capnkirk

There are seemingly unlimited threads on this forum debating the belief v. non-belief issues in a (more or less) science v.religion context. (And I come down squarely on the side of science, so don't mistake this thread for some apologist defense of theism.)

The intent of this thread is to explore and perhaps understand what human need(s) the religious experience fills. WHY has theism endured?

As an anthropology student, one of my most amazing discoveries(?) was learning that anthropologists have never found a human society (contemporary or archaeological) that existed within the past 60,000 years that did not practice some form of religion. That fact pointed so strongly to the presence of some universal human need that I began to realize that any attempts to replace "religion" (beyond a small minority of intellectuals) must not only understand those needs but also find suitable alternatives (i.e. alternatives that don't carry so much counterproductive baggage with them).

Let's use this premise for our starting point:

Religious ideas and practices take root NOT because they are promoted by forceful theologians, nor because they can be shown to have a sound historical or rational basis, but because they are found IN PRACTICE to give the faithful a sense of sacred transcendence.

kctan

Not really. You'll find that most religions are not based upon a sense of sacred transcendence but a need to appease an entity which could affect the livelihood of a tribe or group. Be it food or reproduction, the main purpose is survival thru appeasing.

Only when this basic need is met will you find the next step of evolution in theological needs which include death & afterlife, happiness, material gains etc...

The common followers don't think of sacred transcendence, they only think of what the religion could offer them.

Bede

Capnkirk,

I think all ideas are evaluated on their usefulness rather than any higher analysis of rationality, at least among most people.

I expect that science has the reputation it has because it works rather than because scientific method is found to be intellectually superior. Science, at least on the practical level that most people see it, does not have much to say on ethical or 'ultimate' questions, so religion still has that market cornered.

As you say , to replace religion you need something with a very high ethical and metaphysical utility, that is also sufficiently easy for people to grasp. You also need to undermine the naturally conservative way that people hang on to what they know.

And that doesn't even touch on the fact that theism is true.

So science as currently conceived is a non-starter in the religion market. On the other hand, most secular ideologies (which is effectively what you are looking for) have not had a very happy time. Given that modern religions are clearly capapble of being reconciled towards liberal democracy and science, it might be best to leave well alone and let that process continue.

Yours

Bede

Bede's Library - faith and reason

Marduk

Many things, such as the weather, health, death are beyond peoples control. Seeking intervention from a real or imagined being with powers to help is a major attraction to religion, as is the policy of random reinforcement (viva Las Vegas). If you pray or perform a ritual, let's say for rain, and it rains 1 or 2 times out of 10, bingo! The pattern of behavior will be reinforced.
Superstition has been induced on pigeons in experiments using this mehtod. A hungry bird is waiting for food, it dances around and sometimes food appears, it will then do its little dance more and more.

And of course there is what Bede said as well. A search for meaning, morality etc.

Amos

Hello capnkirk, your second lesson should have been that the mythology is for the survival and prosperity of the tribe. Better yet, it is out of the mythology that the tribe was created from which follows the when the mythology becomes neglected or rejected the tribe will decline and eventually fall or just perish by itself.

So contrary to your postition humans do not have the need for a mythology but the mytholgy has the need for human loyalty because it alone is real and human life is just the illusion created by it. It this was not true a civilization could not fall as a result of religious neglect.

If you see anything wrong with the argument please let me know.

Arvel Joffi

Human beings have an innate desire to understand the world around them, hence science. To primitive culture, religion is science; it explains events, sets order to their lives, and gives them a connection to the greater world around them.
To a more advanced culture, religion is tradition; sacred tradition, of courde. In a society where science is the predominant belief system, religion is still handy in giving concrete moral answers in an ambiguous world.

I just wish the damned things would die when their usefulness is used up.

happyboy

individual people are smart and may, at their option, free themselves from the insanity that is religion.

people, as a group, are stupid beasts who will never be free of the taint of religion.

happyboy

capnkirk

The observation that they haven't is what precipitated the question "why not?" Why haven't more truthful insights and discoveries been more broadly accepted; is there anything we as athiests can do to change that; or should we even try?

I am very familiar with the origins of religion (I got my anthropology degree thirty years ago now. The reference to my university days was intended to get the information out on the table in a personal way.). I am now more interested in exploring (secularly) the social and pshchological functions that religion provides, their value, and their relationship to the longevity of the religious urge.

I have long contended that the main reason athiesm has been unable to gain much wider acceptance is that, from the viewpoint of those we are trying to enlighten, we are trying to replace "something" in their lives with "nothing". It takes a very strong individual to accept that they are alone in this life (in the sense that there isn't some authority figure overseeing his welfare, forgiving his shortcomings and his wrongdoings, defining what's right and what's wrong, etc.). It seems to me that most all the athiests I have known are very intellectual, well-centered, self-reliant people. Unfortunately, that describes a small minority of the populus out on the flange of the bell curve.

Against that background, should athiests seek to make athiesm the dominant worldview (for lack of a better word)? In which case, athiests will have to broaden their campaign to provide cultural processes to replace those functions that religion now provide. We will need to address how we as athiests integrate our lives, how we understand "god's forgiveness" to actually be "self-forgiveness", how we build an intellectually honest ethical code without the delusion that its source is 'god'. We will need to demonstrate what we have replaced delusion with.

OR

Do we concede that "the masses" won't be ready for athiesm for a long, long time? Do we concede that athiesm will remain for the forseeable future, the realization of a permanently small minority? In which case, should we focus our efforts at enlightenment and acquisition of knowledge more for our own benefit and tone down the "war on belief"? War that takes the form of demanding that some judge remove the ten commandments from his courtroom, banning voluntary prayer in school, removing "in god we trust" from our currency and "under god" from the pledge of alliegence. (I would specifically exclude the issue of teaching creationism as fact in public schools, on the basis of it's being a fact issue rather than a tolerance issue.). Do we concede that there are no broadly viable alternatives (currently available) to the positive services religious practice performs? Do we let the masses have their god and their worship of him?

There is an old political axiom that says, "You can't beat somebody with nobody." It appears to me that our efforts to battle religion on these kinds of high profile issues with the arguments that we presently use are "trying to replace something with nothing".

These are some of the questions that I would like to see discussed in this thread.

happyboy

humanity as a whole is addicted by this point to their precious sky faeries. i don't forsee atheism becoming a major force in the world at any point in the future.

if we're still around ten million years from now, we'll STILL be believing in sky faeries.

happyboy, disgusted at humanity

Selsaral

The fact that a cult like scientology could flourish in our modern culture should clearly indicate the trend: humans will always be religious, or will replace god with space overlords and body thetins.