The end of Religion is inevitable?

[Gorbles]

Maybe we should just drop this interaction, because you're still trying to 'splain a situation to me that I see and deal with every day and you don't.

Apologies, that wasn't what I was trying to do. My bad.

 

[amadeus]

It’s a good thing we finally got rid of religion, now we don’t have to worry about people arguing—like in this thread.

Aside from the theism of religion, is there really that much of a difference between that and other things people will identify with, base their values on, etc.? It’s what makes us human.

Get rid of religion, we’ll (people) just make another thing and call it something else.

 

[Farm Boy]

I heard it is healthy to hate other religions and avoid their follower

is there really that much of a difference between that and other things people will identify with, base their values on, etc.?

I worked at a university for a decade and a half. Unless you're wearing work clothes, chubby aging white dudes look the university part, not the townie part. The amount of times that random would light into the worst sort of people, the child molesters, the rapists, the rednecks... yeah. They are definitely the most bigoted sample I have regularly run into. Even klanners drop it when you aren't interested. These freaks would argue.

 

[Gorbles]

Good to know people's sample sizes, here.

 

[Farm Boy]

Yup. This would be Midwestern universities over the past 2 decades, not the one. About 3 states and backed up by Bootstoots' experiences and my network of educated persons as well.

But it's not like coasters here don't take up the same sword. There is like, social networking, and stuff. These days.

 

[amadeus]

No idea what you’re getting at @Farm Boy

 

[Farm Boy]

No idea what you’re getting at @Farm Boy

Lex is talking about the proselytizing-crazies wing of one group of people, the way we're dicing them up in this thread(religious-identity specifically for this exchange, right? Not the religion-as-faith one Bonyduck mentioned upthread). I agree with him and have recognized and interacted with that social current. I compared them unfavorably to another group that will occasionally approach me with assumed-in-group bias.

 

[Ziggy Stardust]

My mom was religious, so religious people are great.
Trump is an atheist, so atheists are morons.

I'm sad I don't believe in god and have to be part of the morons

 

[Harv]

Using an analogy from the Colonization game, the master distiller converts sugar into rum. If we are distilling rum, will rum cease to exist?

 

[Birdjaguar]

It's still mystical and the threat of reincarnation into a fly is similar to the threat of going to hell.

Fear and manipulation by the priestly class to control people's actions.

Your view of how reincarnation works is misguided. Like karma, reincarnation needs to be viewed in the context of Hinduism/Buddhism and the doctrinal changes over time. The great wheel of life, death and rebirth is the structure of living things though time. Even the Gods are subject to it. In your example of a person being reborn as fly (unlikely) that life as a fly would be short and lead to a quick rebirth as something else. It would not be any kind of eternal damnation. With both religions karma and reincarnation are intrinsically tied together and "sudden" leaps from extremes unkikely. To oversimplify: the physcial world of life, dearth and rebirth is an illussion (Maya) and through right actions and right living one can escape the illussion of separateness and individuality and join the unity of god which was, is and always shall be all in all.

 

[Joij21]

To oversimplify: the physcial world of life, dearth and rebirth is an illussion (Maya) and through right actions and right living one can escape the illussion of separateness and individuality and join the unity of god which was, is and always shall be all in all.

And yet there's nothing to indicate that there's anything but this. Therefore thinking like that could be dangerous if this is the only life we live before it all goes black.

 

[Farm Boy]

And then what would there be to be ashamed of, not cupping the brightness of our light?

 

[Valka D'Ur]

Some people will proclaim anything on the negative side of an argument they're invested in is a "religion". An anti-vaxxer once called me a "vaccine priestess" because I explained why flu vaccines are beneficial. Oh, and because I'm not vegan, I apparently dance around the bodies of the dead cows I consume.

That was back around 2013 or so, therefore well before the current anti-vaxxer hysteria.

And in the meantime, just recently, a kid died of measles. The parents didn't bother to have their own kid vaccinated against it. I feel sorry for the kid. The parents? Their own fault. I feel nothing for them but contempt.

 

[Farm Boy]

That point you post often seems to follow my posts, so I'll address it, feel free to correct the dialog if that's off base: so the thing to be ashamed of in my faith, for example, would be Canadians who share a different faith, who have lost thier children?

 

[Birdjaguar]

And yet there's nothing to indicate that there's anything but this. Therefore thinking like that could be dangerous if this is the only life we live before it all goes black.

