[QUOTE=Falubii;37029042]Morality is not a product of religion.[/QUOTE]
Morality is a product of human compassion and our ability to be self aware, has nothing to do with religion at all.
justification of certain things, I think originally it wasn't meant to be so harmful just so much as people wanted reasons for the unknown but as time progressed lo and behold we're all just competing. :(
Religion made sense back when the earth was inhabited by stocky men with bushy beards that sodomized anything.
Because it is a coping mechanism for the complexity of the world - think about it.
When all of life is horrid, it helps your morale to think that there is some divine machine nodding over your shoulder as you go about your day. It makes things simple - it defines good and bad so you don't have to. It creates a sense of community - nothing says togetherness like being raised against a common enemy, like people who are looking to change the religion-established status quo or the classic 'sinner'.
It protects you from cognitive dissonance by telling you everything in absolutes.
In my own personal opinion, I believe religion started as a way to explain the odd world around the early civilizations. A way to describe where the ants crawling up my arm came from, why they exist, and where they started. Later on, people started realizing those who knew religion and its doctrines the best, the ones who understood all of it and possibly amended it to greater expanse; were the ones who should have the authority. People began giving authoritative positions to the studious, thinking that their higher connection would somehow keep them in good hands. Even in indigenous religions like in africa, for example, they would look up to the shamans, coming to them in their time of need. They believed that his massive understanding of the world around them, and his understanding of their religious explanations of said world would bring them fortune or healing.
Thus many centuries later, people stopped being nomadic, indigenous religions ceased for the most part; cities became common. Once cities become common, people move close together, when they move closer, they tend to chat more. Various evolutions in ways of life gave people some more free time and time to discuss their explanation of the world around them. People argued, listened and created their own stories. They then found some common ground and started compiling their understanding, again giving the authority to those who understood each story best. They then formulated a compiled belief and organized religion was thus born.
Afterward, as cities grew larger, people sought out to explore the unseen world. They found other cities, wanted their goods because they hadn't been able to produce them on their own. And while this trading was going on, small talk was passed between people, they began talking religion. They argued their differing explanations. Some gave in either by self-understanding, where the losing arguer would find that the opponents argument made more sense; or they gave in through force, which was displayed quite grandly by the Crusades.
Each major religion in the world today has written somewhere in it's doctrines, that it's followers should have a will to continue the expansion of the religion. The writers and thinkers of said religion most likely didn't think of the obvious consequences and contradictions of using force or persuasion to expand their grasp. Most missionaries probably thought that their opponents were going to immediately accept their beliefs and convert. Other missionaries just said "fuck it, let's make 'em listen" and resorted directly to using contradictory violence to get their point across.
And finally, my view on modern day religion: I do not believe the world should be rid of all beliefs of any God figure, creationism, or organized religion. I do, in fact, believe that people should just left it be. I do not hate religion, I hate the people who shove it down each others throats. Take for example, the current surge of homosexual equality rallies, as well as the unfortunate surge in homophobic acts. In the United States at least, the Christian population is using their beliefs to attempt to rid the area of homosexuals or at least prevent them from marrying or voting or whatever. That's what I have a problem with, feel free to practice the shit out of your religion, but don't come smashing down my door, shoving a bible up my ass telling me I'm going to hell for aiding the homosexual community.
Personally, I am so sick of people using their religion to infringe upon the rights and ways of life of others. Again, I will use the States as an example. We have a Bill of Rights, in that list of rights, we have 10 original amendments (27 total amendments). The first of those 10 is the Freedom of Speech right....
It reads: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."
That basically states that you are free to establish and practice your religion, not use it to shove it up people's asses and restrict the shit out of their lives and make them miserable for being alive.
In my honest opinion, Religion was originally created to explain the big questions: Who are we? Where did we come from? Why are we here? As it grew, it eventually spread to answer questions such as "why does this happen" or "why does this happen".
As time went on, religion was also used as a buffer for comfort. For example, the fear of death was aided with tales of an afterlife. It kind of gave you something to look forward to. The afterlife was typically some kind of paradise.
I'd write more, but I figure that I've summed it up in a nice, easy to read package.
