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There is definitely bubble wrapped around theists in their own religion. Ask an average people what they know about a given religion and they would either say they don’t know or would give a grossly inaccurate response. I came from a pre-dominantly Catholic culture, and my parents don’t even know what makes Protestants different to Catholics. I had to tell them that Protestants simply don’t believe in the authority of the pope. And then there was a pastor telling me to “just believe” in just about anything, after I stated I am agnostic atheist. He mentioned everyone believes in a religion, like how Muslims believe in Muhammad, or Buddhists believe Buddha is a god. And I was like, no, Buddhists don’t believe Buddha is a god-- he simply was a human being believed to have attained enlightenment.
It is many of those instances I realised people are generally ignorant and have pre- and misconceptions. Not only that, even way before the idea of post-modernism, people generally want to stick with information that comforts them, whether intentional or not.
Religion is a product of oral tradition, taboo, and superstition. These features of human behaviour played a valuable role in protecting humans from dangers we did not individually understand. Fires, lightning, floods, drought, poisons, diseases (especially sexually transmitted diseases) underlie much of the religious beliefs and other cultural superstitions you can see even today.
A favourite of mine is the processing of cassava aka manioc by indigenous Amazonian tribes. Their cultural practice involves a long, multi-stage cooking and washing process which removes the cyanide that is naturally present in the root. The amazing thing is that the cyanide levels are high enough to cause chronic poisoning but low enough to not present any short term symptoms besides a bitter taste. However, taking shortcuts with the process leads to a reduction in the bitterness without actually removing enough of the cyanide to prevent chronic poisoning.
This means that this cultural practice maintains a complicated process that can’t be immediately supported by the available evidence (bitterness) but nevertheless provides a strong protective effect against chronic poisoning. In the absence of modern chemistry, this complex practice could only have developed through a long process of cultural evolution selecting against tribes who suffer from the chronic cyanide poisoning.
If you think about it, we are all born atheist.
I have to think the reality is more about wishful thinking. My path to naturalism was coming to terms with bad news, specifically my own mortality. Not just that, but any legacy I might leave is going to be extremely brief.
(Of course, in recent times I learned that Pythagoras didn’t actually work out the Pythagorean theorem, rather one of his cult minions did and attributed it to him. And it’s quite possible that the same theorem was known by cultures that were millennia older, so even brilliant Hellenic mathematicians are forgotten.)
When we’re raised to believe in heaven, and then find out that all our hopes of salvation are dubious, it’s tempting just to pretend that believing in Jesus will make it so like clapping for Tinkerbell. Confronting our absence of spirit or divinity, especially in light of 20th and 21st century understandings of the the universe (it’s huge and we’re microbes on a speck of dust), especially as the human species is on the brink of self-annihilation (a run of 250,000 years, contrast to the 2,000,000 of Homo Erectus, or the Tens of Millions of some dinosaurs), really makes life feel like a candle-flame in the wind.
A lot of mythology originates from someone’s dad or older brother or uncle messing with them.
Let’s examine the myth that you’ll find a pot of gold at the end of a rainbow. There isn’t an end to a rainbow, someone was messing with a kid and it got passed on. It’s like sending the new kid at work to go down to the basement or go ask for a long weight.
When I worked at a pizza place it was the ‘dough patch kit’
When I worked on airplanes it was exhaust samples and the id-10-t form.
When I worked with fiber optic cables it was the fiber stretcher.
When I worked as a mechanic it was blinker fluid. When I worked as a chef it was the bucket of steam.
You gotta have the check as well
“The boss sent me for striped paint”
“Oh you need to go back and ask him if he wants horizontal or vertical”
I grew up in a religious household. My parents made me go to church and youth group until about 16-17 when I pushed back (still had to go to church but not youth group).
I was always more skeptical of it all. Even as a kid I remember having these “wtf, that doesn’t make sense. So dinosaurs were…on the ark?”
Anyway, after a couple decades of separation from it all you realize how absolutely bonkers religion is. The amount of mental backflips you need to make for it to make even a little sense is borderline insanity.
It’s crazy how otherwise very intelligent people just…go with it and never challenge it. Then will fight with you if you challenge it.
hoo boy isn’t it nice not having to make all those excuses anymore?
Dinosaurs would have been extinct for millions of years, even in the time of Noah. It makes sense that he wouldn’t put them on the Ark.
Yeah, there’s lots of people thinking 🤔 we’ll ok something’s are just alliterate proverbs. But no! Literally they guy writing the bible part you read is supposed to be saying what you understand…two dynos of the same species were dunked in the boat. Either that, or only the species mentioned exist, which is not true unless they evolved rapidly…a rhino fucked a giraffe so we got the regular unicorn 🦄?
But that’s just the bible religions. Okay so if you had to cut all the bullshit, then you could just narrow it down to one commandment “love each other”. Or maybe, how about we don’t gotta go to a place since the flying guy is everywhere. You can just talk to your flying guy!