Not at all. Here is a link to a prfetty good synopsis of HInduism. Hinduism is ~2000 years older than christianity. Buddhism is about 500 years older than christianity.. Over those long histories, just like christianity, they have undergone changes and schisms.and the appearance of many sects.

Hinduism and Buddhism have many similarities. Buddhism, in fact, arose out of Hinduism, and both believe in reincarnation, karma and that a life of devotion and honor is a path to salvation and enlightenment.
But some key differences exist between the two religions: Many strains of Buddhism reject the caste system, and do away with many of the rituals, the priesthood, and the gods that are integral to Hindu faith.

Like most religions, they both have an end game. For Christians it seems to be Heaven or Hell. For Hindus and Buddhist is appears to be union with God and the disappaearnce of Maya or Buddhist enlightenment. Religions have trong roots in the time and place of their origins. Judism introduce linear time with a beginning and end into the religious world that previously looked at time in a more circular fashion. Both Islm and Christianity carry on in that linear tradition.

As a side note Zoroasterism began in ~1000 BCE but too a few centuries to grow into the dominant relgiion of Persia's Cyrus the Great. Zoroaster introduce the concept of dualism into the ME religions: A battle between good and evil. The Jews in Captivity would have been exposed to it along with all the other mesopotanian mysth stories of Fertile Crescent. 600 BCE to 100 BCE were the formative years of Jewish religious thouhgt.;udaic ideas mixed with Zoroasterism and both laid on top of the earliest mythis and stories of the retgiion that came through Sumer and Babylon.

BBC - Religion: Zoroastrianism

Guide to the ancient religion of Zoroastrianism, including history, modern practices, beliefs and worship.

www.bbc.co.uk

 

[warpus]

China, biggest nation of the world, also one of the least religious...

Are they though? There is a lot of ancestral worship and the following of ancient Chinese spiritual beliefs going on in China, isn't there? Isn't that pretty much "religion"? Does a religion have to be organized the way the major world religions are?

Personally I don't think religion will ever die out. It's been pretty much with us from the days when early human tribes started having a shaman or a similar figure talk to the Gods to try to predict the weather or the next harvest.. and probably well before that even. Religious thoughts were likely with the very early humans, who could not comprehend what the motorboat was going on around them, what from the earthquakes, volcano eruptions, eclipses, floods, the changing of the seasons, the miracle of birth.. I think that as soon as humans could reason in a complex enough manner to try to explain why and how things were happening, that they likely started attributing a lot of what was around them to the supernatural, gods and spirits who orchestrate such events on this world. That's pretty much religion.

Humans are superstitious, I don't think we will ever lose that attribute of who we are. Not all of us are superstitious, but many of us are, and I think that even in the year 3,500, 1450 years from now, when we have flying boats and when America finally gets universal healthcare, there will exist humans who believe in things that are outside of science, people who believe that there are supernatural agents out there influencing our world, people who pray to saints, their ancestors, gods, angels, and other non-worldly beings, people who believe in ghosts, miracles, and other things not proven by science. Even if there is no organized religion the way it exists today, why wouldn't there still be people around who harbour some of those beliefs? Science will never explain everything. Isn't that something Godel proved at some point?

While religion is on the decline in the developed world, and which points to a broader dynamic of people in developed countries gradually becoming less religious over time, I don't think this will ever eliminate all religious or spiritual thought. Even if scientists figure out how the universe was created and all the mechanisms associated with that, there will always be something that some people feel requires a supernatural explanation. Science never proves negatives, so it will never prove the absence of an afterlife, for instance. Even if it turns out that the afterlife exists and that scientists figure out how it works, I doubt all humans will accept that this is basically it, as far as the afterlife goes. Some people will continue having their own personal or organized religious beliefs about the afterlife, the same way a lot of people today hold alternate religious hypotheses about the origins of humans on this planet, dismissing the already figured out theory of evolution, even in semi-developed places like Florida. Even the best developed parts of the planet, with the best quality of life and education, like Norway and Switzerland, contain significant groups of people who hold religious beliefs. Even if all organized religion shut down in those countries, those people would continue to exist, likely meeting and praying together, and discussing religious matters in their homes and in community centres, even if churches and priests no longer exist.