Some of the responses in here really remind me of how shortsighted a hell of a lot of people can be. If your answer to "Where did life come from?" is "The Big Bang, and Evolution" you need a bit of a reality check. Where did the Big Bang and Evolution come from? There's just flat-out not an answer for that. Why is the speed of light 3*10^8 m/s? Why not 4*10^8 m/s? Why is there a speed of light at all?
Again, there just aren't good answers. It's not surprising that religions that can answer the questions of our very existence... exist. Especially so when we assume that there's actually a point to it all, other than just living, then dying.
Perhaps radical Islamists are right? Perhaps we're all heathens who need to die? Hell, they've found a lot more purpose in life than I have, and I certainly envy them that, though are definitely religions out there that align more closely to my current world-views. (And I'd prefer to go on living, just the same)
Which really just makes me thing that's the whole of it. There are a lot of people out there looking for a reason they exist. If religion can give it to them... Why not?
At least, that's why I think it exists. I'm sure people join for other reasons as well. Just dismissing it as "old habits" though, would be a mistake.
[QUOTE=Absynth;36837142]So why write the book? The religion is based on its religious book. I'm talking about Islam and Christianity that is, some religions don't have their holy books. And it is confirmed that the verses' meanings haven't changed, they remain the same.
Quran says: "Kill non-muslims if they don't convert." and "Women are inferior to men." And Quran is Islam, Islam is violent and discriminative.[/QUOTE]
Can I have -YOUR- source please? You seem so informed on the subject
Religion exists so people can find answers that our society cannot explain. It offers explanations for things like death and the afterlife, but also the creation and origin of our people/universe.
Science has answered a lot of these questions legitimately, but there are questions that it will never be able to explain, and that's why there will always be Religion. Mankind's defining feature is curiosity, an inner desire to know and understand the world around us. We are frightened by the unknown, and so we make up stories to explain what we cannot explain.
Personally, aside from those kinda things, I fail to see the practicality of going to a church or temple and praying/making sacrifices and offerings. If there were actual gods that people worshipped, and making sacrifices unto them would bring benefits unto you and power unto them, THEN I would understand religion's practical uses, and i'd probably bend knee before the deity that suited my habits best.
For example, if a farmer prayed to the Black Goat, a sort of fertility goddess, and made a sacrifice of the harvest unto Her, in turn she'd ensure your next harvest would grow well and your animals would be fertile. Another example would be an architect praying to Golem, the god of Masonry, and offering up several slabs of jade to grant strength and skill to the workers who're quarrying the stone and using it to construct dwellings.
Thing is, without the gods really doing anything for us, and sacrifices yielding no results, there's really no point in following Them unless it's some kind of Lovecraftian extortion racket where the gods demand tribute otherwise They take your souls. And for that matter, there's no proof of there being true "gods" in existence; no viably-attributable signs left in Their wake, no blazing incarnations wielding the power to warp reality, and don't even get me started on that tired banal tirade of "God works in mysterious ways"; that's just a poor excuse.
All in all, if there were real gods who thrived off of prayer and sacrifice, and doing such things in their name brought benefits to you and those close to you, then i'd actually see the point in religion, and probably kneel before an altar to offer X to Y in exchange for Z. But otherwise, it's just some sort of moral educational thing that just happens to have interesting stories written alongside. If I can say anything good about religion, other than that some religions aren't as bad as others, it's that they usually have some interesting tales associated with them.
Speaking of tales, I should really read American Gods.
Religion, in the context that it is today, is the result of corrupt men withholding/changing teaching and turning them into a dogma, rather than a search.
Wasn't there a study that showed children are more inclined towards religion, that it was basically and evolutionary offshoot? I mean most religious people took that as it meant God had inclined people to believe in him. The truth of the matter is that these beliefs are appealing to us for some reasons and clearly has to do with our ancestors.
We aren't exactly extremely intelligent beings anyway, we're only 1% different from our ape cousins, if 1% gives us such a vastly different level of intelligence, then we are just literally on the thin line of difference between doing nothing but eating a bunch of bananas to making nanotechnology, I'd make the assumption that there are still parts of our brain that act more instinctively/primitively then rationally and these tend to cause us to side more with religious views.
