6 ms·

Almost like these arose as functional elements of society across time because they assisted those who followed them in outlasting their competitors. Weird.

jimkleiber 3y ago
There's a book called Why We Need Religion[0] and I believe the main premise is that religions have practices and beliefs that help us process emotions. [0]: https://bookshop.org/p/books/why-we-need-religion-stephen-t-asma/7312344 https://bookshop.org/p/books/why-we-need-religion-stephen-t-...
- yomly 3y ago
  I am personally atheist/apathetic. The closest thing you could get me to profess a religious fervour to is exercise (or martial arts) and mother nature. That said, I am a huge proponent of religion and can see how it is so important to people like my mother. She doesn't preach or judge but I can see how faith anchors her. It gives her answers and an unyielding optimism in the face of difficulty, and I can tell you as someone who has clawed her way through a poverty most people in this world will only ever read about, she has known what difficulty can be. Faith keeps her positive and kind and generous. She finds it in herself to let go of anger and to forgive thanks to her belief in God. So you're bang on the mark - my personal observations agree that religion helps us process emotions. Seen through the lens of a social technology, we've replaced religion with consumerism and individualism, and social media has encouraged unchecked mammon. And so we're having to relearn everything old as new again. Confession and grace are parts of the toolkit in therapy. Breathing techniques from yoga, wim hof and meditation are doing the rounds. The presence of song and chanting in many religions seems like a decent overlap... Then at times of the highest reported rates of loneliness, especially amongst the young, what did religion give us - a local community. Don't get me wrong, there was a lot of bad with religion but modern faith in places like the UK or the Nordics seems to be a net benefit IMO...
  - CamperBob2 3y ago
    Don't get me wrong, there was a lot of bad with religion but modern faith in places like the UK or the Nordics seems to be a net benefit IMO... Even in light of what the Christian Nationalist movement is striving towards in the US, and in light of the ugly persistence of fundamentalism in places like Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Afghanistan?
    - jimkleiber 3y ago
      I wonder if it's like any technology and trade offs between helping/hurting people. If religions help 95% of people be more loving and 5% be more hateful, would it be a net benefit? Does it depend what those 5% do with the hate or the 95% with the love? What if the percentages were different? Obviously an overly simplistic thought experiment, yet I wonder if we have any way, that isn't arbitrary, to say if a tool is net beneficial. Side note...I've often played with the idea in the past of what I called the case for moral superposition: nothing is good or bad, everything is good AND bad, but thinking makes it good OR bad.
      - mordae 3y ago
        It's more like 50/50, though. So in practice it mostly just amplifies authoritarians telling us to either submit or go to hell. The other (loving) half gets so non confrontational we never hear of them again.
        jimkleiber 3y ago
        I think the "loving" half is often not fully loving but other-loving and self-hating. "I feel annoyed that this person is doing this thing. But if I say something, they may feel angry, so I won't say something... And then will fight against myself instead."
      - watwut 3y ago
        Religious people are not more loving then the rest.
      - 3y ago
klipt 3y ago
Atheists believe in evolution; evolution believes in religion.
phailhaus 3y ago
They're stable and self-perpetuating, that doesn't make them better. There are plenty of abhorrent beliefs that also "stood the test of time".
- rayiner 3y ago
  I think you’ll find that for the most part beliefs that are present across religions are pro-adaptive in the economic and technological contexts in which they arise. I also think people fail to appreciate how much their own worldview reflects the religious tradition of their community. Coming from an eastern tradition, western secular humanism seems like an “ad hoc, informally-specified, bug-ridden, slow implementation of half of” Christianity.
  - dctoedt 3y ago
    > I think you’ll find that for the most part beliefs that are present across religions are pro-adaptive in the economic and technological contexts in which they arise. True! But we have to remain open to the possibility that any such belief could represent a local maximum, roughly analogous to Ptolemaic astronomy or Newtonian physics: Serviceable in limited contexts but falling apart in others. > western secular humanism seems like an “ad hoc, informally-specified, bug-ridden, slow implementation of half of” Christianity. Which half of Christianity would that be? Being serious now: Christianity — the version actually preached by Y'shua of Nazareth — is simply Judaism stripped down to two specific commandments from the Hebrew Bible: Love God, love your neighbor as yourself. See the Parable of the Good Samaritan in Luke 10:25-37 ("Do this and you will live [eternally]") [0] and its counterpart in Matt. 22:34-40 ("On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets"). [1] Jesus wasn't trying to start a new religion: He wanted Jews to be better Jews, and he seems only reluctantly to have concerned himself with non-Jews. What we now think of as "Christianity" and its doctrines of the Triune God, soteriology (how "salvation" is achieved), and christology (what was the nature of Jesus): Those came later — in some cases, much later — from others, not from Jesus himself, so far as we know. [0] https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Luke%2010%3A25-37&version=NIV https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Luke%2010%3A25-... [1] https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=matt.+22%3A34-40&version=KJV https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=matt.+22%3A34-4...

