Would You Ever Torture Your Children With Fire In in the Basement?

[jynnan tonnix]

Everyone's family and cultural practices make sense to the people who grew up with those practices, but seem strange to outsiders. Christianity, Hinduism and Islam all make sense to the people involved, but clearly all three cannot be true reflections of reality. If Brahma created the world and is in charge, then we should be doing what he wants. There is no room for Shango, Ra, Jehovah or Allah.

I was raised a JW, and that still makes sense to me, because I understand it. However, I don't believe any of it is true. So, we certainly can't rely on what religion makes sense to us personally--because that is what we have been taught since childhood, or because that is the prevailing culture, or because some powerful person said we have to do it. 

How do we determine which religions make sense because they are true, as opposed to which make sense because we are used to them?

Hmm...I see what you are saying here, but it seems to me that the problem with all those man-made religions is that, ultimately, once they are looked at critically, the "sense" breaks down. The holes become apparent. And there just comes a point where either you have to admit that the big picture doesn't, in fact, make sense and lose your belief (or SPAG it into submission), or plug up those holes with doublethink and apologetics and hope you can distract yourself enough not to look to closely at the bits and pieces which still want to unravel.

I'm not sure where "making sense" fits into that beyond the point where you just accept the dogma and stick to putting the puzzle together using only the pieces which have been trimmed to fit. Or is that the sense you are using it in?

I mean, I agree with you. When you are used to something it does become easier to see it from an insider's point of view, but I'm still not sure I'd use the term "sense" to describe it.

[Hatter23]

I find that asking a theist to present evidence is like asking a brick wall to do push ups....

Not quite. Brick walls don't dodge, and then condecendingly sneer at you about how they did the push ups one handed.

[nogodsforme]

When I use the phrase "making sense" I am probably getting away from what MM meant. He will have to explain what he meant.

What I am talking about is having an internal logic, such that once you accept the basic premises, things that would seem contradictory can be easily dealt with.

For example, we have lots of religious people saying that god is completely good and knows everything. So, what's the deal with a pregnant woman having a miscarriage when she really wanted the baby? (Or a family dying in a house fire, or the black plague, or warfare or natural disaster, or whatever bad thing you want to bring up.)

In order to keep "making sense", the religious person has to twist the bad thing around to be good-- god knew that the baby was going to be seriously deformed and the family would not be able to handle it, so god took the baby to heaven instead. Heaven is even better than earth, so god is still good.

Well, then if miscarriage is okay with god, can a doctor induce a miscarriage and send the baby to heaven if the woman finds out that her baby will be seriously deformed? No, that would be bad, because that is not for humans to decide. God knows more than we do, god knows all the outcomes. Everything god does is for the best, even if it is bad when people do it.[1]

I guess a lot of having religion make sense is due to cognitive dissonance, because you have to look at the world around you and convince yourself that there is something very different from what your brain tells you. It has to be like being in a mind-control situation, like a dictatorship or cult where you keep saying stuff that makes no sense until somehow it does.

"Dear leader is good, kind, smart and loving. He makes everything beautiful. If it looks and feels like North Korea is a hell-hole it is due to my own inability to completely understand and appreciate dear leader. I must be re-educated."

Hard to see how "making sense" is different from "lockstep cultlike mentality". 

1.

We actually have someone on this board who says god is always loving and good, even though he makes natural disasters that kill millions and destroy entire cities--because the disasters shape the planet and make it beautiful. I guess the dead folks go to an even more beautiful, yet, somehow, disaster-less heaven....no contradictions there at all.

[12 Monkeys]

It might seem that way, but it really isn't. Thousands of different denominations really doesn't mean a lot. Generally speaking denominational differences are so minute they are hard to distinguish.

I think the 3 to 11 million people who died in the Thirty years war might be evidence to the contrary.

Look at Northern Ireland Vs the Protestants ruling class,still going on. Though it may have more to do with Great Britain thinking they can own anything they claim