The Afterlife?

[Anderson]

 

Yes, that's why I said cherry-picking is necessary. When a book can promote both one principle and its opposite at the same time, then it's not exactly a valid source of inspiration. At best it supports principles that people come to through other means.

 

If you want to look at it that way, that's your right I suppose. I think we both now that in the 1'st century AD nobody could give an answer to slavery. It's either running away and dying or paying off the debt and maybe remaining alive.

 

Yes, that's the easy escape any time a claim is made that can obviously be disproved.

However, there are plenty of Christian sects that obviously don't believe that passage is metaphorical, which is why you have churches promoting faith healing, speaking in tongues, or snake-handling.

 

Well, you made the claim and I tried to disapproove it given what the text offers. I don't answer for fanatics who do things for their own gain. But I refuse to blame an entire religion for a handful of congregations who take quotes from the text to extremes.

 

 

 

It's not "impossible to test". Yes, there are plenty of people who do this kind of thing through trickery, but legitimate, rigorous testing conditions can be set up to find out whether there are people who can do it legitimately. To my knowledge, no such test has ever had positive results, but many people who claim to have these abilities have been proved fraudulent (Peter Popoff being a high profile example).

 

Why test it? It's not going to change anything for me anyway. If I want not to believe I will find a counter-argument that will proove that the test was a fake.

 

 

 

Faith is just the excuse people give themselves to believe things they know they don't have enough evidence for.

 

There can be no evidence for things that have no physical presence in this world.

 

We can easily revert this into science being there just for the sake of replacing religion.

 

I'm sorry for the polemics but in my opinion realistically using only rationality or blind fanatiscism to the extremes is not good. There must be always a healthy balance between religion and science.

[Springheel]

Yes, you can rebut specific claims, but that does not rebut religion as a whole

 

If you take the truth claims of religion away, you're basically left with cultural mores, which can't be "rebutted" per se, because they're not truth claims.

 

But religions DO make claims about reality, and those can (depending on the claim) be tested.

 

Perhaps you mean the following:

Every time a specific claim about religion is proved false, people who believe in the religion often respond by saying that it was never a claim in the first place. The "it's just a metaphor" or "you're taking it out of context" response. To me this seems like moving the goalposts, and results in highly metaphorical, abstract religions that can't be disproved...but are so abstract that they have little (or no) practical value.

 

If that's what you mean, then I agree with you.

 

 

 

Faith is just the excuse people give themselves in order to believe things they know they don't have enough evidence for.

Doesn't mean it's bad or useless.

 

 

Your example is an interesting one, and I don't know enough about mathematics to say one way or the other. However, there is a big difference between making reasonable assumptions, educated guesses, and faith. Your example sounds to me more like making an educated guess than it does "faith". There are times where we have to make a decision, and don't have enough evidence to know which option is true, so we do the best we can with the information we have. As long as we portion our belief to the strength of the evidence, that is a reasonable thing to do. There's also nothing wrong with "hoping" something is true, as long as we are clear that hoping doesn't make it so.

 

 

Well, you made the claim and I tried to disapproove it given what the text offers. I don't answer for fanatics who do things for their own gain. But I refuse to blame an entire religion for a handful of congregations who take quotes from the text to extremes.

 

 

Huh? I said some religious claims can be tested, gave you an example of one that CAN be tested, and your response was that "it's just metaphor". Well, it's not metaphor to many Christian sects, as I pointed out already. They treat it as a valid claim in THEIR religion. Telling me that not everyone believes it is a complete non sequitur. Any claim made by any religion is going to be dismissed by people from other religions.

The original point--that you can scientifically test some claims made by religions--therefore remains valid.

 

Why test it?

 

 

To establish whether it's true or not? Why do we test anything?

 

I'm countering your claim that religions CANNOT be tested. Whether or not you WANT to test them depends on how much you care about reality.

 

 

There can be no evidence for things that have no physical presence in this world.

 

 

Drop a pen and then think about what's wrong with that sentence.

[Gestas]

 

Historically speaking - the society of today wouldn't exist with the liberalism it has today without Christianity which was the first religion ever to be for everyone.

Which is ironic as so many of today's 'Conservative Christians' hate lieberalism and basically everything Jesus stood for.