Religion is deep within the human animal & psyche - The concept of worshiping the creator - life giver is a leftover impulse from innate survival instincts - not 'Religion' as we've come to know it - but the deep human inclination and 'pre-programming' that has created all the 'Religions' that mankind follow. Science, Power, Sex, Christianity, Gambling, whatever - even fanatically DENOUNCING Religion and PREACHING something else are all part of the same basic need of man.
Studies by certain groups/psychologists suggest that just as a moth is pre-programmed to fly towards light to reproduce, mankind is programmed to gravitate towards SOME form of belief system - Archetypal (in this context meaning pre-existant) innate drives and inclinations.
When you are an infant, your sense of yourself is defined by what you cannot control - I can move this arm, this is my arm, I cannot move that cat - that cat is not part of me, I want my mother to give me Milk, I cannot control my mother, I am separate from my mother - The second you realise you are separate from your mother in order to promote and ensure a necessary bond of survival the human animal is pretty much pre-programmed to see Mother as God - life giving - all knowing - to be obeyed and followed - this is ESSENTIAL - it causes the baby to cling to the mother and follow the mother in order to ensure its survival - (even before it is consciously aware of these inclinations)
Eventually you realise your mother is NOT God - and merely just another human. At this point the human psyche naturally seeks out another 'God' - this can be in the form of another woman, gambling, science -- blah blah - I'm over simplifying various shades of grey but you catch my drift.
Basically as soon as conscious man first saw the life giving sun appear over the horizon he was pre-programmed to worship it - everything else is just an extension of that - a new story and a new spin.
On the same note, we have the theory of the Devil - evil - formed out of man kinds need to understand that sticking your hand in fire is BAD, we are preprogrammed to be TAUGHT (by our respective societies) what to fear. We were born with the capacity to fear anything - then society teaches us what to fear - originally our tribes would teach us to fear FIRE and LIONS - now sadly our tribes teach us to fear Terrorists and Dark Alleys - muggings etc...
The root of God is the same as the root of the Devil - it comes from inside us - if we were not able to experience and FEEL fear - it would not exist.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying I don't believe in God - I'm not one of those - 'lights out go in the ground when you're dead' kind of guys - I just believe formulating religion is instinctual.
I won't get into what I REALLY believe about existence but I will leave you with one question...
watch this quick video:
[video=youtube;0DBs7hQi0JM]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0DBs7hQi0JM[/video]
You marvel at the 'relatively' simple systems that allow the robot to 'perceive' light. You say to yourself, the Robot doesn't REALLY understand light, or KNOW what light is - yet is it capable on some small level of experiencing and responding to it.
WHILST at the same time, you assume that your perception of the world and 'reality' though your potentially limited receptors is the CORRECT - and highest form of perception.
well - what if it wasn't - what if your perception of reality was RELATIVELY SPEAKING as limited as the infrared device that flushes the toilet after you've taken a piss? What then?
When you're in a dream - do you doubt that it is your whole reality? I don't.
[QUOTE=SwissDRRex;37151511]Religion is deep within the human animal & psyche - The concept of worshiping the creator - life giver is a leftover impulse from innate survival instincts - not 'Religion' as we've come to know it - but the deep human inclination and 'pre-programming' that has created all the 'Religions' that mankind follow. Science, Power, Sex, Christianity, Gambling, whatever - even fanatically DENOUNCING Religion and PREACHING something else are all part of the same basic need of man.
Studies by certain groups/psychologists suggest that just as a moth is pre-programmed to fly towards light to reproduce, mankind is programmed to gravitate towards SOME form of belief system - Archetypal (in this context meaning pre-existant) innate drives and inclinations.
When you are an infant, your sense of yourself is defined by what you cannot control - I can move this arm, this is my arm, I cannot move that cat - that cat is not part of me, I want my mother to give me Milk, I cannot control my mother, I am separate from my mother - The second you realise you are separate from your mother in order to promote and ensure a necessary bond of survival the human animal is pretty much pre-programmed to see Mother as God - life giving - all knowing - to be obeyed and followed - this is ESSENTIAL - it causes the baby to cling to the mother and follow the mother in order to ensure its survival - (even before it is consciously aware of these inclinations)
Eventually you realise your mother is NOT God - and merely just another human. At this point the human psyche naturally seeks out another 'God' - this can be in the form of another woman, gambling, science -- blah blah - I'm over simplifying various shades of grey but you catch my drift.
