Since the issue has come up, I’ll say that I think a “religion” is an organized system of belief base in part or in all on faith. In other words, it’s wrong. If there really was a god or gods, with actual evidence of their existence then believing in them would not be religious; it would be accepting the facts. And following a god or not wouldn’t be religious either; it would be politics, just like with any other leader. A true belief is never religious, by definition; only falsehoods can be religious.
I consider Communism to be a religion, for example; just a non-theistic one that refuses to admit what it is. It’s clearly based on faith rather than evidence; it’s followers know it will work because they know it will work, not because of the evidence. And many people have noted over the years how much it acts like a monotheistic, evangelical religion.
So I was going to mention the Roman Republic as an example of a society that did owe its success somewhat to religion. The idea that the Republican political system was actually part of the religion of the state, and by usurping and setting yourself up as autocrat, you were not just an enemy of the state but actually blaspheming against the gods themselves, definitely contributed to the longevity of the Republic IMO
That’s clearly true, what’s rarer is examples where a civilization would be objectively less (or more) successful if religion wasn’t a thing. E.g. unlike the Republic I don’t see how the roman empire (in its early stages when it was still genuinely polytheistic, it gets more complicated later) would have been significantly more or less successful without religion
I think you’re using a nonstandard (and probably unhelpful or question-begging) definition of “religion.”
There are plenty of fantasy novels in which a god or gods do exist (within the context of the story, of course), and there is “actual evidence of their existence,” and still there are beliefs, practices, or areas of life that it seems right to call “religious.” In some cases, that actual evidence is only available to some people (e.g. those who have had a direct encounter with a deity). In some cases it is not clear, to the characters or to the readers, which parts of the religious beliefs and practices are based on (that world’s) reality and which are custom, legend, or superstitition.
In addition to my objection above, it occurs to me that there may be religious beliefs that are “true” because enough people believe them. I’m thinking of things like “This person/place is special/holy” or “Performing this ceremony/ritual grants this status to people.”
There are some very basic fundamentals that need to be addressed when evaluating the need for religion. #1, it has to be something that is comprehendible. 2. It has to be interesting and of value, if not no one will listen to it. 3. It has to be effective. I am probably as close to an atheist as you can get yet I use religion in my life every day. I struggle with lust, pride, anger, weakness, sloth, hording you name it. I find it necessary to reboot back to my original settings several times a day. My original settings are best on a god with perfect morals. I don’t see any man as my ideal reset point only a perfect god. I feel better and I act better when I do this. I realize we don’t all need this but I do believe that as long as a segment of society maintains this it will bleed over to some extent. i feel certain that over time science will identify the kinds of chemicals stimulated by the rituals we go through but until then I will just go with what works.
…really? It seems like you’re hyper focusing on a modern conception of religion, then, because while you could maybe make an argument that the importance of the anthropomorphic gods like Jupiter and co. may have decreased in the latter empire (although that would be debatable), you’d be excluding the importance of the Imperial Cult (and the Imperial Cult was intertwined with the cults of the various gods, so I don’t think you can ignore those, either).
You don’t think the fact that Rome’s state religion involved the worship of Rome itself, and of the Emperor, had a significant impact on Rome’s success, one way or the other?
I would argue that having a source for your leader’s legitimacy is of vital importance in any functional society, and in almost every case I can think of, until modern times when we came up with ideas like “the consent of the governed”, that legitimacy came from your king or emperor being divine, or descending from the divine, or being chosen by the divine. (Or being descended from a guy who conquered the whole place thus proving that the gods favored him!). The divines in question could be Zeus and Sons, or it could be God, or the Mandate of Heaven, or the Sun.
Hell, the Mandate of Heaven is pretty amorphic. It almost fits in the gap between “By the Will of God” and “By the Consent of the Governed”.
Rome never got rid of that concept; they replaced the Roman gods with the Christian God, but at no point did the Emperors rule without some Divine’s blessing.
