[extropy-chat] Secular worship

[Adrian Tymes]

--- Damien Broderick <thespike at satx.rr.com> wrote:
> It starts to look as 
> if people really *do* find secular scientific
> cultures too `cold' and 
> `impersonal' and even `inhaman' to sustain the glow
> of life. True, there 
> are parts of Europe and Australasia where Religion
> Incorporated has been 
> sidelined for a few generations, but I'll bet it
> comes ripping back in the 
> clutches. Time for humanism and transhumanism to
> start thinking seriously 
> once again (as Bertrand Russell and Wells and others
> did nearly a century 
> ago, without getting anywhere) about some sort of
> secular equivalent of 
> worship (ugh; whatever) and mutually supportive
> emotionally enriched 
> fellowship.

Consider the psychological needs that are fulfilled
through worship.  No matter who you are or how you
have conducted your life, there is someone who cares
about you, and who values your efforts.  You have no
need to justify yourself; you are accepted, even if
everyone else believes you're a total screw-up whose
negligence kills people on a regular basis.

Religion is spiritual candy, while we offer spiritual
nutrition.  Similar tactics may work in selling our
philosophy: find ways that the nutritional alternative
still "tastes" good.  But one must consider different
peoples' tastes.

Those who strongly prefer self-empowerment already
come to us.  Leaving things to some unapproachable God
while one's own efforts ultimately come to nought?  No
thanks: I'd rather be my own person, among others who
are their own people.

But homo sapiens is a social animal, so we should not
be so surprised to find humans whose most important
need (beyond needs related to continued physical
existance) are for community and acceptance.  "I
screwed up; do you still love me?"  This is, perhaps,
inherently difficult for us to convey: there is no
source of love separate from the mass of humanity that
an evil person may harm.  God would still accept a
sinner, they claim, but those who are sinned against
are naturally upset.  We might claim "tough love" when
we punish minor sinners before releasing them back
into society - but "tough love" can be hard to
perceive, and God usually does not even inflict that
in practice.  (Biblical stories are one thing, but
most believers probably at least subconsciously know
the difference between reality and what they profess.
Else why so much sorrow at funerals, when there should
be joy that the departed is going to a better place?)

Perhaps this just boils down to a lesson in the
nature of humanity: always try to deliver your message
in a friendly tone.  Never discard happiness unless
dealing with people who admit they are trying to
destroy your happiness as a goal in itself.  (Anyone
sophisticated enough to actually have this as a goal
without admitting it is also almost certainly aware of
the desirability of achieving the goals they do admit
to without destroying your happiness if possible.  But
more often, those who seem to be intent on destroying
happiness only do so incidental to their real goal, no
matter how blind to your suffering they are, and would
be willing to avoid angering you if they were aware of
alternatives that achieve their goal without the
negative consequences.)  Happiness may be incidental
to the message you are trying to deliver, but it is a
method that works - and in the end, are we not mostly
about doing that which works?

...although this is a tough problem.  I review the
above, and I'm not entirely happy with my proposed
solution.  But what do others think?