[Sotha]

When people die, the matter their personality and memories are recorded onto is destroyed. Even if it is frozen, we do not have the means to decode and recover it.

 

All data is lost forever. Information loss is always a pity.

 

On the other hand, humans are like chemicals. When we interact, we leave lasting, possibly permanent effect, on each other. That way, we carry some of the lost information with us the remaining of our lifespans.

[lowenz]

After-Life is what you get when you escaped the Black Mesa of Life.

 

Joking

[demagogue]

The mainstream philosophy of mind is fuctionalism, which means if you can recreate the fuctional organization of a mind in some substrate, the consciousness comes with it... whether it's the same person or not is a matter of convention. We're not really the same person staying in one body as it is (cf Derek Parfit's famous paper on Personal Identity). It doesn't really care how separated in time or space, and as Nietzsche was toying with eternal reoccurence, a big and long universe gives us the law of large numbers which makes the wildly improbable probable.

 

So if my cns wakes in some new body and setting (I suppose different religions care about whether memories come along or not) after the death of the body manifesting it now, it wouldn't be a paradox, and anyway, me or that person would have to deal with it, as life always demands of us, so I'd continue life as I do, trying to keep my values, do what's right, etc. I don't imagine it's my call any more than my first birth was (short of near-future technology that can take a brain scan slice by slice and reproduce the neural organization in a computer sim). If an entity has some control over that in ways I can only speculate and wants to have me reborn out of grace, which is one strain of Protestant Christianity, I am personally fine with that because I enjoy life.

 

Does it matter if the new body is made of physical or soul stuff? Classic functionalism has always said soul stuff is subject to the same rules as physical stuff, so there's not much relevance distinguishing it.

 

As for the boundaries of rationality, the recent trend is that the big candidates for final theories, M Theory, and whatever may be below them, may already be in a domain of reality structurally beyond scrutiny, like an experiment couldn't resolve the truth even in theory.

 

Formally, topos logic is what you can use to describe it. It throws out the law of excluded middle (which says, in a case where 'A xor B', the reality must resolve A or B as the final truth). In topos logic this may be false because A & B may recreate an identical universe that resolves all experiments the same. There's a lot of talk that this may indeed be how the most fundamental questions of our reality stand, making them essentially matters of faith, and why some don't want to call string theory science.

 

I have more to say about the connection between religion and experience. Eg, a lot of talk about an afterlife often points to something structural about consciousness, what phenomenologists call horizonal elements, the limits beyond it that also help construct it and are part of it. Many religious concepts may be pointing to these horizontal aspects in our experience. I think the 'mystic'interpretation doesn't have to be bad, eg, that two world views flip the meaning of the same experience, and we can recognize that different meaning. It's wrapped up in how experience is constructed, and how meaning is attached to it. It can be described again with topos logic. The same 'thing' can be constructed in experience in much different ways with much different meanings. It's how humans naturally confront the world, so it'd be artificial to go out of our way to ignore that internal aspect of experience. Anyway, it's a long discussion that can't all fit here.

[Anderson]

 

If you take the truth claims of religion away, you're basically left with cultural mores, which can't be "rebutted" per se, because they're not truth claims.

 

But religions DO make claims about reality, and those can (depending on the claim) be tested.

 

Perhaps you mean the following:

Every time a specific claim about religion is proved false, people who believe in the religion often respond by saying that it was never a claim in the first place. The "it's just a metaphor" or "you're taking it out of context" response. To me this seems like moving the goalposts, and results in highly metaphorical, abstract religions that can't be disproved...but are so abstract that they have little (or no) practical value.

 

If that's what you mean, then I agree with you.

 

 

Ok, let's outline what is certain about that quote: "them that believe" - this most likely refers not to simple believers but rather people who reached some higher stage of spiritual perfection. Agreed? Hence they are able to do things beyond the powers of ordinary people.

I didn't mean that it's a meaningless abstract or a nonexistential superficial metaphor just for the sake of being allegoric and cryptic. There is a meaning to it. Religious books are not simple books. That's exactly why their study became a separate academic commitment.

 

 

 

 

Huh? I said some religious claims can be tested, gave you an example of one that CAN be tested, and your response was that "it's just metaphor". Well, it's not metaphor to many Christian sects, as I pointed out already. They treat it as a valid claim in THEIR religion. Telling me that not everyone believes it is a complete non sequitur. Any claim made by any religion is going to be dismissed by people from other religions.

