When we look around the world, we see various religions.

Many people who leave one religion quickly replace it with another. It's kind of like how addicts will replace one addiction with another. Not a perfect analogy, but I think many people have seen it. For example, an alcoholic or drug addict gets sober and replace their addiction with another; smoking, s3x, food, etc.

So do humans have some deep-seated need to believe in something? There are not just the Abrahamic religions; Christianity, Islam, and Judaism, but several Eastern religions as well as indigenous religions.

Japan, before they imported Buddhism, had Shinto, which is very close to animism. There is debate as to whether they meet the definition of indigenous, of course. At any rate, they believed that "kami" inhabited all things; mountains, rivers, places, and even the forces of nature.

There are more religions; new religions, new religions, and religious cults. Many of these came into being on their own. They developed in isolation.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_religions_and_spiritual_traditions#

So this makes me wonder. If there are so many religions, does this mean that humans have a need for religion?

Thoughts?

I don't think it's religion and gods that humans need. I think it's what religion and gods represent-- which is all about humans rather than god. And, with another thread in mind, I do think there is a lot of FOMO involved as well as not only safety in numbers, but, superiority in numbers.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/20/2023 01:38PM by anybody.

No but religion has a need for humans.

It NEEDS "tithing" to operate... So we they cooperate!

I think many humans are wired for the kind of assurance religion provides. They need the (assumed) certainty that is not available in what we know of the universe so far.

Religion also triggers emotional responses. You see similarities between music performances and religion. The lights are lowered to provide a focal point of the performance, the rhythms of the music, the communal response of the audience. The audience goes on a journey of emotional response, shared by the rest of the audience.

Humans are wired this way. It is my opinion that this wiring is what helps humans cooperate and form societies. It just got hijacked for money and power along the way. People who respond strongly to these inputs are those who value religion more than other people it seems.

Hopefully we develop less harmful ways to stimulate and reward these people to achieve the fulfillment they need, but not waste their time and energy on fakery and money extraction.

Great post.

Religion is the glue that holds traditional societies together. It reinforces group bonds, shares if not shares individual and community fears, and enhances the willingness of the individual to sacrifice for the group.

Sometimes peoples abandon an old religion because their needs and fears change, shifting instead to a new religion as happened when Brahmanism suffered massive losses to Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism; or when Buddhism displaced Taoism and folk religion in China or animism and (largely) Shintoism in Japan; or when Islam spread through Central Asia at the expense of Zoroastrianism and Buddhism and Tengrism; or when Christianity displaced most of the European cults. Then as Nietzsche pointed out, sometimes it is God rather than the religion itself who loses favor--as in 19th century Europe--and is supplanted by new religions like nationalism, its cousin racism, and political ideology.

But the substitutes end up looking functionally like the religions they replaced. The fanaticism of Germany at Hitler rallies was highly religious in a functional sense, so too the cults of Mao and Stalin and the Kims. The same is true to a lesser extent of lesser community activities of the musical and sporting varieties you indicate.

And then sometimes you get the reactionary fusion of secular and religious cults. Iran was a highly secular society in the 1960s and 1970s, as was Pakistan and even Afghanistan. But the decline of faith in God left an absence in people's lives, an absence that was exacerbated by economic and political tensions and a new religion-cum-political movement is born: militant Islam, with its secular hostilities between Sunni and Shia; its xenophobia; and its fusion of state and religion. We've seen the same religion-cum-politics in the US over the last fifteen years and for similar reasons of economic distress and widespread anxiety and resentment. Why does this happen? Because people evolved with religion and most modern substitutes are not quite as satisfying.

https://iranprimer.usip.org/sites/default/files/2020-08/Women%20Movement/Mid%201970s.jpg

Gives you a lot to think about <shudder>



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/20/2023 03:56PM by anybody.

What happened in Iran at the end of the 1970s was an immense tragedy--and it extended to Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Afghanistan, women students at the Polytechnic University in Kabul:

https://image.glamourdaze.com/2015/08/Female-students-at-the-Polytechnical-University-in-Kabul-in-the-mid-1970s-Hulton-Archive.jpg

https://i.pinimg.com/550x/6c/c2/c7/6cc2c77ddedebebc000d18d0c7fb404b.jpg

Pakistan, a meeting of feminists and on a university campus, respectively:

https://s4.scoopwhoop.com/anj/pakistaniwomen_7/399957038.jpg

https://i.pinimg.com/originals/f3/5e/7c/f35e7c1b381da608cb413374c443f63a.jpg

All of this was ruined by economic troubles, wars, and the injection of massive Saudi funds into the most reprobate Islamic groups. . .

