Religion for Rationalists

[-]Said Achmiz6mo*6359

It is bad to participate in organized religion, because you are thereby exposing yourself to intense social pressure to believe false things (and very harmful false things, at that). This is very straightforwardly a bad thing.

You claim:

You can find religions you can practice without being asked to give up your honest search for truth with no need to even pretend to have already written the bottom line.

And this may formally be true—you may not be officially asked to believe false things. But if your social context consists of people who all believe approximately the same false things, and if that social context is organized around those beliefs in false things, and if the social context valorizes those beliefs in false things… then the social pressure will be intense nonetheless. (And some of these false beliefs are fairly subtle; Eliezer discusses this at length in a number of Sequence posts.)

You say:

I also got asked about how I feel about religions and truth seeking. My answer is that you shouldn’t think of religions as being about the truth as rationalists typically think of it because religions are doing something orthogonal.

And here we have a perfect example of the damage done by religion. The claim that “you shouldn’t think of religions as being about the truth as rationalists typically think of it” is absolutely typical anti-epistemology.

Of course religion is about “the truth as rationalists typically think of it”. There is nothing but “the truth as rationalists typically think of it”, because there’s just “the truth”, and then there are things which aren’t truth claims at all, of any kind (like preferences, etc.). But get into religion, start relaxing your epistemic standards just a bit, and very quickly you descend into this sort of nebulous and vague “well there’s different things which are ‘true’ in different ways, and what even is ‘truth’, anyway”, etc. And then your ability to know what’s true and what’s false is gone, and nothing is left but “vibes”.

[-]Gordon Seidoh Worley6mo13-1

And here we have a perfect example of the damage done by religion. The claim that “you shouldn’t think of religions as being about the truth as rationalists typically think of it” is absolutely typical anti-epistemology.

This is an uncharitable and unkind claim to make given you have about 1200 words worth of my position in this post. We've gotten into it over many years and at no time have I felt the better for you commenting on my posts. I welcome the criticism, but not the way you deliver it, and in all our years of debating I feel you have never engaged seriously in any way other than trying to hammer what you already believe, so effectively immediately using the ban feature to ban you from my posts.

I'm sorry it's come to this. I'd like to engage with you as a critic. As you can see, I gladly do that with many of my other critics, and have spent hours doing it with you specifically for many years. But having you comment on my posts is net-negative for me and makes me want to use Less Wrong less, so I'm doing what I should have done a long time ago.

Sorry it had to come with so little warning and after such a long hiatus from us having interactions. I also wish it was on a less contentious and visible post, but that's perhaps what has finally pushed me to do what I should have done before.

For the benefit of other readers, I deny that I am taking some kind of anti-epistemology position. Instead, I take a view that most people do epistemology in ways that overreach and makes metaphysical claims when none need be made, and am writing a book about that. I also can say that, in my experience practicing Zen, there is no culture of subtly pulling me towards obviously false beliefs. I'm sure this happens in many religious communities, but not in mine. If I am pulled towards any false beliefs, it's within the same degree of error to which I am pulled towards false beliefs by my entire life, including the part of it that's on Less Wrong.

[-][anonymous]6mo-2-4

“well there’s different things which are ‘true’ in different ways, and what even is ‘truth’, anyway”

Well I am not sure what conception of truth do you buy into, but the lesswrongian theory of truth is fairly deflationist. Tarskii's semantic theory of truth requires two different language one meta language which is open-ended, and other one being object language. So you could have different things which are true between two pair of languages, so things can be "true" in different ways in that sense.

[-]Said Achmiz6mo2410

Well I am not sure what conception of truth do you buy into

The simple one.

[-][anonymous]6mo1-3

I think that sort of truth is something everyone in practice buys into, due to usefulness but I think someone could have different notions of truth, like in maths or morality.

[-]Adam Zerner6mo2418

My thesis is that most people, including the overwhelmingly atheist and non-religious rationalist crowd, would be better off if they actively participated in an organized religion.
My argument is roughly that religions uniquely provide a source of meaning, community, and life guidance not available elsewhere, and to the extent anything that doesn't consider itself a religion provides these, it's because it's imitating the package of things that makes something a religion.

