Should we abandon religion?

This thread is meant for a serious discussion of religion, its limitations, its advantages, its history.

What is the use of religion? Does utility imply goodness? An important function of religion is to relink our personal and social relation to things-in-themselves and that symbolic imagery from most religion points from reality towards the real (in the Lacanian sense). Religious rituals are liminal in taking up the challenge of naturalizing social categories by way of artistic expression.

Three supposed disadvantageous aspects of modern religion include superstition, idolatry, and blasphemy. Superstition assumes that all sacred spheres, including ritual and community, must produce favorable results. This type of favourability is tranquilizing and ascetic. Superstition emphasizes the manipulation of the relation of perception and things-inthemselves, and in other words, have total control of that which reminds one of the the other. This is problematic because a thing-in-itself is only known as an appearance rather than a unified whole with other things-in-themselves. Superstition assumes that religion grants us access to control over predictive powers and all-encompassing explanations of being.

Catholic Idolatry may have been the main determinant in revising the 2nd commandment. This is problematic because an icon is worshipped as if it is God or Gods itself.

Blasphemy forces the limits of language and practice of relating the real and reality as contextual. Whether or not this aspect of religion is exclusively Abrahamic is doubtful.

I am more interested in the purely artistic forms of mythical religion that seem to supersede culture and normative limitations. Shamanism and Lulu spirits are more symbolic than those represented in the Balinese theatre.

But what are the main functions of religion? Is religion a necessity for healthy living?

Some of the mental fuckery I read in the Tao Te Ching just seems like linguistic acrobatics.

Is Joseph Campbell a credible author?

Does Mircea Eliade have anything important to say?

Why is my generation so disgustingly agnostic and scared of religion?

Do you have a credible replacement for it?

I’m extremely straightforward James.

Suicide occurs because the subject sees life in context as meaningless. People avoid suicide when it is more difficult. To make suicide more difficult obscures accountability for representing meaning in a system.

My religion is simple …

Make suicide as easy as possible and have zero suicides. Keep resurrecting people if need be.

Once the number gets to zero, you have inherent purpose for life and living.

It logically entails from the premises, and is the only metric throughout all of the cosmos that verifies purpose and meaning of systems

I have always maintained the civilization would be a whole
lot better off without religion… it has created far more wars,
conflicts, riots and deaths, then anything else ever created or found…
and not just between rival religions, but the wars between the same faith…
in fact, given all the wars between rival and competing religions, I would
say that the wars of religions has caused the death of millions and for what?
to say, my god is better then your god…in the name of religion, man
has killed, tortured, maimed, burned down whole cities, killed men, women
and children in the name of _________ pick the name of whatever deity you
are fighting for today…in the name of my god is better then your god, men have
said, I am better then you, creating an “us vs them” attitude that separates
one from another…religion doesn’t create unity, it creates disunity and hate
and discord in the name of god…nothing good comes from religion… because
at its heart is the separation that divides us and makes us less then what we would be
without religion…abandon religion and we shall be much closer to peace and
human happiness then ever before…don’t replace religion with something else,
remove religion in all its forms and we shall see a new golden age of peace…

Kropotkin

We are not far enough removed from primal needs, fears, desires and instinct to be able to abandon religions.

Venture,

Religion can give a sense of purpose - a positive one.
It gives one or some the sense that there IS something somewhere more worthy of being worshipped than ourselves, something which transcends us, something to give our hearts, minds and souls to at times.

Well worth reading. He was wonderful.

We must be willing to get rid of the life we’ve planned, so as to have the life that is waiting for us.

Follow your bliss and the universe will open doors for you where there were only walls.

The goal of life is to make your heartbeat match the beat of the universe, to match your nature with Nature.

Shivers…

I’m agnostic but I am not afraid of religion. I do realize though that organized religion has as much capacity to destroy as it does to build up where the right individuals are concerned.
I cannot know, we cannot know, but I can still experience and intuit - ergo, I am agnostic.
The word comes from the Latin religare (?) which means to bind. That binding can be as wonderful as it can be destructive.
We all need something to bind us up, to hold us in the grasp of the great beauty of the world, to where our imaginations can go, to what inspires us and yet at the same time that being “bound up” causes us to experience real freedom because of its capacity to bind us to these things.

… and Man-ipulations.

Yes, we should abandon religion. You didn’t phrase it as a simple question, but the simple answer is given nonetheless.

If God created Himself, in some way, then the death of God, through His Son, represented by the birth of unbelief, when Jesus was asked on the Cross, why His Father could not save him-the only evolved answer, at all credible still : is: If God does not exist, surely He would need to be created.

