How is religion still a thing? How is religion still a thing?
Proto-humans would have looked out from their caves and hiding places in the night and wondered fearfully about the great, scary dark. The huge forrests where beasts and preditor and the unknown lurked. Cowered in awe before the mighty storms, thunder and lightning.
They would sometimes have come across the remnants of other humans, left by animals and been afraid.
They would quake at the anthropomorphized causers of these unexplained terrors, as we still anthropomorphize things today. Perhaps they will have named the lightning and the 'spirit' of the deep darkness of the forest. And these unknowns will have evolved into primative gods. The Druids and nature worshipers.
These will have taken on forms like the Hindu gods and merged as human ideas of what gods ought to be formed over time. A 'priest' class will have emerged. Either of those who truly feared and believed in these spirits or of those who saw the potential to manipulate and dominate their fellows with the fear and reverence they held for these emerging god forms.
As people interacted with other tribes their ideas would evolve until fewer, more powerful gods emerged, like the Romans worshipped. Eventually monotheists would emerge with their one, supreme all powerful gods.
Religious thought, like philosophy of all kinds would and did evolve. We have only to look back over the history of religions to see it happening. That's where gods came from. Our minds. Evolving as our concepts evolved. Obviously.
So, Hitler, probably going to hell, in the mind of a religious person, right? Mother Theresa - Heaven. So far so good.
A murderer of one person? Hell? Okay. Someone who's lived a basically good, lawful life? Heaven. How about the two guys that have done almost the same things, twins say. But one once stole a candy bar from a store when he was 13 and the other didn't - hell for one and heaven for the other?
That's eternal hidious, agonizing torture for one and eternal,happy bliss for the other. Is that justice? Where ever you place it there must be some dividing line between someone who's just a little better or worse than their fellow the other side of the dividing line. With all the people that have ever lived that line is going to be between pretty similar people.
Is that a justice system that we can attribute to an all knowing, infallibly wise god? No nuance of punishment, just heaven for this guy and hell for that.
Are you going to buy into that?
What does belief mean?
There are different ways we use the word 'believe' to mean different things.
'I believe in democracy.' ~ a statement of my pricipals.
'I believe in god.' ~ a statement of what I believe to be true.
You'd not expect saying you believe in democracy to be telling someone you believe 'democracy' is a physical thing that exists, just that it's a concept you support and agree with.
When people say they believe in god they mean that they are there by stating that it is their opinion that 'god' is a real physical thing with existence. Which, if you think about it is a very unusual thing to say. You'd not say, 'I believe in this table.' Because there's no doubt about the existence of this table. You only say that for things that are in doubt.
But more importantly, saying such things and other people letting such statements stand as reasonable is one of the worst harms that religion does.
And the fact, especially in the USA, that politicians have to not just let such talk stand but say it themselves, and believe it themselves leads to a country in which belief (and reality) is accepted as being whatever you want it to be.
People definitely tend to favor beliefs that they like. So when a politician like Donald Trump comes along who just says that anything he doesn't like it a lie, that it's 'fake news', people are 'permitted' by their paradigm of belief to 'believe' him. To say, 'yes, I hate that the USA is being invaded from the south, that our national language is not English anymore but sometimes English and some times Spanish. In my country! The USA.' And I hate that, so I am going to 'believe' that what this man says, who says things I want to be true, that what he says, everything he says, IS TRUE.
Many people in the US accept his lies as FACTS because people in the US have this flexible idea about what 'true' is, that what we believe is voluntary. That belief - truth - is whatever we want it to be.
And Donald Trump has been blatant that he's going to end democracy if he gets back into power.
Called it. (2024-06-08)
This definition of the concept to 'believe' is where debates between religious people and scientifically minded people becomes problematic.
The religious 'believer' can just say anything they like is true, a fact, because that's what they believe. Whereas a scientist has to state what they have evidence to conclude is actually true. And claim that that fact is true only to the extent to which it is indeed proven.
A debate between a religiuos believer and a scientifically aware individual has no common ground in language or paradigm. They think differently and that's a hurdle that's hard to convey to the religious person.
And that's one of the reasons we are sleepwalking into a dictatorship.
What does 'faith' mean? It means believing in something despite there either being no evidence to support that belief or, worse, despite evidence to disprove the assertion.
Religions have to make a virtue of 'faith', but it is a terrible thing. Convincing people to believe against evidence. Enter religions, cults and any liar with an appealing message.
Religious people tend to avoid learning any science that might prove to them that their beliefs, or excuses are incorrect.
For example, many religious people still use the, 'organized objects have to have been made by a maker. A person made that chair so a god must have made life, trees, birds, insects and people', logic.
But they fear that argument, that was sound logic 1,000 years ago, fails when they actually look at the overwhelming evidence for the expanding universe, the creation of heavier elements in super novae, the coalescing of new stars and solar systems. The nature of organic chemistry, the natural tendency for amino acids to form in mineral rich waters like seas and lakes. Protiens, RNA, natural selection, deep sea vents perhaps, L.U.C.A, the Last Universal Common Ancestor, eukaryotes, chloroplasts, plants and amimals, us. How life evolves. If you stay ignorant you don't have to lift your head from the sand and face the fact that the, 'some creator had to make people', argument is rubbish. Their last, desparate hope their religion might actually be true, that a god really could exist, extinguished. Being wrong.