I would have liked to see the post focus more on the second paragraph. I feel like the post very minimally focused on it and instead, the majority of the post was on related topics like which religion one should choose.

[-]Gordon Seidoh Worley6mo40

Fair enough, but I don't have much to say here beyond what I've sketched above. I could write a lot of words expanding it, but I don't think it would help, because it's ultimately something best proven or disproven through experience by actually engaging with religion in a non-antagonistic way. So I understand why you and a lot of people want this, I just don't think it'd actually teach you anything because you'd come away from what I wrote knowing as much as you do based off this single paragraph.

[-]Richard_Kennaway6mo*183

My argument is roughly that religions uniquely provide a source of meaning, community, and life guidance not available elsewhere

In my limited experience of religion (brought up Church of Scotland but never took it seriously; attended Buddhist meditation classes on and off over a period of about 6 years; have attended a few Christian wedding ceremonies), I have never witnessed these things. At a church service there are bible readings, hymns, and a sermon, and … that’s it. (ETA: And prayers. Yes. There were also prayers.) Whatever community there is around it is at most just people using the regular services as a Schelling point to meet everyone else.

This surely varies from place to place, but that is what I have seen.

[-]mruwnik4mo32

As with most things, there are circles in circles. The closer you are to the center, the more you get of the meaning, community and life guidance. Organized, large churches with lots of levels of structure seem to often be what you're describing, but the smaller the group, the more involved people tend to be.

My parents were very involved in church activities, in very informal denominations, where it was expected that everyone takes an active part in everything. Or at least your status is very dependent on being involved. Of course it's highest status to be a preacher, but even things like baking cakes or just tidying up give you more status than someone who just comes once a week on Sunday. There are also additional meetings during the week (e.g. prayer meetings, bible studies etc.), which are not mandated in any way, but you pretty much need to go to them if you want to be high status. This naturally gives you a lot of meaning, as your actions give you local status, but are also believed to give you future rewards in heaven.

The community isn't just geographically bounded - whenever we would go to a new town or even country, we'd first find out where the local church was (or assembly, as it was called), as you could just walk in and be treated like family, including being taken to someone's house for dinner, even if everyone was a total stranger to you.

"Pastor" was a job description in these circles, not a title. A pastor is someone who takes care of people (same roots as "pasture" - from the Latin "pascere") so their whole point is to make sure people have life guidance, a source of meaning and feeling of community. When done well, this works very well. Of course the downside is that this is often correlated with insularity.

[-]Gordon Seidoh Worley6mo33

Yes, sadly, not all religion provides the level of community and meaning it's capable of. It took me a while to find the right group even after I found that Zen was right for me, and without the right group I'd probably be less of an adocate because I know what's possible and how good it can be.

[-]Viliam6mo169

I would suggest an opposite approach: to adopt the parts of religions that work, especially if we already have a rational explanation why they work. And if some people don't like it, no big deal: they don't have to participate.

For example: we could meet regularly once a week, get regularly reminded of some fundamental facts that we believe (but are likely to forget), express thanks for the good things that happened to us recently, declare our wishes, do some emotional-connection-building activities such as singing together...

I repeat: only for those people who want to do that. If someone is opposed to wasting time on regular meetings, or is not interested in connecting emotionally, that is a perfectly valid choice; the point is to provide such opportunity for those who might like such things, because now the default option is the no one can have that (unless they join a group of irrational people who meet for specifically irrational purposes).

But I would prefer to keep that group unattached to the epistemic baggage of various religions, lest we end up worrying about possession by (metaphoric, I swear!) demons, etc.

[-]Gordon Seidoh Worley6mo30

I would suggest an opposite approach: to adopt the parts of religions that work, especially if we already have a rational explanation why they work. And if some people don't like it, no big deal: they don't have to participate.

This is what humanist churches try to do. Best I can tell, it doesn't work.

unless they join a group of irrational people who meet for specifically irrational purposes

I'd just like to say I think this is unnecessarily uncharitable. I happily agree that many people who practice religion are less rational than would be ideal, but those people are not "irrational" they are instead people who sometimes, perhaps often, use irrational reasoning procedures, nor are their purposes irrational, since that isn't really semantically sensible: purposes are just what they are, it's only the reason why someone chooses to adopt a purpose that may be irrational, and there may well be rational reasons to adopt what seem to you foolish purposes given their circumstances.

