numisworld

I'll go check out Plato and the Royal Lie. Thank you for the guidance.

I was wondering is there any organized regligious group that embraces these ideas? That religion is indeed a creation of man and that divine intervention doesn't exist or is at least irrelevant?

Through my 3 year old I am beginning to understand how important abstraction is to human thought and I wonder if there are any schools of philosophy or religion that embrace the idea that religion is entirely a human construct, and sometimes a good one at that.

In other words are there any organized religious people that don't really believe in the divine but go along with the story because the stories and traditions that religion propogates are good ones (sometimes!).

As you can tell, I am poking around trying to find some good practical use for religion!

Thanks. Jonathan

Yahzi

It is also a fantasy created to allow men to control other men.

I think religion started like this: Hundreds of thousands of years ago, a cougar knocked a woman down and stole her baby and ate it. So some big, brave, strong man went out, killed the cougar, skinned it, and brought home the skin as a proof. Now all the women wanted to have his baby, because he could protect it from cougars.

Then a skinny, weak, but really clever man decided he wanted some of the women too. So he made up a story about an invisible cougar, and how it was a hundred times more dangerous than real cougars, and when somebody's baby died of an unknown disease, he went out and killed that invisible cougar. But of course it was invisible, so you can't see the skin he brought home. Now all the women are interested in him.

And poof! Religion was invented.