dingdao
The eternal Tao cannot be told - Tao Te Ching
Blue Sky Accurate
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Why religions even exist in the first place.
- Thread starter Jonathan Bailey
- Start date
sealchan
Well-Known Member
This is a good list of the values/qualities that a religion can offer to an individual or a society.
I like to think that today's religions grew out of a diversity of oral traditions which formed into written traditions which were allowed to develop under the freedoms of a political/governmental system of some sort. Those oral and ritual traditions, in turn, developed out of the work of artists who had experiences of their unconscious and were able to translate those experiences into stories and ritual acts which the community found valuable whether due to the authority of the "artist" or the shared recognition of the value of the unconscious probably understood as some variant of the spiritual realm.
To this extent we can find the evidence within today's religions of this long, organic process and in the dreams of people today the spontaneous re-invention of those same inspirational experiences.
I suspect we started out with magical thinking. There was a lot of phenomenon primitive people could observe but didn't have the advantage of scientific thinking. Links between cause and effect were imaginative. You have bad thoughts about someone, they die, good thoughts, they live. The ability to control the environment or outcome of a situation by thinking about it. Then we started using props, Like bones of dead people/animals or what was see as elements of nature, used for their similarities of what we were trying to influence. People were trying to figure out "reality" and bend it to their will.
When folks found that often things would not directly bend to their will they started thinking that maybe there existed opposing wills. That there was an intelligence behind natural phenomenon. That trees, rain and the wind, etc... had similar wills. If you could appease them, they would cooperate with your desires. These spirits began to take on human form.
We started to think these spirits had their own hierarchy. Spirits with greater power over nature. Tribes started putting their support behind whoever they saw as the more powerful spirits and elevated them to deities. By appeasing these deities in the proper manner one could get reality to work in their favor.
Eventually some men decided to test these ideas of cause and effect. To test the theories of magic, deities and track the results.
Magic, religion, science. Man's attempt to understand and control the world around him. IMO.
I don't think there is anything more sinister behind it but some of the more popular ideas about cause and effect have been put to sinister use.
If I can get you to believe such and such about cause and effect, I can control, manipulate your behavior.
Kharma, cause and effect.
Judgement day, cause and effect, etc...
nPeace
Veteran Member
I hope you don't mind if I add one of my own.
10. (Matthew 5:3) . . .Happy are those conscious of their spiritual need. . .
Just as there is physical in nature, there is spiritual. We see this from observation.
Just as it is a natural urge to satisfy physical needs (not meaning unnecessary things, but basic needs), there is a natural urge to satisfy our spiritual needs. This is inner.
Both contribute to man's overall happiness and well-being.
If both were continually, and completely satisfied, man would be complete and in harmony with the physical and spiritual natures that are (not meaning the junk that man creates that give him temporary enjoyment).
Evidently this is why we have religion.
...is what I believe.
This is clearly guesswork. There is no evidence of early humans holding belief in the supernatural. On the contrary, it appears their belief up to a mere 15 or 20 thousand years ago was in the physical animals and land that sustained them.
There is evidence of ancestor reverence as far back as 35 thousand years ago (actually Neanderthal, not human)
but it is a giant leap of faith to say ancestor and animal worship was seen as a supernatural god.
Behold, The creator designed another eternal life. Religion is the guide to happiness in the other permanent life.
Dell
Asteroid insurance?
Like nets were invented to catch fish so idealology of religions to catch spiritual minded people. (Jesus used this example... fishers of men.)
1. People want eternal life.
2. People feel a God must exist because there has to be a reason for everything.
3. People believe God is above all physics and can do anything or miracles.
4. People believe God must care for them.
5. Most People were raised in a patriotic influence of God and country. Im proud to be an American, God bless the USA.. etc...
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Or it bcould be we're all like monkeys, going tribe verses tribe.
There is some truth in this humans have evolved behavior, but we through spiritual evolution can rise above the tribal behavior of the ancients. but not by clinging to ancient paradigms.
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From what little I've read over the last 18 years or so seems to me, that it is a combination of 1, 5, 7-9. Especially, when looking at it from a neurological perspective. Humans are predisposed to seek patterns as a species, and it gives one a way to deal with some of the unfortunate disasters life can give us without due cause or explanation (weather, supernatural, sexual assault, trauma). Religious experiences also tend to light up a specific region in the brain, while deactivating others according to fMRI scans. And some have theorized evidence that some of the processes at work in the brain during religious experiences are tied to sexual arousal of the mind (not physical).
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Can someone come get their kid before he starts drawing the hammer and sickle everywhere please.
