Religion

Have you ever thought why religion exists? Do you believe in God? Recently I've read this book "Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind". "The book's idea is that Sapiens are myth-makers. They use imagination and language to create and communicate new worlds, alternatives and possibilities." The author was literally describing religion as a joke made by a bunch of silly ancient people and that religion is just a huge myth to unite people. Throughout my life, I wasn't really sure of religion. I believe in karma, but I was never fully sure about religion itself. Now that I think of it, is religion just a big ass myth made so that all people have something in common? So that people have something to fight for and to fight against? So that people have something to believe in and live for?

>>64460 >So that people have something to fight for and to fight against? So that people have something to believe in and live for? Partly. Also because we don't like not knowing things so we find the need to make up our own explanations. Which is often used by atheists to claim that religion is dumb because it was invented in time where we didn't understand the world around us but now we have science so we don't need religion anymore. This argument is dumb. Because if you think it was reasonable for our ancestors to invent gods because they didn't understand what lightning, wind, fire etc... were, it's also reasonable for us to believe in gods now because we still don't understand how anything works. We just understand them better than before. Sure, you can say that the lightning is not some god being angry at us, it's just static electricity, electrons are jumping from atom to atom creating a chain reaction which creates electricity. But now I can say that there's a god that makes electrons jump. So we moved from "god creates lightning" to "god manipulates electrons". If you explain why electrons do that then I can still ask "why?" and when you find the answer I can keep asking and making up gods before you find answers. If you ever get to the bottom of the "why?" chain then it would make sense not to make up any more gods. But we are not on that level yet and I don't think we'll ever be. That being said, I don't think it was reasonable for our ancestors to make up gods for unexplained events (but I see how it could've been necessary) so I still don't believe in god. I was just trying to say why the aforementioned argument that atheists often use is dumb.

I think most people misunderstand religion. We all have one. And sometimes the forms it takes are very similar...

>>64460 Religious traditions are primarily structures that develop around metaphysical experience and understanding, with a lot of secondary elements (such as improvised explanations for natural events) attaching themselves to that over a long period of time. Assuming religion to be "made up" is philosophically lazy and dismissive of a central feature of human experience.

>>64460 >is religion just a big ass myth Yes. But it's useful as explained in that book. Most humans like to feel comfortable and safe so they need something like religion to give them peace of mind, also the community aspect is huge. I'm sure most religious people I know wouldn't be religious if only 4 people went to the church. There's nothing wrong with this, people need to be included in a group and it makes them happy. On the other hand if you don't want to be comfortable and are okay with not knowing and want to keep looking for the truth, you won't be satisfied with religious explanations. I was raised christian but I stopped believing when I was about 17. I wanted to start thinking rationally and wanted to get rid of the programming I was going through since I was a kid. So I started asking myself why I believed the things I did, would I have believed in them if I hadn't been raised that way? No, it was simple as that. Not believing in a religion is the default state you're born in, and if you find any reason to believe any o f the religious texts then you can choose to believe in them yourself because you came to that conclusion not your parents, or people around you. This is the most reasonable path in my opinion. Keep in mind that if you spend a lot of time talking with people of specific religion more likely you are to be converted to their beliefs. Especially if you enjoy their company and think of them as your friends. Which will make your brain trick into believing in things that you wouldn't have if you weren't really getting along with those people because your personalities were different. I've also seen religious people describe "miracles" that happened in their lives and then I remembered how I also used to think of things as miracles the same way and learned that, if deep down you really want to belong in a group, your brain will make up anything for you to believe that "god is speaking to you" or that "x, y or z was a sign", it's up to you to recognize these. God may exist or not, but for me there's no reason to assume either and there's especially no reason to believe any of the religious texts.