The original point--that you can scientifically test some claims made by religions--therefore remains valid.

 

 

To establish whether it's true or not? Why do we test anything?

 

I'm countering your claim that religions CANNOT be tested. Whether or not you WANT to test them depends on how much you care about reality.

Following the logic of the meaning I gave to that quote I'm just trying to explain that - if we haven't found Noe's ship yet, it does not mean that it didn't exist.

How can science proove that a person has or does not have enough faith to walk on water? There is a degree to what can be tested and what cannot be.

The claims of some religions are often dismissed by others because from the very start - we know that neither of the parties intended to change their opinion. It's usually not a debate about a mutual desire to find truth in life but just to *convert* someone. I think you'll find that it's true these days ( and it was going for ages too).

In this case a consensus will never be found.

 

You can of course test things like if a certain artefact which people pray for instance does indeed come from specifically that period of time or it's a fake etc. etc. You may test a certain dude if he's a saint and can walk on water or not. But let's face it. The people The Bible talks about are long dead. It can't be 100% proven and there's always going to be sceptics even if the test was positive i.e. the scientists were biased towards religion; the test is not conclusive; it's a scam. Controversy in these things are unavoidable and thus cannot ulimately lead to conclusions that matter to me personally. It's about the beliefs. Not straight up scientific facts. I think Einstein was one of those combining science and religion for the greater good. And that's a healthy balance if you ask me.

[Anderson]

Which is ironic as so many of today's 'Conservative Christians' hate lieberalism and basically everything Jesus stood for.

They failed to read it thoroughly then. Many people become authoritarian in their thoughts to find themselves and compensate for their failures and humiliations.

These people always annoy me. Ironically they're always looking for scapegoats. Never mind if it's jews, gypsies, muslims, black people, homosexuals. Anything but self-perfection.

[lowenz]

Einstein was a pantheist like Spinoza.

Pantheism isn't a "religion".

[lowenz]

They failed to read it thoroughly then. Many people become authoritarian in their thoughts to find themselves and compensate for their failures and humiliations.

These people always annoy me. Ironically they're always looking for scapegoats. Never mind if it's jews, gypsies, muslims, black people, homosexuals. Anything but self-perfection.

+1

Edited August 1, 2015 by lowenz

[Springheel]

Following the logic of the meaning I gave to that quote I'm just trying to explain that - if we haven't found Noe's ship yet, it does not mean that it didn't exist.

There is a degree to what can be tested and what cannot be.

 

 

I never said that _all_ religious claims can be tested. I said "lots" can be tested, and when you asked for an example, I gave one (technically three). I can give more if you like, but I think the point has been made.

 

 

 

How can science proove that a person has or does not have enough faith to walk on water?

 

Uh, we could test people to see whether or not they can walk on water? Take everyone who thinks they have enough faith to do this, and introduce them to the nearest swimming pool.

 

The fact that we have no evidence of this feat ever being done, and that no theory exists for how this could possibly happen--given what we understand about mass, displacement, and gravity--doesn't prove that it didn't _ever_ happen. But it does make it highly unlikely, and anyone trying to say that it did happen needs to have some pretty good evidence.

 

 

The people The Bible talks about are long dead. It can't be 100% proven and there's always going to be sceptics even if the test was positive i.e. the scientists were biased towards religion; the test is not conclusive; it's a scam.

 

 

If your point is that some people will choose not to accept evidence that contradicts their worldview, then I agree. You don't have to look very far to find them: creationists, holocaust deniers, anti-vaxxers--take your pick. However, the reality that some people willfully refuse to accept facts does not mean that the facts don't exist.

 

If your point is that it's okay to believe something simply because it hasn't been proven wrong, then I can't agree with that. That kind of reasoning puts you in the position of believing all kinds of nonsense, like shapeshifting reptilian overlords, martian pyramids, or that the moon is an artificial secret base put there by the ancient civilization of Mu.

 

this most likely refers not to simple believers but rather people who reached some higher stage of spiritual perfection. Agreed? Hence they are able to do things beyond the powers of ordinary people.

 

 

Are we still talking about real life?