jimkleiber 3y ago

There's a book called Why We Need Religion[0] and I believe the main premise is that religions have practices and beliefs that help us process emotions. [0]: https://bookshop.org/p/books/why-we-need-religion-stephen-t-asma/7312344 https://bookshop.org/p/books/why-we-need-religion-stephen-t-...

yomly 3y ago
I am personally atheist/apathetic. The closest thing you could get me to profess a religious fervour to is exercise (or martial arts) and mother nature. That said, I am a huge proponent of religion and can see how it is so important to people like my mother. She doesn't preach or judge but I can see how faith anchors her. It gives her answers and an unyielding optimism in the face of difficulty, and I can tell you as someone who has clawed her way through a poverty most people in this world will only ever read about, she has known what difficulty can be. Faith keeps her positive and kind and generous. She finds it in herself to let go of anger and to forgive thanks to her belief in God. So you're bang on the mark - my personal observations agree that religion helps us process emotions. Seen through the lens of a social technology, we've replaced religion with consumerism and individualism, and social media has encouraged unchecked mammon. And so we're having to relearn everything old as new again. Confession and grace are parts of the toolkit in therapy. Breathing techniques from yoga, wim hof and meditation are doing the rounds. The presence of song and chanting in many religions seems like a decent overlap... Then at times of the highest reported rates of loneliness, especially amongst the young, what did religion give us - a local community. Don't get me wrong, there was a lot of bad with religion but modern faith in places like the UK or the Nordics seems to be a net benefit IMO...
- CamperBob2 3y ago
  Don't get me wrong, there was a lot of bad with religion but modern faith in places like the UK or the Nordics seems to be a net benefit IMO... Even in light of what the Christian Nationalist movement is striving towards in the US, and in light of the ugly persistence of fundamentalism in places like Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Afghanistan?
  - jimkleiber 3y ago
    I wonder if it's like any technology and trade offs between helping/hurting people. If religions help 95% of people be more loving and 5% be more hateful, would it be a net benefit? Does it depend what those 5% do with the hate or the 95% with the love? What if the percentages were different? Obviously an overly simplistic thought experiment, yet I wonder if we have any way, that isn't arbitrary, to say if a tool is net beneficial. Side note...I've often played with the idea in the past of what I called the case for moral superposition: nothing is good or bad, everything is good AND bad, but thinking makes it good OR bad.
    - mordae 3y ago
      It's more like 50/50, though. So in practice it mostly just amplifies authoritarians telling us to either submit or go to hell. The other (loving) half gets so non confrontational we never hear of them again.
      - jimkleiber 3y ago
        I think the "loving" half is often not fully loving but other-loving and self-hating. "I feel annoyed that this person is doing this thing. But if I say something, they may feel angry, so I won't say something... And then will fight against myself instead."
    - watwut 3y ago
      Religious people are not more loving then the rest.
    - 3y ago

klipt 3y ago

Atheists believe in evolution; evolution believes in religion.

phailhaus 3y ago

They're stable and self-perpetuating, that doesn't make them better. There are plenty of abhorrent beliefs that also "stood the test of time".

rayiner 3y ago
I think you’ll find that for the most part beliefs that are present across religions are pro-adaptive in the economic and technological contexts in which they arise. I also think people fail to appreciate how much their own worldview reflects the religious tradition of their community. Coming from an eastern tradition, western secular humanism seems like an “ad hoc, informally-specified, bug-ridden, slow implementation of half of” Christianity.
- dctoedt 3y ago
  > I think you’ll find that for the most part beliefs that are present across religions are pro-adaptive in the economic and technological contexts in which they arise. True! But we have to remain open to the possibility that any such belief could represent a local maximum, roughly analogous to Ptolemaic astronomy or Newtonian physics: Serviceable in limited contexts but falling apart in others. > western secular humanism seems like an “ad hoc, informally-specified, bug-ridden, slow implementation of half of” Christianity. Which half of Christianity would that be? Being serious now: Christianity — the version actually preached by Y'shua of Nazareth — is simply Judaism stripped down to two specific commandments from the Hebrew Bible: Love God, love your neighbor as yourself. See the Parable of the Good Samaritan in Luke 10:25-37 ("Do this and you will live [eternally]") [0] and its counterpart in Matt. 22:34-40 ("On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets"). [1] Jesus wasn't trying to start a new religion: He wanted Jews to be better Jews, and he seems only reluctantly to have concerned himself with non-Jews. What we now think of as "Christianity" and its doctrines of the Triune God, soteriology (how "salvation" is achieved), and christology (what was the nature of Jesus): Those came later — in some cases, much later — from others, not from Jesus himself, so far as we know. [0] https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Luke%2010%3A25-37&version=NIV https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Luke%2010%3A25-... [1] https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=matt.+22%3A34-40&version=KJV https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=matt.+22%3A34-4...