# What religion is good for.



## ambush80 (May 7, 2016)

"If you think about religion as a set of beliefs about supernatural agents, you're bound to misunderstand it.  You'll see those beliefs as foolish delusions, perhaps even as parasites that exploit our brains for their own benefit.......religious practices have been binding our ancestors into groups for tens of thousands of years.  That binding usually involves some blinding--once any person, book or principle is declared sacred, then devotees can no longer question it or think clearly about it.

Our ability to believe in supernatural agents may well have begun as an accidental by-product of a hypersensitive agency detection device, but once early human beings began believing in such agents, the groups that used them to construct moral communities were the ones that lasted and prospered. Like those nineteenth-century religious communes, they used their gods to elicit sacrifice and commitment from members.....their gods helped them to suppress cheating and increase trustworthiness. Only groups that can elicit commitment and supress free riding can grow.

This is why human civilization grew so rapidly after the first plants and animals were domesticated. Religions and righteous minds had been coevolving, culturally and genetically, for tens of thousands of years........Only groups whose gods promoted cooperation, and whose individual minds responded to those gods, were ready to rise to these challenges and reap the rewards.

We humans have an extraordinary ability to care about things beyond ourselves, to circle around those things with other people, and in the process to bind ourselves into teams that can pursue larger projects.  _That's what religion is all about._ [emphasis, mine]  And with a few adjustments, it's what politics is about too."

Jonathan Haidt--

_The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion_


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## drippin' rock (May 7, 2016)

My team is correct.  Yours is wrong.


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## Artfuldodger (May 7, 2016)

Love, faith, and hope? The security of everlasting life? Rewards? coming back as a better being than the one you were on your last trip? Redemption of one's spiritual being by becoming a human?
Answers to the unknown about our beginnings and endings such as birth and death?


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## ambush80 (May 8, 2016)

Artfuldodger said:


> Love, faith, and hope? The security of everlasting life? Rewards? coming back as a better being than the one you were on your last trip? Redemption of one's spiritual being by becoming a human?
> Answers to the unknown about our beginnings and endings such as birth and death?




Love, faith and hope aren't contingent on the presence of religion. As for everlasting life, all you have to affirm that is a weird, sometimes non-sensical book.  Same with reincarnation.  No one has ever been able to confirm anything about an afterlife. No one.  

You have to be more critical of where you're getting your information about beginnings and endings, birth and death and whatnot; as critical as you are of the other sources of such information whose validity you deny.


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## Artfuldodger (May 8, 2016)

ambush80 said:


> Love, faith and hope aren't contingent on the presence of religion. As for everlasting life, all you have to affirm that is a weird, sometimes non-sensical book.  Same with reincarnation.  No one has ever been able to confirm anything about an afterlife. No one.
> 
> You have to be more critical of where you're getting your information about beginnings and endings, birth and death and whatnot; as critical as you are of the other sources of such information whose validity you deny.



Do you think that if I tried more of the world's religions that I could see this validity?
I was thinking of starting with Eckankar although they have a living game master you have to follow.
I think I'd like a religion with no human game master unless that game master was also divine. I feel that human game masters sometimes try to lead me in a path they choose for me instead of letting me or God choose my path.


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## Israel (May 8, 2016)

drippin' rock said:


> My team is correct.  Yours is wrong.



OK...let's go with that as an odious and base tribal response.
The tribe/group gathers to the fires of their traditions, their strengths (perceived) their more noble histories (again, perceived), all that identifies them as a member of whatever group...is seen superior. 

If, as you may seem to suggest...or perhaps even grasp, the gathering "to" has really nothing to do with strength (in the philosophical sense), or nobility, (in whatever sense), but really only the very base impelling to "feel" superior. Whatever fits...works, right? If our school has higher SAT's...fine...but if not..."our" school has a superior football team. "We" make more money...ahh, but "we" are published in the poetry section of the Atlantic Magazine!


Playing always to what we consider our strengths. Not really because they are strengths...but always and only because they are "ours". Or, at least identified...as such, again, for our own aggrandizement. Of course...fights ensue when one or another "disses" what is considered the strength of another. Yes, you may have a great football team...but your QB doesn't know the square root of 25. 

Nations do much the same, no?  From neighborhoods to continents...no matter what "internecine" squabbles may be common...when the "group" identity is threatened...it's on. And the group, usually, to some extent coalesces around the survival of its identity.
But, if you see it may go from neighborhoods (we are a "gated" community)...can you, do you not see the even smaller scale? House to house...each with its own "history/identity", and man to man?
If its base for the group to claim superiority, do we at least see it all starts with where each man chooses to identify? But always first...what does every man identify with...more than his own self?

