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Who Made Religion Up?

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aghogday
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15 Apr 2023, 6:02 pm

^

Shalom…


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16 Apr 2023, 12:19 am

ToughDiamond wrote:
Pepe wrote:
ToughDiamond wrote:
I wouldn't think that it's the job of the rational mind to believe anything, only to test. Surely belief is irrational by its very nature, being essentially the taking of a mere guess as the absolute, unrefutable truth? The only "rational" arguments in support of religious belief I've seen are inconclusive at best, such as the watchmaker analogy.


My "belief system" is based on REASON.
I will take that any day of the week over a belief system built on "faith". 8)

I too much prefer to keep my critical faculty awake, generally speaking. So much so that I don't really have a belief system at all. I suppose I see no difference between belief and faith - both seem to be to do with assigning certainty to things that aren't certain, without the believer seeing or admitting what they've done.


Are you saying you have no "rudder" in life?
Could you define what you mean by a belief system?



Pepe
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16 Apr 2023, 12:25 am

JimJohn wrote:

Your statement about people flatlining on an operating table being considered dead is really grasping at straws. They survived. They did not die.


Obviously.
The heart stopping is NOT death if the body can be revived.
The brain maintains its integrity for minutes after the blood stops flowing.
Cell degradation is NOT instantaneous.



Pepe
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16 Apr 2023, 12:34 am

ToughDiamond wrote:
JimJohn wrote:
...people flatlining on an operating table being considered dead....

I remember seeing the film "Flatliners" and laughing at the naive idea of those experiments they were doing- supposedly killing each other temporarily so they could experience what happened after death and then come back and report their findings. I guess the outmoded definitions of death are still accepted by many. A stopped heartbeat was once the best indicator of death they had, but muddled thinking somehow led many to view it as the definition of death rather than just an indicator. In the days before defibrillators, taking that view would have nearly always worked. It's interesting how even these days there's no perfect definition either of life or death.

Talking of living and non-living entities, does anybody know why many languages assign gender to nouns that refer to things generally accepted to be inanimate? Is that a linguistic relic of an ancient mindset that presumed everything to be alive?



Oh, me! me! sir!
I'll try!

If the brain is, erm, brain dead, that is the end of "The Person".
The PERSON is dead.
The body may continue as a biological husk.

I think I deserve a gold star. :star: :mrgreen:



IsabellaLinton
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16 Apr 2023, 1:04 am

Religion began as philosophy, to explain metaphysics and the nature of existence and perception. That evolved to epistemology, ethics and aesthetics.

Religion as an organised institution was likely begun by a gaslighter who wanted to promote monogamy by shaming others for spreading STDs and having illegitimate children, which leads to poverty and the lack of a work force / army. Chances are they were guilty of such "sins" themselves, but they forgot to mention that. The personification of Heaven and Hell would control lust and greed which, given the lack of antibiotics and social welfare, was probably a good thing in its inception.


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JimJohn
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16 Apr 2023, 8:41 am

I know this topic covered belief in God being something innate that arose with evolution.

Personally, I have a more innate belief in an afterlife than a God. A God would be kind of an after thought. I can see ancestor worship or hero/legend worship as almost automatic in the human experience. The whole “My father who aren’t in heaven” phrase is probably said or felt by everyone alive or lived who had a good warrior father that passed in battle or whatever.

I totally agree with organized religion starting by a gaslighter for some sort of social sexual shaming engineering. Any talk of religion eventually devolves to that anyway. It even did in this discussion which mentioned adultery and rape.



Lecia_Wynter
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16 Apr 2023, 9:00 am

The controllers.



ToughDiamond
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16 Apr 2023, 10:11 am

Pepe wrote:
ToughDiamond wrote:
I too much prefer to keep my critical faculty awake, generally speaking. So much so that I don't really have a belief system at all. I suppose I see no difference between belief and faith - both seem to be to do with assigning certainty to things that aren't certain, without the believer seeing or admitting what they've done.


Are you saying you have no "rudder" in life?

I suppose it depends on what you mean by a rudder.

Quote:
Could you define what you mean by a belief system?

By "belief system" I mean a system of beliefs, a unified set of value judgements such as a relgion, a "philosophy of life," or a political ideology.



mrpieceofwork
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02 Jun 2023, 9:27 am

A whole spectrum of believes were developed to provide answers to impossible questions, and from there, certain groups realized they could use those impossible questions and beliefs to "bring order" to the masses. Tens of thousands of years went by, and now here we are.


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Honey69
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28 Jun 2023, 11:41 am



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notSpock
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29 Jun 2023, 6:49 pm

As a bombastic teenager decades ago, I wrote "Worship is an insult to the gods." (Nowadays, I try to be a bit more discreet and less provocative. I don't at all mean to offend anyone here.)

This was a deliberate paradox, implying that there are gods or a god, but worship per se is not what they want from us. My chief inspiration for this was the neoplatonic philosopher Plotinus (3rd century CE), who was actually a major influence on St. Augustine. Plotinus said, "Make yourself like God". In other words, if God is good and generous and loving, the very best service to God is simply to be good and generous and loving in your life. We are (or can be) the agents of providence.

Note what this does not include: anything about what we believe. In institutionalized Christianity, the Nicene Creed already made belief in various things a requirement. But even though he defends this, Augustine in his Confessions also clearly speaks of what I call faith in the intransitive sense -- NOT a belief in some propositions, but rather a practical attitude of affirmative, trusting, hopeful sincerity in life. To me, that is what faith is. Faith and belief are really two different things.



Last edited by notSpock on 29 Jun 2023, 8:34 pm, edited 1 time in total.

old_comedywriter
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29 Jun 2023, 7:57 pm

Who Made Religion Up?

Politicians.


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UncannyDanny
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29 Jun 2023, 8:30 pm

The earliest religion I can think of is shamanism, which originated during the Stone Age.



notSpock
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29 Jun 2023, 8:38 pm

UncannyDanny wrote:
The earliest religion I can think of is shamanism, which originated during the Stone Age.


I found Werner Herzog's 2010 movie Cave of Forgotten Dreams utterly enthralling. This is about the Chauvet cave in France, which has astonishing painting and engravings twice as old as Lascaux.



notSpock
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29 Jun 2023, 8:45 pm

old_comedywriter wrote:
Who Made Religion Up?

Politicians.


That was Baron D'Holbach's theory in the 18th century. He wrote about the conspiracy of kings and priests. This earned him the reputation of being a horrible atheist. Indeed, his philosophy was materialistic, but he was also a vitalist.

Hegel later made a complex argument that attempted to combine Enlightenment criticism of supernaturalist beliefs with a more forgiving view of the social role of religion.



ToughDiamond
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30 Jun 2023, 8:57 am

notSpock wrote:
As a bombastic teenager decades ago, I wrote "Worship is an insult to the gods."

Makes sense. Worship - praise, thanksgiving, and surrender - seems to have a very strong resemblance to narcissistic supply. Worshippers aren't encouraged to question, criticise, or act independently.