Akeem Scribe wrote:What exactly is it you are disagreeing with, that religion is conceived of by humans? We're both taking that position so that can't be it. You say that a community forms a religion. At least I can understand why you would think I don't agree with you, but I do. What I am saying is that after the creation of religion, religion helped structure the community. The structure religion gave helped man evolve culturally and live better lives. Though I would argue it has done very limited good in recent times.
Religion in no sense is created, but is natural, growing out of community, and out of the human ability to concieve of reality abstractly...Comunities are good to their members..God is the abstraction of that good...
Quote:
I'm not understanding your logic. What makes you so sure there was a two world dichotomy like that. There were no other variables at work, just those two huh? And what's with the Native Americans and talking about fate? How is that relevant at all? You keep saying the community makes the religion. Alright, I'll agree. How does that show religion has no effect on environment. We can see that it clearly does make a difference in how people behave, so whether it was all conceived by men doesn't matter. The fact that religion played a major role in history is undeniable. So why is the idea of religion being one of the variables that allowed humanity to better survive such an abomination in your eyes? It has lasted all this time, it must have had some benefit at some time. Why is that such a scary concept?
Back when I actually wanted to be a writer, I thought the key to being successful would be the ability to communicate with the limbic, the primitive and primeaval in the minds of men... On this course I read much of magic, and more of myths, and plenty of anthropology, and eventually a lot of history, especially of my native Americans...While I might agree that history has played a part in history, it began far back in prehistory and can be seen alive in the minds of children....But what does that really mean; that religion played a major role in History??? Does that not mean that exactly at the point when humanity should have grown more reasonable that superstition renewed its grip on the throat of mankind???
Quote:
Well you would guess wrong about me being a Muslim. I have no discernible religion. I don't see how the philosophers rejected anthropomorphism. That's like rejecting a style of music. If you mean they rejected it as in the idea that gods are not actual human-like figures, then it serves little purpose as I never claimed otherwise. Also, rituals have many purposes, that does not mean they are not an aid in organizing a community as many rituals require community participation.
I am only telling you what I have learned from a lot of reading of history...The three western religions share a very spiritual view of God in spite of the trinity notion held by many christians... Naturally, this is an old trend among the Jews, very old among Muslims, and Medieval among Christians...At the very point where philosophy was breaking with theology, theology was reaching a point with some of a purely spiritual understanding of God. This happened among the Muslims, and spelled the end of this marvelously philosophical people...When God is conceived of spiritually as everything, the only thing, and speculation upon the nature of God is denied to philosophy, then it dies on the vine...In Islam, philosophy used religion to stab itself in the heart... Once the God was conceived of as a being one could only reach spiritually and through the form of established dogma there was no need of philosophy...
Quote:
Quote:Religion has been a positive poison for human development...The resistence to change of any form is multiplied in religion because it feels so threatened by education and secular knowledge...Why did the Catholic Church resists so strongly the understanding of the copernican universe???Did they think the truth would never come out... Even while Nietzsche was right to blame the church for the notion of individual equality, what did the church actually ever do for democracy as the expression of individual equality...They never taught the Bible because they did not want to open a can of worms, so the enlightenment was the fault of the protestants who taught people to read so they could read the Bible, and rejected irrationality, and found people who could read, read all and turned their rationality into the production of great weapons of war...
At what point is any of this suppose to imply religion had no part in aiding human development?
Quote:Does it matter what the original god was in this context. Religion still structured the community. So community created religion, religion still improved it.
What does religion do for people besides giving them a place and purpose in the universe, a simple explanation, and certainty???
Akeem; You try to tell me how people of the past were...The past is not so far away that we cannot touch it... And much as we abstract good and evil into God and the devil; in fact, these were always the dicotomy between the near and far, the inside of society and the outside...
You just cannot understand western culture, tragedy being one example, without being able to see through the eyes of a person scapegoated for sins real, and imagined and driven out of society... WE bulllshit ourselves into thinking we exist apart from our communites... We do not exist apart; and far more than us, ancient people got their identity from their communites and could not think of themselves other than as part of this group or that... Community is so much easier when surrounded by enemies, and we see this in words like ethic which point at custom or character...One reflects honor onto ones people or lays them open to insult and attack... And honor itself was a function of status in community, so that we still say rehabilitate, having the meaning of restored to honor and saying returned to home...
