Why Religion does not work anymore.

Logically, belief in Cthulhu MUST come before any other religious beliefs. I view the entire belief system of any religion as some sort of upside down pyramid, all balancing and dependent on Cthulhu's existence.

I don't think that's accurate. A better analogy than FSM for a belief in Cthulhu would be the theory of dark matter. People don't think dark matter exists because they've observed it; they postulate the existence of dark matter because they observe what effect it has; the same is true of a belief in Cthulhu. Religious beliefs are developed from the bottom up. I think C.S. Lewis wrote something along the lines that he believed in Christianity as he believed in the sun; not only because he sees it, but because by it he sees everything else. FSM is an incomplete analogy because it does not take into account the latter part of that sentence; there is a substantial difference between believing in something that is unprovable and irrelevant and believing in something that is unprovable but relevant.

Moreover, I don't think it's correct to characterize it as believing something because it makes you happy. I am sure many religious people would be happier if they didn't believe in Cthulhu. Religious people often restrict themselves from particular activities that they are tempted by solely because of their belief. Nor is it a desire to think that human life has worth; it is not simply "meh, I think it would be really cool if human life had meaning, so let's just pretend it does and say that Cthulhu is the reason." People believe in a religion or spirituality because they perceive truth in it. I don't think that is a material perception; I think it is nonetheless a genuine perception. If every human were blind, would you deny the existence of light? By your logic, you must, since there would be no way to confirm its existence through the limited means we would have available. Would you then ridicule anyone who claimed to be able to see, since you cannot confirm the existence of light yourself? For those people who are blind, is it logical for them to deny the existence of light since they are unable to perceive it themselves, even if others tell them it exists? Human faculties are limited; to reject anything that cannot be confirmed through what limited faculties humans have is not a search for truth, per se; it is a search for certainty, and you will necessarily deny many things that are true. I am not saying that anyone who perceives some supernatural truth is perceiving something actually true; there are many beliefs or belief systems that I too reject. Just as people can see things that do not exist, I suspect that people, if they perceive supernatural truths at all and if there are supernatural truths to perceive, are even less likely to be perceiving them accurately or completely.

However, the gist of my post is this: I do not believe that it is illogical to believe in something of which you are not certain. For instance, much of what I know about scientific knowledge or otherwise I did not learn through direct perception or experience, but through reading the accounts other people have written of their experiments, etc... I trust in the scientific method; I trust that people who follow it are less likely to draw inaccurate conclusions; I trust those people not to be biased and not to lie; I accept that others have done the work that I have not to confirm hypotheses. I cannot say I am certain, but I still believe, and I believe despite knowing that some new study could come along and completely contradict what I believe, and if it does, I will probably believe that study too. I believe them based solely on the testimony of others and without any direct perception whatsoever. To require certainty is unnecessarily limiting. I genuinely believe that there exist things that are true that exist outside of natural human perception (the five senses) or capability, and I believe that religion is capable of granting access to supernatural truths that are outside our perception, whether through the testimony of others who have perceived them or through some non-physical perception, such as a perception that human life has meaning.

you'd be surprised how many good arguments there are for morality and worth there are that don't involve Cthulhu.

I've heard a lot of them; none of them are very compelling - 80 years of life among a race of 7 billion people that is hurdling toward extinction on one tiny planet in a huge galaxy in a huge universe; no naturally apparent reason why something exists rather than nothing - pretty damn sure that nothing within natural perception could possibly justify that life has meaning, so anything that could is just as or more unprovable than Cthulhu.


Anyway, I'm really tired now, so hopefully that didn't come out incoherently.

Science attempts to tell us how the universe works. There are some things we cannot yet explain, and something we probably never will. Scientists admit that. You're right, since science works on observing patterns technically it never 'proves' anything, it can only disprove. But if something is repeatedly tested and hasn't been disproven, than chances are pretty good it's true. It's the best possible method we have for determing truth from fiction in my opinion, would you agree? As such, if the majority of scientists believe something than It would be wise for us to believe it as well. It would certainly be unwise to hold a belief that goes against common scientific beliefs, unless you had very good reason.

