Reply #32: How does one "understand religion" exactly? [View All]

And who gets to decide whether someone else has understood it?

In a nutshell, I disagree that it is necessary to understand religion prior to rejecting it as a means of clarifying the world or improving one's life. I don't understand advanced fluid dynamics, for example, but I reject it as a method of achieving a better understanding of why my cat insists on waking me at 6:45 every morning. Fluid dynamics has nothing to say about my annoying cat, just as religion has nothing do say about life in general.

In my experience, religion seems a tool not clearly suited to any particular job. At least, no job for which a better tool is not already available.

My overall framing of the issue goes like this:

I have encountered nothing for which religion (and/or belief in a deity or the supernatural) provides a better explanation or method of coping than empiricism, and often religion provides no real explanation or aid at all.

YMMV, of course.