Eh, “time”. I’d say so far only religion has killed other religions. I don’t think there’s ever been a time where atheism was as prevalent as it is now after the concept of religion was first formed.
Inaccurate. Neopagans and reconstructionists exist, and have growing communities. A thing doesn’t have to be the most popular thing to be alive and well.
I feel bad for religious people who have been deceived their entire lives' into a delusion. But at the same time, I almost feel no empathy when they go out of their way to do and say the most insane stuff with religion as a justification.
I feel so bad for the kids of these religious zealots. I used to live next to a family with a little girl (12/13ish) that just played/stood around in their yard alone for hours every day. She wasn’t allowed to speak with anyone outside of their church ever or use the phone. She wasn’t allowed to have toys or really celebrate anything ever. “Homeschooled” of course. Often she’d just sit out there crying because her mom constantly used her as a bargaining chip to guilt her dad to join their religion. She told her constantly that her dad didn’t love them because he wouldn’t join their faith and that he was going to hell blah blah blah. She riled her up and made her hysterically beg her dad not to leave them and go to hell on a regular basis. It was truly awful. Sometimes when her parents left she’d wonder over to the fence separating our homes and chat with us. I hope we were able to plant at least a seed of sanity with our talks. Poor girl.
Later I had a coworker stressing out about her kid having extreme night terrors and behavioral issues because she was SO scared of going to hell. I, knowing her kid was only 7, kinda laughed and said something like “did you tell her 7 year olds aren’t ending up in hell?” To which she got angry, snapped at me, and said that she wouldn’t lie to her daughter like that. She seemed genuinely offended that I expected her to have cared more about her young child having a mental breakdown at the age of 7 than appeasing her rancid asshole of a god.
Abhorrent parenting from stupid and small minded people all around. If that’s what they deal with as kids no wonder they’re so broken and incapable of rational thoughts as adults. It’s SO important to keep this shit out of our schools.
If you didn’t killed the Ocean or Love then you didn’t killed Poseidon/Neptune or Aphrodite/Venus. Good luck to kill the Creator(, and what S.H…e became after the Creation).
Any argument or will you assume you’re right just because ?
No amount of downvotes will ever weight compared to an effective counter-argument.
Must be nice to believe that people in the past were either liars or idiots.
In animism, you attribute a figure to a forest or a mountain, it’s the same.
God created many things, some of which were responsible for the Earth, would you deny the existence of Gaïa, or Helios(, Sol in roman) ? The problem is that you assume that these god.dess.es have the same consciousness as human beings. Since non-humans don’t have the same consciousness as ours i don’t see why god.dess.es should be an exception.
So, since you consider that these god.dess.es should have the same consciousness as us, and since they quite obviously don’t, you conclude that Gaïa doesn’t exist, or that this forest shouldn’t be named, yet you treat your car or your computer as if they were alive by excusing yourself to them if you mistreated them, because it helps to ‘care about them’/‘avoid damaging them’, that’s one reason to do the same about destiny.
The New Age movement doesn’t speak about the law of attraction as if it was something new : thoughts shape our perception of reality, but also makes us much more receptive to what reality sends us.
Etc.
Don’t act as if there weren’t millenias of people like you in theology classes, rationality has been used to prove God’s existence, as the Greatest, the First, etc.
Thanks for wanting to help, we’re simply disagreeing, God is Great. Don’t you see that a god.ess, but also sometimes a saint.e, is the ~embodiment of an Idea(l) ?
Temples for the god of knowledge were libraries, taverns often gave worship to Bacchus, and Hermes/Mercury, the god of merchants, was also the god of thieves.
Moreover, the genealogy of god.desse.s is rational, have a look.
Idea(l)s are real, and god.desse.s as well under this definition, you can’t kill an Idea(l) even by killing its representation among humans, because they’re not invented but discovered, and given their rightful place. Yet even Idea(l)s aren’t God Almighty, no worship could ever be enough, we’re not worthy but can( only) try to search for H…er.im.
I remember that i wrote about this a few years ago, here :
The temples of Gula, goddess of medicine, he writes, served as healing centers where patients’ wounds were licked by dogs, and then dressed with herbal ointments.
The temples of Samas, the god of justice, functioned as courthouses;
the temples of the goddess Nungal served as jails;
and those of the goddess Kittum were a sort of Bureau of Weights and Measures.
