IndigoChild5559
Loving God and my neighbor as myself.
You are the one in here who made the claim, so we are asking you.
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Why Does Religion Exist
- Thread starter Nakosis
- Start date
Tinkerpeach
Active Member
Has science found any basis for that?
Heyo
Veteran Member
I discern between religion and spirituality. We were spiritual, possibly hundreds of thousands of years ago. And I agree that that spirituality is the basis of religion. But organized spirituality, i.e. religion with scriptures and priest caste, seems to have only started with big settlements, multiple times all over the world.
IndigoChild5559
Loving God and my neighbor as myself.
There is no scientific evidence for ANY theory on this matter. Everyone is basically just making contradictory statements based on blind faith.
IndigoChild5559
Loving God and my neighbor as myself.
I don't. To me, spirituality is just religion lite. But if you disagree, that's fine.
Nakosis, I think religions first of all begin as parental and tribal education. Religion is the first form of education. Before reading and writing and maths there are constellations and weather patterns and hunting tricks and questions about why things are the way they are. It is your parents trying to prepare you for the world you must face in which preparing a child seems an impossible task. As an example consider some of the ancient small family cults and household gods, and consider stories about the constellations in the stars. Imagine being a parent living close to nature in an enormous continuous world filled with cycles of nature. You will view education as part of a cycle will you not?
Building upon this comes political religion. Use Egyptian religion as an early example. The political religions seize upon religion and make something new called a nation. These nations become popular, and they remain popular today albeit in slightly different forms. Why? Because a larger group of people is strong.
National politics itself can lose its parental religious character and become something else less like a religion, but it may also try to dive back into that parenting state wherein is direct control over the lives and thoughts of citizens. It can become more religious or less religious.
Finally, religion is the pattern in which you live. Its the pattern that is passed onto the next generation.
It is not a set of beliefs, not a conspiracy, not something we have evolved beyond, not a thing on its own. Religion is what we call the way we live but which is not very easily defined, since we all live very differently. Religious labels allow us to address groups of people without knowing them intimately. Religions are the intimate details of how how they live which get passed on to future generations.
In times like these when the pattern of life changes vastly between generations...then people wonder what religion is. It is what it always was.
RestlessSoul
Well-Known Member
Actually there’s quite a body of empirical evidence which supports the Standard Model of cosmology, ascribing the beginning of the universe to an event occurring approximately 13.8 billion years ago. And the mathematical model was derived from Einstein’s field equations, independently by Alexander Friedman and George’s Lemaitre. The term Big Bang may not be universally popular among cosmologists, but it remains the standard model because it is supported by evidence, and because that evidence arrived subsequently to the mathematical modelling, confirming predictions made by the theory.
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Which chapter and verse explains quantum physics?
RestlessSoul
Well-Known Member
You might find the Buddhist canon more helpful there. Several physicists (David Bohm, Anthony Aguirre, Carlo Rovelli) have turned to Buddhist philosophers, to help envisage an ontology for QM.
So it was a way of education.
Perhaps no longer the best means of education.
We became educated to the point of demanding supportable claims.
We haven't found a culture free of supernatural beliefs.
That points to supernatural beliefs being a phenomenon that humans generate.
The best explanation I'm aware of as to why this is so is the nature of the evolved human mind. We constantly and automatically monitor our surroundings, and our brains are constantly, and very usually invisibly, checking all data input, not least visual and aural. The brain constantly devises hypothetical and tentative explanations for surprising input, and abandons them as soon as they don't fit, or alarms your consciousness if they do and you should take action. Against that background, things that have been inexplicable, like thunder, lightning, meteors, eclipses, drought, famine, plague, flood, luck in hunting, war, love, and so on, are explained as being due to the agency of unseen beings. Thus if you're having a drought you may derive a sense of control using customary formulas to propitiate what are in fact natural forces. If you're going to war, it may be good for morale to be told supernatural forces are on your side.
And once you have a priestly caste, tribal politics may get more complex. Think of the god-kings of the Egyptians and others, for example.
Interesting enough, the preview provided attacks the view provided in the book.