God is community, and when the Greeks scapegoated some poor unlucky soul to certain death, it was not for an actual crime, but for a presumed offense of the community against its god, just in case such an offense actually occured, so that the whole community could be on the good side of god, and pure in the sight of god...
Look at the Orestian trilogy... Why did Orestes kill his mother???Why did Electra tell him in some accounts that if he did not, that she would...Why did Their Mother kill Agamemnon, and was it for that murder that she was killed??? In fact; she was entitled to kill Agamemnon for he had killed her daughter, her tribe; but she was killed because she defiled the temple, and by extension, the whole community with human blood...Now, she inflated the ego of Agamemnon so he thought he was as good as the god, and went into the temple unwashed, which means he should die, but to kill him there was a crime against the whole community... And this brought dishonor to the whole family as well as the community; so that Electra was married off to a commoner, and thus her rage from the royal blood in her veins...But, to avoid blood feud, no one but Orestes, or some other member of her tribe could kill her, and it is for this reason that Orestes was not punished as guilty, because, while he had done the most terrible crime among ancients, that he had lifted the curse from his community... Look at Oedipus as one who did the opposite, that in killing father, and marrying mother brought a curse onto his whole community...What we normally think of as the lesser crime because it was done out of ignorance was actually the greater crime...
Religion in no sense is created, but is natural, growing out of community, and out of the human ability to concieve of reality abstractly...Comunities are good to their members..God is the abstraction of that good...
Back when I actually wanted to be a writer, I thought the key to being successful would be the ability to communicate with the limbic, the primitive and primeaval in the minds of men... On this course I read much of magic, and more of myths, and plenty of anthropology, and eventually a lot of history, especially of my native Americans...While I might agree that history has played a part in history, it began far back in prehistory and can be seen alive in the minds of children....But what does that really mean; that religion played a major role in History??? Does that not mean that exactly at the point when humanity should have grown more reasonable that superstition renewed its grip on the throat of mankind???
I am only telling you what I have learned from a lot of reading of history...The three western religions share a very spiritual view of God in spite of the trinity notion held by many christians... Naturally, this is an old trend among the Jews, very old among Muslims, and Medieval among Christians...At the very point where philosophy was breaking with theology, theology was reaching a point with some of a purely spiritual understanding of God. This happened among the Muslims, and spelled the end of this marvelously philosophical people...When God is conceived of spiritually as everything, the only thing, and speculation upon the nature of God is denied to philosophy, then it dies on the vine...In Islam, philosophy used religion to stab itself in the heart... Once the God was conceived of as a being one could only reach spiritually and through the form of established dogma there was no need of philosophy...
Religion has been a positive poison for human development...The resistence to change of any form is multiplied in religion because it feels so threatened by education and secular knowledge...Why did the Catholic Church resists so strongly the understanding of the copernican universe???Did they think the truth would never come out... Even while Nietzsche was right to blame the church for the notion of individual equality, what did the church actually ever do for democracy as the expression of individual equality...They never taught the Bible because they did not want to open a can of worms, so the enlightenment was the fault of the protestants who taught people to read so they could read the Bible, and rejected irrationality, and found people who could read, read all and turned their rationality into the production of great weapons of war...
Religion as we know it structures larger communities... Catholicism was meant to be world wide... Islam comes closer yet to that goal, mostly because it offers both peace and justice, and supports rather than attacks community values... But, in asking for justice, and letting people make an issue of it, it has in fact limited the wealth of the people and their progress... Capitalism was built on exploitation...If you cannot charge interest, you cannot build capital for example...On the exploitation of the past is built the hope for freedom in the future that is both free of want, and free of inequality...
Only the Jews have limited their number by the nature of their religion... For them there has been no progress beyond a community faith...But it has loaded them with wealth, and justified them, and made them for all others the masters of parasitic capitalism....
On the contrary; easy to defend; and impossible to prove...
Okay, here we go...
Your assertion: "Religion just gives people a place and purpose in the universe, a simple explanation, and certainty."
My counter:
Quote:You are wrong... Christianity has always put man dead center in the universe, God's little school project... Other religions do the same, and in fact, all spiritual understanding does that... You cannot classify on thing, as every form does without giveing a reference to every other in space or time or mind...1. People already have a place and purpose in the universe. Religion doesn't give that to them. It guides them in their efforts to understand it.
