The Road to Rationalism pt 3.2

In part 3.1 I attempted to show that all of the world's religions provided us with pre-scientific explanations for the existence of the Universe, and that the acquisition of knowledge through the process of science has revealed all of them to be false.

It was my premise to suggest that explanations for the existence of the Universe (or at least the relevant religion's corner of it) form the core of any religion; we cannot doubt that any dedicated believer of one of the Abrahamic religions, for example, must believe the creation stories told by genesis to be true.

A reader was kind enough to take the time to comment on my post, casting doubt on my conjecture that the primary role of religion is to explain the world around us. He said:

"I think the trouble with this sort of analysis is that it makes certain unexamined assumptions about what religion is "meant to do". In particular, you assume that it's role is to somehow "explain" things in the world, in the same way that science does, but of course, much worse."

He goes on to say that although religions do have "cosmogenies associated with them" these explanations are most likely secondary considerations, and that we should view the ritualism (sacrificing goats, to take my favourite example) of religion as the primary function.

I am happy to concede that this may be the case, and would be happier still if the reader could cite any of the "lots of evidence to the contrary" to which he alludes.

I must disagree with the main point of his argument though, which is to suggest that since explanations are only a secondary consideration and not the primary function, my fundamental argument that religious explanations are inferior to scientific ones is somehow weakened...

"I bring these points up because I don't [doubt?] that the phenomenology and anthropology of religion and religious experience at all support the "explanatory" theory about primitive religion: and thus the implications that follow from this sort of theory are also suspect."

The 'implications' of course being the main premise behind my Road to Rationalism posts - that all religions teach evident falsehoods to be true, and require their followers to believe in unscientific, unsubstantiated nonsense to the exclusion of all evidence to the contrary.

As I said in my reply

"The main thrust of your argument appears to be: 'explanation is not the primary role of religion, as you have suggested, therefore comparing the validity of explanations put forward by religion to that of scientific explanations is suspect.' I strongly dispute this argument, if that is indeed what you are suggesting, for the fairly obvious reason that it doesn't matter whether the founder of a religion invented the story, or whether the stories were set in stone much later by an organised church; what actually matters is the truth value of the explanation put forward.

We live in a world where the vast majority of people accept that their religion's creation stories are true.

Tell them that their explantions are only secondary roles in their religions, and see how far you get."

I look forward to continuing this debate.

Infidelity discovered - by both partners!

An absolute gem of a comic/tragic story from my paper yesterday that I hope you'll all enjoy. Nothing to do with religion at all but it's too funny to let it pass...

The game is up
Warsaw A Polish man visiting a brothel discovered that his wife was one of the prostitutes. She had told her husband she was working at a store. "I was dumbfounded" he said. The couple, married for 14 years, are divorcing. (Reuters)

Oops!

Do any of you have humorous stories like this to share? Contact me and I'll link to your site in a post.