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This has crossed my mind many times and with recent "news" i started thinking about it again, I obviously can't ( and even if i could, it would only generate pro/anti religion discussion ) post this in the general forum but hopefully if i make it a blog i can actually get a few opinions and maybe someone that can recommend me a book/in depth article about the subject.
Again, this comes from the point of view of an agnostic and i would like it to be discussed from an agnostic/atheist point of view ( that's why i am making it a blog ). If you are religious i have nothing against you but I will regard religion here as a social tool/man made concept thus undoubtedly insult most religions that regard themselves as being revealed trough divine intervention and used as a spiritual tool.
The outrageously wrong intro out of the way, the subject that i actually want to talk about is " Do we still need religion as a social tool ?"
Now i know many of you might say " What !? Of course not ! ". But i always thought that the role of religion, tho a rather vague one, was one of the main thing that helped the human race get to where it is as fast as it did. Some may say that early religions where used to explain the unknown, but i am of the opinion that all religion up until today where actually used to explain the "scary", that which we are unwary of in terms of origin and exact effect but obviously had an effect upon us.
Just think about what we know of prehistorical "cults" or what clues we have of those cults , better said. From what can be deduced the human back than were heavily focused on animals, fire, lightning... etc. There are no "huge" proofs that they cared so much about a "god of death". Than suddenly in ancient times a lot of the wide spread European religion were switching there focus to death, to water and to love.
Why is that ? Why is RA a sun god that sails on a river such an important god ? Why are Osiris and Set, 2 of the most important deities in the ancient Egyptian religion so closely related to death ? Why the hell is Isis so important ?
I would say the answer is an easy one, since the ancient Egyptians no longer feared their village being attacked by animals, their crops not having water... etc
They built shelters, they built weapons, they invented irrigation. Instead there god focus on things that they still can't control, such as the heat of the sun. On things that they started to get wary of since other "bigger" problems they had were on longer present. What happens after one dies ? And on "problems" that formed due to society evolving, Such as family and sex... 2 concepts that presumingly evolved a lot since prehistoric times.
Even more so, you can look at gods such as Osiris and Hades and you will note that they were related to the "after life" and were spoken about in the context of "the guys who judge the dead, the guys who host the dead, the guys who punish and/or reward the dead... etc".
They weren't regarded as sort of a "grim reaper". Even more so, the actual gods that influence if you died or not, the gods of medicine ( Heka, Serket, Ascelpius ) and the gods of death... the ones that took ones soul from the body ( Thanatos and the later reincarnation of Anubis ), etc. These gods were regarded somewhere bellow the god of the after life, the ones that had rule over you after your death.
You can even take a deeper look and see this in the Greek religion. Where the actual deities that created the world, that created "the elements" and that created life were the titans, the titans which were nether worshiped nor seen as "good guys".
Why is that ? Did the Greek people knew about the Big bang, about evolution and about advanced chemistry ? No, it is because the common plebe did not care about that sort of things. The Greek mythology is the perfect example where you can see that gods weren't used to explain " The unknown" but rather " The uncontrollable", the things that people were afraid of, the things that they were frustrated about.
The evolution eventually led to 15-20 century Christianity as the main European religion. A religion that even tho experienced a severe amount of change in that time remained surprisingly similar to the "original". Why ? Since it was very good at dealing the peoples frustrations and fears.
You are poor ? You will reach haven easier than the rich. You are afraid of death ? Don't be, it's better up there. You are rich ? Don't worry, you can put your material wealth to good use and thus reach haven without bothering with more trivial tasks. You fell like someone if unfair to you ? Don't worry, they will burn in hell for all eternity.
However there is a darker side to religion, that is the fact that it can be used and was/will be used as a political tool, not only as a control tool. What's the difference you may ask ? Well it's pretty easy. A control tool is what a king uses so the plebe won't complain about not having enough to eat. However a political tool it becomes when someone can use it to take power away from the king in an extreme situation. Is that bad ? Maybe not, in 18 century Europe. But it's bad in a democracy. Why ? Because there are already political tools at the disposal of the people to change a leader, thus you don't need a religion or an army to dethrone a president that acted like a douche, you only need people to vote.