Quote:In a sense they are all complex, and yet quite simple... Do you think it is less complex for a person to believe that every object, animal and natural has a spirit, than to believe that only God and his angels apart from humanity has spirit???Yet we do not understand them by their differences, but by their form, their common quality after which their differences only distinguish them...Religion as a form is pretty useless...You cannot count on your prayers being answered no matter for what cause you pray...As a form of relationship it gives a great window into the human mind, and human behavior...As in all times, what people are they cannot change, and instead, they change their forms, like religion so the trail of discarded forms marks their progress...2. Religion is not a simple explanation. Most religions are pretty complex.
Quote:You are looking at very recent changes, and judging the egg by the chick... Copernicus delivered his treatese on the revolution of the spheres to the pope fifty years after Columbus discovered the new world...It was 1517 when Luther nailed his 95 thesis..The world changes and religon changes with it, but it has never failed to tell believers how it is, and who you can believe even while making a fool of itself in the process...I agree that no one can look at the thing objectively without being torn alternately with laughter and gas; but who can really approach the subject objectively... It is given to children when their lives are already suffering superstition and magic...Children have no more rational explanations for reality than did our primitive ancestors...3. Religion seldom provides certainty. Witness the enormous diversity within any of the major religions, and it soon becomes clear that, far from providing certainty, religion provides myriad explanations and values. A careful study of religion by the critically-minded individual is more likely to drive one toward radical skepticism rather than certainty.
Quote:Perhaps your definition of religion depends on a limited subset, one that is restricted to rather naive forms of religion.
Akeem Scribe wrote:We do have some insights into that part of our past. I am not saying that such a dichotomy had no influence on the development of religion. What I am disagreeing with here is the idea that it was the only influence or the most important influence. I believe there were many influences and that nature played just as large a role or larger than the insider/outsider dichotomy.
I am not saying religion is possible without the ability to form concepts which makes us human... Yet, in a world filled up with spirits as people once conceived it, those of ancestors, dead parents and friend held a high place, and spoke to people through their memories... That was their community, and to many, if not all, only their people were human beings and all other people were some species of animal...You must understand that those people could not objectify their ideas or emotions...You can see in the behavior of people the great changes occuring in their psychology...Were we suddenly in that moment of time, say in the stone, or bronze age, people might all seem quite schizophrenic, hearing and responding to voices in their minds as though outside of themselves... And yet their sense of personal power and fate would be entirely different...A single hair off your head, or possession of your name might give a person the power of life or death over you... We do no less with our forms today, thinking of the concept of a thing as the same as the thing, so that if we thread a conceptual needle with a conceptual thread we can sew a conceptual patch on a conceptual shirt.... We can consider objectively and are given a power over our reality... They considered their concepts subjectively, as giving them a power over their reality as well...To their minds that power was spiritual, and no less, but more powerful than our understanding of forms, which is practical and not spiritual...
Quote:
Community is important, but part of the community is religion. I think that it would be a mistake to say that God is the community as in all religions gods are greater than the community. In the Abrahamic religions especially God is seen as the god of everything, not just their community. Religions evolve naturally from the community. The religious dogmas structured the community better than its previous disposition by giving laws for the community on absolute authority. Look at the laws of the Old Testament for example. You don't eat certain things because back then they might have killed you. You don't allow sodomy (sex without the purpose of reproduction) because it would facilitate the transmission of disease and possibly threaten the population. There are laws about land management, marriage, what happens to property after death, punishment for crime. There is no way you cannot tell me at that time creating such a structured system for the community did not help in the development of those communities.
Yes; I can say that laws built upon authority instead of common sense have torn societies apart...The ten Commandments built a strong community and the other Jewish laws tore the society to pieces...Jesus continually pointed to the ways the laws condemned Judah...Law is just a form, and there has never been found a way that some people will not turn forms to their advantage as individuals and against the interests of the whole community... Look at the world of Jesus...People were bringing law suits for a man's shirt... People would fight over a days wage in a vineyard... When Titus raised Jeruselem he took so much wealth out of there that he could build the Colloseum, which was an emmense building project...That was one city that because of its monopoly on religious sacrifice could suck the wealth out of the whole society... That form destroyed its society, and after, Judaism was forever changed...
Quote:
I want you to look at your logic here. God is the community, and the community killed people to be on the good side of God. In one breath you equate God with the community, and in the next you equate God to something greater than the community. You can't have it both ways.