I believe a better term than 'religion' would be 'worldview.' Many claim to believe in no religion, but as I understand the situation, a worldview is essential to existence as a logical being. I might be alone in my thinking, so I'll try to explain myself better to perhaps establish my position less as an internalized bias than a justifiable theory. Basically, a worldview needs to answer four important questions. Number 1: why are we here? Clearly, everyone believes to some extent that something exists as opposed to nothing. Even if you believe some or all of your perceived reality is a lie, you still live under the unconscious assumption that something has to exist. So, a worldview seeks to explain an answer to this question. 2: how did things go wrong? Clearly, life isn't perfect (at least, not for everyone). If things are going poorly in some capacity for one or more people, then something had to go wrong at some point. A worldview should explain how this is so. 3: is there any hope? And if so, how? If things are bad, that means they could be better. A worldview should explain how things could be better, if they can be, or it should posit that things can't get any better in any way. Even if your belief is that doing what's best for you is as good as it gets, then that's still an acknowledgement that things can get better in some small way. Lastly, we have 4: what will happen next? A worldview should answer what lies ahead in the future, if not in specific, concrete terms, then at least in some vague understanding of what is to come. This could be something like a prophecied end of times, or even something much, much simpler, like understanding trends and predicting future events based on such trends (for instance, you might go to bed at night under the assumption that you'll wake up in the morning, with subtle assumptions tied into all of this). Some of these details might seem trivial in some way, but if that's so, then it only justifies my argument. Why? Because that means these ideas are accepted as givens, functioning as underlying truths that everyone operates by--in other words, as I said before, everyone has a worldview. Some such worldviews are more nuanced, answering these four questions with greater detail; this is what we might think of when considering the concept of religion, since all religions necessarily answer these questions, if they're tenable at all. So, getting back to the subject of OP's post. If you're having doubts about religion in general, that might suggest that your idea of a useful worldview might be one that doesn't try to overcomplicate things with explanations that seem to transcend experiential reality. But I'd hate to assume anything, and perhaps my theories are all garbage, so you tell me: how would YOU answer these four questions? I find this kind of subject rather pleasant to discuss, so I apologize if anything I've said could come across as adversarial in the slightest.

I suggest you a book called "Evidence of the Afterlife: The Science of Near-Death Experiences" See, everyone can read a book. It all depends on what you read.

>>64518 What really matters is what the individual is capable of getting out of any book. Anyone can throw a title out in a discussion but can you explain why we should read that and not something else?

>>64518 afterlife is not religion, religion is not afterlife. several religions have ideas about after lives but your claims from the other thread were basically secular and not especially religious at all.

>>64530 read the book >>64524 exactly, just saying "I read" doesn't mean that the book is any good.

>>64546 That's kind of my problem with "faith", it comes down to the fear that some guy MIGHT be telling the truth. What if he's right? Risk your immortal soul? He's probably wrong but eternity is kind of a horrible thing to contemplate. >>64547 Having known people who experienced "spiritual" encounters who were also diagnosed schizophrenic or bipolar, not to mention celebrity cases you can read about including PKDick, there is that to consider also. These people really believed their experiences were real but it looks to me their brain was stewing in some juices that boiled way too hot (pardon the clinical and scientifical language any poor layfolk reading this).

>>64545 I think that's their point - just because something is in a book doesn't mean it's accurate. It's a strawman and kind of a stupid point to make here seeing as OP just mentioned the book as a bit of context to why OP is asking the thread's main questions. It's not like OP is hailing the book as dogma.

>>64582 If he's wrong and there is no afterlife then I'd be wasting my one and only existence by following him.

>>64588 I didn't mean exact opposite in terms of afterlife existing. I tell you that there is heaven and hell but you have to do exact opposite that he tells you in order to get into heaven.

>>64460 >Do you believe in God? No. I started having doubts around 13 and became an atheist at 15, more than a decade ago. >Have you ever thought why religion exists? Of course I've thought about it. I think it exists because the average person lives more in social reality than physical reality. They'll believe whatever makes them feel good and is socially useful, whether it makes any sense or not. Religion helps people have something in common and deny the reality of death, so it definitely qualifies. There's actually a certain pragmatic logic to it.