[-]Viliam6mo40

This is what humanist churches try to do. Best I can tell, it doesn't work.

I agree.

I suspect the problem is that they try to provide a watered down (sometimes to homeopathic levels) version of religion. Well, if you take the thing that is supposed to be the pillar, and weaken it, then weaker results should not come as a surprise.

If the group is not strongly religious, it needs to be strongly <something else>. Otherwise it is a waste of time. Strongly atheistic might work in a country where the atheists are a small minority, but where people can be openly atheists, even that is not enough. It should be something that you feel that you can get in the church, but not otherwise (or at least: not consistently enough, not concentrated enough).

My preferred choice would be a strongly rationalist, Read-the-Sequences fundamentalist church. Read a chapter from the Sequences or some other approved text. Think about how it applies to your life. Split into smaller working groups, and discuss whatever you want, but the recommended template is: express gratitude for the things you have succeeded at recently, express regret about things that didn't go well, state your hopes and desires... after everyone had enough space to talk, start providing feedback and advice to each other. At some point, various community announcements are made, e.g. "there is a rationality meetup on day X in city Y". Then the official part is over, and everyone is free to stay talking, or go away, or take a walk together...

That would require someone to take the role of the "priest", i.e. select the text to read, remind people of the rules, etc. The responsibility could be shared by multiple people, but we can't expect it to just happen spontaneously.

I may be wrong, but I think that with the right people, this could work. If there is a specific program (e.g. reading a chapter) each week, then people who skipped the meeting will feel like they have missed something specific (as opposed to when people only chat or sit in silence, which is the same thing every time). You can't get "people discussing a chapter of the Sequences" outside the church.

Now I just need to find enough followers willing to meet every week and follow these rules...

[-]jchan6mo51

I think this approach wouldn't work for rationalists, for two reasons:

The rationality community is based around disputation, not canonicalization, of texts. That is, the litmus test for being a rationalist is not "Do you agree with this list of propositions?" (I have tried many times to draw up such a list, but this always just leads to even more debate), but rather "Are you familiar with this body of literature and do you know how to respond to it?" The kind of person who goes to LW meetups isn't going to enjoy simply being "talked at" and told what to believe - they want to be down in the arena, getting their hands dirty.
Your "recommended template" is essentially individualistic - participants come with their hopes and desires already in-hand, and the only question is "How can I use this community to help me achieve my goals?" Just as a gut feeling I don't think this is going to work well in building a community or meaningful relationships (seeing others not merely as means, but as ends in themselves - or something like that). Instead, there needs to be some shared purpose for which involvement in the community is essential and not just an afterthought. Now, this isn't easy. "Solving AI alignment" might be a tall order. But I think the rationality community is doing a passable job at one thing at least - creating a culture of high epistemic standards that will be essential (for both ourselves and the wider world) in navigating the unprecedented challenges our civilization faces.

[-]metachirality6mo1-4

Is Judaism not also based around disputation of texts?

[-]SpectrumDT4mo20

I know very little about Judaism, so I am not qualified to say, but I can quote Yudkowsky on the topic:

Modern Orthodox Judaism is like no other religion I have ever heard of, and I don’t know how to describe it to anyone who hasn’t been forced to study Mishna and Gemara. There is a tradition of questioning, but the kind of questioning . . . It would not be at all surprising to hear a rabbi, in his weekly sermon, point out the conflict between the seven days of creation and the 13.7 billion years since the Big Bang—because he thought he had a really clever explanation for it, involving three other Biblical references, a Midrash, and a half-understood article in Scientific American. In Orthodox Judaism you’re allowed to notice inconsistencies and contradictions, but only for purposes of explaining them away, and whoever comes up with the most complicated explanation gets a prize.
There is a tradition of inquiry. But you only attack targets for purposes of defending them. You only attack targets you know you can defend.
In Modern Orthodox Judaism I have not heard much emphasis of the virtues of blind faith. You’re allowed to doubt. You’re just not allowed to successfully doubt.

