What will we replace religion with?

Discussion in 'Religion' started by Magical Realist, Feb 19, 2014.

  1. Arne Saknussemm trying to figure it all out Valued Senior Member

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    This is what I mean about many of you being completely unwilling to listen. Will you listen to me now?
    I have been to thousands of Catholic masses, and scores of non-denominational services. Not once has any one ever vilified anyone, and we certainly were not setting ourselves apart because all are always welcome.
     
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  3. (Q) Encephaloid Martini Valued Senior Member

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    Good point, I will retract what I said about gathering in churches to vilify others. I'm listening.
     
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  5. quinnsong Valued Senior Member

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    You do know that much of Jesus' teachings were around and taught long before his arrival on the scene? I will just give a few examples of this, the Old Testament, Lao Tzu, Confuscious, Seneca,etc.... There is one difference however, Jesus offered a great reward for doing and being good the other examples offered no such reward except the betterment of the human race.
     
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  7. Arne Saknussemm trying to figure it all out Valued Senior Member

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    Hats off to then, Brainiac. You keep the lid off your jar!

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    There are similarities, and how can their not be? Wisdom is wisdom, but Jesus teachings went beyond anything known before. First century B.C. rabbis and then even John the Baptists said to give half your cloak to someone in need. Jesus said to give him the whole cloak, and whoever compels you to go one mile with him, go with him two miles. I assume you've read the Bible, yes? Sure you have, but I've read it back to front more than twice now, and what strikes me is that as much compassion as their is mixed with the Old Testament hell-fire, it's easy to see why non-believers don't see anything but a vengeful, jealous God. So it takes months to read the entire Old Testament, and then perhaps the Apocrypha, and then I return to The New Testament - what a breathe of fresh air! After all these Biblical books of put upon prophets that are genuinely scared stiff of The Lord, here comes this cat who claims to be The Lord Himself and he stands the entire Old testament on its head. I mean, I thought I knew what it was getting at, and then Jesus shows me (and everyone) that we had it all back assward.
    "Do not think that I have come to do away with or undo the Law or the Prophets; I have come not to do away with or undo but to complete and fulfill them."
    What a thing to say! Who talks that way!? Who else possibly could!? And then he backs it up healing the sick and raising the dead, and stilling the sea, and still people ask for evidence!? Jesus Christ IS the evidence.
     
  8. Grumpy Curmudgeon of Lucidity Valued Senior Member

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    Syne

    Good question, glad you asked.

    Humanism-a progressive philosophy of life that, without theism and other supernatural beliefs, affirms our ability and responsibility to lead ethical lives of personal fulfillment that aspire to the greater good of humanity.

    Unitarian Universalists hold the Principles as strong values and moral teachings. As Rev. Barbara Wells ten Hove explains, “The Principles are not dogma or doctrine, but rather a guide for those of us who choose to join and participate in Unitarian Universalist religious communities.”

    1st Principle: The inherent worth and dignity of every person;
    2nd Principle: Justice, equity and compassion in human relations;
    3rd Principle: Acceptance of one another and encouragement to spiritual growth in our congregations;
    4th Principle: A free and responsible search for truth and meaning;
    5th Principle: The right of conscience and the use of the democratic process within our congregations and in society at large;
    6th Principle: The goal of world community with peace, liberty, and justice for all;
    7th Principle: Respect for the interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part.

    Or join the Peace Corps.

    Spirituality and morality are not the sole province of religion, often exactly the opposite is true.

    Grumpy

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  9. C C Consular Corps - "the backbone of diplomacy" Valued Senior Member

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    It's ideologies that drive people to do good or bad en masse, which would still be around in general even if that specific genre sported by spiritual / sacred organizations faded. Those systematic orientations which are derived in part from science (which I'll simply group as "scientism") have to be contaminated with some degree of "pixie-dust" themselves, if their social contracts to value any specific human life are to carry weight in the otherwise pointless existence they are founded upon. As well, there could still be an "honest" brand of the "scientism" category which throws away lingering pretenses of rose-colored glasses, like that adopted by secular totalitarian regimes in the earlier 20th century. Wherein there's not even nonreligious woo-woo factors yet obscuring the "fact" that most people are indeed just insignificant machines, to be manipulated by or dealt with (when deemed a nuisance/threat) by the greater state machine according the best interests of the latter.
     