[Gast]

I think Einstein was one of those combining science and religion for the greater good. And that's a healthy balance if you ask me.

There are a lot of scientists that are religious persons but they clearly separate beliefs from tangible facts. I do not know Einstein's life very well but I doubt he would have let his spirituality get in the way of facts. Science and religion are operating on different levels and can coexist, but not be combined. Filling the gaps of science with religious "facts" that could have happened in a mythical past is a weird thing. It's like trying to write a poem with numbers. That being said, I value the role of morality (eventually religious rooted morality) influencing the work of scientists and I do imagine that faith can give inspiration or will to some of them but that's all.

 

Also, I don't get that concept of greater good you speak of. I'm being a bit of the devil's advocate saying that but Einstein's discoveries have led in an indirect way to the Japan bombings and to our modern, dangerous nuclear industry. For me there is no such thing as the greater good in the sense of a fight for and towards "progress". We're just curious. But maybe I read you wrong and this is just a saying.

 

If your point is that it's okay to believe something simply because it hasn't been proven wrong, then I can't agree with that. That kind of reasoning puts you in the position of believing all kinds of nonsense, like shapeshifting reptilian overlords, martian pyramids, or that the moon is an artificial secret base put there by the ancient civilization of Mu.

It sounds like you have all the ingredients for the narrative part of the next Assassin's Creed game !

[Anderson]

 

 

If your point is that it's okay to believe something simply because it hasn't been proven wrong, then I can't agree with that. That kind of reasoning puts you in the position of believing all kinds of nonsense, like shapeshifting reptilian overlords, martian pyramids, or that the moon is an artificial secret base put there by the ancient civilization of Mu.

 

 

 

Are we still talking about real life?

It's ok to believe what you feel brings peace to you. If you don't want to believe in God, do not believe. If you don't want to believe in Allah, do not believe.

 

Yes, I'm talking about life because I distinguish clearly between physical and spiritual/psychological condition and health. I was following the logic of the fragment you brought as example.

 

 

 

There are a lot of scientists that are religious persons but they clearly separate beliefs from tangible facts. I do not know Einstein's life very well but I doubt he would have let his spirituality get in the way of facts. Science and religion are operating on different levels and can coexist, but not be combined. Filling the gaps of science with religious "facts" that could have happened in a mythical past is a weird thing. It's like trying to write a poem with numbers. That being said, I value the role of morality (eventually religious rooted morality) influencing the work of scientists and I do imagine that faith can give inspiration or will to some of them but that's all.

 

Also, I don't get that concept of greater good you speak of. I'm being a bit of the devil's advocate saying that but Einstein's discoveries have led in an indirect way to the Japan bombings and to our modern, dangerous nuclear industry. For me there is no such thing as the greater good in the sense of a fight for and towards "progress". We're just curious. But maybe I read you wrong and this is just a saying.

 

We're all entitled to have our own set of beliefs. I think that he was himself horrified to know of the death that the atomic bomb can bring. So was Saharov in Russia for instance. To me it's the fight on the political side that in the end decides what happens to the dangerous side of this technological progress.

 

 

For most of us it probably won't matter what happens in the afterlife. Nobody knows what will follow. Yet it's certain that everything we can do - depends only on us. We always have the choice and the forces to leave a mark on this world and contribute. With the help of friends, people whom we love, family. That is the most important. I see religion as an additional support to help with that.

[Springheel]

It's ok to believe what you feel brings peace to you.

 

 

If someone doesn't care about reality and what is actually true, that's their choice, but once they admit that they're just going to believe whatever makes them feel good, they've pretty much removed themselves from any kind of reasonable discussion.

 

I do not know Einstein's life very well but I doubt he would have let his spirituality get in the way of facts.

 

"It was, of course, a lie what you read about my religious convictions, a lie which is being systematically repeated. I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it." -- Einstein

[Gast]

You can of course test things like if a certain artefact which people pray for instance does indeed come from specifically that period of time or it's a fake etc. etc. You may test a certain dude if he's a saint and can walk on water or not. But let's face it. The people The Bible talks about are long dead. It can't be 100% proven and there's always going to be sceptics even if the test was positive i.e. the scientists were biased towards religion; the test is not conclusive; it's a scam. Controversy in these things are unavoidable and thus cannot ulimately lead to conclusions that matter to me personally. It's about the beliefs. Not straight up scientific facts.