You can look at countries such as USA, Canada or Korea and say " Well its not that bad, it only leads to candidates not being able to act against the church... but it's not like the church is a single unity, there are parts of it that want taxations for the rich and equal rights between sexes and races and there are part of it that don't, much like there are politicians that stand for both things"
But what about Islamic countries ? Where religious organizations are much more strict and united ? A politician is forced into obeying to said religious principles or he will lose to much from his "voter mass".
And than we get to the capitalist side of things, and again we have to think about the whole " I am poor but will be rich in haven " thing and realize that it's not like that for many people nowadays, capitalism has pretty much allowed for more than half of us "white dudes" to live at standards that are high enough not to be very pissed at x being a billionare, add marketing to that and you get a lot of people that actually "love" guys like Job or Gates.
Than you look at the last role of religion, to set social interaction norms. But yet again we see coinciding holidays as being a hassle for some. Sexual restrictions being a hassle for some and dressing norms for some more.
So where does religion stand today ? I fell like it stands at a point where the only frustration/fear that it "resolves" is the fear of death, the problem of the after life. I fell that it no longer needs the "other" parts to work as a control tool that stops people from being afraid and unhappy.
But than you get things like the African and Asian countries, where the last 2 points are very much different due to the level of evolution yet religions are many times the same or very similar.
What some people might say is that you already have things like tolerant Christianity and Islam, which very much accept things such as homosexuality, liberty of choice and equality. But those concepts are evolving very slowly, and by the time that the Catholics are okay with gay people you will have them not being okay with the increasing number of "lab grown" babies and animals... or god knows why.
Yet the religions are so well established that it's very hard for a completely new religion to make itself noticed. Not to mention that the worlds "best" prophets are generally known to suffer from epilepsy or schizophrenia and thus will most of the time get ether partially treated or isolated from the world if they are born in an advanced country.
I can't get this subject of my mind, it's such a curious and important one. Will we actually see a new religious "super-craze" like Christianity and Islam were ? Will current religions simply evolve ? If so will we have separated religions depending on the level of evolution of a certain country ? Is it possible for religion to get completely "extinct" and for every human to accept there own mortality ?
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I disagree with your premise that civilizations evolved because religion allowed the masses to not focus on bad/ irrelevant things and instead focus on progress. Not acknowledging a bad thing would eventually bite them in the ass, and you don't really need to be religious to find a way to get your mind off irrelevant situations and focus on other tasks. Furthermore, I think that religion has stagnated some progress, especially since many theistic arguments have no thought process other than "You have no control over X because God is in charge" or "God is the answer to this, rather than [actual natural explanation]". Religion provides dead end answers or no actual assistance at all with factual explanations. And finally, there's the occasional step backwards in the name of religion (e.g. human/ animal sacrifices in the name of a deity).
I do agree with you that religion/ God is often used as a defense mechanism when people are in fear or sad or depressed or angry. That's certainly a function (although, again, that's not to say that non-religious people can't cope in a different way, and so I don't know if we'd need religion forever necessarily to get over our problems).
As far as the possibility of new big religions coming in are concerned, I don't think there will be such a thing because I'm pretty sure there would need to be a civilization conquering everyone else and forcing that religion upon the rest of the world (much like how Christianity started), and I can't really see that happening. I do think that our big religions will eventually (however long that means) lose some strength and I hope that a lot of organized religion as a whole will eventually fade away (at least to the point of people not killing one another or discriminating against each other over personal faith).
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On September 24 2012 22:50 DarkPlasmaBall wrote: I disagree with your premise that civilizations evolved because religion allowed the masses to not focus on bad/ irrelevant things and instead focus on progress. Not acknowledging a bad thing would eventually bite them in the ass, and you don't really need to be religious to find a way to get your mind off irrelevant situations and focus on other tasks. Furthermore, I think that religion has stagnated some progress, especially since many theistic arguments have no thought process other than "You have no control over X because God is in charge" or "God is the answer to this, rather than [actual natural explanation]". Religion provides dead end answers or no actual assistance at all with factual explanations. And finally, there's the occasional step backwards in the name of religion (e.g. human/ animal sacrifices in the name of a deity).