Basically as soon as conscious man first saw the life giving sun appear over the horizon he was pre-programmed to worship it - everything else is just an extension of that - a new story and a new spin.
On the same note, we have the theory of the Devil - evil - formed out of man kinds need to understand that sticking your hand in fire is BAD, we are preprogrammed to be TAUGHT (by our respective societies) what to fear. We were born with the capacity to fear anything - then society teaches us what to fear - originally our tribes would teach us to fear FIRE and LIONS - now sadly our tribes teach us to fear Terrorists and Dark Alleys - muggings etc...
The root of God is the same as the root of the Devil - it comes from inside us - if we were not able to experience and FEEL fear - it would not exist.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying I don't believe in God - I'm not one of those - 'lights out go in the ground when you're dead' kind of guys - I just believe formulating religion is instinctual.
I won't get into what I REALLY believe about existence but I will leave you with one question...
watch this quick video:
[video=youtube;0DBs7hQi0JM]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0DBs7hQi0JM[/video]
You marvel at the 'relatively' simple systems that allow the robot to 'perceive' light. You say to yourself, the Robot doesn't REALLY understand light, or KNOW what light is - yet is it capable on some small level of experiencing and responding to it.
WHILST at the same time, you assume that your perception of the world and 'reality' though your potentially limited receptors is the CORRECT - and highest form of perception.
well - what if it wasn't - what if your perception of reality was RELATIVELY SPEAKING as limited as the infrared device that flushes the toilet after you've taken a piss? What then?
When you're in a dream - do you doubt that it is your whole reality? I don't.[/QUOTE]
I'm not really sure if 'you' are an alt of someone else or the 'same' person I've seen here in MD before, but your 'style' of writing is 'quite' distinctive, to put it 'lightly'.
On your point though... I don't even know what you're trying to say. You seem like kind of a solipsist, but not entirely, you say that we're preprogrammed to worship a god but you don't say why.... I dunno if you're a definition bender like matsta and you're so caught up in useless philosophic definitions that you can't get your point across, or maybe I just don't get it. Can you say what you want to say again, in less words and without 'these'?
[QUOTE=Numidium;37151688]On your point though... I don't even know what you're trying to say. You seem like kind of a solipsist, but not entirely, you say that we're preprogrammed to worship a god but you don't say why.... I dunno if you're a definition bender like matsta and you're so caught up in useless philosophic definitions that you can't get your point across, or maybe I just don't get it. Can you say what you want to say again, in less words and without 'these'?[/QUOTE]
I've never posted here before. OK same thing much shorter - no quotations.
Mankind has survival instincts that pre-desposes it to certain behaviours right? So for example Strength in numbers is vital for human survival, so every human has a pre-programmed need to belong (you can't fight it - it's why we're all here on this forum)
so with regards to constructing religion - it's an extension of human's instinctual need to gravitate towards GOOD, life giving, and survival ensuring things...
so it could go a little something like this in the mind of primitive man.
Man needs sun and heat to survive. Primitive man monkey is programmed to respond to the sun, to ensure his tribe is in warm sunny areas. THEN man obtains consciousness - man is able to reflect on his love of the sun and on some dim level take his need for the sun beyond meer instinct - the innate compulsion becomes a conscious compulsion, man (in some form) thinks - "sun is good" how much of a leap is it from man accepting that the sun gives life, and thinking on some level "sun is good" to then thinking "sun, gives life, sun is god"
then bang you have the first religion in primitive man. Sun worship.
Then I guess the next step - as consciousness evolves it seems only natural to apply stories to those feelings - maybe the first story was about why the sun rises and falls - told through dance - or cave drawings.
this is the basis of all art right? we try to give physical form to our feelings - be it through music or painting or whatever.
It's the same way primitives would worship animals - because they gave, food, life, they gave warmth with their skins.
Alright, that made 10 times more sense. And yeah, I guess that's kinda right, in broad strokes. Prepare for an anti-evopsych shitstreak from the godwin department here though.
