That’s really only Western religions whose job is to answer purpose and providea guide for eternal paradise. That relives the anxiety of why am I here and what’s next.
Eastern religions in general have the end goal as enlightenment rather than something external like a Heaven or Hell. That is more of an acceptance of the anxiety and suffering rather than an abuse of it.
I have never seen much difference between reincarnation and the resurrection. One is circular, one is linear.
I think religion is the salve of anxiety.
People have anxiety about death and their purpose, and religion relieves that anxietyIts absolutely supposed to be. But then we came along and got the classic human stink all over it. Everything will be fine after you die as long as you recruit all your friends and do as I say and gimme some money. Might do a Holy War too, stay tuned for that.
I think a lot of people need religion to compensate for what society does not give.
Society has failed and it is going nowhere
Or society has failed because of religions indoctrination and lack of critical thinking.
Both can be true, two very different sides of the same coin
Society has failed because people like me, spent too much time playing videogames, instead of devoting their lives to making it better.
We have to fix it ourselves.
I’d say it’s more accurate to say the abuse of religion/abusive religion uses the abuse of anxiety. Yes, abusive religious organizations exist, and they all use anxiety about some cosmic punishment to excuse and enforce their abuse. I absolutely agree with you on their existence and how terrible they are.
I don’t think that’s universal and inherent to religion. There are religious groups that are simply good sources of community with either no focus on any cosmic punishment, or that don’t agree that any “cosmic punishment” exists.
There are religious groups that are simply good sources of community
Which is an important factor for social animals like us humans. This also underlines that there is a lack of alternatives for people who seek community, social support, etc… Thereby inviting more people to become indoctrinated.
Definition “Religion”: identity-anchoring, axiom-based assumption-river, which usually disallows falsification.
Fundamentalist anti-theism is every bit as “religious” as any other religion, even though it orients around absence-of-deity instead of deity.
The Physicalist/Materialist assumption-river/religion which prohibits that mind is real, is every bit as identity-anchoring AND every bit as rejecting-of-falsification as any other religion.
Were Physicalism/Materialism true then mind would only be effect, never cause of the behavior-of-matter.
So, engineered airliners wouldn’t exist.
The fact that they do exist, and are produced by intentional-mentation being expressed by matter … is powerless to falsify Physicalism/Materialism simply because Physicalism/Materialism’ is axiom-based, & doesn’t allow falsification.
Therefore it’s a religion.
Hofstadter’s “Godel Escher Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid” was about ideologies, prejudices, religions, & formal-systems. The 2nd edition of it explained that it wasn’t only about formal-systems, in the new Preface, because nobody ( Western ) had gotten that implication.
All of those, ideologies, prejudices, religions, & formal-systems, … ignore evidence that isn’t obeying their view.
Empiricism, which is outside-centered, seems to be the only religion/method worth holding-to.
& that means that all spiritual-religions which are empiricism-rooted, also have some chance of being valid.
But without outside-centrism, the biblical Greek “eklegos”, then it’s an “already-lost war”: self-centrism isn’t capable of knowing universe, only its own assumptions/beliefs.
That is consistently demonstrated by humankind’s history.
Self-consistency-of-view vs completeness-in-knowing-Universe: 2 mutually-exclusive paradigms.
_ /\ _
The God that people believe in, in the Bibble, clearly contradicts himself repeatedly. You can straight up write him off through deduction, at which point, you realize you don’t even know what the fuck you are believing in, so might as well not, or might as well believe whatever random thing you want.
Might as well believe in a supreme being, but you don’t have holy rules telling you how to behave, so you either have to assume it’s evil, or it does not exist, because a good spreme being would never leave you to suffer for your sins, and commit immorality through no failt of theirs.
It is. But it is also a common moral code and the foundation of a society.
Areligious people aren’t inherently immoral and it was the foundation of some societies because it was used to control people while at the same time pass blame to an intangible entity
Historically speaking all of morals were established by religion. Good or bad but everything is based on it.
I’m genuinely not trying to argue and just trying to understand your train of thought. Do you truly believe that humans were incapable of empathy prior to religion?
Empathy and morals and laws are different. And no empathy is luxury, when your dream is not to get eaten by a predator or not to go to sleep hungry - there is no place for empathy.
Monkeys and even apes eat their own kind.So you don’t believe that humans are tribal by nature?
Tribal by default means shared morals. And organized from the top - by religion and shared anxiety
The conclusion I’m coming to is that you believe religion came before society, or do you mean something else?
Objectively false my friend.
How would animals have morals if that was the case? Why would they have a sense of fairness baked into them if it came from a religion they couldn’t possibly comprehend?
The reality is that morality as we perceive it, is mostly just the natural rules that let us work together. This little known scientific concept called ‘apes strong together’, meant that the people who possessed a basic sense of morality could work with others and accomplish more, then those without it, and those without it, died off.
That’s all morality is. It has nothing do with any magical creature.
Empathy is luxury. If you don’t have food you will not care. Morals is the thing that stops you.
You can’t have food, and in result act egocentrically, disadvantaging others and still feel bad about it. Having empathy does not necessitate acting on it.
No you won’t have empathy towards your enemies when you don’t have the luxury to do so.
How many conflicts are going on right now where religion and local society is killing ‘others’ without any mercy?
Do you think those brain washed massses can waste to feel emphatic towards the enemy that is ‘evil’, ‘bad’ or ‘unclean’ and deserved to be killed?
If they would - they freaking would stop all these friggin wars. Morality wins - and morality still not a good thing.No you won’t have empathy towards your enemies when you don’t have the luxury to do so.
I don’t see how ‘luxury to do so’ should disprove my point.
Regarding the rest:
While I agree with the underlying sentiment, I wouldn’t go so far as to generalize entire population groups and claim they do not feel empathy, even if they kill others. Also: This is drifting a bit beyond what I wanted to point out, therefore I won’t go into more detail.
If someone needs religion to be moral, it says quite a bit about them.
Depends on the religion. Catholic, yes.
Most religions play with fears to get people aligned with the respective religious agenda. I can’t name a religion that does not do this in some form. Got an exmple?
Buddhism
I suppose karma and reincarnation fit the criteria of using fears. Which is why Buddhism is not an exception imo.
Overly simplistic. Lots of things are the abuse of anxiety.
“Lots of things are the abuse of anxiety” doesn’t make my statement any less true. As far as extent of abuse goes, I would say religion is near if not the top of the list though.
Are you convinced that this is what Occam’s razor is?