In the chapter dedicated to the deities of writing, the goddess Nibasa and the god Nabu, Charpin discusses the training of scribes, the constitution of archives, and the establishment of libraries.
And in the temples of the well-known Ishtar, the goddess of love and war, there was space for taverns and pleasure houses.
Most important, key and sometimes mundane aspects of daily life—funerary practices, beer brewing, dairy production, and even the crafting of perfumes—were placed under the patronage of a deity or deities, whose temple served as the center of the activity.
Even if that wasn’t exactly the case in all religions, god.esse.s were/are as real as Idea(l)s. But worshipping god.desse.s without worshipping God is despicable, and even rejecting God after hearing about H…er.im, i can’t stand by the side of polytheists or animists who despise my/our/Our/the Lord/Creator/Source/Highest/…, the reason for everything and the only possible direction, etc., if only because it’s a total lack of common sense, i’ll never be on their side, Muhammad and the other prophets were right, but that doesn’t mean that i see a point in being an anti-polytheist either, they’re simply mistaken, perhaps even more than me, and as we all are, only God knows the most(, once again by definition).
An other problem is that in these domains, virtue is the one which should be given preeminence, i’m thanking God to have enabled our ancestors to wish for, and accomplish, this worship of virtues, i’ll never be thankful enough for that, the Kingdom/City of God could come tomorrow if we all durably changed our minds overnight, one day, we must have faith that everything will turn out all right, that God’s Kingdom/City will come unto Earth, but for now we must be awake, preparing for its coming with the help of God’s Grace, otherwise we may not be worthy enough for it to come.
This allegorical speech makes more sense if you understand that they were longing for the Paradise on Earth, something doable if we set aside our disagreements and help each other as sisters/brothers, can’t we do it ? I maintain that bringing down this City/Paradise is one of the historical role of the Church.
A very well written comment, thanks. However, I’d have to disagree on the following points:
If one examines deconstructivist subdialectic theory, one is faced with a choice: either accept antipagantheoreconstrucivism or conclude that reality comes from communication. Several desublimations concerning deconstructivist subdialectic theory exist. Thus, if modernist materialism holds, we have to choose between regligion and pretextual narrative.
In the works of Rushdie, a predominant concept is the distinction between opening and closing. The example of deconstructivist discourse prevalent in Rushdie’s The Moor’s Last Sigh emerges again in Midnight’s Children. Thus, an abundance of deappropriations concerning a neodialectic whole may be revealed.
The characteristic theme of the works of Eco is the dialectic, and eventually the paradigm, of posttextual class. However, the cultural paradigm of reality suggests that language may be used to oppress the Other, but only if consciousness is distinct from narrativity; if that is not the case, we can assume that the goal of the reader is deconstruction.
Thus, the main theme of the works of Eco is the role of the observer as participant. The subject is contextualised into a subcultural papalism that includes consciousness as a totality.
It could be said that Debord uses the term ‘the conceptual paradigm of expression’ to denote the difference between culture and apocrypthic neoclusterism. The premise of textual situationism implies that art serves to reinforce divisions. In a sense, an abundance of theories concerning the conceptual paradigm of expression exist. Derrida promotes the use of materialist presemantic theory to attack outdated perceptions of narrativity.
It could be said that Lacan uses the term ‘textual rationalism’ to denote the role of god…ge…ci as poet. Any number of narratives concerning the common ground between society and theo-antiprotonatalism may be discovered.
I remember that i’ve played with a website that automatically produced such texts in school once, like 15 years ago, now i’m thanking Google to have given us Chat-GPT(, and the chinese people talk(ed) a lot about a.i. in the few manhuas i’ve read, much more than Japan, Korea, or the West), not saying that you didn’t write this yourself, nor that i really care, i’m just saying 🤷♂️.
Would you say that you’re a materialist then, that 'i/I’dea(l)s don’t exist, would that be your “argument” ?
Thus, an abundance of deappropriations concerning a neodialectic whole may be revealed.
This one above is self-explanatory of course :), but could you please be kind enough to explain :
The subject is contextualised into a subcultural papalism that includes consciousness as a totality.
I don’t understand how consciousness as a totality would be included, thanks :) !
And while i could eventually understand how «textual situationnism» could lead to division in a world who hasn’t found(searched?) how to be united in diversity, i’d say that “your” usage of the word «serves» is a bit too strong for my tastes(, since “you” didn’t meant, like, 100% of what art serves, then it’s all right, i’d agree, just that the emphasis on “involuntariness” could be more marked).