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/dHQkDNMhj692ayx78/avoiding-your-belief-s-real-weak-points

[-]Rana Dexsin6mo30

To warp the quotations somewhat to focus on something:

… And if some people don't like it, no big deal: they don't have to participate.

… Best I can tell, it doesn't work.

Specifically, it seems to me like not immediately making that first part overt, salient common knowledge would be load-bearing for acquiring the kind of social cohesion attributed to religious groups. The stickiness of mutual anticipation is a lot of the point.

[-]derelict54326mo105

This is a utilitarian argument for either believing or pretending to believe poorly-supported superstitions for social benefits. Do you value the truth that little?

My favorite counter-thought-experiment to this comes from Sam Harris:

A man believes there is gold buried in his very large backyard. Every Sunday morning he wakes up, grabs his shovel, and starts digging. There is no gold. But the digging is good exercise. There are no substantial negative consequences of his belief.

Is his activity justified on the basis of its utility? How much do we figure in the value of truth here? If people want to either delude themselves or pretend to delude themselves in order to benefit tangibly, I'd say they're doing a disservice to truth. You don't particularly seem to care about that. Or do you?

[-]Gordon Seidoh Worley6mo84

This is a utilitarian argument for either believing or pretending to believe poorly-supported superstitions for social benefits. Do you value the truth that little?

This is not my position. I have made no claim that you should believe poorly supported superstitions. I specifically believe you can engage in religion without doing this, which is part of what I'm pointing at in this post.

[-]derelict54326mo61

I also added 'pretending to believe'. I see your position as wanting to have your cake and eat it too. You're encouraging people to join the most watered-down religions that make the smallest epistemological demands on followers, so that they can enjoy the benefits of community and mental well-being.

You say:

My argument is roughly that religions uniquely provide a source of meaning, community, and life guidance not available elsewhere, and to the extent anything that doesn't consider itself a religion provides these, it's because it's imitating the package of things that makes something a religion.

I'd tend to agree with you. But how is it that religions are able to uniquely provide a source of meaning, community and life guidance, if not through shared belief? You're arguing we can reap the benefits of the effects without the cause. I'm most familiar with christianity. Where do you think the source of meaning and guidance on how to live your life come from, if not in a shared belief that jesus is the son of god, that he died for your sins, and was resurrected?

I'm less familiar with buddhism, but every religion requires some commitment of belief, and that's the whole point.

[-]Gordon Seidoh Worley6mo72

Not all religions require much in the way of shared beliefs. Many require only that you do. It's your duty to, say, carry out some rituals and practices, but what meaning you find in them and what you believe about them is up to you to decide. This is the way it is in Zen and among old-line Quakers.

It'd be unfair to say there's no shared beliefs, of course. If you don't believe in the Four Nobel Truths, it's hard to be a Buddhist, but you can take them more as claims that you either agree with or don't. If you don't agree with them, Buddhism is probably not for you. If you do, then it might be.

I'll just also say that commitment to a belief being the whole point is a very Abrahamic view and less common in other religions.

[-]Karl Krueger6mo53

I'll just also say that commitment to a belief being the whole point is a very Abrahamic view and less common in other religions.

It seems to me that Anglo-American atheists often have a Protestant (or even specifically Lutheran) ontology of religion; they implicitly expect that "religion" must mean something creedal, evangelical, often sola scriptura, and various other things that aren't even universal among denominations of Christianity.

[-]Adam Zerner6mo40

That's an excellent thought experiment!

Piggybacking off of it, suppose the man is struggling in life and otherwise doesn't get any exercise. Suppose that Sunday morning digging really improves his health and quality of life a lot. Is the activity justified?

How about if he's depressed? What if he isn't digging by himself but is instead digging with a tight nit community of other gold believers? The digging provides him with feelings of warmth and connection that make life worth living. Is it justified then?

Where I'm coming from is that, supposing we view truth as an end in-and-of-itself, I want to question how much weight we give to truth relative to other ends we are interested in. I think that regardless of whether you are a consequentialist or virtue ethicist or deontologist or whatever, non-naive versions of these philosophies will weigh different considerations against one another.^[1]

And so I don't think OP's position here indicates that he assigns a low value to truth. I moreso suspect that he is weighing truth against other important considerations and feels that the calculus comes out in favor of sacrificing some truth in favor of other important things.

