Critical thinking and philosophy forms religion as its final resolve. The religion is what the critical thinking was trying to accomplish and by doing so (or believing that they had done so), the solution is then applied to the population and accomplishes in the population what it was designed to do.
But you are right in that accepting that the solution is already available reduces the urge to seek it and thus eventually causes its loss. People become stupid to the truth of the religion because they were raised presuming what everything was resolved and what everything meant. Acceptance of no need to think merely evolves into no ability to think. Man sleeps.
The better religion involves the urge to think while not inspiring disregard for what has been thought. Science aspires to be that religion.
Are you talking about all religion, some religion, religion in this or that time, or in this or that part of the world? I think we have become so used to making some blanket statement without realising how important it was in the past to stick together, or to have a common understanding upon which the group could base all development. I remember being a young boy in the scouts where the philosophy of the group was taken from the Jungle Book. In any good story you can find good or bad examples for behaviour or survival. If the texts at hand are also intended as moral guides, all the better. But life is on the move, and there is no looking back, so we have to learn from past mistakes but not throw the baby out with the bathwater.
It isn’t so much a question whether God “exists” - as a metaphor for the one unique prime mover at the beginning of existence, God already exists in the relationship one has with him. Some relationships are devotional, some are oppositional. “God” describes a relationship with something unfathomable and yet strangely present, or something construed and dangerous. You have heard of the comparisons to the experience of love, which some people have and others haven’t experienced. For some love is an ideal they hope they will some day experience, for others it is an experience they enjoy. The various scriptures and canons devoted to God, Gods or Tao or Law, are all dated. They all come from a certain stage in history,a certain time in the development of mankind, or a certain culture or cultural understanding. But culture too is on the move, and we are just as in danger to loose all cultivation, as we are to progress.
We are in the position to reap from the huge cultural harvest, to learn from the best, and worst examples of history. As is said, those who forget history are often doomed to repeat it. Religion is a part of our heritage. It has contributed, in whatever way, to what we are now. Every family has a skeleton in the cupboard, so do we, and it could be the misbehaviour of religious zealots, the cruelty of fanatics, or the closed minds of fundamentalism. But I also have a great Aunt, who was a methodist all her life, and she was the loveliest ladies I have ever known. I have known catholics, muslims, protestants and hindus, buddhists and free church christians, and they were all just as bad or as good as I feel about myself. In every case, it was always a question about how I allowed them to effect me.
I never considered any of them “mentally ill”, even if I disagreed or found them somewhat overbearing in their beliefs . There are some who have become depressive over the years, which has me asking whether their faith has been good for them, or whether they had become too idealistic. But there are others who have been a light in hard times, who have shown strength of character when others failed. I think it is a question of being able to differentiate. That seems to be something that religious or non-religious alike are losing, and their views are becoming more and more black or white.
I don’t view buddhism as religion, it isn’t coercive or a system, the Buddha never asked or wanted worship, not like the religions that are poisonous. Take away the churches, the dogma, the heaven (false promise/hope) and hell (coercion) and would it still be considered religion? I personally don’t think so, it would be an actual philosophy/possibility without working off of control or manipulating the gullible.
If I may ask, when was religion first introduced to you? At all, any part of it, childhood? It was for me and it is for near all others, now let me ask another question, as a child who is naturally gullible, less logical, more imaginative and creative… Did you get a choice? Did anyone else get a choice?
The problem is not people getting together to express themselves and their ideas, it is the FORCE that comes with religion that is the problem, the hypocritical contradictory method.
You see, most religious are against abortion because they say “the baby gets no choice” yet turn around and whisper in their own gullible childs ear “praise the lord and go to heaven, worship Jesus if you don’t want to be burned in hell”
Does THAT child get a choice? No, they don’t. That my friend, is poison and I do not stand for it. That is mental disease and sickening, to willingly shape a child who could be a potential genius in whatever they wanted.
Children are not pieces of clay to be shaped by others, they need to be allowed to shape themselves and if religious can’t agree to that then they ARE diseased.
People who manipulate people always force their preference. Science is forced upon people today every bit as much as any other religion has been. It is just what people do.
Your complaint should be against intentional hypnosis, forced, or coerced behavior. What does it matter if someone is calling it “religion” or “government” or “marketing”. The separation of state and religion was support to help in that regard. The effort to ban religion is exactly what the problem is - “intentional hypnosis, forced, or coerced behavior”.
…and because they are mandating coherence, firing and socially cursing anyone who implies that anything else might be significant or even worth mentioning. Some teachers have been fired merely for mentioning the concept of “Intelligent Design” even though mentioned disparagingly.
Science is a religion of selfish hatred and abuse of people as mere objects of elitist manipulation. In the “Cain and Able” scenario, Science plays Cain.
