I hate to suggest the nuclear option, but… what about…
…scientology?
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This is what confuses me - people everywhere have all kinds of rituals, and many are not even aware that this is what they are. What difference does it make if somebody uses the word “religious” to describe them? Why do many people buy and sell things which aren’t needed? Exchange money instead of dividing resources? Eat crisps? Always wash their hair a certain way in the shower? These don’t seem to usually be, strictly speaking, practical decisions. Practically everything that artists do to realize their work can be considered ritual. What crazy beliefs are required? Simply the belief that “this is the way this is done”. Some people might complain that this is not very “spiritual”, but this I think is a real baseline of what ritual is in daily terms. The way they stir their coffee. What they say when they greet people. The kinds of foreplay they engage in.
So, if everybody has rituals, how does one improve them? Optimize them? How does one do this consciously to make the best, most thoughtful, appropriate rituals they can? When a person does this, they might learn about themselves, their life, their circumstances. It can be a liberating process from doing the same old thing automatically, with no meaning, for no reason.
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What about those who deliberately conduct rituals for or pray to gods they don’t believe in, how are those reconciled in your categories of religious activity? Like jerwin alluded to, in some traditions, doing/saying the right thing is a ritual in itself, and it’s not considered relevant if the participants invest belief in the process. Or, alternately, disciplines such as chaos magick which use a sort of meta-belief to fabricate deities for specific circumstances - because they consider this a useful process - even without ever believing in such deities in the usual sense? Or believing fervently in a deity for a pre-arranged length of time, such as a month, and not believing in it after this time?
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Yeah, a lot more “Frosty the Blow-man” and a lot less “carbonated Gatorade”.
Exactly. As I said at the very start, you are confusing Jesus with Saul of Tarsus. I suggest you stop digging.
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The Enlightenment was 18th century France, very recent.
Your perception is flawed. I ask why, if something is at best neutral and at worst harmful, it is so persistent. This is a sociological question. Why is murder persistent? That isn’t a particularly difficult question; anthropologists have been studying male violence (which is most murders) for a long time, and come up with explanations. The difference is that, with the exception of a minority, murder is perceived as a bad thing and society attempts to stop it; while, again with the exception of a minority, religion is perceived to be a good thing, even atheists create godless religions like humanism, and society encourages it with tax breaks and status.
I am not trying to win an argument by “logic” but by content. If you make a false analogy between A and B and then use it to say “so A = B”, that is not logic because your premises are invalid. See any introductory logic textbook.
Very recent was just a second ago, potato.
I’ll put my Jesus spade away and pick up my enlightenment shovel then.[quote=“kupfernigk, post:127, topic:49734”]
The Enlightenment was 18th century France
[/quote]
Incorrect.
“The Age of Enlightenment (or simply the Enlightenment or Age of Reason) is an era from the 1650s to the 1780s”.
“in most European countries”.
Taking categorizing each flavor of religion and belief system out of the equation for a second as that seems to be causing some hangups in conveying my point.
What I believe is that you can’t hold a belief in something imaginary and unfounded for any length of time, unless you engage in cognitive behaviors that enable such a belief to persist. The enabling cognitive behaviors are the repression of: critical thinking, free thinking, questioning/challenging/and refining of ideas, the scientific method, many forms of logical analysis, etc. because those would challenge and uproot any belief that is unfounded. It is fairly simple and not that far fetched to understand this idea.
Now where I upset some folks was pointing out that many major organized religions encourage these exact cognitive behaviors of thought repression, because they are holding onto beliefs which are unfounded or which are logically contradicted or for which there is no evidence, so those exact sorts of repressions are required and mandatory to hold onto such beliefs. They are required to believe that an imaginary being is real for example. These sorts of cognitive behaviors at the extreme is the root of fundamentalism (what triggered me to mention it), and at its least extreme is still responsible for a host of issues, climate change denial is a great example of a less extreme consequence.
The cognitive biases are only required for the duration of preserving any unfounded belief, the belief ending is a good sign that some internal questioning and challenging of ideas has occurred.
I am for systems that encourage questioning, challenging of ideas, free thinking, systematic exploration of understandings and observations, rational thinking, logical thinking, etc.
My issue is with beliefs that require the suppression of any of these. Not all beliefs or religions do, but many modern organized religions do, one indicator that a belief or religion probably does is if there is a fundamental faction.
Hopefully that helps clarifies what my thoughts are regardless if one agrees with them or not. cheers.
I’ll just leave this here:
Civilisation has been around for at least 5000 years with recognisable religious practices, and on that scale the Enlightenment is very recent. Geologically,the Holocene (very recent) period is about 12000 years old.
Use your fork in the leftBlasphemous. You can't trust a left-handed fork user. That's against my rituals. Therefore it is wrong and to be condemned and hated :grin:
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Are you edging your way toward an argument from antiquity?
My French bias is showing, I fear. #jesuisdiderot.
From a source other than Wikipedia:
“The Enlightenment has been defined in many different ways, but at its broadest was a philosophical, intellectual and cultural movement of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.”
Wikipedia is not normative you know. You may say that I choose a different definition from yours, but calling me wrong for disagreeing with you is part of your modus operandi. Here’s a clue; the world is shades of gray, and not in a BDSM sense, while you want to see it in black and white.
Theologians will demolish that one pretty quickly. It’s a somewhat 18th century notion (“the supreme being”). You won’t get very much support for it in reality.
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Except from millions of practicing theologians in the US, who believe exactly that. Religious scholars may not actually believe in what tens of thousands (if not more) pastors teach, but that doesn’t make any difference to the populous who believes religious leaders, and fears people with book learnin’.
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I was wrong on the Jesus quote, you were wrong on the Age of Enlightenment.
I suggest you stop digging.
Well then, my apologies. Your post, quoted above, looked like an attempt at argument.
My guess is a mix of reasons including social control and cheap psychotherapy.
As a Kansan, I’d like to say John Brown was a crazy son of a bitch, but he is our crazy son of a bitch.
Here he is in the capitol building.
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