>>64856 In the sense that nationalism is made up of fictitious myths of great empires, founding fathers, ancient primordial origins etc. etc. A good amount of these are flat out fabrications or just made up entirely, take the myth that Vercingetorix was a defender of France, when in reality he was basically a Gaullic tribesman who was culturally much closer to ancient Celts than a Frenchman. Take raising the flag ceremonies in America, if I were an alien who'd never seen this before I could easily mistake it for some kind of religious observance. >>64859 What I meant is that 'religion' is a modern concept. If you flip through medieval dictionaries, or go look at ancient China or Arabia there isn't an equivalent for our modern word 'religion'. Putting systems of belief and thought into boxes like 'religion' or 'politics' or 'science' is an effect of modernity, it's something todays governments do to organize and police the way we think. In other words, before modern industrial society there was no religion as we today understand the term. That's not saying Christianity didn't exist, but that people back then didn't chop stuff up into 'religion' or 'science' or any other abstract category separate from other aspects of life. I would say, those things which we call religions today, were originally closer to martial arts. They were a holistic art of life that involved training mind and body to achieve some sort of spiritual perfection, often through the assistance of some kind of learned hierarchy (e.g. a priesthood) who provided guidance, discipline, and training. What we today call religions were originally arts of life. However, as we enter the age of industrial capitalism, these 'arts of existence' aren't useful for those in power anymore. What you want is to drill people into being mindless shop floor workers who passively accept orders and are good at managing their own time. Plus, if you have all these ideas that the natural world is sacred, well that makes it much more difficult to mine coal or dump waste into rivers. So what secular governments did is they invented this legal category called 'religion', shoved Christianity etc. into it and told everyone that religion ought to be private, a matter of individual conscience, something that should stay at home where it can be domesticated and get out of our way.

>>64885 Nationalism isn't the same as patriotism. Nationalism can be summarized simply as "one state for one nation (people)".

>>64885 >In other words, before modern industrial society there was no religion as we today understand the term. That's not saying Christianity didn't exist, but that people back then didn't chop stuff up into 'religion' or 'science' or any other abstract category separate from other aspects of life. You've got the timeline wrong. In Europe, that chopping happened philosophically around the mid-late Renaissance. Industrialisation simply forced this mindset onto workers.

>>64897 disagree; nationalism can exist seperate from nationstatism, better to think of it as a more encompassing tribalism.

>>64897 I don't believe one can be had without the other. Nationalism and patriotism may not be the exact same thing, however a nationalistic spirit, that being patriotic, is an intrinsic element of a nationalistic nation. I don't know of any nationalistic nations which were not in some way patriotic. Patriotism is required in the maintenance of a nationalistic nation. There is the nation, its people, its tenets and ideals, and emblemizing these things is ritualistic action, tradition. These traditions are a dedication to the nation, they serve as a reminder of what the nation is, what it stands for. A "nationalistic" nation not performing rituals serving to reinforce and maintain the spirit of itself will surely see its machinations oxidize and halt. What presence has it? It may exist in thought but not in reality. The nation will degrade, it will weaken without the exertion of ritualistic action. People of the nation will be left with no unifying identity, no flag to rally under. What will the nation stand for? What will it believe? Nothing. In the absence of tradition the nations identity will be forgotten and it will die. Look at America and European nations such as Germany, Sweden and Britain. Are these patriotic nations? Compare them against how they were 70 years ago. They were far more patriotic and thereby far more nationalistic, than they are in the present day. Today there is hardly any patriotic spirit among them, there is unequivocally none among their governments, there lingers only some lethargic, dying national spirit among their peoples, these nations are decadent shells of their former selves. I'm sure you understand the point I am trying to convey, sorry I am quite tired, I feel I am not able to entirely express my thought. Not the guy you replied to either.

>>64460 I belive in god to make sure that the objective world exists. You can call this a cope. But since I'm an idealist and I think everything is mental, to get the objectivity god was the simplest path. I've had no problem with myths since already I thought that ideas *exist*.

>>67730 >I belive in god to make sure that the objective world exists This may be one of the most convincing reasons I've seen to choose to believe in divinity.

>>64943 why not just tribalism. My nation is my extended family, and I don't really care about the people too far outside of the family. Other races, nations ? No need to say they're inferior or bad in any way. But end of the day: they ain't us. And to me, we come first.