 

Yes, I'm talking about life because I distinguish clearly between physical and spiritual/psychological condition and health.

How does this separation between physical and spiritual condition applies if you can give credit to a mythical extraordinary action because the science does not have 100% of chances to prove it wrong? Aren't you mixing the spiritual and physical domains doing that?

 

We always have the choice and the forces to leave a mark on this world and contribute. With the help of friends, people whom we love, family. That is the most important. I see religion as an additional support to help with that.

So if I read you well, a fair and peaceful interpretation of religions would be an optional helper of morality? I can get along with that.

[Anderson]

 

How does this separation between physical and spiritual condition applies if you can give credit to a mythical extraordinary action because the science does not have 100% of chances to prove it wrong? Aren't you mixing the spiritual and physical domains doing that?

 

The spiritual elevates man to overcome the hardships of the physical. I know that science will never proove how some people overcome hardships.

I don't know if everything written in The Bible happened just the way it's written. Possibly there were errors made in some places, it was written by people after all - we are prone to mistakes. Obviously science and religion are always going to contradict each other.

In the context of the religion the events of The Bible are considered obviously miraculous.

A lot matters as well as you say the mythologized events, superstitious, just for the desire of people wanting to attribute meaning to things that have no real significance. Living a balanced life is just about that - figuring out for yourself your own tempo, discern the superstition from what really matters.

 

I can't really say about what science can or cannot proove. I only know that it's unlikely there's ever going to be consensus on many event from The Bible if I understood you correctly.

 

 

 

 

So if I read you well, a fair and peaceful interpretation of religions would be an optional helper of morality? I can get along with that.

 

I think those religions were never meant to be used to call crusades either. Each religion's dogma sets certain rules and ways to live, so it's just about each individuum to make up their own mind (especially when a question isn't directly addressed). A healthy dose of critical thinking and a rational approach is in and of itself vital to character development.

 

 

 

If someone doesn't care about reality and what is actually true, that's their choice, but once they admit that they're just going to believe whatever makes them feel good, they've pretty much removed themselves from any kind of reasonable discussion.

 

You can take it to extremes if you like. That's your call. I just think you're mistaken.

[Springheel]

You can take it to extremes if you like. That's your call. I just think you're mistaken.

 

 

Mistaken about what?

[Anderson]

 

Mistaken about what?

In my opinion science doesn't give answers to many questions.

With the exception of some fundamentalist and extremist currents, religion does not impose a lack of judgement or blind obedience.

[nbohr1more]

I've fallen in and out on the belief in an afterlife but it all hinges on my ability to suspend logic and believe in magic

which is a pretty troubling thing for me... especially with "the test of Faith" seemingly being a very unfair apriori expectation

in Christianity. Judiasm at least gives you some leeway to ask God for proof that he exists (or did back in the beginning

at least).

 

The more I look at Judeo-Christian religion, the more it looks like the work of some limited but superior being (alien?)

rather than a Universal God as we know it now. I'm not quite ready to throw in with the "Ancient Alien" crowd but I wouldn't

be shocked if someday an Alien showed-up and explained what really happened during the biblical epoch was a small territorial

squabble between a few wayward E.T.'s where one faction's leader conscripted a few select tribes to carry out some military action.

The proto-indo-european language has a religious phrase translated as "sky father" which to me seems odd compared animism where we

have a perfectly understandable notion of why they thought animals could be thinkers and thus gods. It also jives closer to an "alien in the sky"

as compared to a god who exists in a different dimension\plane\realm etc.

 

Still, an afterlife might not be quite a lost cause for atheists:

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simulation_hypothesis

 

maybe you'll just get debriefed after the simulation to see what your stealth score was (etc)?

[Gast]

 

The spiritual elevates man to overcome the hardships of the physical. I know that science will never proove how some people overcome hardships.

I don't know if everything written in The Bible happened just the way it's written. Possibly there were errors made in some places, it was written by people after all - we are prone to mistakes. Obviously science and religion are always going to contradict each other.

In the context of the religion the events of The Bible are considered obviously miraculous.

A lot matters as well as you say the mythologized events, superstitious, just for the desire of people wanting to attribute meaning to things that have no real significance. Living a balanced life is just about that - figuring out for yourself your own tempo, discern the superstition from what really matters.