Well there is the argument of " religion discourages progress by giving people comfort with what they have ", but quite frankly i think that is a 2 sided blade. If a man is concerned with his house burning down or falling to the smallest earthquake said man will still have that fear in his mind 99% of the time regardless of religion, it's however religion that many times gives him the comfort to sleep at night during a storm knowing that his house could be struck by lightning at any moment.
If we were to take religion literally than yes, we would simply loss all will to improve all life since most religions tell us that is not important, however most religion have nothing against improving ones life. But how many people do that ? A few crazies here and there but the vast majority don't.
May would consider that being able to "lie" to yourself means you have a weak consciousness. But actually the more in control you are of your brain the more you are able to negate irrational fear and frustration. Most of the time however people that are able to do that are the "above the average" smart people that won't be religious by default most of the time.
However a normal person will be much more secure if you have someone lie to him about the obvious to make the obvious less potent in this mind since he doesn't have the same power of self suggestion as a smart person.
I do agree with religion, at times, being a bad thing for out evolution. Causing us to take steps backwards even. But most of the times is simply due to religion being to conservative and trying to use god as an explanation for things that are already explained instead of moving on and using him to explain the things that still bother us. Even more so, many times religion is falsely blamed for the stupidity of the masses.
Even if Christianity wasn't a thing you would have still had people despise and marginalize a guy who said " The Earth is round" since he's point of view is different and more complex than the widely accepted point of view. Religion there is simply used as a tool to punish him since that is the easiest way for society to pray upon a man that they disagree with.
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I can tell you are a decent thinker with well rounded information sources; however, you have made too few specific references to materials that you use to support claims. The reader can’t check your research. Secondly, I found some things unclear, largely because I do not follow global issues (soo ignortant -.-) and also because specific examples were so few.
I think I may have read some material that you will find relevant but I can’t confirm. I do not know specifically what you have written about. I wrote two versions of what I think your implied thesis is. They follow below in the quotations.
“In the past, religion’s main purpose was to provide its society with myths that encourage personal well-being. Many believe in the literal truth of religion and myth. The myths when removed from their intended context become false. Therefore, governments are led by irrelevant value systems instead of value systems that are more congruent with the current state of humankind.”
“Myths can heighten the quality of living for a society by abolishing its fears and difficulties, however, since it is often used for political gain, it does more harm than good in our modern cultural climate. For this reason, humankind ought to find an outlet for spirituality that causes less political disruption.”
Your supporting arguments
-Problems that religions once dealt with become quickly obsolete, such as how the West now struggles less with poverty and inequality making Heaven of Christian a generally less useful remedy for distress.
- New consumer cultures encourage more disparity between the wants of an individual and the restrictions placed on him by myth/religion
-technology is evolving too quickly for religions to ever reconcile old beliefs with current reality
TL:DR i think you need more structure in your writing because it makes the piece of writing easier to understand
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Your analysis of religion and its place in the human story seems immediately tendentious, in that you come out of the gates with a rhetoric that casually bypasses the inherent difficulty in separating various phenomena from their respective genesis and commonplace, and then proceeds to rely on invisibile or very assumptive definitions. For example, this line,
If you are religious i have nothing against you but I will regard religion here as a social tool/man made concept thus undoubtedly insult most religions that regard themselves as being revealed trough divine intervention and used as a spiritual tool. , requires far more explication than you provide. To call something a tool is to assume a discrete, utility based identity of an object, as though it could exist in some sort of definite manner that we can rotate, observe, and critique. To claim that religion is a "tool" is to excavate the bulk of human history and make arbitrary, subjective value judgements at practically infinite junctures. "Religion", at least as far as the record of written human history goes, is inseperable from the human story. Unless, that is, one has extraordinary evidence to the contrary.
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