What's the alternative?

[Magyar]

Suppose we all agree that Church X is false. Please do not derail this thread by attaching any real-world name to this church.

Its founding stories are myths, its leaders engaged/engage in life-long deception and questionable practices, it makes difficult demands/requires painful sacrifices of its members. Therefore, critics spring up ranging from the mildly jaded to vehement haters who curse it with mouths a-foaming, and passionately advocate its utter destruction.

But this church also helps addicts break their addictions, teaches principles of love, hard work, personal responsibility, etc.

Somehow, someway, this hypothetical church is suddenly proven to be utterly false. Maybe a vault is cracked open in the founder's home that contains the founder on videotape explaining that it was all a scheme for money. Please discard all possibilities that the video was faked, produced under duress or some kind of spoof.

What should then be done? What secular organization can be named that will have the reach, the leadership, the organization, the compassion and the motivational power to do the good that this church did? Would an objective analysis conclude that the believers went down a useless dead end, with a net loss for humanity, when they should have been spending their time seeking secular solutions on how to most effectively do good in the world? Are there secular solutions on how to most effectively do good in the world -- and on what basis are they formed? The most rigidly secular societies I can think of in history are rather notorious, to say the least.

[thesometimesaint]

Magyar:

As long as that church dos not harm to me. They can believe anything they want.

[mfbukowski]

That would be like disbanding the Red Cross because it's founder did something wrong.

Why would you?

Many Protestant churches have had leaders who were not exactly..... sinless. I don't see the problem. What is it?

[Tarski]

That would be like disbanding the Red Cross because it's founder did something wrong.

Why would you?

Many Protestant churches have had leaders who were not exactly..... sinless. I don't see the problem. What is it?

"hypothetical church is suddenly proven to be utterly false"

No mention is made of the behavior of the founding leaders which is a separate question.

My answer is that the church should own up to the facts and then transform itself into a similar organization that retains the valuable social aspects and ethical teachings.

[mfbukowski]

"hypothetical church is suddenly proven to be utterly false"

No mention is made of the behavior of the founding leaders which is a separate question.

My answer is that the church should own up to the facts and then transform itself into a similar organization that retains the valuable social aspects and ethical teachings.

Hey Tarski!

Hope you are doing well- good to see you here!

Yeah- I can see your point, but the problem to me, surprise surprise is that "utterly false" was not defined, and as usual, I am not sure what that could mean in its context

I am not sure what could make the doctrine of any church "utterly false" since doctrinal matters cannot be proven to be "true" in the conventional sense anyway, so I kind of ignored that part.

[Tarski]

Hey Tarski!

Hope you are doing well- good to see you here!

Yeah- I can see your point, but the problem to me, surprise surprise is that "utterly false" was not defined, and as usual, I am not sure what that could mean in its context

I am not sure what could make the doctrine of any church "utterly false" since doctrinal matters cannot be proven to be "true" in the conventional sense anyway, so I kind of ignored that part.

I think you can (but may refuse to) imagine what would constitute "utterly false" in a given case. For Scientology it would be that the background story (Xenu etc.) is fictional.

For any Christian religion it could be something like the discovery that the person Jesus Christ was found to have been invented by a particular person in order to start a religion.

For Mormonism it would be sufficient to have somehow determined that Joseph Smith fabricated his visions or that Spalding wrote the Book of Mormon. We are asked to imagine that something like this has been determined and not worry about how it was determined or how it could have been determined.

Its a hypothetical, so play by the rules.

[The Nehor]

If it's false I want nothing to do with it no matter how 'helpful' it is.

Part of being human is wanting to know the truth, how things really are.

To lose that desire is to be less then human.

I want to know the truth if it offers no help and don't want to believe a lie even if it will save civilization.

Plus if there is no God I've been doing it wrong. Without a knowledge of how things really work and what people really are you're going to mess things up.

[mfbukowski]

I think you can (but may refuse to) imagine what would constitute "utterly false" in a given case. For Scientology it would be that the background story (Xenu etc.) is fictional.

For any Christian religion it could be something like the discovery that the person Jesus Christ was found to have been invented by a particular person in order to start a religion.

For Mormonism it would be sufficient to have somehow determined that Joseph Smith fabricated his visions or that Spalding wrote the Book of Mormon. We are asked to imagine that something like this has been determined and not worry about how it was determined or how it could have been determined.

Its a hypothetical, so play by the rules.

Honestly, playing by those rules, IF it could be established absolutely that the BOM was utterly false, I would probably start my own church incorporating many LDS concepts into it, like the LDS nature of God, exaltation, something like temple worship if not the very same temple worship and I would regard the BOM and BOA as religious "revelations" still.

Heck people believe the Bible and can't prove it's "true" in any way except spiritually- though they won't acknowledge that. I just had a go-round with Bowman about that on another thread.

Assuming that Jesus never lived, I would still need some kind of redemption principle in my church, which I would probably see psychologically as repentance and dedication to service. It is by repentance and dedication to others that we are redeemed- probably something like that. Kind of a Karma thing I guess.

I was an atheist too long to not know what principles give people meaning in life. I was a perfectly good person and a good humanist while I was an atheist and believed much of what I still believe about morality etc.

After all, in humanism and linguistic constructivism there is no god but humans who create the world through their culture. In Mormonism God is also human and he creates by organizing through the Word.

Pretty similar really.

[zelder]

Suppose we all agree that Church X is false. Please do not derail this thread by attaching any real-world name to this church.

Its founding stories are myths, its leaders engaged/engage in life-long deception and questionable practices, it makes difficult demands/requires painful sacrifices of its members. Therefore, critics spring up ranging from the mildly jaded to vehement haters who curse it with mouths a-foaming, and passionately advocate its utter destruction.

But this church also helps addicts break their addictions, teaches principles of love, hard work, personal responsibility, etc.

Somehow, someway, this hypothetical church is suddenly proven to be utterly false. Maybe a vault is cracked open in the founder's home that contains the founder on videotape explaining that it was all a scheme for money. Please discard all possibilities that the video was faked, produced under duress or some kind of spoof.

What should then be done? What secular organization can be named that will have the reach, the leadership, the organization, the compassion and the motivational power to do the good that this church did? Would an objective analysis conclude that the believers went down a useless dead end, with a net loss for humanity, when they should have been spending their time seeking secular solutions on how to most effectively do good in the world? Are there secular solutions on how to most effectively do good in the world -- and on what basis are they formed? The most rigidly secular societies I can think of in history are rather notorious, to say the least.

Belief in Church X was not in vain as long as it was helping people. Hoever, the future of Church X is going to be a dead end since nobody will be able to have faith in its claims anymore and nobody will be willing to make sacrifices for that church. I'm am not aware of any secular organization capable of teaching people how to love and overcome the natural selfishness we all have. The holy spirit is the most powerful teacher of love I have encountered, the secular world rejects the holy spirit and Jesus Christ. Only Jesus Christ can save us. The secular world seems to encourage our selfishness and provides few boundaries for moral behavior, it appears to be a slipperly slope that ends in disaster.

[BCSpace]

What should then be done?

We ought then to remember that hypocrisy is a two-edged sword. The danger for the one viewing the hypocrisy is that one may be rejecting truths that would do one good simply because they were offended.

Just because one teaches not to steal and then steals anyway doesn't make not stealing any less good.