Perhaps the evolution of man, requires a God, even as a pure concept, to enable Man, to attain Paradise.
Perhaps, Manhood could never be attained except for going through the Pugatory, the cleansing to a purity necessary for It. That purity, may be the validation of God’s intentionality to find reason to live, for civilization to go on.

Otherwise, come chaos and again the beginning. For I believe, there are infinite chances of Man to redeem him selves in the eyes of God.

Why? A "Why makes it less simple.

Sometimes it’s a good thing to add the word “necessarily”.
I wonder, what would the world become without some form of good morality and ethics. Religion is capable of achieving this, depending on who the individuals are.
Is religion so antiquated and without validity?

Anyway,he forgot the word “organized” religion.

There are too many reasons for a simple why to be phrased and any phrasing of the why becomes too convoluted to do so correctly. The reasons to abandon religion outweigh the reasons to keep it, the why can always be figured out and worked out after the fact. Action is often what is needed.

If it isn’t organized, it is erased by Government persecution.

You will either bow to a dictatorial Government or a Religion. Moses was the liberator from the ancient Pharaoh government. Judaism and Christianity from the Roman government. And currently Israel from the Global government.

Without one, you WILL have the other.

Just a word, most social species follow taboos and social directives through breeding or experience taught to young. Social creatures manipulate their young.

Religion is scary because it turns people into brainwashed agents. Once they are infected with the disease they can never be cured. Religion is the most dangerous disease of all.

Maybe for brainwashed idiots, but not me. I bow to noone except my hot lesbian dominatrix.

I think James needs a good slapping like in one of those classic action movies. He needs to soldier up and stop panicking like a scared greenshoe.

It’s not religion, per se. Religion does/can have a place in society…plays an important and “sane” part. A sense of community and shared values is important for people. It’s just when certain individuals take it to the max and different directions that it can take on the demonic within. It’s the particular individual and his idiosyncrasies and neurotic and psychotic behavior and thought which turn religion into something negative and destructive.

A truly religious and spiritual person can be a great positive in the world. Religion is a tool.

Do we throw away all of our tools simple because they may find their way into the wrong hands?

These so-called brainwashed agents might have become such through other means as well.

The scope and degree of the manipulation is the problem.
“No reach of authority should ever exceed its reach of awareness.”

James,

That would necessarily depend on what “kind” of awareness. You left out the positives which would have to go with that. There are all kinds of awareness which are peculiar though not helpful and that do not shine like beacons.
That awareness which you mentioned just might be egotistical, narcissistic, pathological et cetera.

You asked, indirectly in the title, and explicitly in your post, what is the use of religion.

Oh, and by the way, for someone who asks “Should we abandon religion” you do a one-eighty in your last sentence.

One thing I got from my religion for dummies book is that religion can be divided into three core aspects: belief, ethics, and ritual.

Beliefs is what keeps the religion together. Beliefs give people a sense and purpose over doubtful nihilism. Religious ethics, or morality, shapes people to do good. Rituals tell people what to do to symbolize their presence inside a religion. All three work together to give a meaningful and purposeful life.

There are some religions, like Islam, that takes all of this to an extreme. Having to do multiple practices every day, pray a certain way, etc, is crucial for entire devotion to the cause. Other religions, like Unitarian Universalism, virtually has no belief, ethic, or ritual structure and people are meant to find meaning in things themselves. Of course, UUism is geared towards political, social, and religious liberalism, but that topic shall be debated in another post.

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Oe6HUgrRlQ[/youtube]

I’m sure a lot of you have seen this video. This TED talk discusses how atheism can learn from religion. Although this sounds unlikely, I see the future of religion and atheism to come together, to learn from each other and to become less superstitious and less nihilist and materialistic.

This is already happening - many people don’t take the Bible literally anymore, but atheists still have holidays, sometimes exclusively for them (Carl Sagan’s birthday, perhaps?). Recently secular holidays have been flooding the gates. “National Talk Like a Pirate Day”, etc. These events are going to separate people more until every family has their own holidays.

I see the future like this: people won’t debate Christianity VS Islam anymore, people will debate Super-Sting Theory VS Loop Quantum Gravity. A race of super-intelligent lifeforms will argue for and against things like genetic and epigenetic alternations, the use of the computational singularity, etc. The nature of our planet, of our star, of our galaxy, local cluster, Universe, and beyond - will be discovered. We are the ancestors of divine beings.