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Society And Religion
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The French writer and intellectual, Michel Houellbecq, has always maintained that no society can survive without religion, do you agree?
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meanwhile, back on page 2…
//Old_Geezer
I do not believe far flung tribes don't have their version of a shaman or whatever. //
I don't doubt that and thought I'd skilfully avoided the issue by using a sociable animal species as a model of a functional "society" with plenty to fear but no deity. I think a follow up point didn't get from thought to typing finger (phone keyboard!) to the effect that the "need" for gods arises when intelligence evolved above the threshold required for - how shall I put this? - "vivid imagination".
//The more primitive and unknowing a group is the more they'll attribute a greater power to that which they don't understand.
07:45 Mon 21st Mar 2016//
On a recent edition of The Big Questions , airtime (not enough!!) was given to atheism and one put forward the idea that "credulousness" can confer advantage to a mammal because, if it imagines that there is a predator, lurking around a rock, if it is incorrect, it doesn't matter and wastes only a tiny amount of energy taking a detour but, if it turns out to be correct then its detour keeps it alive, whereas the empirical mammal will take its chances because saving energy would have been the factor keeping it alive longer, if the population was iniformly stressed by famine, say.
Having said that, this ability to picture things in the mind, handle concepts like time, plan out future events ("I will go to the river to drink, after I've eaten this meal"), imagine potential dangers is a big advancement over mere reaction to sensory inputs. Whether it is an ability unique to humans is impossible to tell. They've communicated with chimpanzees and they can request food and beverage types well enough but whether words like "now, later, yesterday, tomorrow" - concepts with no physical presence - hold any usefulness or meaning for them, I don't know. If they cannot or don't then I'd regard them as below the threshold for theism. A discontinuity in your spectrum of "more primitive = more tendency to believe".
My stance regarding the other side of that threshold is that, the most "primitive" human tribes still have brain *power* exactly equivalent to our own. They only lack the education and time to work the world out for themselves. In the vacuum that is the absence of that knowledge, there is ample room to, as you suggest, attribute what they do not understand to higher powers.
a.k.a. "Magical Thinking".
//Old_Geezer
I do not believe far flung tribes don't have their version of a shaman or whatever. //
I don't doubt that and thought I'd skilfully avoided the issue by using a sociable animal species as a model of a functional "society" with plenty to fear but no deity. I think a follow up point didn't get from thought to typing finger (phone keyboard!) to the effect that the "need" for gods arises when intelligence evolved above the threshold required for - how shall I put this? - "vivid imagination".
//The more primitive and unknowing a group is the more they'll attribute a greater power to that which they don't understand.
07:45 Mon 21st Mar 2016//
On a recent edition of The Big Questions , airtime (not enough!!) was given to atheism and one put forward the idea that "credulousness" can confer advantage to a mammal because, if it imagines that there is a predator, lurking around a rock, if it is incorrect, it doesn't matter and wastes only a tiny amount of energy taking a detour but, if it turns out to be correct then its detour keeps it alive, whereas the empirical mammal will take its chances because saving energy would have been the factor keeping it alive longer, if the population was iniformly stressed by famine, say.
Having said that, this ability to picture things in the mind, handle concepts like time, plan out future events ("I will go to the river to drink, after I've eaten this meal"), imagine potential dangers is a big advancement over mere reaction to sensory inputs. Whether it is an ability unique to humans is impossible to tell. They've communicated with chimpanzees and they can request food and beverage types well enough but whether words like "now, later, yesterday, tomorrow" - concepts with no physical presence - hold any usefulness or meaning for them, I don't know. If they cannot or don't then I'd regard them as below the threshold for theism. A discontinuity in your spectrum of "more primitive = more tendency to believe".
My stance regarding the other side of that threshold is that, the most "primitive" human tribes still have brain *power* exactly equivalent to our own. They only lack the education and time to work the world out for themselves. In the vacuum that is the absence of that knowledge, there is ample room to, as you suggest, attribute what they do not understand to higher powers.
a.k.a. "Magical Thinking".
Hypo.
What you are touching on here are two opposite actions each governed by the two different sides of the brain and being used singly ; the left side the rational energy saving economical approach, the right side imagining that there might be danger around the rock and going a different route and wasting time and energy.
But there is a third, fully human 'joined-up' way; continue along the shortest route, but carry a big stick !
What you are touching on here are two opposite actions each governed by the two different sides of the brain and being used singly ; the left side the rational energy saving economical approach, the right side imagining that there might be danger around the rock and going a different route and wasting time and energy.
But there is a third, fully human 'joined-up' way; continue along the shortest route, but carry a big stick !
@mibs
I was hoping Khandro would deliver the punchline but you managed it, with an unexpected flourish.
Screening process eh? This thing about priests and their proclivities seems to go back to primitive societies.
Christians please note: sacrifice is an old, old theme and no-one ever questions why it is supposed to placate angry gods.
I was hoping Khandro would deliver the punchline but you managed it, with an unexpected flourish.
Screening process eh? This thing about priests and their proclivities seems to go back to primitive societies.
Christians please note: sacrifice is an old, old theme and no-one ever questions why it is supposed to placate angry gods.
A friend of mine who eschews conventional medicine recommended quite seriously a herbal remedy rather than conventional medicine for curing colds. When I told him that I never take any medicine for curing colds yet they all get cured anyway he gave me a sheepish look and changed the subject. It seems to me that sacrificing virgins works perfectly when the volcano only rumbles. It is the explosive eruption complete with pyroclastic flow that needs a few extra virgins..by then it is too late.
As Godwin's law is to Hitler and politics, it seems that human sacrifice is a version employed by atheists when the are able to come up with an intelligent rebuttal of religion, (or indeed address the OP).
'The last traditional human sacrifice from Europe surely dates back to the Viking Middle Ages when the Norse still killed humans at their boat burials: examples can be given from the Isle of Man in the west to the Volga in the east.'
'The last traditional human sacrifice from Europe surely dates back to the Viking Middle Ages when the Norse still killed humans at their boat burials: examples can be given from the Isle of Man in the west to the Volga in the east.'
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