My Thoughts
This was an interesting read that resonated me well to most of the dimensions…and here are my thoughts.
I)
I am an atheist myself – and sometimes call agnostic based on whom I am interacting with because of “trigger” factor for those folks as I don’t want to go on argumentative/debate mode – since childhood. As far as I remember, I think I began not believing god when I was in grade 5 (2005ish). The belief system I have adapted in my life is an accumulation of various factors, mostly accounting for science, technology, philosophy, death, absurdities/inconsequentialness of it all. It’s crazy to think that as a child around 2003, I realized “death is inevitable. As I explored the themes of life, universe and cosmos in general, from grander-ness of everything to the miniatures within our lives and within the society, it was clear for me that “God” as a belief system makes sense within a sense of “society”, as a de-facto for delegating your hope/lessness, and un/certainties towards this non-existent image of something (called “God”), which is crazy to think that controls all of your lives, from brith to death. It didn’t sit well with me….
II)
Of course, as childish as I was in my “concrete” belief system, I didn’t realize the difference in “Religion” (capital “R”) and “Culture” (capital “C”) and mixed it. There were several instances of me mocking people worshipping in temples, even at home to my mom and what not. I had conflated both things to be the same. It was as childish as a child can think of. I had questioned all over the places and used to question everything. But still, culture was something I realized is different than religion slowly into 2010+ onward as I started to learn more about the world, society and culture. But by that time, I used to tell people (when asked) being an atheist and there were so much lashbacks from family, relatives, et al. But me being stoic (and then clinical depression). But one thing was: I didn’t have the any mental model of “God” internally. All I could think was “this is what I have, can do and eventually deal with consequences”. But philosophical ideas, more [[Scientific Method]] methods and understanding were the belief system I grounded myself. And surely these are all bayesian in nature ([[Evergreen Note/Life is all about constantly updating our prior beliefs]]).
III)
Coming back to the theme of the book, it resonated with my absolutely. The analogy makes sense that, [[Mimetic Desire]]s propagate like viruses do and shall. Classic [[Richard Dawkins]]’s way of saying “memes” like “genes”. [[Mimetic Traps]] all over the place.
Although most of the books is grounded on author’s own culture of Christianity and growing up in the states, he argues along the framework of Christianity as a religion and the periperhials. But the arguments hold true for any type of religion, be it the “God” god or some cultish “god” like events (eg: [[Marxism]] ). Some things that I would like to highlight:
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Religion discouraging birth control mechanism
If there’s no birth, there will be less future “generation” to propagate into. So, most of the christian roots are against abortion and what not. (Again: this is another debate about pro-life vs what not)
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Religion confines the limits of critical thinking
People are bounded to a very strict framework of thought process, where religion imposes certain set of morality, ethics and behavior. If any opposition, it discourages people to think outside of that framework. This furthers the [[Belief Template]] of “rest everything in ‘God’” when anything happens, be it sad or happy situations.
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Religion as a whole doesn’t have self-correcting mechnism
This makes sense w.r.t to point no. 2 as well. There’s a confinement problem to religion in general, which just chains people to one set of belief system. This results in people not able to think outside and explore various external themes in life.
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Religion just discourages empathy
As a person who is “highly empathetic”, it disturbs me that when something happens, people always put “rest in God” instead of acknowledging the events and their lives. For instance: when you are going through hard times, instead of them saying “I hear you and feel you. I am here to support you. Let me know what I can do”, there’s this narrative of “God is here to save us all”. Which is triggering in general.
I have had many instances here living in the states where I interact with people who are highly tied to such behavior. This discourages me from interacting with them further, because no matter what, within minutes all the conversations would revolve around this sense of higher being that will help you (or condemn) no matter what because of things you do and will do. This again relates to point no. (2) as well where critical thinking is confined within reglious framework, because it helps in the “spread”.
IV)
It’s also interesting that growing up in mostly a hindu-religion-society, there’s fundamentical difference in monotheist region and polytheist ones. All the observations point towards monotheist religion like Christianity, Islam, etc exists to spread itself and that underlying framework will always bound you to belief in single character that will be constantly juding you and your actions. This creates a self-looping feedback cycle in an individual believer that: || they will do something –> It’s “God’s intention” –> reinforce self-satisfaction | they don’t do something –> “God will condemn you” –> creates guilt-trip –> triggers them to do X ||. Never-ending cycle. This is unlike any philosophical ideas which exists to just help you move forward in life without enforcing anything. Of course I am not here to talk shit about specific religion. This can apply to potentially for any cult-like culture as well, where the [[Belief Template]] is confined.
A tangent here is: when I talk with Vipassana meditators. There are minority who behaves like cult saying “Goenka this, Goenkta that. Buddha this, buddha that”. But most of the folks I have interacted (including the teachers and students in my both of my 10-days retreats – Vipassana Re-treat, Vipassana Retreat II ), it’s more like a framework of creating a living of mindfulness, being present and actively acting on being happy in life and minimizing our own internal suffering without relating with any form of religious figures. Of course there’s another story to this where I have read threads about these retreats also enforcing certain cult-like behavior here and there, exiling people who practice other forms of meditation, etc…But that’s for another write-up. In general, I find Vipassana meditators to be more empathetic and mindful about other people/living beings and day-in-day-out I practice (try to) being more mindful about things at work, life, and relationships.
V)
I can keep on writing about this and I am sure I have a lots of personal essays I have written here and there about this. In general, what any belief system should do is encourage more critical thinking, more empathy, more helpfulness and it’s easy to give-in to the concept of blaming everything you have in life to this some external entity. But for me: the book is highly resonating, in that sense I don’t find many atheist around but feels like people should be rational, mindful and encourage support for each other in general than being fixated within one-line-of-thinking. I respect all the belief systems as long as they don’t “impose” certain set of frameworks to me.
Metta!