 

I can't really say about what science can or cannot proove. I only know that it's unlikely there's ever going to be consensus on many event from The Bible if I understood you correctly.

 

I just think that these things cannot be placed on the same level. So yes, only some events will overlap.

 

In my opinion science doesn't give answers to many questions.

With the exception of some fundamentalist and extremist currents, religion does not impose a lack of judgement or blind obedience.

 

That is very true, science (hopefully) doesn't have all the answers and religion does not necessarily impose a lack of judgement. But a religious judgement cannot apply to a reasonable discussion, and the contrary is true. No scientist will try to rewrite parts of the Bible so they fit the laws of physics.

 

I think those religions were never meant to be used to call crusades either. Each religion's dogma sets certain rules and ways to live, so it's just about each individuum to make up their own mind (especially when a question isn't directly addressed). A healthy dose of critical thinking and a rational approach is in and of itself vital to character development.

If by religion you mean those who wrote the books and people that do believe, I do agree with you. Most are of good faith and want to do good things around them.

 

The more I look at Judeo-Christian religion, the more it looks like the work of some limited but superior being (alien?)

rather than a Universal God as we know it now. I'm not quite ready to throw in with the "Ancient Alien" crowd but I wouldn't

be shocked if someday an Alien showed-up and explained what really happened during the biblical epoch was a small territorial

squabble between a few wayward E.T.'s where one faction's leader conscripted a few select tribes to carry out some military action.

The proto-indo-european language has a religious phrase translated as "sky father" which to me seems odd compared animism where we

have a perfectly understandable notion of why they thought animals could be thinkers and thus gods. It also jives closer to an "alien in the sky"

as compared to a god who exists in a different dimension\plane\realm etc.

Why writing books or starting a territorial quarrel should be reserved to superior beings? Religion is a system that embraces the faith itself but also the administrative, politic and economic sides of a cult. All these things - to create stories, to believe them, unite around moral values they communicate and spread them, use them for control or war - are achievable by simple humans.

 

That "sky father" worshiped by the Indo-European cultures could be the sun, the fertilizing rain - especially in the late Neolithic societies described in the Bible - or just a product of the human imagination. We built the pyramids, we crafted stone blades during the ice age that we aren't able to reproduce today, we tamed fire. All this is for me very simple, humans back then were really good at what they were doing, and they invented gods because of their formidable tendency to explain things and invent stories. We are the superior being.

 

Until aliens land on my backyard !

 

 

 

Edited August 2, 2015 by Gast

[Springheel]

In my opinion science doesn't give answers to many questions.

With the exception of some fundamentalist and extremist currents, religion does not impose a lack of judgement or blind obedience.

 

Sometimes I'm not sure we're understanding each other very well. Maybe it's a language thing.

 

I never said science can answer every question.

 

I agree with everything in the above quote.

 

The more I look at Judeo-Christian religion, the more it looks like the work of some limited but superior being (alien?)

rather than a Universal God as we know it now.

 

 

This is a perfect example of where Occam's razor should apply (basically, don't add assumptions that aren't needed in order to explain something). There's nothing about Christianity that makes it unique among other religions that have been created by regular old humans trying to understand the world around them (other than being adopted by one of the most powerful empires in ancient history). Nothing about it requires the intervention of a superior being.

[nbohr1more]

Oh I don't doubt that anything built in ancient times was the work of man. No aliens needed. I just have this odd suspicion\hunch which comes

to mind when I read a passage like:

 

 

 

Then take them from their hands and burn them on the altar along with the burnt offering for a pleasing aroma to the LORD,
a food offering presented to the LORD. Exodus 29:25

 

 

Why is a god "smelling" anything?

 

What goal does this accomplish other than to waste valuable nutrition during a harsh and impoverished era?

 

It points to the belief that God literally exists "in the sky". The same could be said of "The Tower of Babel", where God

basically says that the tower was destroyed to prevent humans from reaching the heavens. One line indicates that

if humans could reach the sky they could achieve anything and this would be a problem for God.

 

A being that lives "outside of our realm" would not be bothered by humans in the sky but here we have a God who acts like

he lives there. Yes, I guess the Sun could probably be a possible root of that belief. It could be borrowed Sun mythology

re-adapted for Judaism... hmm Atenism (the first monotheism)?

