LogFAQs > #895848055

Okay so upon reflecting, I think your approach to religion is going to depend on what you want out of religion in the first place.

1. Truth: This is the model I follow. To me, the purpose of religion is to find out the truth about whether there is a god, whether morality exists (in the sense of absolute and unchanging standards of right and wrong), and to act accordingly. So if a particular religion is false, then it has no value for me. Well "no value" is kinda harsh -- it might be interesting historically, or its holy book might be interesting from a literary standpoint -- but I would never want to be an adherent of that religion.

2. Socializing: I'm going to call this the "tree fort" model based on what Maria said. Suppose the coolest kids in town have a really sweet tree fort, and they have secret handshakes and chants to the Almighty Were-Tree-Bear of the Forest and a book of tree bear legends. If you want to be friends with them and get into that sweet tree fort, then you have to do the handshakes and the chants. So you do it.

I don't mean this in an insulting way -- maybe they really are genuinely cool dudes and over the years you become fast friends for more than just the tree fort stuff. But you still have to pretend, because if you ever told them "the Were-Tree-Bear is just a dumb thing you made up as kids" then they'd get offended, and might not be friends with you any more, and you definitely wouldn't get to hang out in their tree fort.

In that case it makes total sense to call yourself a devotee of the Were-Tree-Bear (or a Christian, etc.). But you should at least be honest with yourself that you think it's all a crock and you're just playacting to keep your tree fort access.

3. Philosophical/Historical: Maybe you're just interested in discussing philosophy and insights into human nature. Confucius had some neat stuff to say about human nature and relations. So did Nietzsche. So did Jesus. As a scholar, you could study all three (and Jesus holds a special position because of his pervasive historical influence over Western society).

You wouldn't necessarily need to become a Christian (or a Confucian, a Nietzschean, etc.). But maybe you become convinced that Jesus' views are just really insightful and he's basically your favorite philosopher. In that case, I'd say your views are still not strictly religious; you don't believe in his divinity, you don't believe he's the path to salvation, you just think he was a clever dude that was more clever than other clever dudes. I'm not the gatekeeper of words, though, so if you wanted to call yourself a Christian then I sure couldn't stop you.
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another place and time, without a great divide, and we could be flying deadly high