Retro is also always in, it seems. Even in the scenario of all all organized religion disappearing off the face of the planet and the solar system, some people will dabble in ancient religious thought, the same way there's dedicated groups of humans today who dabble in retro gaming, retro music, and even attend retro medieval-themed renaissance fairs, just to name a couple examples.

For all these reasons I don't think religion is ever going away.

 

[PPQ_Purple]

This is it's own tragedy as well though, one that I don't often see talked about, the number of people rejected from their families & communities just for admitting to doubt. I couldn't imagine abandoning family members just because they have different spiritual ideas to me.

Honestly I do not see that as so tragic. Yes, the loss of ones support network can be difficult materially. But fundamentally anyone who is willing to put things like belief higher on his list of priorities than blood is worth only of disgust. And one is better off without such people in his life

They are as real as we make them. Mercy & justice (karma if you will) may not exist 'out there' but thru out actions we can make them exist. I always thought a good line of a vigilante in a movie would be "I don't believe in karma, I AM KARMA". Belief that some otherworldly power will sort out one's affairs is a type of passivity I can't help but be disgusted by, and this is by design, all empires love religion because religion placates. You can train a dog to wait five seconds for a treat he can smell but only man can be trained to wait his whole life for an invisible reward for his meekness

If you fight enough windmills you might just slay a giant or two along the way, eh? Let's be real. We can't. The world is evil, unjust and cruel to the bone. And there is nothing we can do about it. All we can do is struggle to make the little bubble of life around our self and those we love more tolerable for the brief instant it takes to dash over that line on our gravestone between birth and death. And more often than not we'll fail even that.

So yes, it is indeed insidious and cruel to the max to use false hope to manipulate people into giving up what little chance they have to better their life.

This said, I don't fundamentally think that we should try and do anything about that. As I said, I feel that it is inevitable that such things will exist. For as long as human nature is what it is we are simply going to keep doing what works. Human evil is a fundamental law of nature just like gravity. We can and should seek to understand it but only so that we can make use of it and not out of misguided hate.

As one of my favorite tech quotes from CIV4 says. You can't direct the wind but you can adjust your sails.

 

[Gori the Grey]

A lot of the comments here seem to me to oversimplify the experience of religious people by presupposing that religion doesn't enrich one's experience of this life, that believers are somehow forgoing something else better that they could be doing with this life on the promise (by the oppressive priestly caste) that if they do that, they will be rewarded with better circumstances in the afterlife.

Speaking just for myself as one believer, I want to say that that's not my experience of Christianity at all. The sacred texts; the comforts and challenges and insights they bring me; the overall worldview that can be derived from them; the rituals; the sense of community with fellow worshipers--all of these enhance nearly every aspect of my daily experience.

Should there prove to be no afterlife, I'll still think there could have been no better way of spending this life than as a Christian.

Your mileage will undoubtedly vary.

 

[PPQ_Purple]

A lot of the comments here seem to me to oversimplify the experience of religious people by presupposing that religion doesn't enrich one's experience of this life, that believers are somehow forgoing something else better that they could be doing with this life on the promise (by the oppressive priestly caste) that if they do that, they will be rewarded with better circumstances in the afterlife.

It's not quite like that. At least not for me. Basically what I would say is this.

Belief and its related cultural identity can be beneficial to a person as you say. No argument there. Indeed, even if you and everyone else around you don't actually believe in any of it, just being part of a group that identifies as belonging to a "religion" can often be enough to create a sense of community and belonging that is valuable in its own right. We humans want to belong and we work better as societies when we do. This is basically the role of Christianity in a large part of Europe right now.

However the way this is achieved is by tapping into one of the most fundamental aspects of our nature, the need to belong and to explain. And because of this religions (by any other name) create fertile ground for the rise of parasitic organizations that tap into them for their own nonferrous ends.

Those can be churches in the traditional sense but also political organizations or social movements of all kinds. For example, I would argue that the western social justice and environmentalist movements have reached the point of being a religion and one that is being actively exploited by a parasitic political class which cynically fans the fire of social conflict in order to divide and conquer while true believers on both sides fight each other on their behalf. And the same can most certainly be said of Communism in the Soviet block.

 

[Gori the Grey]

Those can be churches in the traditional sense but also political organizations or social movements of all kinds.

Right, so if that's a wash, then I'm going with the guy who said "I have come that they might have life, and have it in greater abundance."