  10. Yazata Valued Senior Member

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    I don't think that religion is a "dull stupor", so I disagree with that.

    Religion, in the broad sense, seems to be an expression of human psychology. While individual religious traditions can be and have been replaced, I'm not convinced that religiosity itself can be. About all that people can seemingly do is invent new things (Marxism, the UFO-faith, whatever it is) to fill the same void.

    Compatible? Sure. But whether science can satisfy all of those needs by itself is another question. It comes close for some rather cerebral-type people, like Einstein. But his sort of reliigosity is probably too dry and etheric for most people. Other people, less thoughtful and sophisticated than Einstein, turn science into a doctrinaire new faith of scientism.

    Art's something that supplements science. Though modern and contemporary art and music have reacted forcefully against the idea, the arts have traditionally tried to express something deeper or transcendent in life, however subtle it is. That's why the arts have always (until comparatively recently) been associated with religion.

    I'm just not convinced that religion's something that people can just lose. It's inherent in what most people are, as human beings.
     
  11. quinnsong Valued Senior Member

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    Let us say we wipe the slate clean and there is no religion and we have the knowledge and technology of today, what kind of religion would man create? Now remember there is no religious texts of any kind, so we would need to start from scratch.
     
  12. Arne Saknussemm trying to figure it all out Valued Senior Member

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    Ah, but of course they'd still be The Lord, and He would guide us. I'm sorry to ruin your supposition, but that's just what's so amazing and frightening about The Living God. He is real and he's as close as a knife to your throat, as The Quran says.
     
  13. Arne Saknussemm trying to figure it all out Valued Senior Member

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    Really, I can't help myself. This is all just too ridiculous. Grumpy made as good an answer to the original question posed as we're going to get with his twelve steps of Unitarianism or whatever it was.I kept quiet because it all seemed so damned silly with the Reverend Sis Poom Bah and all. How can they say it is without theism, and then have someone who calls herself a reverend telling us so? I'm sorry but a religious faith without God, this seven-principle system that mostly just repeats its own redundancies is like caffeine-free coffee, like non-alcoholic beer, like Coca-Cola without the coke. Don't accuse me of 'typical Christian intolerance' because the Unitarianism Grumpy presents is to watery and paper thin to be called a religion. You look at any major faith and even many of the minor ones and they got these seven principles covered pretty well and with Our Lord God as a basis in the case of the monotheistic Middle Eastern ones.

    No quinsong, we can't wipe the slate clean and say there are no religious texts. Or rather we can say that, but excuse me, I really need to quote a text here:
    Religion is not just a lot of words. This is the fundamental misconception being made in this thread. M'kay?
     
  14. Arne Saknussemm trying to figure it all out Valued Senior Member

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    Yes, me again. I know you gentleman and ladies do not think very highly of creationists, and neither do I. I'm a Dawkins Catholic. But I did like what one of them said once at the end of his documentary that a friend of mine forced me to watch. It went something like this: We are taught that there is only matter and energy, but there is a third thing, something that came even before those two: The logos.
    Dudes, the truth will set you free!
     
  15. Aqueous Id flat Earth skeptic Valued Senior Member

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    I actually disagree with that popular interpretation of John.

    The translation of logos as 'word' is a later adulteration. The Greek for 'word' is lexis. No one can say for sure how to translate logos as the author of John left us; it's a matter of opinion. If anything its use here, which was taken from the lexicon of Stoicism, should tell you that Christianity has roots in Greek philosophy and legend -- if you didn't already conclude this by noting the parallels between Jesus and Socrates.

    http://www.st-andrews.ac.uk/divinity/rt/otp/dmf/logos/


    It will only free us to the extent that we pursue it. That means we must rely on best evidence, come Hell or high water.
     
  16. spidergoat pubic diorama Valued Senior Member

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    Name one positive thing that a religious person or institution can do that a secular one can't. I assert there is nothing about religion, except for the irrational faith, that can't be replaced by secular customs. We can have gatherings in a large building on Sundays, we can try to make society better, we can council people who are having trouble, we can philosophize about life...
     
    Last edited: Mar 5, 2014
  17. Syne Sine qua non Valued Senior Member

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    How so? What would entice people to socialize there? What would be the commonality that would invoke a sense of community?

