Religion is social order

[Vkothii]

The reason I believe that any religion that worships an external god and doctrine is necessarily based on false ideas, is that I know that there is no God "up there".

By which I mean the only thing I know about that's "up", or if I look up (with my eyes closed), is "in there", it's not "out there".
What I see out there is, however, because of what I'm made of - which is the same stuff, as far as I can tell.
And because of the way the stuff I got made out of "hangs together". It looks like a kind of "closed system" in some respects, but it isn't because I'm obliged - to be "open" to things like: oxygen; water; other kinds of 'chemicals' that I need to process (both externally and internally); other "people" and beings that are obviously obliged, as I am, to be "open", or to interface with, the external stuff.

Religion is essentially the militarisation of our rationale for that old chestnut: group cohesion; the finding and sharing of resources, and its counterpart - the seeing-off of any interlopers, who are not in the social group.

We tend to form groups, both geographically and sociologically - religions are an extension of the principle of diversity, and the need to find different ways to maintain the cohesive group activities that underline this. But we forget whose idea it was - we should not abstract the idea so far that it becomes externalised, and we then forget who we are, that our God is ourselves.:cool:

:m:

[S.A.M.]

Thats Advaita vedanta.

[Vkothii]

You mean: "what I'm thinking has a name"..?

[brokenpower]

I have to agree to a certain extent. IMO the bible was an economic tool to control the less literate people of the early ages. Threaten someone's eternity and they will listen. Give them a convincing story ( in their minds ) and they will believe it.

[Gently Passing]

The reason Religion has been so difficult to extract from our modern society is because it is so much a part of the Social Program by which we operate. For so long Religion served a myriad of purposes including government, social network, even medicine, and each quite effectively by Stone Age standards. I mean, what did ancient religious medicine say?

Pray to these gods, shake this thing over your head and fall into a trance, but in the mean time you're eating this herb that in fact has medicinal properties.

In came "Western" medicine and many traditionalists said, "wait, this works!"

In a sense every aspect of our society that we wish to replace religion, be it government or medicine, education or whatever, needs to prove itself more effective than its predecessor. It must then exist as the dominant form for long enough to virtually invalidate the older system.

This has occurred in Medicine, but we still have wackos out there getting coffee enemas and a variety of snake oil for their ills.

But government? We're still struggling to eliminate the religion from Government! Look a W.

Even Obama is talking about Faith Based Initiatives.

Theocracy dies hard. So will religion.

[Vkothii]

What about what happens when an established, politically enshrined, "enlightened" religion encounters a people with "barbaric", or "uncivilised" cultural practises - multiple deities and "spirits" that explain things like volcanoes, etc...?

There's a good example of this sort of encounter where I live, for example.

Maori explained the existence of the new land they found as having been fished out of the sea by a mythical figure (Maui), using the larger part (the one with the big range of white mountains, that we palefaces call civilisedly: the South Island). The big island was the boat or canoe he stood in, the smaller southernmost island was his sea-anchor, and the northen island was the big fish - which if you climb up a few of the mountains on it looks like a sort of fish, if Taupo is the eye, Hawke's Bay the mouth, and the northern peninsula the tail, then Kapiti is the jaw, and I'm not sure what Hauraki and the gulf there are meant to be, but otherwise, I guess it looks like a fish. Maui was conjured up (a big giant godlike figure is what we would say he is), to explain the geological facts.
These days most Maori understand that it's a story, an explanation, but most still also believe in taniwha, or river spirits (a major road construction was held up a while back because the local tohunga had to mollify the taniwha, who they claimed was angry about all the racket). Our view is still different to theirs.

P.S. I think the names: "Te Ika a Maui" for the NI of NZ, and "Pounamu", or "Te Waka a Maui" for the SI, are better names for Outer Roa, or Aotearoa, rather.

[Gently Passing]

^^ That is a beautiful story, and no less plausible than a man being born from a virgin, hanging out with thieves and prostitutes, getting killed and rising from the dead three days later.

Imagine what they thought when we first introduced Christianity to them!

More generally, though, I think it's important that we consider our own intellectual frailty as post-"Enlightenment" Agnostics (or so we claim when our politicians are not pounding the Bible as an excuse to rape and pillage). Sure the Big Bang and Evolution are more in line with scientific evidence than, say, Gods rising from the ocean (or a Virgin's womb!), but who's to say we do not carry our own set of myths along for the ride?