They already don’t ask the flying guy for rain. What’s a stretch of not kneeling and standing and kneeling and standing once again like total retards? Okay and doing the rituals every single time the same? And the music. A god would be tired of that shit by the first week.
Yeah, they are nuts.
They’re not insane. They’re just desperate for answers to life’s great questions. They’re afraid of death and can’t cope with life. They’re affraid to face reality that this is just what it is and death is just death. This is their way of dealing with all that, hiding reality behind a fairy tale to give it some artificial mean, because “life cannot be just an accident. We…I am too important for that”
It’s not simply insanity, they don’t have an affliction, it’s a very conscious, well thought out decision to run and hide. It’s, at best, a fault of emotion, not a fault of mental capabilities.
Exactly this. Some people are afraid of the idea that the universe is indifferent, void of meaning besides that which we create, and that when you die your neurological processes stop and your identity and consciousness wink away, leaving the you who lived your life as nothing but memories of those still living. I basically explained this to a girl once who asked about my beliefs and she said, that’s scary I don’t like it
I would say cowardice is an affliction. Also that the percentage of religious people who have thought this out and made a conscious decision to choose fantasy over reality is tiny; the majority (at least from my experience of Christianity in America) don’t even have the brain function to consider fantasy vs reality due to lifelong indoctrination.
Is all religion hubris? I could see that
No, most religion is people who don’t have the capacity to understand the universe looking for answers to the great questions.
It is also people defending that they were indoctrinated into when they were kids. Looking this if you remove the people who end up non-religious there is a 86% chance that you will match the religion of your parents; if they are both of the same faith. There is a good reason that we indoctrinate kids; it works…really well.
I indoctrinate (instill into) my kids into; thinking education is important, reading is fun and questioning and critical thinking is right and proper. We all push our beliefs onto our kids, it is nice when we see it reflected back to us.
The one question I ask people that always grinds their gears: “if you were born in India, where 80% follow Hinduism, do you still think you would have been Christian, or just believe whatever your parents taught you?”
“Of course I’d be Christian, that is the only true religion!”
You can’t logic people out of something they didn’t logic themselves into. When you’re indoctrinated your whole life into bypassing higher brain functions asking them to think isn’t going to work.
Ganesha, the pancace loving god with an elephant head FTW!
Blind faith is nothing but a socially acceptable mental illness.
The difference between a religion and a cult is scale, that’s all.
There’s a famous quote in sociolinguistics: “A language is a dialect with an army and navy.” I think the same thing applies here. A religion is just a cult with an army and a navy, because then they can enforce it onto others.
Yes, I think scale is typically what determines strength of control upon individuals. Cults are smaller and thus any charismatic cult leader can exert greater control on his small flock. The larger your religion gets though, the less likely the leader himself can micromanage and exert control, thus leading to the delegation of responsibilities and power.
Isn’t that essentially how the megachurches operate? Like a micro cult within the umbrella of a larger, broadly accepted cult? A religious fiefdom, if you will.
“No, bro, trust me, the omnipotent and omniscient creator and ruler of the Universe cares deeply about what happens on a ball of rock comprising a rounding error of a rounding error of a rounding error of fifty more rounding errors of that Universe as it specifically pertains to a species of hairless ape having gay sex, eating shellfish and owls, mixing fabrics, grabbing their husbands’ genitals, and building unsafe roofs. ‘Did I miss my clozapine injection?’ Why do you ask?”
*not that we are advocating for the eating of owls.
Right?
Nah, I’m vegan, and I don’t know how I would get my protein without eating owls. Necessary sacrifices sometimes need to be made.
Well if you say some magic words to a cracker it’ll turn into an edible dead guy so that’s another option.
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Not so sure about that. Like populism in politics, religion gives you simple answers and justifications for complex situations and easily comprehensible explanations for complex phenomenoms.
In a world that is getting harder and harder to grasp, people get lost in the big picture. Things like globalization, climate change, foreign affairs, our financial system etc. are all hard to understand for a big chunk if not the entirety of the population.
Dictators, monarchs as well as religion all provide easy guidance: Do X. Don’t do Y. You are the good guys, people who are/do/think Z are the baddies.
No individual thinking required. No boring facts, no discussions, just faith/loyalty/patriotism that counters every argument and allows you to feel superior and put the blame on someone else.
I think in situations of high social inequality or disruptive events (war, famine, financial crisis, pandamic), there will always be a high demand for religion and political extemism.
Mental shortcuts are a sign of people lacking critical thinking skills. And those are people I don’t like talking to.
I honestly believe that theists that do not need their faith as escape from reality, eg. that aren’t in war or poverty, are to some degree mentally disabled.
When the DSM lists religious belief as a mental illness, I’ll grudgingly begin to respect psychology.
If you weren’t raised to eat meat and saw hundreds of millions or billions of people suffering and dying of heart attacks, strokes, diabetes, and cancer, you’d know instantly.