The marriage of politics and religion is profoundly dangerous--and it is not just the province of developing countries.

Lot's Wife Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> The marriage of politics and religion is
> profoundly dangerous--and it is not just the
> province of developing countries.

Indeed.

People really want Gilead, very scary.

I have friends, military and diplomatic brats, who lived in those countries in the 1960s and 1070s and say that life there was an absolute blast. It's difficult, if not impossible, to imagine how open and free those societies were before The Troubles.

Speaking of The Troubles, Ireland has had more than its fair share of of problems that largely split along sectarian lines, notably The Troubles in the late 20th century, and The Easter Rising in 1916.

And in the 1970s and 1980s there were bombings in Canada by Quebec Separatists, again, a split largely along sectarian lines. Canada came within a whisker of separating into two countries.

So it is not just Asia where this happens.

Yes, my capitalization of "The Troubles" was a reference to Ireland.


---------------

> So it is not just Asia where this happens.

That was what I meant when I wrote:

"The marriage of politics and religion is profoundly dangerous--and . . . not just the province of developing countries."

My allusion was to, among other places, the United States. As, I suspect, was yours.

Yes, if history is any indication, they do.

I don't know if human beings have so much a need for religion as a need for explanations. I don't notice this as much now, but I remember hearing myself and other youngsters in the day asking questions like: Why is the sky blue. Why do people hate each other. Why are there wars. Why does the sun rise and set.

Many of these questions have answers that are scientifically-based but not all parents know or believe them. In addition, religion with its simple explanations of good and evil, really appeals to our emotional needs, as the sub-thread above points out. And, of course, it is a way for political and other leaders to control human activity without having to hire a police force. ("If you don't do what I tell you, I will make sure you will have fire and brimstone in the hereafter," can be cited here.)

But ultimately, I think the need for explanations about the meanings of life and death are what drive most people to religions. It seems that we cannot accept the idea that life has no meaning beyond the meaning we give to it; and that death is the end of everything and that we as individuals will not exist after it has occurred; hence we make up stories to justify our own existance; our wants and needs; and what will happen to us after we die.

> But ultimately, I think the need for explanations
> about the meanings of life and death are what
> drive most people to religions. It seems that we
> cannot accept the idea that life has no meaning
> beyond the meaning we give to it; and that death
> is the end of everything and that we as
> individuals will not exist after it has occurred;
> hence we make up stories to justify our own
> existance; our wants and needs; and what will
> happen to us after we die.

That is a great passage. Scholars of Buddhism use similar logic to explain Buddhism's lightning-fast conquest of China. In terms of praxis and general ethos, Taoism and Buddhism are very similar; they both emphasize meditation as the key to emotional wellbeing.

Where they differ is in the question of an afterlife. Taoism is silent about that; the classics have zero to say about it. Buddhism, however, offers Samsara, the eternal cycle of life and reincarnation followed by an eventual and blissful union with ultimate reality through nirvana. That message gave people, commoners and elite alike, a much greater sense of comfort as well as a sense of direction and answers to many of the existential questions.

There is a profound, if not quite universal, human need for thought systems that unite people and give meaning to their lives.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/20/2023 07:37PM by Lot's Wife.

Lot's Wife Wrote:
> Where they differ is in the question of an
> afterlife. Taoism is silent about that; the
> classics have zero to say about it. Buddhism,
> however, offers Samsara, the eternal cycle of life
> and reincarnation followed by an eventual and
> blissful union with ultimate reality through
> nirvana.

Samsara - one of my favorite concepts. What was surprising, after growing up in Mormonism, is that Moksha is the ultimate goal because becoming a God is the ultimate goal in Mormonism.

Agreed.

The Tibetan Book of the Dead, for instance, puts gods and demons in the same rank: both are powerful spirits who try to draw the deceased soul away from the path through the cave that leads to liberation. The demons try to terrify people into losing their way whereas the gods are themselves deceived beings who entice souls towards earthly virtue, which is of course another form of bondage to mundane existence.

