I know people who are very intelligent, very knowledgeable, and very religious, so I don’t doubt that it’s possible to have all these qualities at the same time. But I wonder how they do it. And for Dopers who have all of these qualities, I’d love to hear how you do it.
Here’s my thinking- from a good reading of the fields of study in the thread title, we know that at the very least the vast majority of human religious beliefs throughout history came about from a combination of factors, but chiefly these two-
The desire to understand the world around them.
The desire to control and manipulate the behavior of the people around them.
So the vast majority of religions, living and extinct, have or had a cosmology that attempts to make sense of the universe- how it came about, and how it functions. And they have or had rules and guidelines for human behavior.
So knowing this (or tell me if I’m wrong about my assumptions above), how does an intelligent and knowledgeable person get the sense that any particular religion is NOT actually about the two factors above, but is in fact Truth revealed from on High?
I’ve known several Orthodox Jews who would fit that description. I don’t know how they do it exactly, but their religious aspects seemed to be based on faith and a lack of a need to question it. It does remind me of someone who said that the appeal of Judaism (and I think this applies to other religions) was all the rules and likened it to the popularity of baseball and it’s complex rule system. Talking about (or arguing about) the rules has more appeal to some baseball fans than watching the game does.
Looking at the universe as a whole, one has to realize how limiting and small past ideas of deities are.
IMHO the ¨truth revealed from on High¨ would had made repeatedly the point that we are not the ¨kings of creation¨ but that we can be part of the eventual development of more advanced beings that will inherit the universe.
Of course, being a teapot agnostic, I do know that it is very unlikely that a deity has set up a plan to make it so, but if that would be the case, then it seems to me that such a deity would not look forward to create a faith based on the idea that we are just the middle men.
I don’t know how much of this is verifiable fact as opposed to theorizing. It would be difficult to track down the origin of any particular specific religious belief (as opposed to “the vast majority of human religious beliefs throughout history”), unless it was modern enough to have a specific documented origin (like the beliefs of Scientology).
I don’t think those two questions quite cover it. I see religion as more of a coping mechanism and a basis for accepting decisions we often make or decide not to make. If I make a decision based on core beliefs I can live with the results easier than I can than if I base my decision on my own logic. I think many of us humans need this to help maintain our sanity.
Well, some get it, so they say, by way of a religious experience, a personal epiphany/theophany where God really does directly and personally address them from on High.
In fact, it’s an old assumption of Christianity or at least Protestant Christianity, not so much talked about any more, that anyone can do that. Everyone Christian or not has a “light,” a direct line to God by which one’s conscience is consciously or unconsciously informed, that’s where the conscience comes from, it’s how we know right from wrong. That is why missionaries to Africa in the 19th Century were so utterly horrified and astonished by the behavior of the Africans. Where is their light?! Why do they practice such violent and such sexual barbarities?! The missionaries just couldn’t account for it and did not have the habit of mind to attribute it to cultural differences.
The nature of man is that he wants to know about the universe and his place in it. The glory of religion is that it answers those questions. That is why religion is so powerful and pervasive, because it fuffills an inborn need. As Pascal said "There is a God-shaped vacuum in the heart of every person, and it can never be filled by any created thing. It can only be filled by God, made known through Jesus Christ.”
God put that curiosity and hunger in each of us to draw us to him. Some people try to fill that vacuum with other things, but to me the fact that everyone is drawn to those questions shows the planning of God.
You’re wrong about your assumptions. Like Thudlow Boink and Honey Badger, I see no evidence that religions arises chiefly from the motivations that you ascribe it to.
Concerning “the desire to under the world around us”, that seems quite obviously wrong. Reading the Book of Job, it does not offer us an understanding of the events in the world around us, but rather a powerful literary statement that there is no such understanding. The theme of the Book of Job, if we wish to use that term, is that the universe we inhabit is wild and uncontrollable and that no explanation can be offered for what we see taking place. A person can be good and righteous and still have many bad things happen to him. We do not understand why this is.
As for “control and manipulation”, I again don’t see it. Anyone who joined the early Christians was joining a tiny minority who faced aggression and persecution from the government of the Roman Empire. They did not get any control or authority; they were signing themselves up for abuses and possible execution. They did it because they believed that Christianity was righteous and true, though it obviously wouldn’t bring them any control over anyone else.
Well, something like the book of Job could well be a response to (or result of) the desire to understand the world around us without being a fulfillment of that desire.
Obviously I understand that individual adherents, for the most part, don’t join a religion for “control and manipulation”, but because they believe their religion is righteous and true. That phrase comes from my belief in how religions come about and come to be ingrained in various societies and cultures.
