RE: 50 Secrets Of Happy People
I have to agree with makshay5 on this one...I have never been able to see the benefit of of being a strong religious believer and church member. I was born into a churchgoing family, and wasn't getting answers that made sense to me when I was a teen...so I drifted away from the church and have never regretted it or felt any need to get back into the fold. My children have never been in a church except for the occasional wedding or funeral and have been able to make their way in the world pretty well. We often discuss religion, but from an observational point of view. I guess my biggest beef with all of the organized religions is that they hold immutable beliefs, which, however improbable, scientifically impossible or downright insane sounding they are, cannot be changed. They cannot be ignored. They cannot be interpreted differently. You either believe, or you're not "one of them". I prefer to foster the growth of ideas in my children and support network. Ideas are terra incognita. They are wide open to interpretation. They can change at a moments notice. They can be private or collaborative. They don't require tithing. They are limited only by imagination.
Yeah...I'll stick to ideas and eschew religious beliefs. Seems like a lot more fun, a lot less stress.
The rest of the post rocks...it's really a great list.
cheers
@makshay5 @scalextrix @dukeru
I am not a religious person myself. In fact I had the pleasure to regularly attend church during my childhood and it didn't just give my nothing but in fact it was terrible, since I was never a morning person. F*cking church stole me 8 years worth of Sunday sleep.
But what I encountered is that if you take away all the traditions and attributes and everything that's not necessary, then - not in every case - you get down to the bottom-line that religion and religious thought is nothing superstitious, but in its core essence systematic recursive thinking as I have described it.
Of course,you can discover that on your own, but as a society (with its not so ambitious members), it is only a coincidence that a non-religious tradition of recursive thinking emerges. In fact I wouldn't know of any society that got this done. It's always in connection with a belief system.
Anyway, my personal thesis is that its carrier function for recursive thinking is the evolutionary reason of why religion is still out there. In fact, I believe religion is the necessary social skill that a culture needs to emerge. Because without recursive thinking, you can't build castles, sewers, infrastructure generally, cathedrals and what ever else you need (like non-material stuff like a codified law system) to get an over-generationally stable social order in place.
I am not saying that all religion are good, or positive in any way or that they don't have massive downsides that can lead to a cultural loss like you see it with todays Islam. The same would happen, if suddenly everyone turned puritan.
Religion must be tamed, but without religion, I believe at one point you will lose the capability to transfer your culture into the next generation. And then, when a crisis comes, everything will be washed away.
Unless of course, you can tell me another social technique that works as a carrier wave for recursive thinking.
That's an interesting take on religion. Where I differ in opinion is whether the contribution made to society as a whole has been worthwhile when compared to the downside of religious zealotry. The organized religions can easily make the claim that they created a set of boundaries for their adherents that will allow them to claim a prize when they die (heaven for example). In return for their subservience, they got organized infrastructure creation, codified law, etc. However, if you are not a believer, you are an outcast and cannot win the prize offered when you die.
The easiest way to control large populations is to keep them hungry and scared by whatever means are available. Religion is a great mechanism for this because of indoctrination from an early age for most people. If someone tells you over and over again that the sky is green from the time you can speak, you will very quickly believe that it is green, and that anyone who says otherwise is wrong.
History offers some great examples of people who tried to advance thinking and novel ideas who were summarily dismissed by the church and exiled or worse. In many cases, they were later vindicated and in a sense pardoned by the church.
The idea that religious people are peace loving and god fearing productive members of society can be disproven in a thousand different ways. All religions are by design a control mechanism. When control is maintained, innovation and idea spreading are stifled. When a person prostrates themself before an invisible master because they are told to do so by a control manager in the church, they are giving up a part of their humanity. When they attack another religion because a control manager tells them to kill all the infidels because "god" wants them to, they not only lose their own humanity, they steal their victims and their families humanity in the process.
I could go on and on, but I have dragons to slay elsewhere....
thx for reading
I don't disagree with your assessment. Religion has plenty of hazards. But it also has this one feature that I believe is supremely important for the creation and maintenance of a culture and civilizational activity. You can remove it, but there will have to be other means that have the same capabilities as I described.
And on top comes the problem, that superstitious individuals will find something else to pray to (with a brain scan you can split religious and non-religious individuals in the sense of "believe" and "don't believe"). This new proto-religion, it could be for example that they create hero stories of sport stars, which will eventually transform into a religion again that has the characteristics of a pagan believe system (=supernatural stuff).
So, the only thing that you can practically do as non-religious person is, that you add some recursive thinking to the recipe and overall make sure, they stay busy with non-worldly stuff. That means, you let the adherents of those pagan gods think about the question what happens after death (and technically also before birth). At the end when they are done - that should be possible when the underlying proto-religious pattern is not too idiotic (well, even the Koran works) - the circle closes and you end up with a full-blown religion again. That again has the features needed to create a stable cultural and social environment.
Bottom line: Destroying a religion gives birth to a new one. And you better stick to the devil you know.