^{^}
Thanks to Gordon for helping me understand this in this dialogue!

[-]Gordon Seidoh Worley6mo60

And so I don't think OP's position here indicates that he assigns a low value to truth. I moreso suspect that he is weighing truth against other important considerations and feels that the calculus comes out in favor of sacrificing some truth in favor of other important things.

Just to be clear, I don't think you have to sacrifice any truth at all and that it's possible to engage with religion, assuming the right religion, that actually aids in your pursuit of truth by helping you develop greater psychological safety to have to courage to face what is so.

That said, if you really wanted to practice, say, Pentecostalism, you would in fact have to give up some truth to get benefits from it. I would not advocate that rationalists become Pentecostalist on this basis, and instead suggestion religions where engagement need not involve a truth tradeoff.

[-]cousin_it6mo60

religions uniquely provide a source of meaning, community, and life guidance not available elsewhere

I'm not sure things like religion should be treated with a consumer mindset. For example, would it make sense to follow EA because it's a source of meaning and community? No, the point of following EA is to do good. With religion it's often similar, for example the early Christians were the first to build orphanages. The New Testament says a person is good or bad depending on what they do, not what they receive, so if someone said they were joining Christianity to receive something, they'd get very strange looks.

[-]Gordon Seidoh Worley6mo20

Fair point.

This is one of those things that's weird about the modern world. Many of us are no longer part of a religion we grew up with, probably because we didn't like it and actively chose to reject it. And so if we later want to come to religion, it necessarily means "shopping" for one in a certain sense that you have to pick one by some criteria.

I generally wouldn't endorse someone deciding to become religious because they read this post and now want to optimize their life by becoming religious. I'd instead endorse them being open to seeing if some religious participation is right for them, and finding a group where they are able to participate in a way that feels wholesome.

[-]Wei Dai6mo50

My argument is roughly that religions uniquely provide a source of meaning, community, and life guidance not available elsewhere

Why is it good to obtain a source of meaning, if it is not based on sound epistemic foundations? Is obtaining an arbitrary "meaning" better than living without one or going with an "interim meaning of life" like "maximize option value while looking for a philosophically sound source of normativity"?

[-]Gordon Seidoh Worley6mo20

Why is it good to obtain a source of meaning, if it is not based on sound epistemic foundations?

It would, in theory, be nice if meaning was grounded in epistemic, rational truth. But such truth isn't and can't be grounded in itself, and so even if you find meaning that can be rationalized via sound epistemic reasoning, its foundation will not itself be ultimately epistemically sound because it exists prior to epistemic reasoning.

Now this doesn't mean that we can't look for sources of meaning that comport with our epistemic understanding. In fact, I think we should! We should rightly reject sources of meaning that invite us to believe provably false things.

Is obtaining an arbitrary "meaning" better than living without one or going with an "interim meaning of life" like "maximize option value while looking for a philosophically sound source of normativity"?

Tricky question. For many people, I think the answer is yes, they would be better off with some arbitrary meaning. They would simply live better, happier lives if they had a strong sense of meaning, even if that sense of meaning was wrong, because they aren't doing the work to have good epistemics anyway, and so they are currently getting the worst of both words: they don't have meaning and they aren't even taking actions that would result in them knowing what's true. I contend that this is why there's a level of discontent with life itself in the modern era that largely seems absent in the past.

The idea of an interim source of meaning is interesting, because arguably all sources of meaning are interim. There's nothing fixed about where we find meaning, and most people find that it changes throughout their life. Some people spend time finding meaning in something explicit like "the search for truth" or "worshiping God" or similar. Perhaps later they find it in something less explicit, like friends and family and sensory experiences. Perhaps yet later they find it in the sublime joy of merely existing.

When I say that religion uniquely provides a source of meaning and other things, perhaps what I mean more precisely is that it uniquely provides a door through which meaning can be found. The meaning is not in the religion itself, but in living with the guidance of a religion to help in finding meaning for oneself.

