u/suddenly-scrooge

My argument is that there is a strictly rational argument in favor of religion and against atheism. Having an answer to life's unanswerable questions provides capacity to focus on things in life we control, a ready-made regime for mindfulness, social-emotional regulation, and community building, and a set of values and principles that have stood the test of time.

I'll start with the last point, that religion provides a set of values and principles. The law we live by, for example, was formed over thousands of years of debate and honed into a set of rules and punishments that is quite complex but well reasoned. The concepts around premeditation, intent, self-defense, and all other types of criminal law, and the method we go about deciding it, are essentially the best humans could decipher what we as a society feel is right and wrong as applied to any imaginable scenario.

If you tried to determine on your own as an individual, what should be done in response to a criminal act, your answer would be sloppy. It would be poorly constructed and reasoned. And perhaps after many years you could think through the various aspects and come to a half-good solution to when a man negligently drops a gun, it fires, and kills another. But the thousands of years of common law would be richer and more developed and you could have saved a lot of effort adopting it, even if you find parts you might not fully understand or agree with.

Religious values are similar. They are ready-made rules for life, usually with some good basis. On an individual level no one is forcing you to adopt any you don't want to. But you could do worse than read what Jesus says in the Bible and say you know what, I'll go ahead and do that.

Then there are the fundamental questions of life, of which there is no answer and you will never have an answer in your life.

Is there value in having an answer, even a wrong one? If we will never know the answer, at least in our current biological forms, then is there any value in having an answer? We have to weigh the cost and benefits.

Religious faith is not free of costs. War, genocide, all types of ills have been justified with religious faith. But these are less important to our individual decision to have faith. If you will not support war, or genocide, or other ills, then religion will not have this cost for you.

I support an a la carte approach to faith because it is more important faith is genuine. If the basis of your faith is authority, then let the authority tell you the details. If your basis is holding an answer, choose the answer that gives you the most confidence and comfort. 

So in that sense the religion you choose and how you choose to follow it will on some level mirror your own intuitive values. As a result this ready-made set of values and principles should have no corrupting effect, and if you are wrong in your choice the net result is that you lived your life mostly how you were going to anyway. The difference is you didn't need to work through the difficult moral questions or solutions, you didn't learn through trial and error. You read what was in your religious text, it felt right, and you followed it.

The benefits include peace of mind, a basis for values and principles, and framework for reflection and gratitude.

First, it’s just nice to have the answers. Since you will never be given them, you may as well move on with your life. Not knowing for any even semi-curious person will lead to a lifetime of questioning, which is an utterly useless expenditure of energy. We may enjoy this sometimes as an intellectual exercise but I don't think a lifetime of uncertainty about death, including the death of our loved ones, or other serious life matters is a net benefit to anyone.

Second, as mentioned religion provides a ready-made set of values and principles so we ourselves don't have to work through them.

Third, religion provides a means to practice mindfulness and find meaning. Take for example choosing a career. We may choose based on salary, on what our parents did, or any number of other factors. But if we believe in a higher power, perhaps listening to it ‘tell’ us to follow someone that sparks our interest is the best way. Does this higher power literally say ‘Do this’? No, but we feel its ‘spirit’ in us in the form of our drive and interest. Or a well-timed mentor, or any other fortuitous circumstance that life has presented us. Again, a non-religious person may have the capacity to understand this as a good strategy, and be in tune with their emotions enough to recognize these things, but the concept of God provides a framework through which to live authentically and meaningfully in tune with ourselves.

Lastly, if nothing else religion provides a space to reflect and be grateful for life, which while non-religious people can also do it is not as obvious as a daily practice. That is to say a non-religious person can mimic many aspects of religion but their adherence to these practices will be unmoored . . going to church is an easy habit to practice gratitude and all the other things, whereas a non-religious person may never form a similar habit on their own. The practices have a purpose and have been built up over thousands of years, so it isn’t realistic for an individual person to replicate all of them.

It's analogous to team sports. Football players are not doing true battle, what they are doing is on a factual level pretty silly tossing a ball around. But by imputing it with importance, we provide a basis to form a team, to engage in teamwork, to develop physically and mentally and emotionally in ways that help us reach our potential as individuals. It's faith that the game matters that brings us the most value from it. Could we separately run on a treadmill, take a course in leadership, and do other things to mimic the results? Sure, but that would be much more difficult and for an individual to properly piece together probably impossible to replicate completely. Could someone live without team sports? Yes, they won't stop breathing. They may find other types of fulfillment. But still the sport has a value that can be harnessed if we choose to engage it.

Let me be clear in this argument that it is not that a religion is true. But that faith, or believing it is true, can provide a net benefit to a person and these benefits form a rational basis on which to have faith.

tldr religion is a benefit to an individual because it frees your capacity to focus on things you can control and provides well reasoned rules for living that save you effort in re-inventing the wheel

I've been a follower of GiveWell for some years now and sometimes would donate to its unrestricted fund because I appreciated what it did in assessing charity's effectiveness.

However, as outlined on their unrestricted funds page, GiveWell's operational costs have risen from $5m in 2017 to $21m in 2025. They call this "modest," I call it "quadruple."

Granted there is inflation, but even before looking at these numbers I started to question GiveWell's purpose today. Their Top Charities list is by and large unchanged for what seems like 10 5 years now, with some charities dropping off but the causes more or less the same.

I already was only a halting believer in this list anyway . . I appreciate the attempt but the data seems to me to be in danger of a garbage in, garbage out scenario. Their Vitamin A evidence from what I remember has a significant chance of being wrong, and seems stuck at the same level uncertainty for over a decade (I'm sure this isn't exactly true but why are we still stuck with so much uncertainty with so much money being allocated for this cause?)

Anyway looks like another year I throw my hands up and donate to give directly

One realization I've had getting older is how mismanaged (or rather unmanaged) my sibling relationships were.

This consequence of this were many. But perhaps the most toxic of all was the hierarchical structure our relationships took even throughout adulthood.

I'm sure this is common to some degree even in healthy families but I can't imagine it is usually this deep and persistent. One way it has manifested is none of my siblings ever seeing me for the sake of seeing me. I can remember one visit to a place I lived for the purpose of seeing how I was getting on, and that was close to 20 years ago.

I reflected on this recently because it is unfortunate, I'm middle aged now and have lived many interesting places and done many interesting things. I have things I can enjoy that I never had the chance to share with anyone in my family . . a favorite restaurant, hike, whatever. It's weird now that they don't know these things about me now that have roots so deep.

During a lot of my life I internalized this so deeply it didn't even occur to me anyone should visit me, or should care about what I am doing. But the more I traveled and lived other places and saw grandparents, parents, siblings showing up for others, the more I realized my experience was reflective of the relationship (or lack thereof) between my siblings and I.

Meanwhile everyone has visited the oldest, including me, multiple times. One of my parents moved there. When I asked them about visiting me in my first house, they said they were getting too old. No one visited me in my first house in the two years I owned it. A few months after saying that, this parent traveled even further to visit a different sibling and told me all about it.

This isn't just about visiting, but I just use this as an example of what a sibling hierarchy looks like. During my life I got steered to do things they were doing, to a weird degree if I really got into it.

Anyway curious if this is something many here have experienced