    Remember, humans do not generally bond over simply being humans.

    Sure, because everyone knows a bowling league creates a sense of community outside of the alley. Can you count on them for more than a ride to a league game (you know, since they would forfeit without you)?

    So I take it you would have all other religions replaced with Unitarian Universalist? How would you imagine that transition occurring?
     
  18. Yazata Valued Senior Member

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    There would be doubtless be nature-mysticism. We would see magic and shamanism. There would be alternative medicine, psychologies and healing. People would rush off in pursuit of ghosts, UFOs and extrasensory perception. There would probably be prophetism of various sorts, from the political to the sotorological. There would be idealistic philosophies. There would be various sorts of ethical speculations, some rather exotic. People would set themselves up as spiritual teachers.

    People are endlessly inventive and I expect that if nobody knew anything about any existing religious ideas, they would simply reinvent most of them in short order.

    It would be very diverse of course, since lots of people would be thinking up lots of different things and particular ideas wouldn't have had time to become socially established yet. They wouldn't have become ideas that entire social groups just absorb and believe by osmosis.

    We wouldn't see widespread belief in individual gods or goddesses. Establishing that kind of religious uniformity in entire social groups probably takes quite a bit of time. Even in what we know of history, the oldest societies (like ancient Sumeria) were polytheistic, with broad and inclusive pantheons, where particular gods or goddesses might be worshipped in a particular city as that city's special patron. It was only several thousand years later that we start seeing monotheism where large groups of people agree on the exclusive existence of one particular god. Even today, after all of human history, the entire human race still remains divided on what (if any) god(s) to recognize.
     
  19. Aqueous Id flat Earth skeptic Valued Senior Member

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    Actually it's the other way around. People who believe in God are pursuing myth under the assumption that it's an authoritative historical narrative. That's untrue. And that fact constitutes the only evidence in play. To be religious you have to deny the evidence. You have allow superstition, myth, legend and fable replace the real artifacts of history. Now who did you say is ignoring the evidence?

    Even the God of Christiantity doesn't fit that description. First, in Gen 1, God was Elohim which is the plural Gods most likely borrowed from the pre-existent Ugaritic pantheon. Second, when Elohim was replaced with Yahweh (Gen 2 etc) his wife Asherah, was imported with him from similar origins. Third, when there was a new niche to fill after the Roman destruction of the Temple at Jerusalem, God spawned the demigod Jesus, following a litany of similar demigods who were sons of the chief god. That in itself created an impossibility that Christianity is clearly monotheistic. In Jesus' own purported words, he said on the cross "Father why have you forsaken me?" The word YOU is second person exclusively because there is a second person involved. Fourth, at some rather nebulous juncture, the early Christians for some reason needed a third God, the Holy Spirit, to supplement the other two. Fifth, the apotheosis of the Apostles, who magically became short-term demigods (healing powers etc) developed into a pantheon of Saints, as you well know. As you see for all its attempts to extricate itself from its polytheistic roots, the Judeo-Christian invention never really cut the umbilical cord.

    Aw geez. Like that's no different than saying "my God is bigger than yours". That's straight from the fundamentalist's playbook.

    Actually in the ancient world from which your God evolved, that grouping would have been a compliment. Indeed the early Israelites realized that, among all of the legacy gods known to them were those of their fiercest enemies. In many cases these included cults in which the gods of a pantheon battled among themselves, from which some chief god rose to the top of the heap. That partly applies to Loki but it fits pretty well with Zeus. And indeed Zeus had a huge influence on the proto-Christian cult as did the prevailing Greek philosophy, Stoicism. Thus Jesus is cast as the Stoic Socrates, the tragic martyr who drinks from the cup of his passion on the eve of his suicide, for the crime of believing in only one God, Zeus, which Plato preserves as Theos, the name that the Christians adopted when they reinvented Yahweh. Further Jesus is accompanied by 12 followers and gathers with them at his last supper just before his crucifixion as did another similarly created demi-god of that era, Mithra. Further, you get an entirely different interpretation of Jesus from the Gnostics, who weave his story under a completely different paradigm, a highly mystical figure closer to the hallucinatory world of Book of Revelation. That's roughly five re-brandings of the same package. Which one is the real McCoy? The one that survived Roman conquest of Europe (ignoring the variant in Revelation)? If not for a few battles here or there, a different person in charge of the Library at Alexandria, or who knows what, you'd be here convincing us that Mithra rules and Jesus drools. And if Spain had lost to the Aztecs, and if they had gone on to conquer the Spanish possessions north and west of Tejas y Coahuila for all we know you'd be praising Quetzalcoatl, at least if you had happened to have been indoctrinated in what is now the Southwestern United States.