[-]Nisan6mo54

Libertarianism teaches that when one wants an economic outcome, one may be tempted to use government to get that outcome; but one should use private-sector tools instead, even if it means inventing a new kind of institution.

When one craves meaning and community, one's first thought is to reach for religion. But one should look for other sources of meaning and community first, including inventing one's own meaning and inventing new kinds of communities.

[-]dr_s4mo40

My argument is roughly that religions uniquely provide a source of meaning, community, and life guidance not available elsewhere, and to the extent anything that doesn't consider itself a religion provides these, it's because it's imitating the package of things that makes something a religion. Not participating in a religion is obviously fine, but I think it leaves people missing out on a straightforward way they can make their lives better.

I think that it's fundamentally sad that for some historical reason, the only organizations in existence with the required heft to really pull this off are ones that inextricably require you to buy into both ethical and ontological and metaphysical beliefs to be considered a member of the community. And the situation is such that maybe due to fragmentation, maybe due to general modern disillusionment, trying to create new communities on different bases just never seems to stick and be quite as successful. But to me this feels like saying "you should consider what you're missing out by never going to a gourmet restaurant, the food is delicious" in a world in which for some reason all gourmet restaurants also ask you to pledge your vote to a political candidate of their choice.

Like, sure, I would enjoy the food! But why you gotta blackmail me that I can only eat it if I support this entirely unrelated thing? That's just weird and then I'm going to stay out simply as a matter of principle.

[-]Gordon Seidoh Worley4mo20

Yes, it might be nice if we lived in the counterfactual world where religion wasn't the only way to get access to some beneficial life experiences. Perhaps in the future we will; people are always trying to start new religion-like things all the time, and maybe one of them will eventually stick and be appealing to people who have good reason not to be part of existing religions. Unfortunately today I don't see other options. I don't mean to blackmail anyone into religion, but if I am, it's reality doing the blackmailing, not me. We simply lack systems other than religions that provide religions same benefits, and so the world simply won't give you some of the good things religions offer if you don't engage with one.

the only organizations in existence with the required heft to really pull this off are ones that inextricably require you to buy into both ethical and ontological and metaphysical beliefs to be considered a member of the community

Arguably, though, requiring members to buy in to some ethical, ontological, and metaphysical claims is load bearing, in that you can't have a thing that offers the benefits of religion without these. For what it's worth, rationality asks you to do roughly the same to be part of the rationalist community. The question is generally whether you agree or not with the common beliefs a group asks you to adopt to be a member.

[-]wonder4mo*50

We simply lack systems other than religions that provide religions same benefits

I am empathetic to this point, and I was thinking of this recently too. However, I've reached a conclusion that the benefit of having values relatively independent of religion (or even similar communities) is to be able to change and develop your values as you experience more things in life. It feels to me that values in religion may be relatively fixed (I could be wrong).

The sad/hard thing is that the process of changing values or beliefs might be a painful experience, while fixed values could bring more stability. But embracing changes in values could be much more rewarding and beneficial in the long run. It does require a person to be very "strong" though, to challenge themselves on some fundamental levels.

requiring members to buy in to some ethical, ontological, and metaphysical claims is load bearing

This is sad, and I wonder what we can do to make it better.

[-]Gordon Seidoh Worley4mo20

The sad/hard thing is that the process of changing values or beliefs might be a painful experience, while fixed values could bring more piece. But embracing changes in values could be much more rewarding and beneficial in the long run. It does require a person to be very "strong" though, to challenge themselves on some fundamental levels.

Totally!

Some religions make this really hard. They have a large, firm set of beliefs they want you to explicitly believe.

Other religions make this easier. In them, you can basically believe whatever you want so long as you, say, still perform required rituals, or continue to commit to a small set of shared values that allow a lot of variation within them.

I think the latter kind offers some big advantages over the former, especially given that the world is changing quickly and some values need to shift to adapt to that changing world.

[-]dr_s4mo40

It's the ontological part that bothers me; it's one thing to have shared subjective beliefs of some kind, but "if you don't believe this potentially falsifiable thing you're not one of us" is just epistemological blackmail.