Perhaps we are just as guilty, if a little bit more well-intentioned (supposedly), of deluding ourselves into Panaceas and Paradise as our predecessors.

There are those who believe stem cells will cure the common cold. Fortunately for the planet it seems very likely that the stupid are likely to simply kill themselves off. Expert at little else, humans are quite ingenious at self-annihilation.

[lightgigantic]

You mean: "what I'm thinking has a name"..?

yes
it's kind of the default the position of speculation simmered scriptural synopsis.

[Vkothii]

Well, that's sort of interesting.
If I was asked (you know, by someone else) what I called my "position" on the question, I suppose I would respond with something like: "it's what I think", or: "I call it my idea, but it isn't really mine", say.

[Gently Passing]

I would argue that religion serves a psychological need in that it defines roles for men, women, and people at all stages of life. The elders are "wise" and pass on the sacred traditions.

Reason and skepticism are noble and necessary for the process of discovery and learning about the Universe. Belief is some hierarchal social system which defines for us a place and purpose is, however, a part of being human. Lacking that we are more likely to feel lonesome, depressed, and to fall into idleness and waste away at life's end.

Science is wonderful, and as it expands into the realms of our belief we should back off and let it be. But in the mean time, while we wait for answers from laboratories and Universities, what is the harm in Faith when it can help us define the Self?

[Yorda]

The reason I believe that any religion that worships an external god and doctrine is necessarily based on false ideas, is that I know that there is no God "up there".

what religions really mean when they say that god is "up there" (in "heaven") is that god is in our brain. consciousness is god. and since god is "up there" the devil is of course "down there".

[Vkothii]

what religions really mean when they say that god is "up there" (in "heaven") is that god is in our brain. Sure they do.

[Fraggle Rocker]

. . . . I know that there is no God "up there".None of us knows with certainty that there are no supernatural beings. To say so is to misrepresent the scientific method to laymen and to widen the gap between science and religion.

The fundamental theory from which all science springs is that the natural universe is a closed system, whose behavior we can predict by deriving theories logically from empirical observations of its present and past behavior. The existence of gods, in their usual form as capricious, meddlesome creatures who perturb the workings of the natural universe and upset our lives, contradicts this theory, since by definition external forces can not act on a closed system. Since the fundamental theory of science has been tested exhuastively for five hundred years and never disproven, it is a canonical theory and any hypothesis that contradicts it is an extraordinary assertion. By the Rule of Laplace, an extraordinary assertion must be accompanied by extraordinary evidence before any of us is obliged to treat it with respect.

Therefore scientists are justified in treating religion with disrespect. But please note that this is not the same thing as proving or knowing that gods do not exist. It is merely a reassurance that the probability of their existence is so vanishingly small as to be dismissable.

Please do not equate the one with the other. That is not good science.The reason Religion has been so difficult to extract from our modern society is because it is so much a part of the Social Program. . . .It goes deeper than that. Religion is a collection of archetypes, to use Jung's term. An archetype is an instinctive belief that is hard-wired into our synapses by evolution. It might be a leftover survival trait from an era whose dangers we cannot imagine--like the instinctive belief that we should run away from animals who have both eyes in front of their head because they are the predators. Or it might be an accidental mutation passed down through a genetic bottleneck like Mitochondrial Eve. But whichever it is, the problem with instincts is that they feel true, truer than the knowledge we acquire by learning and reasoning. You cannot argue with a person who is arguing from his instincts.Even Obama is talking about Faith Based Initiatives.And this is astounding, considering that forty years ago religion was steadily losing its hold on America the way it has over most of Europe. No one tried to win an election by appealing to fundamentalists back then.

[Vkothii]

How about instead of: 'I know there is no god "up there"', I say: "There is no evidence of any capricious meddlesome creatures who perturb the workings of the natural universe, like the fairy tales I got told when I was younger. The evidence is that such things are inventions of the human mind, which is then the source of that, i.e. is 'god'.
Although logically that mind cannot discount the possibility that the gods it creates in the natural world do exist, logically ideas cannot have a real tangible existence other than in a mind."

Any different?