I find myself disagreeing with some of the adaptive ideologies of religion. Yes, religion was very influential in culture.
Doesn't mean we wouldn't have had a culture without it. Just more that is how humanity went about it.
It does I think answer the question why religion was successful. It created a culture which fed back into itself.
Yerda
Veteran Member
Yes.
I've always found the eternal universe idea to be attractive and satisfying in a way that I don't get with a universe that had a beginning. The infinite regress implied by the "something must have caused the universe to exist" type of thinking just feels unpleasant to me.
That's not to say that there's any good reason for having a preference. It's just aesthetics. If we have to posit something eternal I'd prefer it to be the thing I can see currently exists.
Consider the possibility that any positive health correlation with religiosity comes from the general trend of religious people shunning and ostracizing people who don't comply with their religion.Why Does Religion Exist?
Why it must not exist, please?
Religion has many useful benefits for the off-spring, why deny the progeny of the assets they inherit from their forefathers/mothers lawfully, please, right?*
I don't say that the bad effects of Indoctrinations, if any, are not to be cared against, right?
It is good to educate the children instead of leaving them blank in the wild to suffer, right?
Regards
__________________
*Science Says: Religion Is Good For Your Health
" Thus, there is ample reason to believe that faith in a higher power is associated with health, and in a positive way. For example, researchers at the Mayo Clinic concluded, “Most studies have shown that religious involvement and spirituality are associated with better health outcomes, including greater longevity, coping skills, and health-related quality of life (even during terminal illness) and less anxiety, depression, and suicide. Several studies have shown that addressing the spiritual needs of the patient may enhance recovery from illness.” "
Nicole F. Roberts
Mar 29, 2019
Science Says: Religion Is Good For Your Health
Theologists, scientists and thought leaders have attempted for centuries to understand the impact that religion can have on human beings; both mentally and physically. And, there is ample reason to believe that faith in a higher power is associated with health, and in a positive way.www.forbes.com
Perhaps you, Nakosis, demand supportable claims and wish everyone did. There is a lesson in realizing you have been deceived: for example when sweet and trustworthy parents teach you Santa will come down the chimney. What are they teaching you about themselves? That you are a separate person. What they say is not what you think. If it works, and if you get the message then it is a jarring message.
But public colleges and 'High schools' are not teaching children to demand supportable claims. They are also teaching them to trust the teachers, to trust regurgitated information passed down from on high. It is efficient and easy. Part of it is that students are naturally dependent and trusting. A lot of students do trust the teachers and do trust this. Insidiously they can be taught that everything they believe blindly is based upon supportable claims. Many consider themselves to be very credulous and skeptical only because they know someone who is: a trustworthy authority. "I am skeptical, because I have been taught by skeptical people!" It takes work to question things. It takes time. It is not fun. It is not human.
I do not agree with that statement: "We became educated to the point of demanding supportable claims." I cannot see this.
To me there is No point to religion or worship if there is No future hope.
If there is nothing after death, no future life, there is No need for religion.
So, religion exists because of the teaching about the Resurrection for the dead.
'There is going to be....' ( future ) a resurrection - Acts 24:15
A 'thing' is Not a someone. in Scripture is it Not a 'something' but the Someone who is the Creator.
The 'something' that God caused the universe to exist is called as God's spirit - see Psalm 104:30; Psalm 33:6
Since biblical God is ' God IS love ' and ' God IS light ' that is Not un-pleasant but love and light are pleasant.
Men's explosions go from 'cold to hot'.
Whereas, the Big Bang, so to speak, goes from 'hot to cold' which we see as currently existing because of CMBR
(Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation) dating because of the accuracy of microwaves.
stevecanuck
Well-Known Member
Because a religion can be whatever its inventor wants it to be. The vast majority of religious belief does indeed include an afterlife.
stevecanuck
Well-Known Member
See above.
Interesting that you say, " how humanity went about it " because even in Jesus' day the humanity of the religious Pharisees went about religion by teaching their culture (traditions and customs) as Scripture but Not found in Scripture
- Matthew 15:9; Mark 7:7
So, it is No wonder today religious teachings outside of Scripture are still being taught as being Scripture/ God's Word.