You disagree- what do you think is the source of most religions? Or does it vary wildly? I suppose religious people would probably feel that their religion had a righteous and true origin, while other religions were at best a gross misrepresentation of the nature of God(s)'s Creation.
Yep… Some of the very smartest, wisest, and best educated people I know are religious.
Now, they’re the ones who are intelligently religious! They eschew bigotry, skip over foolish literalist interpretations (they all believe in evolution!) and they all are liberal with respect to other religions. They engage in religion as a personal matter, because it comforts them. It makes them feel better about themselves and the cosmos.
To me, it just doesn’t work. But to them, it does. It serves the purpose. It also provides church fellowship and societal reinforcement. They like sitting in pews and singing psalms. To me, that’s one of the most odious possible wastes of my time!
When religion is at its best, then we should think of it as being like personal preferences in flavors or in music. You like hot chili and heavy metal rock. I like mild chili and Vivaldi. There isn’t any “wrong” here.
When religion is at its worst, then we have to treat it more harshly.
I was going to write pretty much this. I know a number of very intelligent, educated religious folks.
It gives them a sense of belonging. It gives them a social group to connect with. It gives them an outlet for their philanthropic efforts. It creates a “clan” that isn’t provided by their lifestyle. It provides a safety net in times of hardship. For many of these people, it seems based less about worshipping god, and more about the community that goes with it. The worship seems a combination of a holdover of how they were raised, and the price of admission.
Because religion also functions as a balm for life’s troubles, so one might not accept your emphasis. Because intelligence involves manipulation of symbolic information, and the main religions have plenty to think about. You just have to accept a few of their assumptions and off you go. Because many were brought up to believe that certain assumptions are immoral to question (to a greater or lesser extent) and most understand that amorality is a slippery slope. Because religious doctrine is constructed so as not to be falsifiable.
The Cosmos - either Mindless Meaningless Matter in Motion somehow developed mindful beings who need to create meaning to enhance our existence or there was Mind & Meaning all along? I find it much easier to hold to the latter- that Mind & Meaning is what we call God.
The Jews - somehow a people emerged promoting Monotheism & a tribal purity code that grows into a workable universal ethical system, in spite of all attempts to oppress, subsume, or annihilate them- until now they, even those no longer holding either the faith or the code, hold a far more prominent place in the world than their numbers would warrant.
Jesus and His “Agency”- Out of this people, a man emerged who convinced a handful of followers that he was the fullest Revelation of that God, that the Agency which emerged from his message took on & dominated the Empire in which it was born, and went on to dominate half the world, and profoundly influence the other half, till even cultures & faiths which oppose the Agency still show some respect, and even reverence, for the man.
I would certainly be willing to investigate this if you wanted to offer any specific sources. The reading that I’ve done does not support the same conclusions. Specifically Huston Smith’s book The World’s Religions looks at seven major religions (Hinduism, Buddhism, Confucianism, Taoism, Islam, Judaism, and Christianity, as well as tribal religions) and does not support the notion that any originated from either a desire for understanding of strictly physical phenomena or for social control. Some religious traditions may have included such things, but that’s not a proof that they originated for those reasons.
In ancient times and in all primitive societies, there was agreement upon the existence of a spiritual realm of beings in addition to the physical realm. Broadly speaking, religion is how mankind has understood, interpreted, and interacted with the spiritual realm.
During debates about religion with non-believers, I’ve heard a lot of theories, stories, and explanations for how and why the first primitive and tribal religions came into being. As for my own thoughts on the matter, I do not know how the first primitive and tribal religions came into being. I was not present at their inception, nor was anyone else. There can be endless theorizing about the matter but no definite answers. Likewise for religions such as Hinduism, whose origins are lost in history.
As for those religions whose origins are a matter of historical record, such as Confucianism, Buddhism, Christianity, and Islam, all seem to have begun in a similar manner. One individual person who had remarkable vision, powerful personality, and persuasiveness began teaching a doctrine. Some of the people who heard it became totally convinced that it was true and became followers. They, in turn, convinced further followers. In that way the religion spread.
Some skeptics point out that with modern religions such as Mormonism and Scientology, where we have vastly more solid historical facts about their beginnings, it’s easy to see them as transparent schemes to take money, sex, and otherwise take advantage of followers. They imply that if we had the full story of the origins of ancient religions, we’d be able to see that their origins were similarly corrupt. Maybe so. On the other hand, it may be the case that there have been no high-quality religions founded in modern times for the same reason that there haven’t been major new developments in Euclidean geometry in modern times. Everything worth knowing was already know in ancient times.