[CheskiChips]

How about instead of: 'I know there is no god "up there"', I say: "There is no evidence of any capricious meddlesome creatures who perturb the workings of the natural universe, like the fairy tales I got told when I was younger. The evidence is that such things are inventions of the human mind, which is then the source of that, i.e. is 'god'.
Although logically that mind cannot discount the possibility that the gods it creates in the natural world do exist, logically ideas cannot have a real tangible existence other than in a mind."

Any different?

Vkothii; at the very least be appreciative that you've enough cognition to come to such a conclusion.

[Vkothii]

Cognition comes in handy, at times. But it's no big deal, you know, being cognitive.

[BrJLa]

Everything we encounter has a cause. If, with any frequency, we experienced things without a cause, it wouldn't seem foreign to us that "things without causes" exist. But, as it is, everything can be traced to a cause.

I think we've evolved to have what we'd call common sense. It is a useful ability to be able to reliably predict what is going to happen, so it is useful to be able to connect effects with their causes. And it's useful to be able to project past experiences on new encounters. It's a tool that allows you to predict, fairly reliable, what is going to happen.

I think religion resonates because of this. We combine this evolved tool of connecting causes with their effect, with the tendency to project our past experience (that everything has some cause) on our current situation, and it is exceedingly hard for the brain to get over the idea that there isn't some fundamental explanation of our origin.

[Gustav]

what is the harm in Faith when it can help us define the Self?

ja
its cool being a damned sinner

[Gustav]

....the workings of the natural universe,

do tell

[Vkothii]

I thought i did tell?

[nietzschefan]

And this is astounding, considering that forty years ago religion was steadily losing its hold on America the way it has over most of Europe. No one tried to win an election by appealing to fundamentalists back then.

But WHY? It really is shocking, watching this campaign unfold with all the god bless you's, god bless America etc. etc. etc. unfold from up here in Canada. It really is weird.

[CheskiChips]

Most of America is still religious. It appeared as if it was losing grip 40 years ago because of a very small minority getting a rather large spotlight.

[Fraggle Rocker]

But WHY? It really is shocking, watching this campaign unfold with all the god bless you's, god bless America etc. etc. etc. unfold from up here in Canada. It really is weird.The Baby Boomers have defined our culture since they were old enough to talk. For a while it was pretty nice. (From my perspective anyway, born three years too early to be a Boomer but I've never felt any kinship with the Depression Babies and there aren't enough of us War Babies to be a community.) Folk music, rock and roll, motorcycles and hot rods, the civil rights movement, the sexual revolution, all the fabulous drugs, the anti-war movement, the Eastern spirituality, the ascendence of science and intellectualism. The whole Generation Gap, rejecting their elders for their wars, racism, sexism and their anemic one-dimensional spirituality of monotheism.

But then in the late 1970s they were overcome with guilt. Most people can put that in perspective and just call it a flash of insight or the wisdom that comes with a little maturity. But the Boomers had to dramatize everything. Their lives were ruined! All because of the sex (even though few of them had any truly traumatic experiences, contraception was effective, abortions were cheap and legal and nobody had heard of AIDS yet), the drugs (which were considerably less dangerous than the alcohol their parents were guzzling), the wasted years (even though an unprecedented percentage of them had university degrees and really good jobs), the failed relationships (the failure was to recognize that the unfocused personal lives were the quite reasonable cost of the energy they'd put into important causes like ending war and racism).

So they all found Jesus. But they did it in a way that continued their lifelong tradition of rebelling against their elders: Instead of going back to the Catholic and mainline Protestant churches of their childhoods, they sought out the low-budget fundamentalist churches in the Redneck and ethnic minority neighborhoods. Ironically, rather than rejoining a faith that would have made peace with most of their postwar shenanigans and simply urged them to practice moderation as they matured, they joined congregations that exhorted them to reject their music, their sex, their drugs, their pacifism, their Eastern spirituality, and, most importantly, their science and intellectualism. Within half a decade, seemingly educated people were telling me earnestly that the Earth was 6,000 years old and that we should spend our spare time reading the bible instead of tracts on history and anthropology.

A girl who worked for me as a programmer trainee actually said that she didn't have to analyze her program dump because an angel was going to show her where the problem was.

I call it the Religious Redneck Retard Revival. These are the people who have completely foresworn their ability to reason, and who are choosing our political leaders.

And we are The World's Only Superpower. Are you scared now?

[StrangerInAStrangeLa]

Religion is disorder.