But it turns around the idea that the “real Human” can’t be found, that Idea(l)s don’t exist independently, such as this other informative myth ? https://lemmygrad.ml/pictrs/image/81c09dfe-fe04-4481-a438-4f3d0dad4f43.jpeg
I remember that i’ve played with a website that automatically produced such texts in school once, like 15 years ago, now i’m thanking Google to have given us Chat-GPT(, and the chinese people talk(ed) a lot about a.i. in the few manhuas i’ve read, much more than Japan, Korea, or the West), not saying that you didn’t write this yourself, nor that i really care, i’m just saying
Since you kept, and still keep replying with nonsensical comments, figured I’d return the favour.
Bit inaccurate, isn’t it…? No such thing as Greek gods and Roman gods… “Roman” gods are just your plain old Greek gods with fake beards, speaking Latin in a Greek accent, and wearing their togas in the Roman style… Should have used Greco -Roman gods for one door and something else (Egyptian, Babylonian, Norse… take your pick) for the other…
It is the syncretist of the pagan. You can still see it in many places of the world. They treat religion basically how Westerners treat tropes in entertainment. Oh you like that show? Check out this show that is almost the same! I have seen shrines that had crucifixes hanging next to a Buddha.
Early christians in Rome were a lot more polytheistic. Many of the saints are borrowed from Roman gods and today they still provide a polytheistic feel to some christian churches.
We were literally taught that in catholic school. Just like Jesus was almost certainly not born in 0 AD. It’s just not important to his teachings, but rather important during the spread of catholicism.
Plenty of good reasons to be critical of Catholic Church, but “They claimed saturnalia as their year end celebration because no one actually wrote down proper dates 2000 years ago and the Romans still wanted a festival in mid-December” is not a great one.
Marx’s vision as expressed in his opiate of the people quote is for a world in which the truth is comforting and hopeful, and the people of the community don’t have to turn to myths and legends for positivity.
Religion is a symptom that emerges from misery and trauma, and should be regarded by the state like an epidemic of an infectious pathogen.
I hope that a world in which the truth is comforting and hopeful is eventually achieved however I kinda doubt that any kind of economic/political formation will ever change the fact that being alive kinda sucks, people will always experience hardship and sadness and insurmountable problems and faith in something intangible helps a lot of people get through that.
Throughout the history of post-agricultural humanity, we’ve had elites that yoked the work of an underclass and only recently (in the last few centuries) have we been able to recognize this is not a good thing and will ultimately lead to the downfall of human civilization on a short time frame (say, the next few centuries as an upper limit).
This may be the fate of the human ape, and while I’d rather we worked out how to organize well enough to go to space and colonize other worlds (what I think would require an egalitarian system), I acknowledge that we just may not be socially developed enough. It’s telling that billionaires don’t invest their gains into massive humanitarian projects that could put their statue in every state park worldwide. Many of them could become the god of Haiti if they wanted and yet none of them do. They invest in charities that are fit to market how much good they’re doing, rather than actually doing major good, and when they think of massive works, they automatically consider profit motives. That’s telling to me.
But not all hope is lost. We’ve psychological tricks to run against our less-than-social instincts before, and as we develop more collective self-awareness (such as our more general awareness of mental health language) we might be able to rise above our tribalist tendencies towards a collective system. Perhaps in the looming population correction we’ll be able to see that the capitalist, transactional society we made lead us to the climate crisis and a cascade failure of the state, and instead of choosing to cling to tradition we’ll decide to try something else.
It’s a far reach, but the only other option is to get comfortable with the risk of human extinction.
I don’t think calling religion a symptom is fair. I think it is it’s own kind of virus that infects people who don’t have the tools to withstand it… And misery/trauma provides the blow that weakens people and makes them susceptible.
Staph doesn’t kill healthy people, but it sure as shit fucks up people who have other ailments.
Vulnerability is the symptom of trauma and pain. Religion exploits that.
Religious conviction and adherence to organized ministries is more prevalent in regions where the quality of life suffers, such as throughout the Americas. Here in the US, precarity (housing precarity, food precarity, job precarity, etc.) feeds into the kind of magical thinking that fuels adherence to faith and authoritarian ideology (that a charismatic figure will use their power to fix our personal woes).
So religion is not a personal symptom like a fever or cough, it’s a community problem, like elevated hate crime or recurring rampage killings.