[Springheel]

Why is a god "smelling" anything?

 

What goal does this accomplish other than to waste valuable nutrition during a harsh and impoverished era?

 

 

If you look through various mythologies of ancient peoples, it was quite common for gods and goddesses to have human characteristics, including human senses. Basic anthropomorphizing.

 

And the notion of having to sacrifice things to the gods was universal as well. Our inherited trait of ascribing agency to things lead us to believe that everything had a mind. If storms struck, it was because something powerful was angry. Same thing if the earth shook, or the rains didn't come, or people started dying mysteriously. The only solution was to try and appease the angry spirits by giving them valuable things, whether that was food, weapons or firstborn children.

 

Over time, we went from everything having a mind (animism) to a group of powerful beings that divided the rule of nature between them (polytheism), to only a single, super powerful being that ruled everything (monotheism). It wouldn't surprise me if this evolution of thought had direct parallels with the evolution of government within human culture.

[Anderson]

 

If you look through various mythologies of ancient peoples, it was quite common for gods and goddesses to have human characteristics, including human senses. Basic anthropomorphizing.

 

And the notion of having to sacrifice things to the gods was universal as well. Our inherited trait of ascribing agency to things lead us to believe that everything had a mind. If storms struck, it was because something powerful was angry. Same thing if the earth shook, or the rains didn't come, or people started dying mysteriously. The only solution was to try and appease the angry spirits by giving them valuable things, whether that was food, weapons or firstborn children.

 

Over time, we went from everything having a mind (animism) to a group of powerful beings that divided the rule of nature between them (polytheism), to only a single, super powerful being that ruled everything (monotheism). It wouldn't surprise me if this evolution of thought had direct parallels with the evolution of government within human culture.

I like your comparisson.

Albeit, once again returning to Christianity I find that the way how commonly and easily someone is made a martyr/beatified/canonized becomes in a certain way analogic to the polytheistic system.

Someone who's really into this will attirubt to each glorified person some connection - № X Saint is responsible for good harvest; № X saint is a patron of X profession. Maybe other religions have this as well, I don't know.

If you analyze it like that, the general population seems rather content with this.

 

What I think is interesting in perspective is how superstitious sailors are in comparison to plain landlubbers. In the condition of a significant exposure to danger people either become really religious or superstitious to death as the stress is pretty hard to deal with.

I thought in the 20'th/21'st centure we were really past that, but that seems not the case for many things men can deal with at once.

[Outlooker]

The notion of an afterlife for "yourself" to exist on in is already problematic, because there is no static "self" at all.

 

Just think about old people - is is not uncommon for them to lose their "self" years, even decades before "death" - that is, before their body dies. Their brain detoriates, their remembered experiences, which are the basis for their/our personality, our "self" concept, get erased - more and more. They are, over time, different "persons" - not only their memories fade, their character changes, too, and often dramatically.

They become different persons.

So:

Which kind of person goes in the "afterlife" - the human with his personality, thinking, feeling and memories when he is 5, 15, 40 or 80?

Because we know today how our brain works at least a bit:

And it turns out, we change dramatically over time, almost every day, because we lose some older memories and remembered experiences that are a functional base for our feeling, thinking and experiencing the "now".

You are not the same person you were a week ago - your self-percepted stability in personality, thinking and feeling is only an illusion that the brain constructs for you/itself(?).

 

Example:

When you were, say, 11, you had a lots of experiences, friends, memories, problems, thinking styles etc. that you today have forgotten - all that remains of that time when you are, say, 30, are very few remnants of memory imprints - and they get fewer evey day, and they are even getting CHANGED - that is, they are becoming less data, but at the same time get a "rosy" taint, in other words, you more and more remember only falsely more nicely interpreted things.

 

This happens even with core persons of your life - if a person`s parants die, every couple of years later, they can remember ever less of them. After some time, almost all details are lost, and only a sketchy, vague memory is there.

 

And it happens with you, without you usually noticing it. You are a different person ten years ago, last week and today - which version goes in the afterlife? The "you" jsut before your death? That would probably a senile husk of a person with very low cognitive ability and only a few grains of sand of memories and experiences that were, on its prime, a full beach of sand of memories and personality.

