We know the most probable answer to this question, though. It’s not a comfortable thing to think about, but the overwhelming weight of the evidence tells us the answer.
Choosing some incorrect answer based on random bullshit or some memetic virus doesn’t mean you aren’t screwing up.
Now for the OP. I disagree that religion is fundamentally about ignorance, and other posters have given the real problems quite nicely.
Think of creationists. The masses may not accept evolution because they are ignorant of what evolution says. But the leaders of the creationist movement are not ignorant one little bit. I think rather that their faith is so strong, and so misplaced, that they fear that one little chink in it from accepting reality will make the whole thing crumble.
They may be right. But it isn’t ignorance.
They’re obviously ignorant about the real math behind optimal decision making. They are ignorant about rational thought - because if they understood it, they wouldn’t be acting like idiots. Their worldview doesn’t let them see that the religion they have so much ‘faith’ in is just a memetic virus, no different than the HIV virus or a virus that infects computers via floppy disks. More like ransomware, actually, since the religion is active malware that tries to propagate itself at the expense of it’s followers.
Believing in religion is like being a gambler in Vegas who doesn’t believe in odds or math. Sure, the experts in math will also lose to the house advantage, but it’ll take a lot longer.
How do you get from “claims they saw” to “evidence they saw”?
CMC fnord!
Don’t forget hope too.
Many today are not literalists, but disagree with you on other parts including the dating. You were on this thread two years ago when this was covered, hope you’ll refresh your memory or has your mind not changed? After Darwin’s On the Origin of Species was released, it set off a more rabid type of literalist, but earlier editions of the encyclopedia Britannica in the 1700’s were taking the Noah story literally. Thomas Brodie says the 1500’s is when literal thought exploded and that goes for Protestants and Catholics.
Maybe. But maybe they are so scared of death that they are willing to eschew rationality in order to not face it. Or maybe they get a kick from being the only ones who are right about the universe, so the rest of us are damned.
Good propagandists are quite rational, and they rationally spew irrational dogma in order to lead the sheeple. Johnson, one of the worst of them, was a law professor at Berkeley. You have to think he can be rational when he wants to be.
Don’t underestimate these people.
It’s more than a fear of the unknown. That’s how you get stories of spirits that rule the winds and trees. It’s fear of death (which is also an unknown). From the time that humanity gained enough self-awareness to realize that we were going to die, we’ve tried to come up with comforting stories for ourselves to take that edge of fear off. You like to think that grammaw is sitting up in a cloud, watching down over you, not rotting in the ground with worms crawling through her intestines. You like to think that you will be reunited with your loved ones, not just join them in oblivion.
And that is the weapon. Once you have accepted an afterlife, and you have accepted conditions to enter that after life, you have rules and oppression. Some of those rules were kinda useful from a social standpoint. “Don’t kill people, god doesn’t like it”, isn’t really a rational argument, but it is one that works on bronze age cultures. The problem is is that you can with just as much authority say, “don’t be gay, god doesn’t like it”, and from the religious moral standpoint, there is no difference between a murderer and a homosexual.
Widespread literacy and lay people actually reading the bible for themselves didn’t start until that same time period. Until then, people were just told by the learned priests what he needed to know and believe. It did not need to comport with the bible, as it wasn’t like anyone could check on it. The bible wasn’t even translated into common languages until the 1500’s.
Again, how do you know? What’s your actual evidence for this theory? Many religions (e.g. Judaism) don’t seem to be centered around an afterlife.
As another example, when I went to Hebrew school we studied the Bible and we also had a “history” book. That started with Abram. No one claimed that the Flood happened or that the Creation story was literal - but they did claim the true existence of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. You can get along fine without the Flood but with them, and without the Covenant, Judaism becomes secular, that is created by people, not God.
I am not a jewish scholar by any means, but I am under the impression, and a quick google research confirms, that the Jewish faith does believe in an afterlife in which you are punished or rewarded for your actions in life.
Centered around, maybe not. But it is there, they do believe that their afterlife will be better for them if they are good (following the teachings and commandments) than if they are bad (ignoring the teachings and commandments).
They have extensive laws governing what you can and cannot do, as well as what you must do, in order to fulfill their end of the covenant with god. The consequences of not following those laws is being punished in the afterlife.
IANAJ, but from what I have read, from (what Christians call) the Old Testament to threads like If Jews don’t believe in an afterlife, what’s the motivation?, I haven’t seen reward/punishment in the afterlife as a major motivating factor for following the Jewish Law, let alone being the origin of it.