The question is whether the individual can pass beyond monsters and sirens, demons and gods, and retain his focus on the ultimate goal of individual extinction and union with the cosmos.

Mormonism is an earthly religion that promises a future of physicality, food, sex, and eternal ambition. The Indian religions are spiritual, teaching that the goal is liberation from the body.

Radically different.

Religion is to serve those in the church, including SOME members, and some outside the church.

It's also to Build Up Wealth in the past days!

1/2 HARM
1/2 GOOD

Hmmm

Take it or leave it.
I left it [for dead].

Religion is Dead!

That's what I said-

Did anybody hear me?

HELLO

Is anybody in here?
Is anybody out there?

I'm a human, and I speak for the humans: We have NO NEED of religion!

Does that answer your question?

I've observed that humans are very needful of patterns to use as they shape themselves into (what passes for) maturity.

The parents (or parental figures) usually lead and the children follow.

An oft-heard chant on my mission (translated): "I was born a Catholic, and I'll die a Catholic; I'm Catholic to the bone!"


"I done raised me some fine atheists!" the exmo Mexican hillbilly proudly proclaimed.


Humans have a need to belong, and it's no surprise that religion satisfied that need, but it may no longer be primary in that regard.


"Where do you post?" is getting to be more and more important!


    How big a loser am I
    that this site, RfM,
    is my primary port of
    entry to the Internet?

This human does not...

The first god, I have no doubt, was the god of thunder. And with no understanding of thunder and lightning and even less for nature and most likely terrified of it, primitive man was ripe for one of the more imaginative from his big-foreheaded group to assume that someone had to be making that crackling boom sound and throwing that jagged flame through the sky purposefully. From there it was a hop, skip, and a jump to an all-powerful being, and the idea of a god was born from fear of the unknown.


Before you know it, a more devious big-brained homo sapien seized the opportunity and claimed to have a connection to this deity—this god of thunder; claimed to have met him, knew all about him. And human nature being what it has always been, he was instantly getting gifts regularly as an incentive to be the intermediary between anyone and everyone who wanted a favor from said god. At first, humans just wanted to get good crops, but then you know how people are. The sky became the limit for the favors they sought.

So this lucky devil, the intermediary, would never have to go hunting and gathering again if he played his sticks and stones right. The middleman had invented himself. The bamboozle known as God was born.

Others seized on the idea. Customized their own god.

Religion spread like a fungus that had no cure as it became the FAMILIAR which humans are so comfortable with, need, crave. At some point we had cathedrals and steepled churches and mosques and temples. Yea, even Mormon temples. And cute outfits to go along with them. Weird pointy hats, and red slippers and green aprons and rings to kiss.

These edifices tended to lend legitimacy soley through grand architectural statement. It's amazing what a flying buttress and few key-stoned gothic arches will do to shore up a wacky belief system. No wonder Russ has become a Temple Czar. He gets it.

In the end it is one big security blanket.

    Humans reason, as in linking cause and effect.  That's all "reasoning" is.  We think we're hot stuff because we can "learn" that heat burns, edges cut, and friction can be both good and bad.

    Humans most often reason very poorly: "If I do *A* and *B*, then the result is *C*!" From this prototype arose applying leeches to cure what ails you and forbidding women to run marathons lest their uteruses fall out...  

    Think of all the folk wisdom handed down in your family that you (hopefully) know was pure gibberish.  The one I remember most is, 'Don't go outside at night with wet hair or you'll get pneumonia!'

    Cause and effect...  A young man goes fishing, and on his path, a 'different' looking colored rock catches his eye, so he picks it up and carries it with him.  That day he catches many fish. Naturally, he attributes it to his magic stone...

    It's all about seeing a Cause and determining, reasoning, the Effect.  ...oh, yeah, along with a good imagination!

What is curious about all this nonsense is your own self-proclaimed inability to doubt an elaborate made-up story for which there is no evidence. Perhaps lightning was the initial cause of religion, or the sun, or the moon, or the desire for a successful hunt; or perhaps merely a desire to understand something as basic as life and death and wanting to believe in immortality.
__________________________________________

"Before you know it, a more devious big-brained homo sapien seized the opportunity and claimed to have a connection to this deity—this god of thunder . . . "

COMMENT: And then, before you knew it, these big-brained *homo sapiens* started making up stories about all manner of things of which they had no knowledge, including 'scientific' stories about the origin of the universe (e.g. Cosmology), the nature of ultimate elementary 'particles,' (e.g. String Theory), and the origin of life. (e.g. the Primordial soup) And, of course, more and more stories came forth about primitive people, what they did and thought, and the origin of their belief in God. Such stories, in large part, were intended to ridicule religious faith and make modern 'enlightened' *homo sapiens* feel superior.