In other words, some of "you" dies every day, even every moment.

 

 

On religiosity:

There is a brain region, I currently not remember which exactly, that when you stick a wire in it and send a electrical current through it, changes "you" -

(Why doing this? Neurosurgeons must cut into brain tissue for reasons like removing a brain tumor - they want to do this by doing minimal damage, so they stick very tiny wires in the brain and apply an electrical current and let the

person that is operated on tell what they think/feel (yes - because the brain tissue itself has zero pain receptors, you can be without any problem being fully awake during brain surgery).

So things happen like if one puts the wire here - my left foot feels cold, if one puts the wire there, you smell bacon, put it here, and you hear your mother sing, put it here and your left arm jerks etc. - they do it to try to

find a brain region to cut in that will probably not result in much damage to memories or abilities of the operated on person)

 

but there is a region that makes people go fully religious when you put the wire in. Such persons suddenly hear god talking, or an angel, or are totally, 100% sure such a being is "there", possibly now and very close to them.

Basically what happens is that what the person has learned about religion is acitivated and supported with a extremely powerful surge of religious feeling.

When this happens to people that have no religious beliefs or even almost no knowledge about religious stories, it triggers a very powerful feeling that things suddenly are extremely "meaningful" - and something "is there" etc.

 

So, religious feelings can be switched on and off in at least almost all people with basically a flip of a switch.

We know quite certain that it is an illusion, because other people there do not experience it, and you can just as well flip on/off a smell of bacon or a certain memory or the feeling your, say butt is ice cold.

 

It is no surprise religious people defend their religion so much - one reason is, they "feel" it is so - and feeling is the base of thinking, for you cannot think wihtout having some sensor input beforehand or memories.

For them it is real - just like other things are real for persons in psychatric hospitals, like persons that "know" they are Napoleon - or, for some reason, more frequently, God or the Son of God.

Well.

 

Probably being religious has some important evolutionary advantage (and probably some disadvantages, too) - for feeling, therefore "knowing" there is meaning, some higher form of justice, etc. can make people

more successful, especially in dire situtaions where for survival, for going on, for fighting on against problematic conditions - just like there is a system in place in us for surviving danger by an instincive "fight or flight" response

to sudden dangers. Religious people would then be more tenacious, be less prone to gving up even if the situation looks very much hopeless.

After all, we seem to be mostly today the offspring of such ancestors. Other ancestors that quite correctly and logically came to the conclusion that certain things are hopeless would have given up and died.

Not so the "religious" - they would have stubbornly went on, defying logic and common sense - if only a few of them made it through neverteless, they had more surviving offspring than others who had given up.

 

So it is not unexpected that there are today a lot of religious people. They have, just for being religious, in some situations higher survivability by being delusioned.

 

That is, on an individual level, not the only reason for religiosity.

One other is the sunk costs fallacy - people have spent much time and energy in religious activity, and cannot accept (partly subconsciously) that this was all for naught. So they keep on with believing.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunk_costs

There are extreme examples for this, like many UFO and Armageddon sects in the past - people sold all their property, left work, family etc. and gave all money to others. They expected the

world to end at date X or for some aliens to pick them up with their UFO right before. When nothing happened, they should look quite silly to themselves and realize they made a huge error and correct their thinking.

But: That almost never happens, instead they become EVEN STRONGER in their faith, even more extreme, and rationalize

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rationalization_%28psychology%29

that they just have erred in the date or the aliens try to test their worthiness and strength of faith etc.

 

Another thing is, and that upsets people because it is not very polite, that religion usually offers very simple, easily to grasp interpretations of reality and rules to follow.

Religion offers certainty and order in a very chaotic, very hard to understand world.

So especially less cognitve able persons are - on average- more religious and at that very sure of their brand of religious faith - for if they hadn't it, they would have not much of an "understanding"

of how the world works. It removes uncertainty, and therefore acts as a guide in life, enables those people to act. Even if it is only an illusion, it enables them to function.

 

 

 

 

Here some article I googles quickly,

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/10914137/What-God-does-to-your-brain.html

 

 

If you want to have a good read on that subject and many more, I recommend to you

http://www.amazon.com/Incognito-Secret-Lives-David-Eagleman/dp/0307389928/

Edited August 3, 2015 by Outlooker