If spirits exist, is it plausible that their individual and collective intelligence is great enough to fool humanity into deifying them? If our reality is nonessential (as in, it suggests a clear beginning and end, or is subject to entropy), then how can we make any declaration that the realities beyond ours are essential or not? If we cannot separate our own illusions and manifestations from the reality that exists beyond our familiar senses, then how can we ascertain truth of the reality beyond our familiar senses? If we claim to know truth of those realities, then what is it we all agree upon? Of those things that are agreed upon, are alternative explanations exhausted and proven to be invalid? And with those questions, I declare that there is no obligation to know of the esoteric aspects of reality beyond survival or enhancement of my individual experience, and our means of doing so is mere conjecture. Trust in any of it is faith, knowing is delusion. As a being that wishes to assert sovereignty in mind, body, and spirit I find trust or faith to be heretical to these wishes. The only declaration that I can make is that of caution; that this deeper reality exists as it is apparent our reality is nonessential, and therefore should tread carefully upon its grounds.

>>64461 Also because we don't like not knowing things so we find the need to make up our own explanations. That, and humans just aren't good at remembering abstract things. We are visual creatures at the core, so when something we can't percieve with our senses comes around, we try to give it a form. This is why ancient Nords, Greeks, Romans and Egyptians made gods represented by animals or humans or a mixture of them out of everything.

>>64460 it seems like people believe in religion more than in god probably because religion is mostly a tool of control so all attention is diverted into that instead of the main thing that is belief in god anyway does anyone have any good resources on the history of christianity? it can be in any format

Depends on the religion. In some cases for organized religion it originated as a form of government control over people. Other cases it is an act of practicing gratitude. Also can be about forming social bonds. It also is born of the desire to make sense of the world and find meaning.

i belive in god because he is the saviour off all the world

>Recently I've read this book "Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind". Haha, look into who wrote it A tip: don't listen to anything about God from them

yes i am a fundamentalist christian get saved https://www.bitchute.com/video/yBMjknEtMXDB/

>>64460 People tend to conflate "myth" with "lie" because we still live with the modernist lie of "objective realism", that we are objective observers detached from their reality and perceptions, and that science is the only form of epistemological knowledge acquisition. But the truth is that myths ARE our reality. We make sense of our world and our lives through stories and myths. Science, philosophy, gender, history, folklore, anthropology, and religion are all myths. Myths are the water that our fish-selves swim in. Special relativity is a myth, one that we know to be materially true. Truths of various kinds are accessed through various different forms (some of which are listed above). In our current cultural mythos we prize certain forms of epistemological seeking as more legitimate than others. Once you understand this, then you realize to appreciate myths for what they are and represent. I believe in Christ, but I'm saying all this because while religion is a myth, myth as its used in the book is often used more as a derogitory to contrast with the myth that the author holds as "absolute truth", and at the end of the day myth is a lot more complicated and interesting than it is being presented as. The mythos of the author could be considered a type of religion, as >>64462 hints at. I might get flack for this. People don't tend to take kindly to the idea that they don't have all the answers, they can get pretty angry when you upset their mythos of objective realism and other ideas like it. If you're interested to get a brief idea and learn more than please read this paper: https://web.sbu.edu/theology/bychkov/Science%20as%20mythology%20summary.pdf

>>80501 Are you in your right mind? When I'm told there's a fairy in my garden and G.O.D. is watching, these are myths, because they were created by imagination alone. But if science tells that jumping off twenty stories building is gonna kill me, that's not a myth. You religious folks are very deft at bullshitting others with this kind of invalid argumentation to rationalize you retarded religion, but the fact is that you need to open the fuarrrking dictionary and stop pretending your IQ is below average. >A traditional, typically ancient story dealing with supernatural beings, ancestors, or heroes that serves as a fundamental type in the worldview of a people, as by explaining aspects of the natural world or delineating the psychology, customs, or ideals of society. >supernatural That's why you need to listen to your teachers in elementary school.