If, as you seem to suggest...in your terse but insightful comment, the baseness of that response...do you see where it always starts?


If you investigate Christ, you may find this all perfectly resolved. The "base" thing of self identification...that which no man can escape of his own self...the way out...is provided.


"unless a man hate (his own household...history/tradition/STUFF) and even his own life...he cannot be my disciple (taught by me).

Yep...the self identity thing always brings crisis. And woe.


(And oh yeah...don't talk to me unless you drive only Fords.) Anything! Anything at all is fodder.


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## drippin' rock (May 8, 2016)

What I suggest in my tersness(spell check doesn't like that one), is we pick a position and then seek to validate it. Whether it is brand of underwear, car, yeti cup(yeah I got one), flavor of church, or translation of bible, we all seek to find reasons our choice is better that others. Nothing divine involved. 

You have decided to follow Jesus. That's what helps you sleep at night.  You spend every waking moment defending and validating that position. You would die for Jesus.  Well, there are men in Serbia that feel so passionately about their favorite soccer team, they would die for that team, or so they say.  Both are equally silly in my eyes.


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## bullethead (May 8, 2016)

drippin' rock said:


> What I suggest in my tersness(spell check doesn't like that one), is we pick a position and then seek to validate it. Whether it is brand of underwear, car, yeti cup(yeah I got one), flavor of church, or translation of bible, we all seek to find reasons our choice is better that others. Nothing divine involved.
> 
> You have decided to follow Jesus. That's what helps you sleep at night.  You spend every waking moment defending and validating that position. You would die for Jesus.  Well, there are men in Serbia that feel so passionately about their favorite soccer team, they would die for that team, or so they say.  Both are equally silly in my eyes.



Spot on


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## Israel (May 8, 2016)

drippin' rock said:


> What I suggest in my tersness(spell check doesn't like that one), is we pick a position and then seek to validate it. Whether it is brand of underwear, car, yeti cup(yeah I got one), flavor of church, or translation of bible, we all seek to find reasons our choice is better that others. Nothing divine involved.
> 
> You have decided to follow Jesus. That's what helps you sleep at night.  You spend every waking moment defending and validating that position. You would die for Jesus.  Well, there are men in Serbia that feel so passionately about their favorite soccer team, they would die for that team, or so they say.  Both are equally silly in my eyes.




Have I said anything to cause you to think I disagree?


And the red part...what "I would do" regarding most everything is not something I pretend to know. 

Could you have read through my post and not imagined I might know something of folks like the Goebbel's family? And the things men are willing to die for? (and kill for?)
To the silly, I appear...silly.

It's a gift.


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## gemcgrew (May 9, 2016)

ambush80 said:


> Our ability to believe in supernatural agents may well have begun as an accidental by-product of a hypersensitive agency detection device, but once early human beings began believing in such agents, the groups that used them to construct moral communities were the ones that lasted and prospered. Like those nineteenth-century religious communes, they used their gods to elicit sacrifice and commitment from members.....their gods helped them to suppress cheating and increase trustworthiness. Only groups that can elicit commitment and supress free riding can grow.


Same as "may not have". After he established nothing, he carried on as if he had.


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## ambush80 (May 10, 2016)

gemcgrew said:


> Same as "may not have". After he established nothing, he carried on as if he had.




A long time ago an astronomer looked through his crummy telescope and observed the motion of some celestial bodies.  Though he couldn't see it, he calculated that at some time when there would be better telescopes that on a specific date at a specific time that a planet would bee seen just "right there". There was no way for him to know if he was right but he made the best guess with the information he had.  


I like that about science.  They use the best information they can gather to make the best guesses they can and never, ever claim to know the absolute truth.


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## StriperrHunterr (May 10, 2016)

It all boils down to one thing: Hope. 

Hope that this isn't all there is. 
Hope that we get to see our loved ones again. 
Hope that the guilt we feel for the things we've done can be expunged. 
Hope that what we do here matters, but that what comes after matters more.


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## bullethead (May 15, 2016)

When inventing a god, the most important thing is to claim that it is invisible, inaudible, and imperceptible in every way. Otherwise, people will become skeptical when it appears to no one, is silent, and does nothing.
-anonymous


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## bullethead (May 15, 2016)

Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by the rulers as useful. — Edward Gibbon


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