Religion, unlike diseases, is a tool made by humans in order to achieve societal goals. So I think that’s a pretty crappy comparison. That said…
All those plagues are a side effect of animal domestication and of living in dense proximity to other humans. And successful societies did both of those things, despite the negative side effects.
So a better comparison might be, religion is like urbanism, and inqusitions, murder of heretics, discrimination against non believers, etc - are plague like side effects inherent to having a religion, and outweighed by the benefits (judging by the fact that every society had it, even more so than urban development).
I guess it depends on your perspective. If you believe in God, I can see your point. But I don’t it’s objectively true.
Suppose a holy man or a religious representative says to the masses, “I represent God on earth, come worship with me and I will relay His message”. If there is no God/supernatural deity, then no matter how many people believe him, it’s not objectively true.
I would ask you to define what “holy” means in the phrase, “This place is holy”. Online dictionary says,
“1.dedicated or consecrated to God”
Again, if supernatural gods don’t exist, then it can’t be objectively true. It can only be “true” if you’ve decided to believe in something there is no evidence of.
If a bunch of people dedicate and consecrate a place to a god, it is holy [to the faithful of that religion] whether or not that god exists.
That’s not very different than a bunch of people deciding that this chunk of land belongs to a “country” named “America”. You can’t scientifically measure the atoms that make up that land to determine that they have some property that makes them “American”, but when enough people decide that America is real, it becomes so.
Cite? I grew up in a strict religious family and was carted off to church on a very regular basis for many years. And married a Catholic and attended many Catholic services. In all that time I never heard anyone say we were striving to achieve “societal goals”.
It was all about self-improvement (not sinning) so as to better get into heaven. That, and tithing.
Mmhmm. What does “not sinning” mean? To use one example, it could mean not engaging in premarital sex. And indeed, getting people paired off and married so they can raise more churchgoing Christian children is a societal goal of many forms of Christianity.
Individual practitioners of a religion aren’t necessarily trying to achieve societal goals (any more than individual cells in a student’s body are trying to do well on an SAT) but the religion itself is, and saying that some things are “sins” is one of the classic ways to do that.
That also isn’t really what I was talking about. Some people looking at a sunset and thinking how beautiful it is may have the sense of oneness and awe that I was talking about; other people are just thinking that the sunset’s beautiful.
People who have never had the sort of experience I’m talking about may have trouble understanding what I mean. But it’s not an experience limited to religious people; certainly not to people religious in the sense that most mean the term. Some atheists have it too. [ETA: and having such experiences doesn’t necessarily make someone become religious.] But religion provides a framework to talk about it in, and at least some religions provide techniques for encouraging it to happen.
I also gave an example. Did that make any sense?
My example would depend on the person undergoing the ritual believing it. But the results in that person’s mien and other behavior would be objectively apparent to nonbelievers.
No. But if he says to his followers “we must destroy the unbelievers”, or alternatively “we must feed and house the poor whatever they believe” and his followers believe him and act upon this – their actions become objectively true.
People claim to see ghosts and have a deep emotional response, does that mean ghosts are real? People claim to see UFOs and little green men and have a deep emotional response, does that mean UFOs and Martians are real?
To do something as simple as giving thanks to the universe for such a wonderful gift and then comparing it to seeing ghosts is more about bias than anythig else. There is no defense for that.
This is exactly bias. Your magical being is more real than someone else’s magical being, right? And framing it in the context of “The Universe” is little more than a variation of the Appeal to authority fallacy.
No, the concept of lost souls being tormented in the underworld was clearly part of Greek mythology (although it probably was around before them). Plato described how people were judged at the time of their death and bad souls were sent down to the underworld for punishment. And there are myths like Orpheus and Persephone that are based on this.
Not sure if you’re right about Plato, but Greek myths refer to “the underworld” as a generally unpleasant-sounding place where the souls of the dead reside, ruled by Persephone and visited by Orpheus. But there’s no suggestion that only bad people go to the underworld, or that there exists some more pleasant alternative accommodation for the pious.
