Analytic Philosophy has missed the point of religion

It is all middle and no end...

I know all that, but it is just cause... Which no one ever gets away with telling a kid... Kids need to know, and even if the story they hear is all blow, it serves a practical purpose...I may be required to know that all people have their creation myths...I am not required to give them any more weight than they have on the scale of truth...The purpose is simple... To make some one quit asking and get back to work... Those who sat around star gazing while chores were left undone ran out of existence pretty fast... For ancient humanity, any answer was better than no answer, because an answer ended pointless questions...Even for us, pointless speculation is a waste of time...If we cannot prove any of the possibilities we speculate upon we have lost time, which is all we have with life... We have to deal with realities... Moral realities present enough problems with tests and proofs...In the end we can suggest answers, and observe results and behavior; but truth eludes us...

There is no point to religion...It is all middle and no end...

Inuendo, without specificity. What's your point?

After I wrote that I went down in the basement, and did a quick scan on the beginnings of the three Claud Levi-Strauss... I was looking for a simple statement of commonality between all myths, one of which is to tell how things got to be the way they are... Like how the bear got his tail, or how the frog got on the moon... I did find a reference to honey, as borderline poison, but understandable also as social poison, which is my take on it...I only say that because I tore the books up once looking for that reference, so there is hope that at some future point I will find what I am looking for in this case...

When I look at the past, I consider people as traveling light...If people have a story explaining events, why not another??? And yet, when people settle upon a certain story, possitive and negative elements may be changed but the flow of the story remains the same, perhaps because language remains a stabile form over many generations... In any event, the explanations people hold to reflect a specific need we have to know, even if our certainty is only a mask for ignorance... I would rather have honest ignorance any day...

I remember receiving the story of original sin to explain both my chicken pox, and not being able to go sledding with my brothers... At the time I took it as unfair in the extreme... What did I do??? What did anyone do??? Punishment first with life, and cause after, and who does not end life fit to be hanged???

It's really interesting, and I think I might even agree with you, at least in part, but I'm still not sure what you are trying to say, or how it relates to the topic. If you could summarize your point with one clear statement, what would it be?

I can't get behind the current state of the debate about religion, specifically about knowledge of the existence of God. I've had Alvin Plantinga's "reformed epistemology" drilled into my brain more times than I care to remember. I've heard the arguments from evil and all this nonsense. The Baysian probability about which "default" position a person is justified and warranted to take, blah blah.

But it's only so much intellectual posturing. Religion is not about calculating the most "probable" position to take ("Hmmmm... what do I think about God? Well, let's see...the chances of atheism being more justified than theism is .3% blah blah"....it's absurd) Faith, religion, belief in God...all of this is a matter in the domain of the human experience that is the opposite of analytic, and our philosophical investigation into the matter has, in the past twenty or so years, become laughably masturbatory as it ignores this truth. Experience has proven to me that there are two sides to every coin, a light for every dark, a high for every low, and all the rest. So why do we ignore this in our philosophy? For every analytic thought there is an intuition, an impulse...and the latter is where religion lay. Back in the day of Spinoza, of Hume, of Kierkegaard...there was still a sense of that search, of trying to come to terms with the search itself. Nowadays it's a show of back and forth "nyah nyah I'm right and I'll prove it mathematically." There'll never be satisfaction in it, it is a means to no end.

So, what, we just trust our intuitions and don't philosophize about religion, then? --quite the contrary. What we need to realize is the search itself, that natural inclination to ask the very question...that instinct of our cognitive faculties to ponder and sit in awe...this is what we need to be philosophizing about. Why can't we accept the subjective relativity of the spiritual conclusions a subjective agent comes to and begin to investigate the mechanisms by which that agent comes to those conclusions? We should celebrate the diversity of the conclusions and attempt to discover the secret of the universality of the search itself.

I must agree that analytic philosophy has largely misunderstood religion. It was religion that brought us the kind of community consensus that allowed humanity evolve from animals that use sticks and stones as tools to the state we are currently in by acting as a form of government. I believe we owe religion at least some gratitude for this. At the very least we owe religion some recognition as a driving force in our cultural evolution. It is also true that today it has become a battleground for who has the best or true religion. I believe that in response to this both the logicians and the religious have forgotten the what religion is meant to offer. More than a mere facility for government, more than mere community, religion is meant to bring people closer to God, or their gods. Arguably, I would say that all gods are reference to nature, though that is a bit of a tangent. The analytical argument against the existence of God depends on a narrow perspective of what God must be. The kind god described in such analytical arguments I think are disbelieved for good reason. Yet I don't think that is the same kind of god most people worship whether they realize it themselves or not. At best the analytical argument is an argument against properties many believe God to have.

I do not accept that religion brought us the kind of community, etc... Rather, the ability to conceive of god was part of the general ability to conceive of reality abstractly that makes us human.

Does it matter if God exists??? Not as concerns our ability to conceive of god, however vaguely as a force behind this universe...

As far a community goes; that is natural...Every family is a community, and it is out of navels that we have our nations...And it is out of family that we have religion.

Look what part geneology plays in Genesis...Look at what part father plays in our religionMany people worship their ancestors... Why not??? Since their smart moves brought humanity to its present point...

Akeem Scribe wrote:

I agree that the ability humans have to conceive reality abstractly is a definite component, yet I would say that such an ability has consequences, which for humanity resulted in religion.

So let us agree to disagree...Is see it as an extension of the same quality; that the ability to concieve of reality allow the conception of unreality... It is not relgion that naturally forms a community, but the reverse, that the comunity is the religion... At least until Christianity attempted to make a single world community out of a single belief...Before that time, every community had its own god, like Athens had Athena...

