# What's the point of a religion if it constantly updates to adapt to changing society? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [March 27, 2021, 6:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-point-of-a-religion-if-it-constantly-updates-to-adapt-to-changing-society/938865 "2021-03-27T18:44:50Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 9
**Author:** ![Babale](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/babale/32/15666_2.png) [@Babale](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Babale)\ **Post date:** [April 21, 2021, 4:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-point-of-a-religion-if-it-constantly-updates-to-adapt-to-changing-society/938865/161 "2021-04-21T16:35:05Z")
> [@GreenWyvern](#): > > Only evidence that the conventional understanding is wrong. I watched your whole video and didn’t see that he provided any evidence that the conventional understanding is wrong. He presented two classes of problem: the easy (how does a human perceive his environment visually?) And the hard (how does a consciousness form?) He then said that IN HIS VIEW we will find physical explanations for the easy problem but not for the hard problem. However, he provides no evidence for this view. Further - let’s say he is 100% right, and the hard problem means we will never be able to understand consciousness as a physical process because we can’t measure it in a physical way. This is NOT evidence that consciousness DOESN’T arise as a result of physical processes, it just means it is untestable. ---
**Author:** ![Crane](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/crane/32/3495_2.png) [@Crane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Crane)\ **Post date:** [May 1, 2021, 1:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-point-of-a-religion-if-it-constantly-updates-to-adapt-to-changing-society/938865/162 "2021-05-01T13:59:55Z")
> [@DSeid](#): > > What’s the point of religion …? The point of religion is to immediately provide answers to all questions. God(s) did everything and the soul is separate from the physical body. That may indeed be true, but it is unknowable so I leave it to the religious. When you watch an infant explore the world with it’s eyes, hands and mouth, you are witnessing the creation of consciousness. My children absorbed and expressed English, my neighbor’s Chinese. Each infant’s system absorbed it’s environment and then looped around and expressed it as consciousness. As an engineer I can imagine an electro chemical model of a system that does this sort of thing. It is my approximation. It would not have general agreement, but it is closer to reality than anything offered by the religious community. Which, by the way, also does not have general agreement, so what’s the point? ---
**Author:** ![DSeid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dseid/32/20194_2.png) [@DSeid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DSeid)\ **Post date:** [May 1, 2021, 9:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-point-of-a-religion-if-it-constantly-updates-to-adapt-to-changing-society/938865/163 "2021-05-01T21:29:45Z")
> [@Crane](#): > > The point of religion is to immediately provide answers to all questions. God(s) did everything and the soul is separate from the physical body. FWIW I know quite a few people who are religiously active who neither look to religion for “answers to all” or even many questions, and some of whom also do not believe in a soul separate from the physical body. Lots of people. Yet they find their religious activity and beliefs to be of value to them and for them it has a point. Religion may for some serve those points (of providing immediate answers to all questions, and of offering a soul independent of body), but I do not see that as being its primary “point” across religions overall or across those who participate in the activities of religions today. To me the activities themselves and the value of those activities are more the point for most. ---
**Author:** ![Crane](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/crane/32/3495_2.png) [@Crane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Crane)\ **Post date:** [May 1, 2021, 10:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-point-of-a-religion-if-it-constantly-updates-to-adapt-to-changing-society/938865/164 "2021-05-01T22:46:22Z")
> [@DSeid](#): > > To me the activities themselves and the value of those activities are more the point for most. Interesting - what might those activities be? Religions are lifestyles. ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [May 1, 2021, 11:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-point-of-a-religion-if-it-constantly-updates-to-adapt-to-changing-society/938865/165 "2021-05-01T23:04:44Z")
> [@Crane](#): > > The point of religion is to immediately provide answers to all questions. God(s) did everything and the soul is separate from the physical body. That may indeed be true, but it is unknowable so I leave it to the religious. I doubt any religion will give you answers to your calculus homework. Maybe “big” questions like why we’re here would be better. Not that the answers religion gives make any sense or are in any way demonstrable. Without this religions would not be much different from chess clubs. ---
**Author:** ![DSeid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dseid/32/20194_2.png) [@DSeid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DSeid)\ **Post date:** [May 1, 2021, 11:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-point-of-a-religion-if-it-constantly-updates-to-adapt-to-changing-society/938865/166 "2021-05-01T23:59:31Z")
You mostly answered your question. Elements of lifestyle, community, traditions … belonging. The activities of being with others in a structure that is familiar and explicitly ritualized. Acceptance. Connection. Religion is not the only means to do those things but it is a means and a very long established one. Not religion’s only point but one of them. ---
