Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Path: utzoo!linus!philabs!cmcl2!husc6!ut-sally!seismo!umcp-cs!mangoe
From: mangoe@umcp-cs.UUCP (Charley Wingate)
Newsgroups: talk.religion.misc,net.religion.christian
Subject: A particularly Poor Way to Examine Religion
Message-ID: <3662@umcp-cs.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 2-Oct-86 23:15:09 EDT
Article-I.D.: umcp-cs.3662
Posted: Thu Oct  2 23:15:09 1986
Date-Received: Sat, 11-Oct-86 08:38:28 EDT
References: <1165@cybvax0.UUCP>
Organization: University of Maryland, Dept. of Computer Sci.
Lines: 41
Xref: linus talk.religion.misc:391 net.religion.christian:4821

Mike Huybensz writes:

>Religion is simply a form of social behavior (in the anthropological sense.)
>It provides certain services which can all be provided by secular sources.
>Different people can select different services.  One may use the crutch of
>belief in a caring god; another may use the church as a meeting place for
>meeting marriageable women or business deals; and another may seek moral
>instruction to deal with life's conflicts.  There's a large list of non-
>supernatural services.

Let us be more accurate: the external signs of religion are, by and large,
evidenced by the behavior of its adherents.  (Even we admit that obvious
mirales are exceedingly rare to the point where their existence can never be
assented to scientifically.)  This means that one can easily make up all
sorts of psychological explanations for everything.  By the same token, it
means that there are three essentially indistinguishable possibilities:

  1)  That all of these things are purely psychological in origin.
  2)  That some are and some aren't.
  3)  That none of them are.

I don't think you can make a case for 3, especially when even the religious
texts are arguing against you.  I happen to believe in (2).  THis, however,
is very difficult to distinguish from (1).  I do have a purely procedural
problem with (1) in that you need to be able to enumerate all the different
psychological motivations and show that at least one holds in all cases.  If
you have one that is reasonable, that tends to reduce faith in (3), but it's
always possible that (2) is true BUT the number of "non-psychologicals" is
small enough to where you've never seen one, or that your psychological
explanation is plausible but wrong.

>It's amazing the lengths people will go to fantasize that somebody important
>has taken an interest in them.

Uh, Mike, I hate to break it to you, but there is no way on earth you can
demonstrate that this is in fact a real motivating factor-- and Auden, for
one, argues against it, so I have to conclude that it is, at best, an
explanation for only part of christianity.  Which means that you'll have to
concoct some other rationalization for the rest.

C. Wingate