That certainly is an interesting way of looking at it Modern, I'll have to think about that for a while. But let me just say that that wasn't my experience. I became a christian at such a young age I can't remember it. My young mind couldn't grapple with the philosophy necessary to even understand the concept of God. I only believed it because my parents told me it was true. But if I had never formed that initial belief in God I don't think I'd have aquired the numerous religious beliefs I formed throughout my life. So while I will concede that for some people religion is built for the bottom up, for me it was all dependant on that one belief.

Again, I fully admit that the human power for observation is limited, and there are things that we cannot know. But that doesn't mean we should guess. It simply means we will never know. If all humans were blind, and there was no way to measure the effects of light through our other senses, than we would have no evidence for belief in light.

Science attempts to tell us how the universe works. There are some things we cannot yet explain, and something we probably never will. Scientists admit that. You're right, since science works on observing patterns technically it never 'proves' anything, it can only disprove. But if something is repeatedly tested and hasn't been disproven, than chances are pretty good it's true. It's the best possible method we have for determing truth from fiction in my opinion, would you agree? As such, if the majority of scientists believe something than It would be wise for us to believe it as well. It would certainly be unwise to hold a belief that goes against common scientific beliefs, unless you had very good reason.

You can't say that the chances are 'pretty good' that it's true, considering how often things change, that's subjective.  We don't know how good the chances are that we're right, we only know what we can see based on the data we can currently get, and the patterns we can observe.

There are some very general things that we can be correct about.

For instance:
-Stars are hot (common sense)
-Creatures and plants kill other creatures and plants
-People, creatures, and plants die
-People have died

Usually, our "laws" amended or partially revised rather than completely re-written nowadays, so we must be doing the right thing somewhere.

Anything that we didn't observe, we are standing at the chalkboard with numbers and formulae to postulate. Somehow, the relation between math (especially theoretical) and the actual world around us is great. The number of links we've found is staggering. I'd like to cite the Fibonacci sequence as one of them.

To say that we basically don't know anything is alternatively baseless and disheartening.

We cannot know everything, it is true, but there are a lot of "concrete" things we can record and generally pass on.

Actually, hot is a relative term, to other stars some might be rather cold, but yes, to us they would be considered hot.

As far as laws of nature are concerned, those are due to the years and years and years and years and years and years of unbreakability, but that doesn't mean that they aren't subject to the possibility of being completely wrong.

We know a lot of things, but most of what Science explains, as theories, hypothesis, or laws, are simply the best answer we can come up with, and only tend to last until a better one comes along.

Considering that almost all stars are so energetic that molecule formation is almost nigh impossible, I'd say that they were hot even when you disregard relative terms. Especially the blue ones.

As far as general things go, we have a perfectly good idea of what has happened, and we form postulates based on that. This, of course, does leave possibilities open.

This has to do with the future being almost entirely unclear at all points in time, however.

Considering that almost all stars are so energetic that molecule formation is almost nigh impossible, I'd say that they were hot even when you disregard relative terms. Especially the blue ones.

Ignoring relative terms is what makes them 'hot' universally.
Consider that to a Blue star, a Red star could be extremely cold.

But yes, the future is uncertain which is why Scientists do not claim to have fully explained anything.

An example of religion not working=Scientology
And thats really all that has to be said

Wow. All this deep stuff flying around, and all I want to do is make i t through the day. Damn.

Religion (usually) expects you do follow certain rules to avoid eternal damnation and suffering. It's scaremongering to get more followers and more church-gooers (if the religion has a weekly mass or something), when often, or at least as far as I'm aware, there's always second chances.

Okay, to re-iterate, Christianity. Depending on who you ask, certain things will result in you going to hell. But God gives people second chances. No matter how hard you screw up, you'll be given another chance in heaven. At least, as I recall reading. That's what I mean by scaremongering. There's always another chance, but telling people that won't get followers.

Spirituality though is a self-sustaining paradox. I'm a very scientific and philosophical person. I can think of many things to debunk what I believe (the scientific side), or explain why I believe it (the philosophical/psychological side). But that doesn't stop me from believing. I believe because it gives me a sense of purpose or security maybe, maybe that's what keeps it alive.

I don't need to follow set rules every day, avoid doing things or whatever. I don't think a heavenly body will smite me for killing someone, I just will feel guilty for it. My beliefs are something that I live with, but not around.