[QUOTE=Numidium;37152157]Alright, that made 10 times more sense. And yeah, I guess that's kinda right, in broad strokes. Prepare for an anti-evopsych shitstreak from the godwin department here though.[/QUOTE]
I don't think I'm Evopsych (am I?) and I'm interested to hear any opinion - These are just my thoughts they will grow and change as I do so I certainly don't want to offend anyone or fight anyone for them.
That would be a waste.
[QUOTE=SwissDRRex;37152284]I don't think I'm Evopsych (am I?) and I'm interested to hear any opinion - These are just my thoughts they will grow and change as I do so I certainly don't want to offend anyone or fight anyone for them.
That would be a waste.[/QUOTE]
The whole survival instinct - evolutionary preprogramming stuff is rather evopsychy, and that's not necessarily a bad thing, your post makes sense, but as I said, there's a lot of godwin being thrown around whenever evopsych or remotely evopsych-y ideas come up.
[QUOTE=Adelle Zhu;37086177]
And finally, my view on modern day religion: I do not believe the world should be rid of all beliefs of any God figure, creationism, or organized religion. I do, in fact, believe that people should just left it be. I do not hate religion, I hate the people who shove it down each others throats. Take for example, the current surge of homosexual equality rallies, as well as the unfortunate surge in homophobic acts. In the United States at least, the Christian population is using their beliefs to attempt to rid the area of homosexuals or at least prevent them from marrying or voting or whatever. That's what I have a problem with, feel free to practice the shit out of your religion, but don't come smashing down my door, shoving a bible up my ass telling me I'm going to hell for aiding the homosexual community.
That basically states that you are free to establish and practice your religion, not use it to shove it up people's asses and restrict the shit out of their lives and make them miserable for being alive.[/QUOTE]
The problem Christians have with gay people, is that for them its wrong, marriage is between a man and a women, not man and a man or women and a women, its not that they hate gay people, although im sure some do, but its just against what Christians believe in for gay people to get married. Gay people should be fine with a civil union, gives them benefits of married people, and doesn't anger the religious by defying what god told them marriage was.
Now on topic, I believe religion was created to give people a sense of whats happening and why things are the way they are. But that was long ago, now religion in my opinion is just something to believe in and a way to live your life, give you guidance and what not.
[QUOTE=V12US;37135273]Religion exists so people can find answers that our society cannot explain. It offers explanations for things like death and the afterlife, but also the creation and origin of our people/universe.
Science has answered a lot of these questions legitimately, but there are questions that it will never be able to explain, and that's why there will always be Religion. Mankind's defining feature is curiosity, an inner desire to know and understand the world around us. We are frightened by the unknown, and so we make up stories to explain what we cannot explain.[/QUOTE]
I would argue that Religion is actually the opposite of curiosity, and is in fact one of the biggest things holding our species back. Most war is fought over religion, and religion by it's very nature often prohibits the tolerance of other ideas or lifestyles. It creates conflict for arbitrary reasons that shouldn't be taken seriously in any context outside of its time period. It encourages the revocation of critical thinking in favor of unquestioning obedience, and takes advantage of the gullibility of the uneducated masses to siphon money into undeserved political clout.
[editline]9th August 2012[/editline]
[QUOTE=assassin_Raptor;37153502]The problem Christians have with gay people, is that for them its wrong, marriage is between a man and a women, not man and a man or women and a women, its not that they hate gay people, although im sure some do, but its just against what Christians believe in for gay people to get married. Gay people should be fine with a civil union, gives them benefits of married people, and doesn't anger the religious by defying what god told them marriage was.
Now on topic, I believe religion was created to give people a sense of whats happening and why things are the way they are. But that was long ago, now religion in my opinion is just something to believe in and a way to live your life, give you guidance and what not.[/QUOTE]
The problem Christians have with homosexuals is 2 lines of text in an ancient book which gave them the false sentiment that their supposed creator has some slight with homosexuals. With no basis in text, history, or anything they've conjured new beliefs and rules for their lord to nod over so they can live their sheltered life with the knowledge that they are doing the lord's work.