    I'm certain that during the Spanish Inquisition a great many parishoners and clerics said the same thing. It's quite easy for any group sitting in a room, excluded from its enemies, to come to a consensus that their hands are clean.

    Obviously in the setting of a modern-day service it may be harder to directly vilify others without shocking the congregation. Nor do Catholics comport themselves or convey the same xenophobia as fundamentalists typically do. At the moment I'm recalling some of the fundies who blamed victims of certain natural disasters--that this was the sins of their fathers being visited upon them by a vengeful God. There are countless examples.

    But the way Catholics hate on people is more nuanced. While they have gradually yielded on a great many of the social conservative policies of the Victoria era, they are still stubbornly resisting abortion and gay rights. In order to truly live inside that highest standard of tolerance which Catholicism aspires to, it must first drop its opposition to both.

    I had to figure out who you meant, since I was not aware that Catholics believe Jesus had a beard. But you're mistaken. Human civilization was thriving for centuries before the Jesus legend emerged from its Hellenistic and Judaic roots. Indeed Christianity was founded on legacy civilizations. And the bearded fellow who presaged Jesus was not John the Baptist, but Plato. It's he who gives the world the precedent role model for virtue in his rendering of Socrates.

    Jesus was definitely not the first. He was little more than Socrates reimagined. And of course it's nothing more than legend. But you can get a lot more clarity and direct ethical content from reading Plato than reading the rambling and bizarre legends of the New Testament. At least Plato enshrines logic as the foundation for all ethics rather than superstition.

    Which is the same as saying there is no evidence since Jesus is not even a historical person.
     
  20. quinnsong Valued Senior Member

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  21. quinnsong Valued Senior Member

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    Sounds right. Thanks BTW for the well thought out answer. Which leads me to my next question, do you think we would eventually create another monotheistic god or savior given enough time?
     
  22. Arne Saknussemm trying to figure it all out Valued Senior Member

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    Of course he is historical, and even his greatest opponents have never argued otherwise. And in the years immediately following his "alleged' life and death, if his opponents could simply have declared that there never was such a person, don't you think they would have gone that route? It would be a pretty airtight argument against a man whose followers insisted he rose from the dead.

    For all the rest of what you have to say, I know that many people who claim to be Christians are just awful people. However, I also know you are not going to let me off as easy as my saying, 'Well, the Inquisitors and the Fundamentalist, aren't true Christians," but neither would I dare to say that I myself am a true Christian. Sure, I accept Jesus as the redeemer of my sins, but whether I am making my soul as slight a burden for him as possible is not for me to say.

    I can't imagine why it is important whether Jesus had a beard or not. I think it's generally assumed that he did as he was an adult male in a certain time and place where it would have been rather odd not to. But, who cares?

    I've read some Plato too, and I think he is just about the most clear-eyed writer I have ever come across. I really believe if he could visit this 21st century of ours not one thing would surprise him. Sure, the technology might baffle and amaze him for a time, but he'd immediately suss out our characters and find our society wanting, and say, "Yep, I thought as much. 2400 years passed and nothing to show for it.' However, I don't think he's as original and radical thinker as Jesus. Just consider Jesus' reference to things like Hebrew marriage laws, and the way the Pharisees tithe. How and why would Plato know or care anything about all that? And I've read that Mithra and even the Egyptian corn gods who rise again actually post-date Christ.

    Oh, and I'm not from Texas, but I have lived in El Paso and I would be proud to have been born in The Lone Star State. It has never been my habit to just be the religion I was born with. I know quite a lot about the other major religions, and it was the liberal-minded sisters in my Catholic high school that put me on that path. You will find that Catholics are a very tolerant people: eager to know about everything from evolution to Kali the destroyer.
     
