Coming to Terms
Religion is one of those things that can invoke the ire of people if you bring it up in the incorrect way. That way is, of course, precisely the manner in which religious people will so often choose to bring it up. Put simply, this is when the boundary of respect for someone else's personal decisions and autonomy over their life is violated. Anger is aroused when boundaries are violated, and since religion is such a tremendous personal decision with profound implications, it's a tender boundary to risk crossing.
The motto of the Royal Society is "Nullius in Verba", which roughly translates to "On the Authority of No One". This is a good motto for science; there are scientific experts, but not scientific authorities. Being the most knowledgeable person in a branch of science doesn't mean you get to dictate how it functions or decide what will be regarded as true or not. It simply means that you have a deep understanding not only of what we know, but how we've come to know it, and the current limitations of our understanding of the field. You should understand how to go about probing reality with experiments to uncover what we don't yet comprehend.
One common maxim I hear from Christians since the Reformation, which was either coined or popularized by Martin Luther, is Sola Scriptura. Again, roughly translated, this means "On the Authority of Scripture Alone." It points to the importance of not deferring your understanding of God (at least the Christian one) to ecclesiastical authorities. In other words, read the Bible for yourself, make your own decisions, and reach your own conclusions. While there are parallels between these two Latin phrases, the two are not quite the same; it's one thing to defer to the empirical and time-tested observations of reality that science has amassed, and quite another to defer to the "authority" of a holy text that was written collectively between 4,000 and 2,000 years ago.
Sola Scriptura is the maxim I abide by when considering questions associated with Christianity, and especially in encounters with would-be prosthelytizers. Christians are apt to say that they've been blessed by this or that, because they prayed properly, or God interceded in their lives for some other reason. They claim that God has spoken to them, or that they have felt His touch in their lives. But God only speaks to human beings via His prophets. Since we have no extant prophets, as far as we know or can tell, the only thing we have is their residuals, which is the writings they have left behind for us to read. Claiming that God has touched your life is to claim to be a prophet, which I categorically disregard from my fellow human beings as heresy. I don't deny that these people have had religious experiences that have touched them, only that it is not valid testimony to any kind of higher truth that I am obligated listen to.
To make the same point slightly another way: the great Thomas Paine wrote in his Age of Reason that any revelation made to a man by God is a revelation, but when that man turns around and repeats what he heard to another man, then it ceases to be revelation and instead becomes hearsay. Moses communicating with God on Mount Horeb / Sinai might be revelation, but once he comes down from the mountain and preaches it, it no longer carries divine authority and therefore the Hebrews are not bound to observe the Law.
These little theological games are all well and good, but there's a more serious problem to be surfaced here. The first function of any mythology (read: religion) is to, in manner of speaking, cheat death. Human beings generate religions (or relay them from divine revelations they've had) because there is a message that some part of humans outlasts the death of the body, and this "essence" persists in a realm beyond our known universe.
The trouble is that death is something that comes to all of us, at some point. In the absence of some catastrophic event that kills us instantly, we'll be facing the end of our lives at some length eventually. Before a person reaches that horizon, one must be absolutely sure they have made peace with themselves about what is about to happen when the threshold is crossed. An atheist may be at peace with the thought of impending nothingness. A Christian may be at peace with the narrative of the Pearly Gates. Mystics may be at peace with the idea that their mortal selves will fuse with the infinite in one of the many ways in which their respective doctrines say that it may.
What's important, though, it that one makes the decision, and arrives at this peace of mind, on their own terms. It's not that help or advice cannot be sought from others, but it is irresponsible of anyone, religious or otherwise, to try and foist an easy answer on anyone else. When the time to shuffle off this mortal coil finally arrives, you won't be at peace because a clergyman told you this or that thing, such as "There's a heaven you go to", or because an atheist insisted that we materialistically go on to fertilize trees, or because any other such person gave you an answer that might work for them. Nullius in Verba.
This is a matter of personal responsibility. I don't swallow the stories that are offered me by those around me without question, because to do so would be a serious abdication of the responsibility that I have to myself.
The motto of the Royal Society is "Nullius in Verba", which roughly translates to "On the Authority of No One". This is a good motto for science; there are scientific experts, but not scientific authorities. Being the most knowledgeable person in a branch of science doesn't mean you get to dictate how it functions or decide what will be regarded as true or not. It simply means that you have a deep understanding not only of what we know, but how we've come to know it, and the current limitations of our understanding of the field. You should understand how to go about probing reality with experiments to uncover what we don't yet comprehend.
One common maxim I hear from Christians since the Reformation, which was either coined or popularized by Martin Luther, is Sola Scriptura. Again, roughly translated, this means "On the Authority of Scripture Alone." It points to the importance of not deferring your understanding of God (at least the Christian one) to ecclesiastical authorities. In other words, read the Bible for yourself, make your own decisions, and reach your own conclusions. While there are parallels between these two Latin phrases, the two are not quite the same; it's one thing to defer to the empirical and time-tested observations of reality that science has amassed, and quite another to defer to the "authority" of a holy text that was written collectively between 4,000 and 2,000 years ago.
Sola Scriptura is the maxim I abide by when considering questions associated with Christianity, and especially in encounters with would-be prosthelytizers. Christians are apt to say that they've been blessed by this or that, because they prayed properly, or God interceded in their lives for some other reason. They claim that God has spoken to them, or that they have felt His touch in their lives. But God only speaks to human beings via His prophets. Since we have no extant prophets, as far as we know or can tell, the only thing we have is their residuals, which is the writings they have left behind for us to read. Claiming that God has touched your life is to claim to be a prophet, which I categorically disregard from my fellow human beings as heresy. I don't deny that these people have had religious experiences that have touched them, only that it is not valid testimony to any kind of higher truth that I am obligated listen to.
To make the same point slightly another way: the great Thomas Paine wrote in his Age of Reason that any revelation made to a man by God is a revelation, but when that man turns around and repeats what he heard to another man, then it ceases to be revelation and instead becomes hearsay. Moses communicating with God on Mount Horeb / Sinai might be revelation, but once he comes down from the mountain and preaches it, it no longer carries divine authority and therefore the Hebrews are not bound to observe the Law.
These little theological games are all well and good, but there's a more serious problem to be surfaced here. The first function of any mythology (read: religion) is to, in manner of speaking, cheat death. Human beings generate religions (or relay them from divine revelations they've had) because there is a message that some part of humans outlasts the death of the body, and this "essence" persists in a realm beyond our known universe.
The trouble is that death is something that comes to all of us, at some point. In the absence of some catastrophic event that kills us instantly, we'll be facing the end of our lives at some length eventually. Before a person reaches that horizon, one must be absolutely sure they have made peace with themselves about what is about to happen when the threshold is crossed. An atheist may be at peace with the thought of impending nothingness. A Christian may be at peace with the narrative of the Pearly Gates. Mystics may be at peace with the idea that their mortal selves will fuse with the infinite in one of the many ways in which their respective doctrines say that it may.
What's important, though, it that one makes the decision, and arrives at this peace of mind, on their own terms. It's not that help or advice cannot be sought from others, but it is irresponsible of anyone, religious or otherwise, to try and foist an easy answer on anyone else. When the time to shuffle off this mortal coil finally arrives, you won't be at peace because a clergyman told you this or that thing, such as "There's a heaven you go to", or because an atheist insisted that we materialistically go on to fertilize trees, or because any other such person gave you an answer that might work for them. Nullius in Verba.
This is a matter of personal responsibility. I don't swallow the stories that are offered me by those around me without question, because to do so would be a serious abdication of the responsibility that I have to myself.