**Author:** ![Crane](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/crane/32/3495_2.png) [@Crane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Crane)\ **Post date:** [May 2, 2021, 1:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-point-of-a-religion-if-it-constantly-updates-to-adapt-to-changing-society/938865/167 "2021-05-02T13:04:52Z")
> [@Voyager](#): > > I doubt any religion will give you answers to your calculus homework And Huckleberry Finn didn’t get the fish hooks he prayed for. Are religions just life styles that provide comfort to their members? Social clubs that give member mores the imprimatur of God? ---
**Author:** ![Thudlow\_Boink](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thudlow_boink/32/320_2.png) [@Thudlow\_Boink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thudlow_Boink)\ **Post date:** [May 2, 2021, 3:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-point-of-a-religion-if-it-constantly-updates-to-adapt-to-changing-society/938865/168 "2021-05-02T15:06:44Z")
> [@Crane](#): > > The point of religion is to immediately provide answers to all questions. Many of the statements that people have been making about religion have been like the blind men’s statements about the elephant. The quoted statement is an example: it’s hardly true of all religion, and in fact is _closer_ to being true about science than about religion. For one thing, much of religion is concerned with domains where “answers to questions” don’t really apply. It’s not just about knowing and understanding, but also about behaving and connecting and experiencing and feeling. But even where religion addresses questions, not all religions claim to immediately provide all the answers. If Zen Buddhism counts as a religion, the [koan](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koan) might be an example of almost the opposite of “immediately providing answers.” ---
**Author:** ![k9bfriender](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/k9bfriender/32/3283_2.png) [@k9bfriender](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/k9bfriender)\ **Post date:** [May 2, 2021, 3:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-point-of-a-religion-if-it-constantly-updates-to-adapt-to-changing-society/938865/169 "2021-05-02T15:59:59Z")
> [@Voyager](#): > > I doubt any religion will give you answers to your calculus homework. You don’t think that anyone has prayed before their math final? ---
**Author:** ![Crane](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/crane/32/3495_2.png) [@Crane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Crane)\ **Post date:** [May 2, 2021, 5:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-point-of-a-religion-if-it-constantly-updates-to-adapt-to-changing-society/938865/170 "2021-05-02T17:43:50Z")
> [@Thudlow\_Boink](#): > > Many of the statements that people have been making about religion have been like the blind men’s statements about the elephant. Religions provide immediate explanations that do not require effort by the recipient to understand. Buddhism 3 situational lines, others just ‘God did it’ or the ‘God’s plan thing’. “Have a nice day” - “Perhaps, unless Jesus has another plan” ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [May 2, 2021, 10:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-point-of-a-religion-if-it-constantly-updates-to-adapt-to-changing-society/938865/171 "2021-05-02T22:10:35Z")
> [@Thudlow\_Boink](#): > > Many of the statements that people have been making about religion have been like the blind men’s statements about the elephant. The quoted statement is an example: it’s hardly true of all religion, and in fact is _closer_ to being true about science than about religion. Not even close. Science is about the process of getting to a better answer given the existing state of information. And it is hardly immediate. Science is all about updating answers to match more information. Even when religion updates its answers, it often pretends to have had the new answer all along. Christianity perverting the Garden of Eden story to be about original sin is a good example. The answers of science are from an imperfect understanding of the universe, constantly being refined. The answers of religion come from revelation from a perfect and all-knowing god. Who is either wrong, and not all-knowing, or who doesn’t care if the people getting the revelation either misunderstand it or distort it. ---
**Author:** ![LSLGuy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lslguy/32/5813_2.png) [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)\ **Post date:** [May 3, 2021, 1:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-point-of-a-religion-if-it-constantly-updates-to-adapt-to-changing-society/938865/172 "2021-05-03T01:55:58Z")
> [@Crane](#): > > Are religions just life styles that provide comfort to their members? Social clubs that give member mores the imprimatur of God? As far as I can see they are almost entirely that. With a side of “a way for a more-authoritarian-than average person to gather willing follower rubes to be dominated.” ---
**Author:** ![DSeid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dseid/32/20194_2.png) [@DSeid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DSeid)\ **Post date:** [May 3, 2021, 3:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-point-of-a-religion-if-it-constantly-updates-to-adapt-to-changing-society/938865/173 "2021-05-03T03:00:13Z")
> [@Crane](#): > > Are religions just life styles that provide comfort to their members? Social clubs that give member mores the imprimatur of God? Not IMHO anyway, but that is part of what many get out of religious activity. It is not trivial. You started this bit by quoting my asking what the point of religion is anyway … and I made my best effort to give my thoughts as I posed the question. Again, I think religion as folk science - providing “answers” to what is unknown, thus providing some relief from the scary state of having no answer, has faded in modern times, superseded by science and a bit more of an acceptance that we can live with not knowing all the answers, that knowledge is a constant never ending work in progress. But the creation of fictive family? That sense of shared purpose, shared values, shared core myths, of belonging? That I think persists, and with more strength to some than mere social clubs. For both better and worse. And again those myths which inculcate the cultural values, reinterpreted through the lenses of the time, that I think has value. Value far beyond providing quick answers (that may be wrong), beyond promise of a soul that exists separate than the body, beyond a place for the soul after the body dies. ---