Religion is largely used as a means of accommodating the cognitive dissonance one has with the world without actually doing anything to improve anything. You can pray and be absolved of your guilt, with the knowledge that you will get a cottage in the sky while everyone else burns. So long as you can find a line of text to justify what you are doing, you can kill, torment, antagonize, or harm anybody in the name of your personal(tm) god. I've yet to find an actual objective reason for harming somebody, but if I were religious I would have many. I believe it is by nature toxic because it creates these arbitrary social boundaries which need to 'not be crossed', as if there is any actual evidence their god exists otherwise they attempt to overthrow society and shoot a few doctors. We do not need to not offend their personal god - they need to not expect us to pretend he exists.
FreakyMe there are a lot of other problems in the world that religion is only a small part of.
And holding back our species from what anyway? It's not like there's anything really stopping us from doing whatever the fuck we do, like witnessed every day.
In my opinion religion is something that should be a private matter, and should have nothing to do with the education of children, politics, or anything else that impacts others.
On the same side of the coin though, you have to be respectful of other people's beliefs, even if they make no sense to you at all.
[QUOTE=SwissDRRex;37151511]Studies by certain groups/psychologists suggest that just as a moth is pre-programmed to fly towards light to reproduce, mankind is programmed to gravitate towards SOME form of belief system - Archetypal (in this context meaning pre-existant) innate drives and inclinations.
When you are an infant, your sense of yourself is defined by what you cannot control - I can move this arm, this is my arm, I cannot move that cat - that cat is not part of me, I want my mother to give me Milk, I cannot control my mother, I am separate from my mother - The second you realise you are separate from your mother in order to promote and ensure a necessary bond of survival the human animal is pretty much pre-programmed to see Mother as God - life giving - all knowing - to be obeyed and followed - this is ESSENTIAL - it causes the baby to cling to the mother and follow the mother in order to ensure its survival - (even before it is consciously aware of these inclinations)
Eventually you realise your mother is NOT God - and merely just another human. At this point the human psyche naturally seeks out another 'God' - this can be in the form of another woman, gambling, science -- blah blah - I'm over simplifying various shades of grey but you catch my drift.[/QUOTE]
Where did you get this "infant experiences" explanation from? It sounds pretty familiar, I think I've read it before. Anyway, I do agree that the 'seed' for religion is somehow present in the nature of man. I mean, even most of the people who call themselves atheists gravitate towards some kind of 'worship of science': praise its benefits, neglect its human origins and the limitations that come with them, etc.
However, I don't think that 'gambling', or other human activities should be considered the same as religion or 'worship of something'. Those things are totally different for me. When you're addicted to gambling you're worshiping nothing.
Also, I don't think that it's totally impossible to just stop having some sort of 'god'. The better example I could point you to is the literature of Camus, and, in general, most of the literature concerning existentialism and nihilism. They show, pretty clearly the sort of life a man who I would call to be really an 'atheist' live.
[QUOTE=SwissDRRex;37151511]Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying I don't believe in God - I'm not one of those - 'lights out go in the ground when you're dead' kind of guys - I just believe formulating religion is instinctual.[/QUOTE]
But, doesn't the fact that you're answering to this thread like that implies already that you're distanced from religion? I mean, this thread already implies that the answers aren't going to be something like: "Religion exists because God wants to be worshiped." Answering the thread in any other way would imply that you don't really believe that religion has a divine purpose.
[editline]11th August 2012[/editline]
PD: what is 'definition bender' even supposed to mean?
[QUOTE=SwissDRRex;37152284]I don't think I'm Evopsych (am I?) and I'm interested to hear any opinion - These are just my thoughts they will grow and change as I do so I certainly don't want to offend anyone or fight anyone for them.
That would be a waste.[/QUOTE]
Yeah, you're an Evolutionary Psychologist. I have come to the same conclusions through introspection of my conscious mind. Are you a computer programmer by chance?
Evolution, logistic growth, logic and mathematics can be applied to everything in the universe especially psychology and social behaviors. :)
[editline]11th August 2012[/editline]
[QUOTE=matsta;37191281]Where did you get this "infant experiences" explanation from? It sounds pretty familiar, I think I've read it before.[/QUOTE]
You feel that these "infant experiences" are familiar because your brain once processed low-level logical processes like this when you were very young.
[QUOTE=newbs;37191724]You feel that these "infant experiences" are familiar because your brain once processed low-level logical processes like this when you were very young.[/QUOTE]
No, I mean, familiar from a [I]book[/I] I've read. I just don't remember which one.