Based upon your post, I wonder if perhaps a more relevant question for this thread is whether exMormons have a need for atheism. Your post seems to suggest that very thing--not to mention the lack of 'critical thinking' by any definition you care to choose.

After all, maybe in the end atheism (at least for some storytellers) is just "one big security blanket." An emotional security supporting their conclusion as to the falsity of Mormonism, and perhaps for some the security of 'knowing' that there is no ultimate accountability.

Nonsense? Ha ha.

Aren't you able to spot a bit of a fun way to look at things?

Did you really think I was espousing that as for sure the real deal?

Think of it more like a skit on SNL before you start with the usual judging of the"critical thinking skills" of others.

However,Henry. Still possible that is the way it all went down. We weren't there and only have bits of twisted history to go by.

And what I said about grand edifices? That's good.

"Religion spread like a fungus that had no cure as it became the FAMILIAR which humans are so comfortable with, need, crave."

COMMENT: That doesn't sound like just "a bit of fun way to look at things," without intending to be an argument as to how you actually *do* view the matter. And even if your account is intended as a general hypothetical, your malicious point and conclusion clearly are not.

Malicious? hahahahahahahaha Whoosh!

Reading Henry's above comments, I was reminded of another comment by another poster made (I think) some 10 or so years ago on this very Board (Wow! I've been around here *that* long? Yes and longer!) What this poster said (and I'm doing this from memory--I can't even remember the poster's Board name) was that the basic difference between Christians and non-Christian scientists when it came to the belief in a god was what one saw in the empty void surrounding death. According to the poster, the non-Christian would lookat this void and say, "See. There is nothing there. There is no evidence of anything being there so there must be nothing there."

To which the Christian would reply: "But there is something there. We don't have access to it, but there is definitely something in that voind which we cannot see."

While I (now) side with the non-Christian viewpoint in this dispute, there is, in fact, no real way to determine the truthfullness of either side in this debate that would satisfy the other. So all we can do is to agree to disagree with each other on this point and go on living our lives as best we can.

"Reading Henry's above comments, I was reminded of another comment by another poster made (I think) some 10 or so years ago on this very Board (Wow! I've been around here *that* long? Yes and longer!) What this poster said (and I'm doing this from memory--I can't even remember the poster's Board name) was that the basic difference between Christians and non-Christian scientists when it came to the belief in a god was what one saw in the empty void surrounding death. According to the poster, the non-Christian would lookat this void and say, "See. There is nothing there. There is no evidence of anything being there so there must be nothing there."

COMMENT: It may be worthwhile to first note the obvious. By "see" you are not talking about vision, but a mental event, somewhat like an intuition. In addition, the 'void' in this context is not strictly spatial but encompasses a non-spatial reality that is not apparent to the human senses. (As, for example, a platonic mathematical reality.)
_________________________________________

"To which the Christian would reply: "But there is something there. We don't have access to it, but there is definitely something in that void which we cannot see."

COMMENT: Yes. for the theist, there is a reality beyond our sense experience, for a non-theist (or better a traditional scientific materialist) there is not. (Note that this is reminiscent of the rationalist-empiricist debate of the 16th century.)

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/rationalism-empiricism/

_________________________________________

"While I (now) side with the non-Christian viewpoint in this dispute, there is, in fact, no real way to determine the truthfullness of either side in this debate that would satisfy the other. So all we can do is to agree to disagree with each other on this point and go on living our lives as best we can."

COMMENT: Well, not so fast. Scientific materialism has taken us well beyond what we can 'see' empirically. In the 'void' we now have a reality that is teeming with particles and fields that are non-material 'entities' and that have causal effects, including bringing about the world of subatomic particles, their related fields, and matter generally, and in cosmology the universe itself. This represents the 'nothingness' of modern cosmology and physics, which of course is not really 'nothingness' at all, but rather a non-material 'something' the ontological nature of which is a mystery.