So no, I don’t think this counts as evidence that religion comes from fear of death.
Not to single you out or pick on you, but I find it ironic that so many people deride religion for its lack of evidence, but then seem totally not to care about backing up the statements they make about religion with evidence.
You say that, and then you use a sd thread as a cite? That’s not ironic to you at all?
I don’t know who is considered to be an authority on jewish matters, but every source I look up, says that they believe in an afterlife. It’s not as descriptive with the pearly gates and all as the christian mythology, but it is part of their beliefs.
I didn’t want to try to cite, because it really would come as a google glurge, as, like I said, I don’t know who would be considered to be the most authoritative on the subject, but I’m not seeing any that indicate that here is not an afterlife (title of your cite SD thread notwithstanding).
I’ll go ahead and glurge out the places I came across, if you come across anything that is more definitive that says “no jews do not believe in an afterlife”, go ahead.
[URL=“https://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/life-after-death/”]
https://www.haaretz.com/jewish/features/.premium-1.638100
https://reformjudaism.org/judaism-what-believed-happen-someone-after-they-die
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/afterlife-in-judaism
http://www.momentmag.com/is-there-life-after-death/
Anyway, I’m sure I could go on, but I don’t see a point. You will need to cite that jews do not believe in an afterlife. I will admit that my cites are not highly researched and rigorous, but you have offered zero.
Religion is a form of organized superstition, nothing more or less. Superstition can be useful in deciding which choices to make in case one has a difficult time making decisions – can’t decide which route to take? Don’t take the one with the black cat – but some people take it way too seriously.
You’re missing the point. The point is not whether Jews believe in an afterlife—the point is whether that’s the motivation for (and consequence of) their law. And, more broadly, whether the Jewish religion “comes from the fear of death,” as you claimed.
Judaism has speculated about the afterlife: there’s talk of something like the Christian Heaven, something like Catholic Purgatory, and even reincarnation. My own mother, a lifelong Jew, did not know any of this, and did not know what to say when someone once asked her what Jews believe about the afterlife. That’s how far from central to Judaism the afterlife is.
Religion has inspired great works of art, music and literature. You don’t get that from dodging black cats and not walking under ladders.
This is a very facile view of religion. Evolution and the Big Bang are perfectly consistent with my religious beliefs. Why would you offer them up as examples of not being a believer?
They do believe that they will be rewarded for being good, and punished for being bad, in the afterlife. That’s what every cite i posted there said. They aren’t as strong on it as some other religions, but if you are going to keep claiming that they think that how well they follow abrahamic law in this life has nothing to do with how they get treated in the after life, you are going to need to cite that.
Now, to be fair, they also believed that god had alot to do with the secular world, and that some of those punishments and rewards may come in this life, and that if you were really bad, then not only you, but your descendants would be punished, but every source I’ve seen indicates that they have as much, or more, concern over receiving their just rewards in the after life than over the present life.
What motivation do you think that bronze age farmers and herders had to follow the commandments that moses brought down from the mountain?
Any case, i don’t see your point. That some of jewish faith do not take the after life as seriously as some christians does not mean that using the afterlife is not used as a reward/punishment for things done in this life to keep people in line.
Do you deny that “https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinners_in_the_Hands_of_an_Angry_God” is a way of keeping people in line out of a fear of punishment in the next life?
You are focusing on a modern interpretation of an evolved and tamed version of an early prototype religion to dismiss the use of it, and later religions to maintain social order.
Did I say that understanding the big bang and evolution were exclusive to those who do not have strong beliefs? Nope, so your question indicates a very facile view of my statement.
There are those whose beliefs supersede secular sciences, and they are the ones who deny the big bang, and evolution. Do you deny that these people exist? They do not pick and choose what parts of the bible that they will believe, and which parts of the bible are more of a metaphor, and which parts of the bible they just rather not talk about. Those are the “true believers” (and I even put that in scare quotes in the post you quoted) that I am talking about.
Finally, the church that you follow, the Catholic church, has accepted these things, so it is okay for you to accept them. If they hadn’t, if they had the same view on evolution as they do on birth control, you would not, or are there things with which you disagree with the catholic church’s official cannon?
Would you go against the official teachings of your church, if secular science showed that your church’s teachings were wrong?
John Wayne Gacy did some clown paintings. Not certain if his inspiration was religion or something else.