Or, in some cases, “Performing this ceremony/ritual calms disturbed minds and restores the person to harmony.”
It’s not always going to work, depending on the cause of the disturbance – but it’s going to work on a lot of believers.
So a common belief among Jews and some others that God is beyond human comprehension isn’t religious? That doesn’t make sense to me.
– what you’re saying about how you use religion might, if I’m understanding you correctly, come under the first part of this post. But I think “it has to be effective” depends on what you mean by “effective”. People pray all the time for things that then don’t happen. This causes some of them to leave the religion; but others keep right on believing.
I don’t always do a very good job of communicating. I like the idea that God is incomprehensible. But whatever story is used by a religion has to be comprehensible or it will not gain any traction. .
No, not in the early empire, one of the reasons I singled out that era was they didn’t deify the emperor until after he died (the emperor was just a regular “first citizen”, remember not a god king or anything like that, on paper at least) So no IMO that didn’t contribute that much to the success of the empire.
More generally of course almost every single civilization had a religion that (on paper) protected its ruler (the person who paid the bills) and justified their rule: be it outright deification or divine right, or mandate of heaven. But also universally that did absolute nothing to actually protect their ruler in practice. Because of course if the dominant religion/God(s) fails to prevent you, a usurper, from stabbing them to death and assuming the throne then that just means they weren’t actually the gods’ appointed ruler, you are.
The difference between that and the religious system of the Republic was it was the political system itself that was sacrosanct and divinely ordained, and that for quite a long time, was enough to protect it in practice.
When religious people see a beautiful sunset, they thank (think?) God. When people with a scientific understanding of the universe see the same sunset, they have an equal appreciation but don’t feel the need to rush to buildings with stained glass windows and kneel in subservience.
Which of course it rarely is. Prayer doesn’t work and when it doesn’t, well, 'God works in mysterious ways
I wish this idea that atheist are not moral or have no governing morality could be put to bed once and for all. This trope is so tiring. Religion or a belief in a higher power is not required to have self morals and to lead a good life.
Depend is too strong a word. The fact that they had organized religion or that it was forced upon the masses doesn’t mean they depended on it. They just had it. They also had smallpox, measles, whooping cough, chicken pox, bubonic plague, typhus, and malaria, did they depend on those? There is no proof that just because they had it, that they depended on it. Obviously, the believers did but that doesn’t mean it was vital for for the functioning of society.
This makes no sense to me. Does the fact that a lot people believe that the earth is flat make it true?
How “early” is the Empire you refer to? Halfway through Octavian’s reign? “Augustus” was basically a religious title.
And the Early Roman Empire continued to pay lip service to that concept, while slowly ratcheting up the divinity granted to the person of the Emperor, until one replaced the other. But at no point did they stop claiming divinely inspired legitimacy altogether.
There’s a technical term I forget for those sort of ritual acts or proclamations that actually alter social reality. They exist in secular society, too. The fact that a jury finds a defendant guilty doesn’t mean it’s objectively true that the defendant is guilty, or that the law they broke was a just one. But it is objectively true that they are going to prison, and that they would not have done so if the jury declared them not guilty. Likewise for marriage vows, oaths of office, and umpiring calls.
“Fred is the anointed representative of God” is an unprovable and unfalsifiable statement, and therefore meaningless. “We are all going to act as though Fred is the anointed representative of God, so don’t mess with Fred” is a statement that can be tested and found to be true, false, or partially true.
But not actual deification (in his lifetime), that’s my point I’m not saying that religion paid no part in the government of the early empire, just that it didn’t obvious cause it’s success. In what way would the alternative reality Octavian and his successors who went by the name “super awesome dude (in Latin)” rather than “Augustus” because religion isn’t a thing in their universe, end up less successful because of it? I don’t see any reason that they would
The religious trappings certainly didn’t stop them from being deposed or assassinated, Octavian was one of the few to escape that fate (Often leading to civil war and instability in the empire)