This is very similar to the Bible (the real Bible, not the so-called “New Testament”), which speaks of the dead going to “Sheol”, which isn’t described in detail but which nobody seems to be in a hurry to get to. Again, there’s no suggestion here that one’s conduct in this world affects your destiny in the next.
“For the same fate is in store for all; for the righteous and for the wicked, for the good and pure…for him who is pleasing (to God) and to him who is displeasing. (T)he dead know nothing; they have no more recompense, for even the memory of them has died. Their loves, their hates, their jealousies have long since perished, and they have no more share till the end of time in all that goes on under the sun.”
(Ecclesiastes 9:2-6, abridged)
I think you’re entirely misunderstanding what we’re saying.
What we’re saying is that religious beliefs and for that matter emotional experiences affect humans; and affect humans in ways that change the world. This is true whether or not the beliefs are true.
Repeating over and over that what people believe often isn’t factually true (which is so in areas other than religion, while we’re at it) has nothing to do with that.
I might do that, actually. Doesn’t mean that I think the wall either hears me, or had any choice in the matter.
It’s not consistent through all religions, though.
I really don’t understand how this can possibly be confusing.
If a Christian tells me, “the Vatican is a holy place to God, and to the Christian people” I can understand what that means about the importance of the Vatican to Christians even if I don’t believe in Christianity. Likewise, if someone tells me that this is Quetzlcoatl’s sacred pyramid, and that it was built to honor him and thousands of captives were sacrificed in his name on its steps in his honor, I can understand what this means regardless of my belief or lack thereof in Quetzlcoatl.
Here’s Plato supposedly quoting Socrates in Gorgias.
For death is no evil, but to go to the world below laden with offences is the worst of evils. In proof of which I will tell you a tale: Under the rule of Cronos, men were judged on the day of their death, and when judgment had been given upon them they departed—the good to the islands of the blest, the bad to the house of vengeance. But as they were still living, and had their clothes on at the time when they were being judged, there was favouritism, and Zeus, when he came to the throne, was obliged to alter the mode of procedure, and try them after death, having first sent down Prometheus to take away from them the foreknowledge of death. Minos, Rhadamanthus, and Aeacus were appointed to be the judges; Rhadamanthus for Asia, Aeacus for Europe, and Minos was to hold the court of appeal. Now death is the separation of soul and body, but after death soul and body alike retain their characteristics; the fat man, the dandy, the branded slave, are all distinguishable. Some prince or potentate, perhaps even the great king himself, appears before Rhadamanthus, and he instantly detects him, though he knows not who he is; he sees the scars of perjury and iniquity, and sends him away to the house of torment.
For there are two classes of souls who undergo punishment—the curable and the incurable. The curable are those who are benefited by their punishment; the incurable are such as Archelaus, who benefit others by becoming a warning to them. The latter class are generally kings and potentates; meaner persons, happily for themselves, have not the same power of doing injustice. Sisyphus and Tityus, not Thersites, are supposed by Homer to be undergoing everlasting punishment. Not that there is anything to prevent a great man from being a good one, as is shown by the famous example of Aristeides, the son of Lysimachus. But to Rhadamanthus the souls are only known as good or bad; they are stripped of their dignities and preferments; he dispatches the bad to Tartarus, labelled either as curable or incurable, and looks with love and admiration on the soul of some just one, whom he sends to the islands of the blest. Similar is the practice of Aeacus; and Minos overlooks them, holding a golden sceptre, as Odysseus in Homer saw him “Wielding a sceptre of gold, and giving laws to the dead.”
My wish for myself and my fellow-men is, that we may present our souls undefiled to the judge in that day; my desire in life is to be able to meet death. And I exhort you, and retort upon you the reproach which you cast upon me,—that you will stand before the judge, gaping, and with dizzy brain, and any one may box you on the ear, and do you all manner of evil.
As for a better afterlife, there was the Elysian Plains. But it was a pretty exclusive place (population 1656). You only got there by being a direct descendant of a god or maybe by being a really exceptional hero in the battlefield.
OK, there were some myths that incorporated the idea. But they still didn’t add the crucial final touch that makes the concept so abhorrently evil; the idea that Rhadamanthus will judge you not just based on whether you were a good person, but on whether you believe in Rhadamanthus.