Scientists do not all follow the same beliefs, theories or methods anymore than the religious or Athiest’s do. And any teacher that signed a contract prohibiting them from saying certain things should have common sense enough to keep their mouth shut. They broke their word and they broke their contract. They can not complain legitimately afterwards. But, apparently now your word and a contract means nothing.
Buddhism in the Far East is a little different from our Western version. There is a whole realm of Gods and Demons behind it, but I too wouldn’t take the teaching of Buddha to be a religion in the way of theism or polytheism.
It may be that we are too disappointed to accept a positive goal that is no more than a hope, but it is hope that helps people progress, and also gives a direction for that progress. Heaven is a place that we would love to go to – timeless, deathless, no tears. It reveals a lot about us and tells us what we’re clinging to, aspiring to or hoping for. The experience of flow gives us a timeless experience; the inevitable fact that we die some time makes the furthering of life in abundance all the more important; the fact that we are often saddened to tears should make us more sympathetic for others in that situation.
There are plenty of people who experience hell every day, through no fault of their own, and it is only human to hope for justice, even if it looks like hell on earth multiplied a million times. The idea that the hell some people make for others will some day fall back on them as punishment is as popular amongst atheists as it is theists. You can’t tell me that it is merely a religious idea.
The problem is really, as James has said, the “manipulation of the gullible” as you put it. This happens in all fields of life and to the detriment of the “gullible”. The examples that James gave are not exhaustive. Think about how people all across the world have suffered toxic poisoning – not through religion! Think of how many people died in Sumatra, when the world banks found people to start a war there, blaming it on the communists. There are uncountable examples of injustice and horror which have nothing to do with religion.
I was brought up Christian, which was something I rebelled at as a teenager. I returned to Christianity in my twenties and left the church again in my fifties. But it was a system that sickened me, not the people – who were just like I was, stuck in a rut. I was in very deep, as a parish elder and also working for the church as a geriatric nurse, and I fell a victim of my own idealism. There is no way that I can blame anyone for that, but it showed me how important it is to get out of the rut and get a different perspective. Now, in my sixties, I am comfortable with the church, but not part of it. I have found too much in other traditions that shows me how religion works for people, including Christianity, and I support people in their traditions. I have for myself, however, a religion of the soul, which spans the traditions.
I am also critical of those aspects of religion, which I see being detrimental to their health, or detrimental to social cohesion. So there are things you have mentioned, which I wholeheartedly agree with, but the more emotion we pump into a subject, the more likely it is to make things worse.
Only in religious fundamentalism does one find concepts of eternal punishment. Their god could reasonably be called insane as could their worship of their god. But!!! God is love. As love he cannot punish us for following our own energies (Blake). God is not a loser. He will reclaim all souls eventually as Paul notes.
God is known in personal relationships with people, places and things. He is real as hands and feet for those who would only believe in him without the baggage of the notion that justice is a matter to be settled in the hereafter.
That being said, referring to God as he is only for grammatical usage. God is force, not a gender.
I think a person should read contracts before signing , make a decision to sign or not sign and if you sign you abide by it. What is so wrong with keeping your word? No one forces you to sign or agree.
That would be the ideal way but, scientists must earn money to take care of themselves and family. They sign contracts with companies and schools. Can you afford to take care of scientists and their families in a manner that makes them happy and healthy? Do you want to draft all so that they only work for governments? Just how do you really expect science to not have borders or secrets when people must earn a living and want luxuries? Drafting for governments sounds even more dangerous, waaaay too much power there already. Do you want scientists to take priestly vows of poverty? ?
Apparently not since the scientists agreed to the conditions set forth by their employers.
If you knew someone gave their word not to say something then they broke their word, would you trust them? Yea you can put a condition like, they told about the cure for polio or something dramatic like that but, the person lied, broke trust, broke their word and least of all broke a written contract, how trustworthy could they be? Did they do it to help or get famous??
Really? You think scientists should live in poverty , their families live in poverty? Should they be servants to the state? Who the hell would ever want to be a scientist then?
Don’t forget to mention the money. When science becomes independent of religion, then it is not or at least hardly because of money; but when science becomes dependend of religion again (it is a cycle) or itself a religion depending on a political state or corporation, super-organization, then it is solely or at least mainly because of money, because it needs much money, it has become corrupt, susceptible to blackmail.
Would you prefer a system in which the value of the money would be different from the current one? A society with an economy that is based upon information (including knowledge and belief) is much more environment-sparing than a society with a money economy that is based upon energetic resources. Information (but not energy and resources) can be reproduced arbitrarily. So information is the better money basis. I would suggest a money system of two monetary units: „I“ („Information“) and „E“ („Energy“), so that, for example, 100 cents would consist of 98 I-cent and 2 E-cent.
In that system science would be - by far - not as much dependent as it is currently.