The Arab world is not known for it's scientists, is this why?
The more deeply people look into the details of their religion the further they get from the important question of whether the whole thing is actually true or not. The one point that matters.
The Arab world, for example, spends a lot of it's time either thinking about religion or pracicing it.
(Ditto for some Americans and people in South America. And, sadly large swathes of Africa, Asia and the world generally.)
Which is going to increase the health, wealth and wellbeing of a people? Grovelling about on the floor chanting, 'Allah! Bluurb blurb blurb blur', bow, grovel, bow, or learning plumbing. Or farming. Or technology or, well, doing absolutely anything else?
Is it plausible that the almighty, super intelligent, wonderfully 'good' mega - being, 'god', would want, or accept, grovelling about in their honour? Or the singing of songs about how great they are?
I'm not that special. We are all human, as in, 'it is human to be falible', people are certainly not perfect. But even I am better that that. I'd not like or even contemplate allowing, any 'followers' of mine to grovel to me. Or, ludicrously, sing songs about how great I am. Can you imagine how petty that is? How farcical?
It is hard to imagine some all powerful being accepting that. But an imaginary being, with only the qualities that early man, from say, the Egyptian Pharoe or Roman era, might think a god would want. That's eminently believable.
A god thought up be people living in those times, yes. Such a creation of people from those times would very likely have the character of one of their leaders, who apparently liked that sort of thing.
I've had muslims tell me that Allah does not ask them to worship him. But the form their praying, 'say this, bow, say that, grovel twice, bow . . .', that's laid down in the Quoran. Supposedly the actual word of Allah himself.
Let's leave aside those skeptics who might see the supreme advantage to themselves accruing from being the leader of a new religion. - Joseph Smith, I'm looking at you - for our most blatant example. And L Ron Hubbard. People believe(d) that wacko, too.
Why might genuine people, not really liars or manipulators, make up a god?
Or why might they espouse a step forward in the evolution of a religion? Like Jesus and Mohamid did?
Was Jesus a skeptic who miscalculated and got crucified for his troubles? Or a genuine believer?
The second option is attractive but not proven.
So why would someone risk everything for their chosen step change in an existing religion? Genuine belief that what they say is really 'how it should be'. Or genuinely what their god 'wants' their religion to become.
It is not difficult to believe people like Jesus and many other lesser prophets may have genuinely believed in their message - to the point they would, perhaps gladly, die for their opinions.
Good people who were, excusably given the lack of scientific progres and knowledge of the day, just ignorant and convinced of their 'right-ness'.
And undoubtedly many, probably most, believers today are good, genuine people who are, less excusably, just ignorant.
It is easy to see that it is human psychology to want to believe they will never truely die. That they will in fact go on to live in happy paradise for all eternity. (And that those they think of as bad will suffer eternally in hell fire).
People want to be told that their loved ones and they themselves will achieve this. So:- 'belief'; they can believe it.
It's another human trait to look up into the night sky and wonder how we got here.
In ancient days before we knew about the expanding universe, galaxies, stars, planets, evolution, life; our back story.
Before we knew all this it was reasonable to look at organised things and ask if a creator created them. After all an ordered thing like a chair is made by a concsious creator, us, there wasn't any other reasonable explanation for the existence of life, the universe and everything than that of a creator.
Now we can prove where these things came from. There is no need to invoke a fantastic, bizarre creator concept to explain anything.
There are so many excellent proofs of evolution out there.
Here is a link to just one of them from phd biologist Dr Joe Hanson: All of Evolution in 18 minutes
'Dave' writes a book about an invisible, undetectable magic pixie called Bertie. Bertie has a little cone shaped hat and floats about above our heads. Bertie creates smiles. No one has ever smiled unless Bertie pointed his holy magic wand and 'smiled' them. True fact, according to Dave.
So do you believe in Bertie. Are you going to kneel at Dave's feet and beg for intervention with Bertie for more smiles? Probably not.
But what more evidence is there for Bertie's existence than there is for any given gods existence?
Zero. There's zero evidence for either Bertie of your god of choice. There's a book that says it's true in both cases. There's the feeling that you genuinely get that the book ascribes to it's supernatural entity, too. You smile? It's Bertie. You feel warm and loved when you pray? It's god. Lots of other people swear it's true and have done for centuries. Really? That has some validity? Other people believing something is true is evidence? Of course it isn't.
There is exactly the same evidence for the existance of any god that there is for Bertie the smile pixie. Zero.
They are all ludicrous, outrageous claims. You make a claim like that, you better have some very convincing evidence.
All the religions 'evidence' boil down to, 'some guy wandering about in the local desert said so'. Then someone else wrote down what he said. That's it.
Or anything else that wasn't known at the relevant time?
The catholic church denied Galileo's observation that the Earth moves around the sun, being the famous example.
