What Good Is Religion?

[Adept]

"What is religion good for?" on a societal, rather than personal scale.

Does anyone have an answer?

There are a couple of phrases that highlight the problem that religion evolved from.

'Too many cooks spoil the broth'

'Too many chiefs, not enough indians'

Basically, when too many people feel they know what is best for everyone, no one agrees and nothing gets done. When a sabertooth tiger is running after you, you dont stand around and debate the best path to run away from it, you just run and hope you run faster than the guy behind you. It is natural human behaviour to allow people who desire power to have it.

We are naturally lazy. Doing more work than we have to is bad. Thus we let people lead us, to a certain extent.

We are also inventive. We have minds that come up with all kinds of wierd stuff to solve percieved problems. I once read about a guy that made a jet-engine powered beer cooler to keep the beer in his shed cool. Because you need a cool beer when there is a JET ENGINE going in the same room.

When faced with bizarre questions like 'Where did we come from?' 'How did the earth come to be created?' 'What happens when we die?' we make stuff up. Eventually, people take the ideas they like best, and other folks start to listen to them. It's no coincidence that all major religions have creation myths, and try to explain what happens when you die. Without curiosity about those things, there would be no religion.

So, we have people with ideas about the spiritual world, and we have humans too lazy to organise and lead themselves. It follows then that organised religion springboards from shamanistic witch-doctors into the massive organisations we see today.

Religion itself is not genetic. It has next to nothing to do with evolution. It is a temporary side effect of the basic pack mentality and our curiosity.

 

[heretic888]

So Random & Herrie,

I think I understand what you're saying about how his way isn't the only way (or even the most useful way) to look at the problem. And I respect that you are both educated thoughtful people.

But your criticism of this article seems to be that he's looking at it the wrong way. And... hmmm... that seems a little snobbish to me?

Please don't think I'm attacking you, I'm just trying to honestly think about the situation. Like, I don't know much about the fields you are discussing. And what you are saying makes sense to me. But at the same time, it seems like you are saying that another viewpoint (his) has no validity. You don't even want to discuss the article because he's looking at the problem through 'the wrong glasses'. So then, if I haven't studied the fields that you deem correct to examine this problem with, then my ideas or opinions or questions don't count?

I'd be very surprised if that's what either of you meant, but that's kinda what it sounds like. Help me understand if that's not what you meant.

Some people do try and make that arguement, though. "You don't know what you are talking about, because you aren't educated in this topic (because, you know, if you don't know about the things I know about OR you don't agree with the ideas that I subscribe to, you don't count as educated) and therefore you aren't qualified to discuss this. You don't count. Pooh-pooh." And I believe that kind of close-mindedness can be the downfall of many academics - to believe that only people within their own circle have anything to contribute to the discussion.

Never claimed his viewpoint was "wrong" --- as opposed to naive, myopic, one-sided, and prejudiced in the truest sense of the word.

Simply look at it this way: his arguments could just as easily be applied to, oh say, martial arts. He could put forward baseless speculations dovetailing the development of martial arts via Darwinian natural selection, and all sorts of nonsense that any experienced martial artist would bawk at.

Regarding the ignorance thing, well yeah. It'd be like having someone who has never trained a single day in the martial arts suddenly write an essay telling the rest of us what we study is "really about". Its arrogance and hubris to its zenith. And, its quite obvious that that is what is going on here.

Ta ta.

 

[heretic888]

There are a couple of phrases that highlight the problem that religion evolved from.

'Too many cooks spoil the broth'

'Too many chiefs, not enough indians'

Basically, when too many people feel they know what is best for everyone, no one agrees and nothing gets done. When a sabertooth tiger is running after you, you dont stand around and debate the best path to run away from it, you just run and hope you run faster than the guy behind you. It is natural human behaviour to allow people who desire power to have it.

We are naturally lazy. Doing more work than we have to is bad. Thus we let people lead us, to a certain extent.

We are also inventive. We have minds that come up with all kinds of wierd stuff to solve percieved problems. I once read about a guy that made a jet-engine powered beer cooler to keep the beer in his shed cool. Because you need a cool beer when there is a JET ENGINE going in the same room.

When faced with bizarre questions like 'Where did we come from?' 'How did the earth come to be created?' 'What happens when we die?' we make stuff up. Eventually, people take the ideas they like best, and other folks start to listen to them. It's no coincidence that all major religions have creation myths, and try to explain what happens when you die. Without curiosity about those things, there would be no religion.

So, we have people with ideas about the spiritual world, and we have humans too lazy to organise and lead themselves. It follows then that organised religion springboards from shamanistic witch-doctors into the massive organisations we see today.

Religion itself is not genetic. It has next to nothing to do with evolution. It is a temporary side effect of the basic pack mentality and our curiosity.

Its incredibly odd how people seem to be consistently presenting a caricaturized version of "religion". Its like they are pointing out a single part, and acting like it is emblematic of the whole. Take a tree, and pretend its the whole friggen forest. Weird.

Most of these critiques, for example, have no applicability whatsoever to the likes of Zen Buddhism, philosophical Taoism, Unitarian-Universalism, Deism, and so on. All of those are "religions", too.

At the same time, a LOT of these critiques could quite easily be applied to very non-religious positions --- such as Maoism, Scientism, Stalinism, Nazism, and so on.

Something tells me people are confusing substance with form here.