Thread: The Purpose of Religion

Originally Posted by Belisarius

The people I know who are most religious are very emotional and most of the very emotional people I know are very religious. Maybe we need to find a new religion, one that takes into account the emotional pressures of modern life and gives our emotional selves a sense of purpose and direction.

We have one already--Scientology.

Originally Posted by Mes Tarrant

I don't either. But no one is going to openly beleive in it because it was created to ridicule religion.

That doesn't seem to be a problem.

Originally Posted by Moonbeam

That doesn't seem to be a problem.

You know people who believe in the FSM?

Originally Posted by Mes Tarrant

You know people who believe in the FSM?

No, I meant not a problem because Scientology was a religion made up for a bet; kind of the same thing.

Originally Posted by Moonbeam

No, I meant not a problem because Scientology was a religion made up for a bet; kind of the same thing.

Ahh yes. I suppose it's only a matter of time before someone takes a joke seriously (again).

Big bang is pretty creationist, if you ask me. That's one reason people can hang onto Genesis.

In my opinion, some aspects of religion are not aoubt explaining stuff. It's about giving order to society. The Ten Commandments, so to speak. "If you do this, you burn in hell." It's a way of keeping the people in order. If people don't know what controls thunder and what makes animals different, they'll believe and follow these laws, despite their self-serving ways.

Today, it still exists because of the afterlife. We can't explain what happens after death. The Ten Commandments are still as spellbinding as ever, for that reason alone.

In the olden days, religion=order. Today, religion=comfort. In politics religion=bogus controversy.

Originally Posted by Abra

Big bang is pretty creationist, if you ask me. That's one reason people can hang onto Genesis.

In my opinion, some aspects of religion are not aoubt explaining stuff. It's about giving order to society. The Ten Commandments, so to speak. "If you do this, you burn in hell." It's a way of keeping the people in order. If people don't know what controls thunder and what makes animals different, they'll believe and follow these laws, despite their self-serving ways.

Today, it still exists because of the afterlife. We can't explain what happens after death. The Ten Commandments are still as spellbinding as ever, for that reason alone.

In the olden days, religion=order. Today, religion=comfort. In politics religion=bogus controversy.

I can agree with a lot of what you're saying, but I wouldn't write religion off as simply fairy tales and mechanisms of control. Religious symbols provide people with handholds on the human condition, including but not limited to mortality. Religions, and some symbol sets or belief systems we may not view as religions, serve as a UI for engaging life, the universe and everything. I don't see them as something to be shaken off or supplanted so much as refined.

Does a recently made-up religion give us "hand-hold on the human condition"? (Whatever that means.) Or does it have to be one made up a long time ago?

That is a rhetorical question. Everything you say is so meaningless. You might as well get a random word generator to write your posts, they would make as much sense.

No offense.