>>80502 > People don't tend to take kindly to the idea that they don't have all the answers, they can get pretty angry when you upset their mythos of objective realism and other ideas like it. Like clockwork. The march of progress, digital salvation via brain uploading, galileo vs catholics, the “dark ages”, the “enlightenment”, these are all myths. They are stories to make sense of the world, symbols that represent our understandings of the world, but they are not the world. > are you nuts No. Modernism is madness, but lucidity seems like madness to those who refuse to learn (such as yourself). What’s crazy is your philosophical illiteracy in /hum/ of all places. Have you never read any Latour? Nietzche? You’re stuck in the myth of objective realism. The world is real, but you’re incapable of seeing the things that paint your own vision. You are myopic.

>>80502 >Are you in your right mind? When I'm told there's a fairy in my garden and G.O.D. is watching, these are myths, because they were created by imagination alone. But if science tells that jumping off twenty stories building is gonna kill me, that's not a myth. You religious folks are very deft at bullshitting others with this kind of invalid argumentation to rationalize you retarded religion, but the fact is that you need to open the fuarrrking dictionary and stop pretending your IQ is below average. “Uhh duhh, religion doesn’t exist, just materialism. Some ‘expert’ told me all about it”-You, 2024. Of you believe in science look for the confluence in individually arising religions. There is a creator god. Consciousness has been progressively marching on. Matter precipitates from the mind. But you think you’re some special genius, so you disagree. Probably think your some special free thinker for copying some materialistic work. As I said, mind precipitates from matter. The devil & Lucifer (two separate people) both try to promote materialism and kill consciousness, sever us from the non material world. And you’re just acting for them. Goddamn agents of satan.

if you'd like to read a book with a compelling argument on the other side, I encourage you to read "Mere Christianity" by C.S Lewis. he addresses common objections atheists have, mostly to Christianity in particular, but also religion in general. it's a short read, so you don't stand to lose anything by reading it even if you're not impressed.

>>64460 Religion is not a group activity. If you want to understand [words] don't talk to other people, ever. Learning is done through anamnesis, the senses will only mislead you in the end.

yes, there is no one as almighty as Allah and Muhammad peace be upon him is Allah's messenger

>>80489 holy based >>80502 here here, calm down have this fedora made out of carbon fiber (by scientists!!) just breathe deep and move on

>>80510 > read "Mere Christianity" by C.S Lewis. he addresses common objections atheists have, mostly to Christianity in particular Does he address the theory that the flavians invented christianity to subvert the messianic jews who were rebelling against rome at the time and redirect them into a pacifist and subservient direction?

>>80507 >Of you believe in science look for the confluence in individually arising religions. Religions *don't* individually arise though, they are informed by the pre-existing religious and cultural practices of the places they emerge from, and they grow and change, faiths interacting and mixing with each other, often following the winds of politics and migrations. The Christianity we know today is *very* different from the Christianity of the early first century, same with any major world religion such as Judaism, Islam, and Buddhism. Most flavors of Buddhism btw don't assert the existence of a creator god and it's the third largest religion in the world. >Consciousness has been progressively marching on. Matter precipitates from the mind. So you think that because some people have had roughly the same thoughts several times throughout history, those thoughts must be true? Personally I have always thought that the biggest lie that any religion tells is that these mystical, divine, whatever things can be understood, that they can be condensed into some pithy sayings or teachings from the holy book. It's like ants telling each other about humans, and convincing themselves that they understand what we are and how we want them to live their lives. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mdKst8zeh-U >>80510 C.S. Lewis is an amazing author. You want to read about matters of faith read him.

Science is the biggest religion in the world. Priests in lab coats say their words are the nature of the reality, and the masses believe them without question. Without even comprehending what the words are, the words are taken as truth. The fallibility and corruptibility of man never enters people's minds. Never is it questioned if the scientists failed their experiments, or failed to understand their observations, or failed to formulate a valid conclusion. Never is it questioned if the results and conclusions were tampered with for personal and political gain. If a word is placed in the box of science, to the world it is heresy and blasphemy to question it.

>>82960 not directly but he does touch on the historicity of the Gospel in general.

>>82981 >never is it questioned It is questioned all right. Scientists are their own worst critics.