So, one thing the theist can say is that science has vindicated the claim that there is a *metaphysical* reality within 'the void' that generates *physical* reality and that is beyond human understanding. Of course, that does not mean that such a reality is God, but it is a bit closer.

This brings us back to the anthropic arguments discussed in the other thread, where the origin of the universe is deemed to be either through some mysterious wholly natural "nothing," or by an equally, or perhaps more mysterious designer. Pick your poison.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Universe_from_Nothing.

Or put another way, Jerry Seinfeld was a prophet with his "It's not a lie if you believe it."

We live in a subject-object false dichotomy foisted upon us by language, considered by some to be the forbidden fruit. One can only know good from evil within an illusion where subject and object appear separate.

The world is both subjective and objective at the same time. That is difficult to conceptualize without a God, a mind hack that objectifies subjective existence. The fly in the atheist ointment is that miracles do actually occur in the lives of believers such as TBMs. Taking up atheism requires a denial that those mystical experiences "didn't really happen". Living is easy with eyes closed, but I know what I saw. Exmos have an emotional need to disbelieve so it's human nature to "bend reality" to make atheism fit. It's their last refuge of sanity.

As weird as Mormonism is, the tenets of physical materialism are even more absurd. I do love putting down the Lord's anointed, but who am I comparing them to? The whole world is a Mad Hatter's tea party. We are all three sheets to the wind, caught up in our own stories. Those pretending to be sober are passed out on the floor. We are lucky to be able to step over them.

The Kool Aid of religion is a matter of taste. Perhaps I don't like religion because I have no taste. But still, I must acknowledge the miracles of life and the obvious (to me) mind effects that are nonlocal in both time and space. Secular humanism leaves those gaps unfilled. Not just gaps, but entire walls. They knock on air and make a knocking sound with their mouth. See? Walls. Yeah, Ima have to hold on to the God of the gaps until you all come up with something credible.

"The fly in the atheist ointment is that miracles do actually occur in the lives of believers such as TBMs. Taking up atheism requires a denial that those mystical experiences "didn't really happen".

Uh no. As an atheist that certainly doesn't hold true for me. Of course miracles happened. The unexplainable happened. Atheists aren't denying that. Did you go to an atheist convention and hear that from the pulpit? :) That is just what theists would like to believe, need to believe that we deny. Not true.

There are many definition of of miracle including "mystical experiences".

Like,

mir·a·cle
noun

"a surprising and welcome event that is not explicable by natural or scientific laws and is therefore considered to be the work of a divine agency."

As an atheist I know these happen all the time. However, since when this occurs I also know that though many humans ascribe what they cannot explain to a divine agency, I also know that many inexplicable occurrances may have a cause that humans simply are not able to explain yet but actually does have an explanation outside of some God doing it. Nobody knows!

I also don't rule out God. Just haven't had a solid reason to include one inside the circle.

How about: "a highly improbable or extraordinary event, development, or accomplishment that brings very welcome consequences."

You see. I enjoy those as much as anybody. I don't have a need to always know how they happened to enjoy them. Maybe God did them but I didn't see him do them and he didn't leave a calling card. So for now I will just enjoy the miracle and let others, yea even the religious, enjoy theirs.


One more:
"Miracle, a noun meaning “amazing or wonderful occurrence," comes from the Latin miraculum “object of wonder." Dig way back and the word derives from smeiros, meaning "to smile," which is exactly what you do when a miracle happens."

Nice.

In the end. Please don't tell me how I think or feel about things.

Now THAT'S a temple!

What man will do for their god!

No.

Cultural anthropology claims that religion's function is to, explain the unexplainable.

And every culture that I know of has a religion of some type. Even if it's a tribal culture that believes in the spirit of the forest or some such thing.

Humans are wired to seek answers. And where there are no answers, religon steps in to make answers. It doesn't matter if it's complete BS, as long as it answers things that can't be answered any other way. Such as, where did we come from? What happens when we die?

Yep.

And sometimes political movements serve the same function, with a prophet or messiah as leader and a vision of eventual heaven on earth for motivation.

Yes.

Humans like WASTE!

Wasting time...
Wasting food...
Wasting money...

°Wasting away°

Humans need each other
Religion acts like the other

Religion takes what people give
But doesn't always give back

After keeping much for itself
To store up riches in the past days

It's a racket

Something about fish and bicycles.