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Our ancestors would have been in awe of the things they witnessed. They would have been thankful that they were able to experience life. But life was unpredictable. Within their communities they must have experienced love, kindness, family. They were greatly thankful that they could find food when they were hungry. Yet they resented being hungry. Life was sometimes cruel. Whatever they were thankful to must also exhibit these less humane qualities. The world around them was as complex and unpredictable as the human experience, so whatever it is must be similar to how they were. Humans conceptualized how to describe this and invented beings with somewhat human characteristics. Rituals and myths evolved over time, stories containing moral codes for the community appeared. By various means these rituals brought opportunity for the entire community to come together. From whence came the kind of group focus that allowed us to enhance our overall understanding of the world around us and build civilizations. I am giving credit where it is due. That is all.

There were two worlds to primitive people; the one within community and the one without... For that reason community was morality, just as today, we are only as much a part of any community as we accept the morality...Primitives never much bewailed their fates, which they very much accepted, as some people still do...In fact, it was often an excuse for mercy, so that if people guilty of bloodshed could escape while blood was hot, they might escape with their lives for a payment of blood money...This was possible because, while the guilt of the killer was undeniable, every one agreed with the universal power of fate, that no man could take a life unless that person were doomed... So people could accept murder and not add one death to another...In fact, they were accepting even of their own deaths, which, if one could judge by the Native American could last for days under the most cruel torture... No hard feelings...Wait till my people get you, and then it will be your turn, and be brave, like I am... In fact, they were always encouraging... And having worked some many times with Native Americans; they still are, even when it is cold and miserable, and sleet is running down your shirt collar...That is one the things I loved about them: Never a discouraging word...It is because the notion of fate cannot be argued with, and no point in crying...

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Depends on how one conceptualizes God. By God, I assume you mean the God of the Bible. I would personally say that particular god is an anthropomorphic symbolic character prominent in the Abrahamic religions. And that he exists only as a metaphor to something that does exist. I in no way think there is the equivalent to a sky daddy in the heavens. I highly doubt that prayer or magick rituals will do anything except maybe give people a sense of control in situations where they have none.

From your name I would guess an honorable Muslim... But, God was first concieved of by them, and just about everyone anthropomorphically; and it was only when the philosophers got a hold of God that they rejected anthropomorphism...I am not sure we can say The God exists, except as being outside of existence... Ritual has a specific purpose, to create a certain reality, and to push forward a certain cycle of existence, that is, the way I understand it...

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If religion comes from family, and nations are from families, why would religion not play its role in nations? Especially when it obviously has. Separating religion and politics is a rather new concept. I have said nothing that is not a natural process. I am saying religion is part of the natural process and that it helped us in our evolution to the status quo.

Nation comes from navel, that is, pointing to a common mother... We are now made nations, having little in common....Shared morals make community, just as shared ancestors, and as having a holy father, and a God the father suggests, the worship of ancestors is common, and may have given rise to religion as we know it, which has the personification of natural forces... But spiritualism is older still, including both naturalism, and animism...

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I don't quite understand what your point was here. I'm all for people being reverent to their ancestors. I didn't even say anything about ancestor worship. Thinking they're going to do good things for me after they've been dead probably is not something I'll be endorsing any time soon, but they spent their lives building us up. I understand respect. Which is exactly what I am trying to say of religion and the concept of gods.

I would suggest we go for an atheistic religion

So let us agree to disagree...Is see it as an extension of the same quality; that the ability to (conceive) of reality allow the conception of unreality... It is not (religion) that naturally forms a community, but the reverse, that the (community) is the religion... At least until Christianity attempted to make a single world community out of a single belief...Before that time, every community had its own god, like Athens had Athena...

There were two worlds to primitive people; the one within community and the one without... For that reason community was morality, just as today, we are only as much a part of any community as we accept the morality...Primitives never much bewailed their fates, which they very much accepted, as some people still do...In fact, it was often an excuse for mercy, so that if people guilty of bloodshed could escape while blood was hot, they might escape with their lives for a payment of blood money...This was possible because, while the guilt of the killer was undeniable, every one agreed with the universal power of fate, that no man could take a life unless that person were doomed... So people could accept murder and not add one death to another...In fact, they were accepting even of their own deaths, which, if one could judge by the Native American could last for days under the most cruel torture... No hard feelings...Wait till my people get you, and then it will be your turn, and be brave, like I am... In fact, they were always encouraging... And having worked some many times with Native Americans; they still are, even when it is cold and miserable, and sleet is running down your shirt collar...That is one the things I loved about them: Never a discouraging word...It is because the notion of fate cannot be argued with, and no point in crying...

From your name I would guess an honorable Muslim... But, God was first (conceived) of by them, and just about everyone anthropomorphically; and it was only when the philosophers got a hold of God that they rejected anthropomorphism...I am not sure we can say The God exists, except as being outside of existence... Ritual has a specific purpose, to create a certain reality, and to push forward a certain cycle of existence, that is, the way I understand it...

Nation comes from navel, that is, pointing to a common mother... We are now made nations, having little in common....Shared morals make community, just as shared ancestors, and as having a holy father, and a God the father suggests, the worship of ancestors is common, and may have given rise to religion as we know it, which has the personification of natural forces... But spiritualism is older still, including both naturalism, and animism...

I was trying to counter your notion that community comes out of religion, and say instead that religion comes out of community, just like morality... And just as we use the word morale for esprit de corp, the community spirit was the original god...And the conception of the thing made it the captive of people... And the first thing victors over a city would do is cart off the local god.. Which was the point of the pantheon in Rome, to house all the gods rome had made her own...Only Judah failed her, having no representation of God to cart off...And in a sense, the god they would have captured made a captive of Rome....