BapFlap

Hey guys and gals'. Today I went into a shop that sold new age and pagan items, I spent a good deal wandering around just absolutly mystified at why people would believe such things. I found the shop filled with relaxing smells and sounds, also the owner added to the atmosphere with her calm personality. Then suddenly somthing dawned upon me, I think that maybe most humans minds are programed to be sensory deprived, so that we see dangers and find food faster than not. Ordanary life may not provide the input that our brain requires. When we are first born we are getting alot of new input and as we grow up that new input reduces to very low levels because reality changes so little, so in order to satisfy this craving for sensory input our brain makes up a totally new reality that does not exist that gives the illusion of new input, not only that but they create sounds and smells that normally do not exist to provide new sensory input. Nonreligious people do not get off the hook with this idea either because they create an ideaology and become totally fixated on it just as if it was a religion.

So what do you think? Let me know.
Thanks.

Eudaimonist

That doesn't explain why art isn't enough to satisfy the need for sensory stimulation. We have plenty of it. Why have religion if we have art? Religion is superfluous.

Ojuice5001

I agree with BapFlap. (But I hasten to add that I think supernatural theism is true !) People live in cities with enough (or too much) to eat, and few dangers. But their nervous systems are made to deal with a life that has significant danger and just barely enough food. Therefore, we turn to many things in order to regain a sense of struggle for survival. These include the drama of fictional characters who struggle for survival, investing unimportant activities (like hobbies) with importance, and tapping into the supernatural world, which pulsates with nonphysical energy and always has something going on in it.

In prehistoric times, we needed the gods to survive. From 1000 BCE to the seventeenth century, we needed them to prosper. Nowadays, people just see the gods as objects of study, or as friends, or as rivals. The result is that if someone has enough of those things in the natural world, or is skeptical of the existence of the gods, they can get along fine without them. Just as we have a society where people pay only so much attention to wild warm-blooded animals, we have a society where people pay only so much attention to the gods. The reason I hang out on this board is that it really is symptomatic of this fact about industrial society. This makes me understand what the early Christians meant by saying that they belonged to the society of the spirit world, not that of earth. In the afterlife, I will meet Postverta and the rest face to face, but for now, I live among atheists and Christians.

hinduwoman

I don't think sensory pleasures have much to do with religious sentiment though the latter can heighten it. religion is largely a matter of emotion.

vedic_dude

I have heard a lot of people say that religion is about emotion, and just a psychological thing.

While this may be true in many cases, Life is about emotion. Almost all people continue existing for the sake of little bursts of happiness brought about from external stimulants (booze, drugs, movies, food, fast cars etc...).

Some people don't like religion because they think the followers are just intoxicating themselves. At the very least if religion is just an intoxicant, it's on par or better than drugs or alcohol which can cause direct physical damage.

[ July 23, 2002: Message edited by: vedic_dude ]</p>

mibby529

hinduwoman, check your PM.

As for this topic, I agree with hinduwoman. For most ex-Xian Indians I've met, the main clincher for the return to native traditions has been that no father would do what Yahweh does. And from what I've read here, most atheists cannot understand how a purportedly benevolent deity could commit mass murders every few chapters. (It is a bit of a contradiction.)

mibby529

Oh yeah, speaking of New Age, dreamcatchers started as a joke. They're actually crab-fishing nets. But some clever Cherokees realized you could hang some feathers on it and sell it to hippies. Now dreamcatchers are an inside joke among Indians.

Aerik Von

Desperation to live forever? Let's face it...it's not complicated. Man needs to feel special...God provides that.

excreationist

BapFlap:
My explanation for people's need for religion is what I call our desire for "connectedness"... it makes us want things to be in harmony and it would motivate conformity, wanting to belong, habits, altruism, environmentalism, the search for completeness, the desire to understand things, the desire for justice, etc.
This is opposed by our desire for "newness" that motivates exploration, discovery, thrill-seeking, etc.
Religion involves feeling connected with the supreme being and the Truth... it also involves familiar rituals that bring a sense of security...
I think people just seek these cravings in different ways based on what they've learnt... and people can have stronger or weaker drives than others...

Heathen Dawn

Exactly. Now the challenge is how to satisfy those drives without having to believe in supernatural nonsense. I'm working on it.