Oh, That’s What Religion is Good For!

August 17, 2008 at 7:49 pm | In beliefs, culture, education | 2 Comments

A must-read paragraph:

Importantly, religious youth have a stronger sense of themselves than less religious youth. In other words, among the less religious, religion is not supplanted by a stronger ascribed or achieved characteristic. In fact, less religious youth are less strongly identified with anything at all, which suggests that religious group involvement is mutually reinforcing with other identities. Or, that feeling connected to a religious community or tradition heightens all other aspects of self-understanding. Religious adherence, in other words, builds social capital not just in terms of participation in civic life (more below), but also in terms of connection with family, self-esteem, and self-understanding. As Christian Smith finds in his study of teenagers, religious youth rank higher than less religious youth on every measure of self-esteem.

This from OMG! How Generation Y is Redefining Faith in the iPod Era.

For all those folks who wonder about the importance of religion in building societies, forging personal identities, and passing on crucial information from one generation to another, the above stands as a beacon. In my view, it is also a sharp retort to those who suggest that science has surpassed and supplanted religion.

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In my job I meet youths all the time. These are generally non-Jewish kids growing up in a blue collar part of town.
The majority have no goals. Ask them what they’re going to do for a living and they shrug. Ask them what’s important to them and you’ll find out who the number one band is that week.
The dirty truth is that Western secularism is all about selfishness. What’s in it for me? What’s good for me? What do I get out of it?
But somewhere along the way these kids catch a picture of the world and realize: I’m not all that important. So their biggest concern, themselves, turns out to be not much. What’s left to believe in?

Comment by Garnel Ironheart — August 18, 2008 #

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Western secularism isn’t all about selfishness and it is not selfishness to defend and concern oneself with the matters important to one or one’s family or group. Secularism merely allows them to do it without genuflecting before another hierarchy which may or may not be at cross purposes to theirs and today most religious organizations are at cross purposes for lack of understanding of what their own should be, and thus inability to relate to the purposes of their congregants.

As the growing number of formerly religious skeptics of all stripes shows, strong religious identity is for nothing if it is not about faith but about supplanting faith.

Science is at its core not about faith. There is no suspension of disbelief. A thing either is provable or it isn’t at all. Religion is about suspension of disbelief. A thing is and needs no proof and if it can be or is proven then it isn’t a matter of faith.

Go back to the stories about the Baal Shem Tov being made to know that his portion of the world to come was taken away for a transgression. His response was delight in that now there was no doubt of the point of his actions. There was no reward yet he still did good anyways.

Similarly, we aren’t to have faith in reward or G-d’s grace and miracles but simply do things because we believe that they should be. Lately though, in wrong-headed response to science, we make religion into its own kind of weird metaphysical science. Instead of simply choosing to believe and leaving it at that, we worry about who is right.

Instead of WHAT is right.

Science tells us where oil is, how deep the oceans are, and how old a tree is. Religion tells us how to go on when the oil is expensive, when the ocean is rough, and when the tree falls on our house. They are totally different things and when religion forgets its place it sullies itself with opposed ideas. The same is true of science. Many are the unproved and indeed unprovable assertions held entirely on faith in science such as man causing global warming, the ozone hole, etc..

Neither should have anything to do with the other.

Comment by suitepotato — August 19, 2008 #

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