    Last edited: Mar 5, 2014
  23. Aqueous Id flat Earth skeptic Valued Senior Member

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    A long time ago we had a thread where someone asked who the reader thought was the most influential person in history. I said Alexander the Great, insofar as his conquest of the Levant alone was enough to trigger the birth of Christianity. That was when Hebrew became a dead language and the portion of the Old Testament preserved, ironically, by Catholics (the Apochrypha) was written in Greek. Alexandria Egypt, of all places, became a shrine of scholarship (the Library at Alexandria was one of the 7 "wonders of the ancient world"), and a character who might be considered a founder of Christianity -- the Jewish scholar Philo -- was Alexandrian. What's really remarkable is that Alexander was mentored by Aristotle who was mentored by Plato who was mentored by Socrates (if Socrates actually existed) but in any case Socrates is the prototype for Jesus.

    My inclination is to think that while Alexander must have advocated for the promulagation of Aristotle's teachings, I suspect Aristotle impressed on Alexander the genius of Plato. But in any case the works of Plato thrived in the Christian world long after, on their own merit, probably because so many readers saw the parallel -- not only the similarities in the martyrdoms of Jesus and Socrates, and the Stoic nature of Jesus in general -- but also because the ethos of Plato as narrated by his character Socrates is so remarkably similar to the Christian ethos of compassion and selflessness. Further, Plato is an actual scholar who creates Socrates speaking in clear concise language that is direct, logical and impeccable, unlike the spotty and sometimes bizarre text in the Bible. Plato doesn't feed his audience any smoke and mirrors; he elevates the reader and gives us a sense of faith in ourselves, as a community, to serve the common interest through ethical conduct. This is threaded in some of Aristotle's work too, but it may be that his genius in natural philosophy is somewhat of a distraction from what Christians would prefer to have their students focus on -- conduct.

    I think what you're saying--what Cantor is saying-- is true on several levels. Yes, I think Christianity would have had a different history if there had not been several surges of Platonism to mold popular attitudes about the value of preserving the Platonic ideals incorporated into Christianity. And yes, if Aristotle had been more widely read those Christian ideals would not have found the same common ground. But what I'm thinking is that if Alexander had never been to the Levant, if Plato had never created such a precise role model for the Stoic as he did in Socrates, then in my mind it's likely that there would never have been a Christian movement at all. The Romans still would have crushed Judaea, they still would have crucified rebels, perhaps even a possible rebel named Jesus, but there's no reason to believe that, even if his cruel execution had been twisted into legend, that it would have built itself around the idea of a martyr.

    While I fully endorse most of the code of ethics Socrates propounded through Plato (or vice versa) [the part about leaving useless people to die on My Olympus is out] it would be fascinating to see how Christianity might have invented itself from the more scientific logic of Aristotle.

    I think all of modern Western history would have been completely altered. I don't think there would have been any of the Crusades, a Moorish occupation in Spain, or an Inquisition, and Spain would not necessarily have become the superpower to challenge the English (even to spur them on) into colonialism and then imperialism. And it's even possible that much of Central and South America would have been never been subjected to European overlords. For the same reason there may never have been such a rush to kidnap Africans into slavery.

    Aristotle practically eliminates the need for God as Creationists demand, by establishing a Prime Mover as the source of all things, which can as easily be interpreted as an agency of nature as much as a "person" called God. I think this would have unraveled most of Western religion in the Copernican era alone, as it became more apparent that there are indeed forces of nature establishing cause as Aristotle predicts. Meanwhile, Aristotle is just as much the voice of ethics as any great Philosopher but I think he stands apart as a sort of patriarch of personal discovery, and there's the part that I think would spell the downfall of religion and the rise of secularism. I think we saw something like this in the Enlightenment when Christians began fleeing to Deism as an escape from the insanity of honoring religious traditions in a world that was becoming steeped in the value of fact-checking.

    This was why I said at the outset that religion will probably fade. It's only logical that people will become more logical, and if so, then we'll be in a new era, a neo-Enlightenment of some kind, perhaps. There will still be a huge force pressing for relief against all kinds of human welfare issues and thus the people who now think that they need to put money in the basket on Sunday to help impoverished people somewhere will simply be turning to charities/NGOs to make sure the money is properly applied.

    My outlook for the future is actually bright. I fail to understand why religious people are so convinced the world is going to hell. I mean I understand the stuff they've been told, I just don't understand why they go on blindly believing it without bothering to check the facts. That's the part I think will fade over time until religion becomes obsolete.
     

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