Your logic is at fault in that you are trying to apply your logic to another age... God is the community, and for the community, the life of the community, every individual life is meaningless... In fact, all primitives has no concept of the individual as we do, which is the result of much law and philosophy... Among primitives there was universal group responsibility, and the whole community might suffer for the crime of a single individual, so that morality was community, and law was community... And in many respects, that system worked better than what we have...Can you argue that we do not hold the whole black community responsible for the crimes of a few, and is this fair since they have no community control??? The community, and the community spirit represented by god, was greater than any individual... They all knew what was right, and they all feared the danger of doing wrong, which they objectified into an angry and justice seeking god...
Quote:
More examples of the community trying to appease something greater than itself, so God cannot be the community as you proclaim to be the case.
Is not your family greater than itself??? Does it not represent the dreams and inspirations of dead members and members not yet born???Community is a certain organic unit, a dynamic, a form, and a dream...
Quote:
Religion is natural, but its still created by men by their ability to conceive reality abstractly. Also, God is not the abstraction of all that is good because God can do evil. The ancients recognized this. No gods, until Jesus to my understanding, was ever perceived as all good. They all had properties of both good and evil.
To primitives there was only the force of nature as a power outside of themselves... Even today we abstract good and evil when these are qualities we all share... But it was essential to primitives to get some control over the events of nature, and this they first tried to do with magic which was mostly sympathetic, and symbolic..But long term, the ability to concieve of nature, and spirits, and even self abstractly was the first step toward science, because in all is the looking for cause from a certain effect, so that magic with efficacy was soon abandoned...
Quote:
It had started in prehistory. That is correct. Yet, religion allows for people to follow common law allowing for larger communities to work together than the simple tribe model. This would mean that it was because of religion that we developed written language, common history, and improved education. We may not have been able to work together in large communities like we grew to be able to do without religion. Today religion may seem simply superstitious to many, but in our early development it was an important aspect of our growth.
When law was custom/ethic within a small community, and only your communities had power over you, or gave you rights, then warfare, such as it was, was a small thing... When one people came to dominate another you have the beginning of law, laid down by the victor for the victim, which is essential to civilizations...Then ask why no civilizations could survive??? It is because of such forms as law and religion, that once people have they are ruined by, and because when they are in them, and raised up in them, they cannot see through them...Certainly civilizations allow for great periods and areas of peace in which knowledge can grow up... Then look at how much is lost when the barbarains sweep in and use all the books for fire wood...If societies, civilizations, do not learn to stay vital, to adapt their forms to give justice, and to keep wealth and poverty general, and to spread education and peace far and wide, then they are doomed... Individuals use forms to their own benefit, and corrupt those they can to enrich themselves... And in the process they kill their societies...
Quote:
OK, so religion has also been detrimental in our development at times. That is something I accept and never argued against. Yet that is not the time in religion I am referring to. I am speaking of when humanity was still very young and civilization was just beginning. At that time I think religion held great value in our development. Which you seem to be arguing against while mentioning the very things that prove my point.
As a psychological advance it is great...To the extent that it became a rigid form making a class of priests powerful and rich it was bad...
Quote:
You are looking into the dark ages of humanity and only pointing out the bad. We could sit here all day and speak of the terrors of religion. What good comes from religion? Have you even bothered to contemplate that?
Science and philosophy grow out of religion...
Quote:
Religion has been a source of horror and greatness. Religion has a problem with change, often because of the fear that change will remove their authority in some way. Why was it important for religion to have authority? There are issues you are simply skipping over to make your case. And what is wrong with spirituality? To my understanding, spirituality has to do with your own emotional state. Unless of course you are speaking in terms of believing in spirits, then its an argument against superstition. In our current society, superstition has become somewhat obsolete and is not something I am arguing for.
I already answered this in regard to forms... Sprituality is the first step toward formal reasoning...No one should stop with the first step..
Quote:Which is kind of my point. Religion structures larger communities. Different religions, different approaches, different results. For better or worse, we would not be the people we are now without religion.
Agreed...But at this point I would expect us to be better...
Quote:Even beyond its historical importance, through out all time religion has been a means of spirituality in the emotional sense. It gives people a feeling of connectedness to the world around them. There are many reasons people accept a particular religion, but it is almost always associated with the feeling of spiritualism. I consider myself to be quite spiritual though I lack a religion or any superstitious and supernatural belief. I believe the point of religion today is that emotional element and development of community. That in itself is good, though the religion itself may have negative consequences through dogmatic belief.