[-]Gordon Seidoh Worley4mo30

Yes, I agree, it's usually bad when religions require that you believe specific, falsifiable claims to be part of them. Not all religions do, but many do, and the two most popular ones (Christianity and Islam) very much do. Sadly, requiring people to believe specific claims is probably why these religions spread so well: it makes it painful to leave the religion because everyone thinks you are doing something extremely dumb and possibly evil from their shared point of view.

For what it's worth, this is one of the things I like about many forms of Buddhism, not just Zen. Aside form the Four Noble Truths there's no creed or specific beliefs you're expected to believe, and even then no one is actually checking that you really believe the Four Noble Truths (though if you don't at least kind of believe them you'll probably select yourself out). At many places all you have to do is show up and do it: sit meditation, participate in rituals, etc. As long as you believe you want to be part of a sangha (i.e. you want to select yourself into Buddhism) and you aren't being a jerk, you can be part of a sangha.

[-]dr_s4mo30

I wonder if this is generally true or just the way Buddhism ends up manifesting in the west, where it's mostly for the sake of educated people pursuing meditation and alternative spirituality.

Historically, Buddhism could well be very playing a similar role for social cohesion and political legitimacy as Christianity or Islam. Mahayana Buddhism has plenty of "saints" and their cults in the Bodhisattvas, Tibet was a theocratic monarchy, etc.

[-]Gordon Seidoh Worley4mo40

Very true. We're in the process of creating Western Buddhism, and probably have another couple hundred years (if we didn't have to think about AI) before it's fully formed. You're right that Eastern Buddhisms contain a lot more traditional religious expression that's missing form the West, although I think part of why Zen in particular became popular is because it's a strain of Buddhism that is especially amenable to post-Enlightenment European values (I occasionally make the analogy that Zen is roughly the Reformed sect of Buddhism (it feels in particular very Presbyterian to me), and it was arguably the Reform movement that laid last pieces of the necessary memetic groundwork for the European Enlightenment to happen).

[-]Mo Putera6mo40

Out of curiosity, does this have any relation with zhukeepa's views?

[-]Gordon Seidoh Worley6mo40

Sort of. I feel generally positive about his views on religion, but we came to somewhat similar positions independently.

[-]Pretentious Penguin6mo30

In what sense does the Society of Friends require more commitment than Unitarian Universalist or humanist churches do?

[-]Gordon Seidoh Worley6mo102

The act of sitting through 1-hour of unplanned service. It's actually quite hard for most people, especially if they are used to being entertained. UU and humanist services provide a lot of entertainment, even if you think it's boring entertainment. The simple act of sitting together in silence for an hour bonds the people who do it because they understand the level of comitment it takes not to get up a leave.

Additionally, if you keep attending Quaker services, you'll eventually get sucked into volunteering and you'll have to show up because that's the only way the service happens.

[-]Richard_Kennaway6mo92

The simple act of sitting together in silence for an hour bonds the people who do it because they understand the level of comitment it takes not to get up a leave.

“I did this difficult thing, therefore it must have been worth it” is standard cultish anti-epistemology.

[-]Gordon Seidoh Worley6mo94

Uh, sure, but that misses the point.

I'm not saying it's worth doing because it's difficult, except insofar as doing difficult things together facilitate social bonding.

There are plenty of other reasons to think sitting together in silence for an hour is good, and the difficulty of doing it is only a little related to what makes it good.

[-]SpectrumDT4mo10

many Western "Buddists" are not clearly religious (they're more Buddhist philosophy enjoyers and meditation dabblers)

I am a bit like this. I meditate 60+ minutes per day, talk to a teacher regularly, participate casually in a number of online "sanghas", and follow the Eightfold Path and the Five Precepts as rough guidelines. But as I have described on Reddit here, I do not consider myself as "being a Buddhist" but merely has "having/doing a Buddhist-inspired practice".

Could I ask you to please say a bit more about why I might want to "be a Buddhist"?

[-]Gordon Seidoh Worley4mo60

In many ways I'd say you're already a Buddhist. There's no strict qualifications to apply the Buddhist label. This is good in that it's about what you do, and if you do Buddhist practice, I'd say that makes you a Buddhist. But it's bad in that it creates a murky line where it's easy to claim one is a Buddhist despite weak practice.