A search engine search for a link between religiosity and low IQ will yield a lot of articles about the correlation. Here is the Wikipedia page which in turn links to a lot of scolarly papers on the subject.
There is an article on the issue by psypost.org here.
But you only have to pay attention to those around you and their attitudes to religion.
Look at the people you know who believe in a given religion. Notice their intelligence. Compare with non-religious. The correlation is often strongly indicative.
Why do people accept that their god will never contact them or answer their prayers? No believer, no matter how fervent actully believes their god will come to them in day light, when they are fully awake, as a giant man, 200 feet tall with a beard, sandals and a giant white robe. Tear the roof off their house in a totally real experience and poke them in the chest with a giant finger. Boom at them to do something they don't want to do and then perfectly replace their roof and go away. Leaving hundreds of witnesses.
No one expects that. Their god comes to them, at best, as a dream or as a warm feeling when they try to believe in said god.
Even believers accept that their god only exists in a sort of, 'yeah, not actually going to SHOW UP', sort of a way. The odd coincidence occasionally but that's it.
And if their god does want them to do something it just happens to conincide with what they wanted to do anyway. How many vicious serial killers have heard the all loving god tell them to torture and kill people (usually in a sexual way) that happens to coincide with their deepest secret desires?
You get to choose your religion, or your sect. You choose what to believe. Wouldn't a god in the model of gods as humans have fashioned them tell you what to believe?
But there's no communication, no clear, real, in your face, actual, provable, witnessed communication telling you which religion and which sect is 'right'. No, 'I'm your god and this is how it is and this is what I want. Now do it.'
There's nothing.
Wouldn't one religion have won out by now if it were the one actually true religion and actually had a god? But all religious people believe in their own god to the same degree of certainty and all have the same degree of evidence: none.
'But there has to be something'
Why does there 'have to be something'? Because so many people believe there is 'something', therefore there has to be?. Each one just believing what the guy next to him believes, none with any actual information, just going along with the prevalent, evolved attitude. The local 'world view'.
It's a human instinct to think there has to be something, we want there to be something. But that's all it is, our psychological want for there to 'be something out there', some higher power. Nature is under no obligation to fall in with human psychological needs.
People almost always follow their local religion, or the one they were brought up with. Why?
If a given god is real why hasn't he or she got a global reach? Why not 'appear' to people everywhere rather than just one person? And repeat the 'appearing to the masses' thing every generation or so, leaving no-one in any doubt? It's human nature to believe in the world view they were brought up with. But it would be the nature of a god to be universal, wouldn't it?
Why is Arabic so important to Islam? It makes the Arabs feel important and successful if they convince others their god and their language is 'best', 'the language of god'. But would an actual god care more about the language of his message or the reaching of the most possible people with that message?
If god(s) created the universe to then create man, why did they make the universe so vast and why did they wait so long?
The universe is nearly 14 billion years old. The earth and it's solar solar system didn't come into existance until some 4.6 billion years ago and humans evolved to the staus 'homo-sapiens' around 200,000 years ago.
So why did god wait so long to tell us about himself through which ever prophet?
And why does the entire universe need to exist for his purposes? We can't even see most of within the observable universe with out modern tools, why do other solar systems let alone other galaxies need to exist?
You might also ask why none of the religions knew about these things and in fact denied a lot of astronomical realities for some time.
The catholic church taking until 1979 to accept Gallileo's observations regarding which astronomical body is the center of this solar system, the Sun or the Earth.
Rehashing the above argument a bit here, but . . .
If a god wanted to reveal itself to everyone why not appear to everyone in a mass and undeniable way? Why make one person do the work and probably not make a very big impact?
Think of the difference in church attendances if a god absolutely did appear to everyone every generation or so. Why would he or she (they) appear to one poor individual who then has to try to convince everyone that there really is a god and it's not just that he's a bit wacko?
Religions can encourage people to act well and be a good person.
Great. But after time religious people (encouraged by their priest religious leader, or whatever) come to believe that just attending their 'holy place' makes them a good person. Or just belonging to their chosen religion at all. So they don't actually have to behave in a 'good' way, just 'be of that faith'.
That's obviously not only not achieving anything 'good' but gives religious people the belief that just being Catholic, Sikh, whatever makes them good.
It also follows from that that people of no religion or different religion are 'not good'. Or 'not as good' as them. Dividing people into 'Us : Good' and 'Them : Not Good'.
So they are good and better than others just by virtue of their religion.
Without religous thinking, without 'reality' being subjective, if everyone had one, agreed version of reality. Where evidence is the only arbiter of 'truth'. With everyone on the same page. What heights could humanity achieve? And what depths could we avoid and have avoided in the past?
We'd still have differences. Your gain might be my loss. But the vast arguments over idiotic non-realities would be gone.
Alas for dogma (religious and otherwise).
Dogma of any sort, where the language of justice takes precedence over justice itself. Like where social justice becomes thoughtless political correctness and 'woke', forgetting it's just roots.
Alas for humanity. Alas religion.
Last modified: 2025-01-05
Science flies rockets to the moon. Religion flies airplanes into buildings.
Against Stupidity, The Gods Themselves, Contend in Vain.