Sprituality is the default setting..
That was their community, and to many, if not all, only their people were human beings and all other people were some species of animal...
You must understand that those people could not objectify their ideas or emotions...You can see in the behavior of people the great changes occuring in their psychology...Were we suddenly in that moment of time, say in the stone, or bronze age, people might all seem quite schizophrenic, hearing and responding to voices in their minds as though outside of themselves... And yet their sense of personal power and fate would be entirely different...A single hair off your head, or possession of your name might give a person the power of life or death over you... We do no less with our forms today, thinking of the concept of a thing as the same as the thing, so that if we thread a conceptual needle with a conceptual thread we can sew a conceptual patch on a conceptual shirt.... We can consider objectively and are given a power over our reality... They considered their concepts subjectively, as giving them a power over their reality as well...To their minds that power was spiritual, and no less, but more powerful than our understanding of forms, which is practical and not spiritual...
I can say that laws built upon authority instead of common sense have torn societies apart...The ten Commandments built a strong community and the other Jewish laws tore the society to pieces...Jesus continually pointed to the ways the laws condemned Judah...Law is just a form, and there has never been found a way that some people will not turn forms to their advantage as individuals and against the interests of the whole community... Look at the world of Jesus...People were bringing law suits for a man's shirt... People would fight over a days wage in a vineyard... When Titus raised Jeruselem he took so much wealth out of there that he could build the Colloseum, which was an emmense building project...That was one city that because of its monopoly on religious sacrifice could suck the wealth out of the whole society... That form destroyed its society, and after, Judaism was forever changed...
Your logic is at fault in that you are trying to apply your logic to another age... God is the community, and for the community, the life of the community, every individual life is meaningless... In fact, all primitives has no concept of the individual as we do, which is the result of much law and philosophy... Among primitives there was universal group responsibility, and the whole community might suffer for the crime of a single individual, so that morality was community, and law was community... And in many respects, that system worked better than what we have...Can you argue that we do not hold the whole black community responsible for the crimes of a few, and is this fair since they have no community control??? The community, and the community spirit represented by god, was greater than any individual... They all knew what was right, and they all feared the danger of doing wrong, which they objectified into an angry and justice seeking god...
Is not your family greater than itself??? Does it not represent the dreams and inspirations of dead members and members not yet born???Community is a certain organic unit, a dynamic, a form, and a dream...
To primitives there was only the force of nature as a power outside of themselves... Even today we abstract good and evil when these are qualities we all share... But it was essential to primitives to get some control over the events of nature, and this they first tried to do with magic which was mostly sympathetic, and symbolic..But long term, the ability to concieve of nature, and spirits, and even self abstractly was the first step toward science, because in all is the looking for cause from a certain effect, so that magic with efficacy was soon abandoned...
When law was custom/ethic within a small community, and only your communities had power over you, or gave you rights, then warfare, such as it was, was a small thing... When one people came to dominate another you have the beginning of law, laid down by the victor for the victim, which is essential to civilizations...Then ask why no civilizations could survive??? It is because of such forms as law and religion, that once people have they are ruined by, and because when they are in them, and raised up in them, they cannot see through them...Certainly civilizations allow for great periods and areas of peace in which knowledge can grow up... Then look at how much is lost when the barbarains sweep in and use all the books for fire wood...If societies, civilizations, do not learn to stay vital, to adapt their forms to give justice, and to keep wealth and poverty general, and to spread education and peace far and wide, then they are doomed... Individuals use forms to their own benefit, and corrupt those they can to enrich themselves... And in the process they kill their societies...
Science and philosophy grow out of religion...
Sprituality is the first step toward formal reasoning...No one should stop with the first step..
At this point I would expect us to be better...
No one can be completely free of it...Sprituality is the default setting..
I know best Christianity, but have read of all the western religions, and I am aware of the Eastern religions...In addition, I have looked hard at primitive beliefs and behavior..
You are wrong... Christianity has always put man dead center in the universe, God's little school project... Other religions do the same, and in fact, all spiritual understanding does that... You cannot classify on thing, as every form does without giveing a reference to every other in space or time or mind...
Dic; if you do not believe me, look a Ptolemy's Universe... but a word to the wise is usally enough when all the words in the dictionary will not sway a dimwit...