There's is some line past which one is clearly a Buddhist, though. When I received the precepts and a dharma name, it became hard to say that I wasn't! But as I say I don't think this is in any way the minimum bar one must cross to use the label. If I had to take a stab at a minimum bar, I'd say anyone who takes refuge in the three treasures, believes the four noble truths, and follows the eight fold path is clearly a Buddhist.

It also sounds like you have strong practice! Stronger than most, and stronger than many who call themselves Buddhists.

What I will say is that I think you would benefit from participation in an in-person sangha because you are a human, humans are naturally gregarious if not made avoidant as a defensive strategy, and we have greater well-being when part of tight-nit communities. If you feel resistance to doing that (I get the sense that you do), that's something to investigate, and a great way to investigate it is to join a sangha and commit to being part of it for long enough, say a year, that you'll have time to figure out if it's really for you. You might want to do a little sangha shopping to find one that feels right, but if none feel right just pick one and run the experiment. You can always stop going after a year if it's really not for you.

[-]SpectrumDT4mo32

I'd say anyone who takes refuge in the three treasures, believes the four noble truths, and follows the eight fold path is clearly a Buddhist.

I am not sure I believe in the four noble truths. I believe that the dharma and eightfold path can reduce suffering, certainly. I am not completely convinced that the end of suffering is possible.

Nor do I particularly take refuge in the three treasures. I think the dharma, as preserved in the sutras, is valuable, but probably flawed and incomplete. I also suspect that the Buddha is largely legendary. (I am sure that he lived, but I suspect that his accomplishments have been exaggerated.)

I have seldom read the original sutras. I find more value in modern interpretations such as Culadasa's The Mind Illuminated, in conjunction with other (non-Buddhist-inspired) self-improvement literature.

What I will say is that I think you would benefit from participation in an in-person sangha because you are a human, humans are naturally gregarious if not made avoidant as a defensive strategy, and we have greater well-being when part of tight-nit communities. If you feel resistance to doing that (I get the sense that you do), that's something to investigate

I feel resistance partly because I am wary of the time commitment (I struggle to find the time to meditate already), and because I am skeptical about whether I will be able to find a good group. But you have a point. I have now posted and asked about it in some Facebook groups for meditators and Buddhists in Denmark. Let us see.

[-]Gordon Seidoh Worley4mo20

Nor do I particularly take refuge in the three treasures. I think the dharma, as preserved in the sutras, is valuable, but probably flawed and incomplete. I also suspect that the Buddha is largely legendary. (I am sure that he lived, but I suspect that his accomplishments have been exaggerated.)

For what it's worth, the Buddha is often understood to be not a man who lived 2500 years ago but awakening itself. Similarly, the dharma is not only what's in the sutras, but the truth of life as it is ("dharma" is a word that means "truth" but also "phenomena", which tell you a lot about Buddhist philosophy). And the sangha is not just the group you meet with, but everyone and everything that supports each other's lives.

[-]SpectrumDT4mo30

Thanks. I apologize for sounding negative and contrarian, but "the truth of life as it is" does not sound like much of a refuge. Could I ask you to please elaborate on that?

[-]Gordon Seidoh Worley4mo31

Of course. No need to apologize, this is a totally reasonable question!

My way of thinking about this is a very Zen understanding of the refuges, which means it's a very Mahayana understanding of them. Which means that "the Buddha" is interpreted to include the literal Buddha, but also to mean "awakening" or "bodhi", of which the Buddha is a manifestation. And since we also understand all beings to already be awake (this is a complex claim about non-duality that cannot be fully expressed in words), it means taking refuge in the Buddha is taking refuge in the world exactly as it is, which also means taking refuge in the life that allows us to know the world.

Now of course maybe you don't find the Zen or Mahayana framing useful, in which case this won't sound like a reasonable understanding of that refuge. Some traditions take the refuge quite literally and revere the Buddha as an interventionist deity, and others have other understandings of this refuge that I'm not very familiar with. But of course totally understandable if none of them connect and you don't want to do it!

[+]Kabir Kumar6mo-9-26

LESSWRONG
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LESSWRONG
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Religion for Rationalists

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