regis

After watching the movie Crimson Rivers: Angels of the Apocalyse, I awoke this a.m. thinking about religious rituals - from the Stations of the Cross to praying to whatever. The following occured to me:

1) The more extravagent the claim, the more extravagent the 'evidence'.

2) Like OCD, religious rituals make real the unreal. They establish, reinforce, and maintain as real that which is patently false.

3) Like OCD, religious adherents must be zealous in their repetition of the rituals; regular, repeated 'doses' of the rituals must be self-administered, else the mania will weaken & they may lose their obsessions.

4) As no-one will be saved or damned by my flicking/not flicking a light-switch thirteen times when leaving a room, so too no-one will be saved or damned by my praying/not praying for them.

Dunno if this is the correct forum for this - any thoughts?


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ArchAngel

The bible doesn't say anything about lightswitches.

Anguirus

^ It doesn't say anything about the Trinity, either.

Once again, we get into analogies...

ArchAngel

Where did the concept of the Trinity come from?

Spherical Time

I agree. There are some other points, such as 'cleanliness' that also seem to have common threads in the Abrahamic religions.

Your last two points seem especially relavent.

Lemur

It sounds like praying the rosary would be a prime example of the kind of thing you are talking about. However from what I know and what I have read, for some Catholics the rosary enables a kind of meditative state, like concentrating on your own breathing or heart beat. Not at all the kind of OC behavior you are talking about.

So while I am sure some worshippers are OC about their rituals, it's not the only reason people do them.

There is also something calming about performing rituals. When I wake up every morning I go to the bathroom, brush my teeth, take a shower, get dressed, in that order. I'm not obsessive about it but I would still call it a type of ritual anyway. Rituals give order which is sometimes nice to have.

Anguirus

Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't it the First Council at Nice in 325?

The idea was to unite all the various Christian sects (squabbling over issues such as whether Jesus was divine, the proper date of Easter, etc.) into a church with a consistent message.

regis

Lemur Quote: There is also something calming about performing rituals. When I wake up every morning I go to the bathroom, brush my teeth, take a shower, get dressed, in that order. I'm not obsessive about it but I would still call it a type of ritual anyway. Rituals give order which is sometimes nice to have.

Yes, there is something 'calming about performing rituals' and if one feels compelled to perform them, especially in a particular order, that is OCD. If I must brush my teeth with precisely 15 swipes of the brush, urinate & flush the toilet twice, etc., then I am obsessed. Obsessions on this scale, however, won't wreck my life. It was my point that rituals designed to reinforce theology share many essential characteristics with OCD, which can be quite harmful to one's life.

I will now sign off as I always do, cuz if I don't my family is in jeopardy!



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Lemur

I would argue that the higher precision you see in many religious rituals, as opposed to waking-up rituals, is because they are designed to be practiced in a group. When doing things in a group everything has to be laid out in detail to the last word or you don't get the harmony which is part of the experience. For example if everyone just prayed out loud whatever they felt like it would be a jarring cacophony, but when you have everyone repeating Our Father in unison then the experience becomes more, I don't know, uplifting.

regis

And I would argue that the unison is to reinforce the believability of the unbelievable, that is, to make god, the angels, etc. real. Sorta like: We're all doing it, so it must be so. Perfect mass OCD.



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