**Author:** ![Crane](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/crane/32/3495_2.png) [@Crane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Crane)\ **Post date:** [May 3, 2021, 12:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-point-of-a-religion-if-it-constantly-updates-to-adapt-to-changing-society/938865/174 "2021-05-03T12:51:09Z")
> [@DSeid](#): > > Value far beyond providing quick answers (that may be wrong) Knowing the “Value far beyond” would answer the OP question of “What’s the point?”. Does religion keep us from peeing in elevators or are we guided by some other social imperative? Is religion a guide or is it chasing a natural social norm? ---
**Author:** ![DSeid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dseid/32/20194_2.png) [@DSeid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DSeid)\ **Post date:** [May 3, 2021, 1:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-point-of-a-religion-if-it-constantly-updates-to-adapt-to-changing-society/938865/175 "2021-05-03T13:46:16Z")
Neither. Both. Certainly never just one or the other. More of a dance between the two, sometimes reinforcing each other and sometimes, especially as cultures and their religions and the religions’ adherents jostle with each other in the same space, conflicting with each other. Each respond to the other and are responded to, and with varying timescales. Not just unidirectional. The premise of unidirectionality, that religion has a revealed truth, if not in the realm of scientific fact (something that took many centuries for some religious institutions and adherents to cede), then at least of moral truth, is the basis of the op: if religion’s revealed moral truths are not absolute and unchanging, then “what’s the point”? But the claim that our moral values, ethical norms, and cultural mores, behaviors, are independent of what we learn by way of our religions and their key stories, by faith for those who have it, that religion exclusively chases “natural social norms” and in no way informs them, is also too simplistic. ETA - I am not saying that all social norms are informed by religion and that a religious edict prevents peeing in the elevator. More that social norms are informed by our conforming natures and that religion impacts many of those norms within groups. ---
**Author:** ![Crane](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/crane/32/3495_2.png) [@Crane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Crane)\ **Post date:** [May 4, 2021, 12:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-point-of-a-religion-if-it-constantly-updates-to-adapt-to-changing-society/938865/176 "2021-05-04T12:43:45Z")
> [@DSeid](#): > > the basis of the op: if religion’s revealed moral truths are not absolute and unchanging, then “what’s the point”? The point - religious absolutism has failed. Our economy, defense and knowledge base were created by the scientific method. Our moral standard is the minimum set necessary for survival. We do not trust in God. Freedom of religion is a ‘soft’ concept that supports benevolent, individual lifestyles. ---
**Author:** ![DSeid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dseid/32/20194_2.png) [@DSeid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DSeid)\ **Post date:** [May 4, 2021, 7:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-point-of-a-religion-if-it-constantly-updates-to-adapt-to-changing-society/938865/177 "2021-05-04T19:17:42Z")
> [@Crane](#): > > Freedom of religion is a ‘soft’ concept that supports benevolent, individual lifestyles. Can you explain this thought a bit more? ---
**Author:** ![Crane](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/crane/32/3495_2.png) [@Crane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Crane)\ **Post date:** [May 4, 2021, 10:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-point-of-a-religion-if-it-constantly-updates-to-adapt-to-changing-society/938865/178 "2021-05-04T22:02:55Z")
Early state constitutions provided for religious freedom as long as it was not socially disruptive. States had state religions but they were not exclusive, even in Utah. I’d call that ‘soft’ religious freedom. I was taught that the Puritans came here for religious freedom. Well that’s true. The Puritans had gained political power in England to the extent that the government and population revolted against them. They came to the US to regain total authority. Acts of their conscience included hanging Quakers and other sinners. Brigham Young applied for statehood but was refused because the Utah government was a theocracy and the economy was communitarian. If the government had allowed the Puritans to form a Puritanical State and/or allowed the Mormons statehood under their communitarian theocracy, I would label our religious freedom ‘hard’. But, we do not. We allow religions as long as they are not disruptive. We have a soft religious freedom. Organized religions constantly jostle to change this. ---
**Author:** ![Crane](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/crane/32/3495_2.png) [@Crane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Crane)\ **Post date:** [May 5, 2021, 12:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-point-of-a-religion-if-it-constantly-updates-to-adapt-to-changing-society/938865/179 "2021-05-05T00:49:27Z")
Oh yeah - the point - the point is that religions conform to local cultural norms rather than guiding them. ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [May 5, 2021, 7:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-point-of-a-religion-if-it-constantly-updates-to-adapt-to-changing-society/938865/180 "2021-05-05T07:16:51Z")
And then they pretend that they have always been at war with Eastasia, I mean have always espoused those social norms. Just listen to a fundamentalist Christian explain why the Bible doesn’t really allow for slavery. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-point-of-a-religion-if-it-constantly-updates-to-adapt-to-changing-society/938865.md?page=8) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-point-of-a-religion-if-it-constantly-updates-to-adapt-to-changing-society/938865.md?page=10)