Again though, religion isn’t necessarily the symptom of these things. Those things can exist without religion. Religion definitely thrives in these environments…
You can derive it from yourself and not a greater 'supernatural' purpose. For example, I have accepted I will die and that there is no meaning to life, I might even be an anti-natalist, but that doesn't mean I just give up and live in despair. I'm alive and so with that life I act in my own self-interest to make the world better because it's what makes my existence have a meaning.
Really original that notion. I’m sure no one has ever considered it.
I also notice it was carefully considered and worded in order to avoid being considered as intolerant as the detractor to humanity it proposes to have dismantled.
Rather than a question of adulthood vs childhood, the reality is that humans evolved certain traits and abilities that mean superstition and religion are in our nature, for better or worse, like it or no.
Humans had to become adept at determining the intent of other humans and of animals to the point where we tend to anthropomorphize animals, inanimate objects, even concepts like justice and luck and fate.
We evolved mechanisms to avoid harm by remembering past experiences and predicting future ones. Though flawed from the standpoint of rationality, these adaptations were enough to prevent extinction of humanity at large, while leaving us saddled with numerous cognitive biases that leave us more likely to believe unfounded claims of a spiritual nature.
The antidotes to irrational, superstitious thinking are knowledge and critical thinking skills. It takes time, effort, and dedication to gain the upper hand against our nature.
It may be impossible to completely overcome our nature. Still I do hope we are able to set aside the most harmful manifestations of our nature: dogmatic thinking and religious zealotry.
Logically and morally, this is an obvious conclusion, but most people are fucking idiots or apathetic towards what they perceive as 'lesser injustices.' Religious people are now existentially threatened because people are openly non-believers and since most of them lack self-reflection capabilities they get angry and aggravated and do what they can to fight for what is right in their eyes. One of the worst aspects of religion is that it makes people feel justified in doing things they otherwise never would have.
science does give you an answer though, there is no meaning for life, or if you want to interpret it that way the meaning is for your DNA to reproduce, that’s what we are programmed to do.
In our society, one that teems with parasitic behavior between its individual members, yes, it raises a question why we might want to live without higher meaning. Sartre didn’t address it until late in life, but Camus recognize that most people at least commit philosophical suicide (that is, take a leap of faith) if the choice is between that or committing literal suicide. It’s why he offers embracing the absurd, imagining Sisyphus happy, and finding a way to get there, yourself.
To be fair, I’m not even there yet, finding that my society has willfully betrayed me from my childhood (as it does for all kids in the US) trying to create an obedient and disposable laborer / soldier to build vanity projects for billionaires, rather than prepare us to shape society the way we want it as we grow into it. Ours is now a gerontocracy as well as a plutocracy, while the kids have their own ideas and are looking to defy the natural social order.
So my story and yours is in how we break free from the fetters and find our own way. Or not, as the case may be.
You won’t ever be able to overcome the ills of society alone, by yourself you’ll never be able to “break free from the fetters and find your own way” Making a better society requires coordinated collective effort. Religion bonds people together in a very rare way. You can’t get people to work together in a coordinated way without some ideal in their minds, they have to believe that their effort might not help themselves directly but might help make future civilization a better place. That takes faith of one kind or another.
You’re right that changing society requires a movement, but I was talking about the individual process.
And yes, few of us find a real opportunity to find a way to create for ourselves some wiggle-room such as Winston and his nook-journal hidden away outside the surveillance of Big Brother. (Our world teems with infant perishing from famine or infectious disease, so just by getting literate and on the internet, you’ve gotten far.)
I think of the chaos of complexity that allowed cloned dinosaurs to breed, to migrate off Isla Nublar and to survive despite a lysine dependency. Our oppressive system is rife with such opportunities even if it’s to pirate movies for diabled folk who couldn’t otherwise afford to otherwise see them. Or for that matter, our own kids.
Steps to escape the cages might be tiny in the moment, but they can sometimes add up.
Here’s the context of that sentence that you are quoting: “You can’t get people to work together in a coordinated way without some ideal in their minds, they have to believe that their effort might not help themselves directly but might help make future civilization a better place. That takes faith of one kind or another.”
I was talking about getting people to work together for a better world, not an individual choice"
It’s very tangible. Quantifiable even. Higher literacy rates. Lower teen pregnancy. Higher incomes. Longer lifespans. Lower carbon emissions. And so on.
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