Traversing the blogosphere randomly led me to this post regarding free will and religion. (Philosophusion also has an interesting essay on the criteria of being worthy of moral consideration). I thought I'd take a break from my usual prison-related psychobabble to make some comments.

In it, he talks about the Christian relationship between God and the existence of evil as a result of His creation's free will. Free will leading up to evil doesn't have to lend itself to a purely Christian claim. There exists two choices: one will necessarily be more "evil" than the other. Of course, evilness only comes into context in a social setting. In a universe of one person, free will still exists, but morals, as measured in good and evil, do not exist (unless you begin ascribing morals as to the relationship between yourself and your inanimate environment; more on this later). Therefore, morality is separate from free will; morality is a function of society.

I've heard some arguments that God, while loving, is also just playing around. Imagine a fishtank: from the fish's point of view, the tank is its universe, and its brain cannot fathom the whole extent of it (it's memory lasts only seconds, and in a large enough fish tank, would have forgotten one end by the time it reached the other). So you, as the fish owner, might feed it and clean it and maintain its tank, but on the whole, you really don't care what the fish does so long as it isn't actively sabotaging the tank itself. I'm not saying I subscribe to that idea, I'm just saying the idea exists.

He hits the nail on the head when he described organized religion as tradition. You don't even have to assume that God exists: in a universe of one person, God may or may not exist, but organized religion definitely would not. Therefore, God could exist in the absence of organized religion and vice versa; organized religion is a function of society. I place the caveat on organized, because in your solitary desert island universe, you can still have inner monologue (unless you're Austin Powers recently defrosted) to begin to describe your relationship with God (or even His existence thereof). Thus, it is possible to have theologically- (or atheistically-) oriented philosophy in the absence of organized religion. This is, I think, what people mean when they describe themselves as spiritual, but not religious. You can even begin to have a spiritual relationship with your environment like Native Americans. (This leads back nicely to his other essay.)

I think people are attracted to the sense of community and hope (ill-founded or not: I don't think prayer is going to stop gangrene, but that's just me) that religion provides, so much so that they are not apt to question its validity. There is a sense of tradition and commemoration that exists, and I don't think there's anything wrong with it as long as you're not giving it any more importance than say, an American religion that meets once a year to celebrate our ancestors, or a religion that meets once a year to give praise for a life lived so far and the life yet to come. You can take any event, tap into its spiritual and metaphysical roots, repeat the process continuously, and you then have a religion. Congratulations. You can celebrate all of its good works, and over time, your religion will have a curriculum vitae of all sorts of good deeds, and your congregation will begin to feel pretty good about themselves and their place in society and the betterment of mankind. And thus, the human ego begins to flare.

However, even if you don't personally acknowledge the shortcomings of gathered individuals (mob theory always holds true: the collective intelligence of a group is inversely proportional to its size), you can still obtain spiritual benefits from this model. Finding peace through prayer or meditation, finding joy in altruism and missionary work, finding comfort in the interpretation of parables and stories, finding unity and fellowship by communing with those who also maintain similar traditions and values: these to me are the benefits of organized religion. Peace, joy, comfort, unity: all noble things, and the means by which they are attained don't matter from my libertarian point of view, as long as they don't diminish or inhibit others. Hell, you can say that you find peace, joy, comfort and unity through claiming ancestry in a race of omnipotent gods. Congratulations. So I'm not as quick to condemn religion as others, because I think that there's nothing wrong with basking in its benefits, as long as you, before claiming that it's better than another religion, are cognizant of its limitations. Me, I take part in a gathering every Sunday that regales tales and exploits of the greatness of yore, and ascribes to such deeply held beliefs as fair play, teamwork, dedication, and not blitzing on 3rd-and-long.