[editline]12th August 2012[/editline]
[QUOTE=newbs;37191724]Evolution, logistic growth, logic and mathematics can be applied to everything(...)[/QUOTE]
No.
Religion was first invented to give hope to the poor and the miserable. Then it was a weapon Kings and Popes alike used to control and subdue the masses, to give themselves "divine right".
Religion was invented by humans. Practiced by humans.
There is nothing more to it. I'd tell all disagreers to go read up on history, but to most theists, half of history didn't exist and science is nothing but "evil heresy".
The thought of interwinding it with politics or society, is nothing short of sickening. :)
[QUOTE=Hashspy;37194387]Religion was first invented to give hope to the poor and the miserable. Then it was a weapon Kings and Popes alike used to control and subdue the masses, to give themselves "divine right".
Religion was invented by humans. Practiced by humans.
There is nothing more to it. I'd tell all disagreers to go read up on history, but to most theists, half of history didn't exist and science is nothing but "evil heresy".
The thought of interwinding it with politics or society, is nothing short of sickening. :)[/QUOTE]
That's quite extreme of you to say that.
For starters, the description you give only works with the three main monotheistic religions - Islam, Judaism, Catholicism. It is true that those notably have a function of giving hope to the poor and the miserable, but it is far from their only function. Islam back when it was made had a rather clear goal of reorganizing society to fit a more moral standard, as the Quran started spreading at a time where Arabian Society was mostly about drinking, sex, games and had a lot of social injustices, notably towards widows and orphans (let alone women in general). Monotheistic religions also have a goal of social rule keepers as well as hope givers and general spiritual helps, plus the usual goal of explaining what we back when it was created could not understand.
Keep in mind that there were religions before those three that had absolutely no intention to give hope. Gods from the antiquity were vengeful and mostly very angry, and they were here not only as explanations of natural phenomenons, but also as social rulers as diverging from the right path would bring divine anger upon you.
The antic egyptian religion is also a good example of a religion that exists for the sole purpose of explanation. There is no such thing as giving hope to the despaired in that religion : egyptian gods only do their job, which mainly consist in directing the dead towards the afterlife, making the sun rise and set, etc.
About monotheistic religions, they were not used as weapons immediately. It took Catholicism about a thousand years before someone decided it would be a great idea to use it as an excuse to raid the Arabian communities in the first holy crusade, and it took even more before someone actually claimed their king status was godsend.
Now about this :
[quote]but to most theists, half of history didn't exist and science is nothing but "evil heresy".[/quote]
This is just downright absurd. First of, "most" theists aren't creationist nutjobs who only believe in the word of a 2000+ years old book when it comes to how the world was created. The part of fanatics and nutjobs alike is drastically inferior to the number of regular, mentally sane religious people. Plus, the whole "half of history didn't exist" part only applies to creationism which is a purely Catholic movement.
As for interwinding it with politics and society, I do agree with the former, but the latter is kind of a gray area. It is undeniable that society would not be the same without religion today, and it does not necessarily mean that we were somehow inhibited by it in our progression. The main three monotheistic religions were all created during times where you were a thousand times more likely to be killed and robbed than today, and where ethics were purely optional. They forged a set of morals and standards that to this very day are for the most part still valid and even used. The issue is mostly that people still try to apply archaic rules that should not be anymore to our present society, but it does not mean our civilization should be somehow completely divided from Religion, given this civilization has started and evolved to this very point thanks to Religion being there in the first place.
It's funny because people back in the day didn't know any better.
[QUOTE=Hashspy;37194387]Religion was first invented to give hope to the poor and the miserable.
[/quote]
Religion was first made when people lived in tribes and were relatively equal.
[quote]Religion was invented by humans.[/QUOTE]
It was actually invented by neanderthals, who were both smarter and stronger than homo sapiens.
[QUOTE=Audio-Surfer;37218093]Religion was first made when people lived in tribes and were relatively equal.
It was actually invented by neanderthals, who were both smarter and stronger than homo sapiens.[/QUOTE]
Religion wasn't "invented" in the sense in which something is "invented". It grew [I]slowly[/I] out of a mythological explanation of things.
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