Re: Non-religion specific prayers
Draq opined:
"Religions that involve the worship of a deity seem to attempt to serve two basic functions. The first is explaining where we all came from and why we're here. As far as the Abrahamic religions go, those teach us that we were created by God to serve God, more or less. Science and religion have always been at odds about this."
See, again, it would help if you knew what you were talking about. Science and religion really haven't been "at odds" until the latter half of the 1800s, and then largely in America. The idea comes largely from two books, one put out in 1874 and the other in 1896. The latter book popularized the idea that before Columbus, everybody thought the earth was flat and that the idea that the earth was round was opposed by the Catholic Church.
A passing acquaintance with history would demonstrate the falseness of this claim. The ancient Greeks knew that the earth was round and gave several proofs, and from approximately 1000 CE onward, the church incorporated Greek philosophy, courtesy of the Islamic world which preserved quite a bit of it lost to the Christian world.
Later, in the early 1900s, a segment of American Christianity vehemently reacted to what it saw as attacks on it by the modern world, culminating in the publication of a set of books called "The Fundamentals" between 1910-1915. Many ideas about the end of the world, e.g. the rapture, also came about around this time. My point is, these are not very old ideas, considering the entire history of Western science and Christianity.
"The second is probably going to ruffle some feathers and step on some toes, but I have a suspicion that a lot of these religions were created to control the masses. What better way to keep people in line than to convince them that an all powerful, Omnipotent being will punish them if they do something wrong, and that if they don't believe in this being that they'll go to some place of eternal torment when they die?
Religions can have some good aspects such as teaching morality and giving people a sense of purpose as well, but the above are the two main things I've identified."
Again, that's because you have no idea of what you're talking about. There are about two or three religions in the world with an omnipotent god. They are Christianity, Islam, and Sikhism. Possibly Baha'i has one as well, but it's been a while since I've done any reading in Baha'i. Some forms of Hinduism can be said to as well, e.g. Krishna in the Bhagavad Gita, but considering that in Arjuna's vision of Krishna Arjuna is told that since Krishna is essentially everything/everywhere even Krishna's enemies end up at Krishna in the end, it can hardly be said that Krishna, if we're considering him to be an omnipotent god, is condemning people to a place of punishment, eternal or otherwise.
Christianity and Islam both have places of punishment, I forget if Islam's is eternal but it's probably a safe assumption. That's two religions, in the whole history of religions that we know about, which covers some five thousand years, that work in the way you've described. Actually, I'll tell you what. Let me be nice to you. Let's assume Baha'i works that way too. Then we'll throw in Zoroastrianism, because even though it's kind of polytheistic, it does have a ruling god and it does have a place of punishment, and I think some writings even consider it to be eternal. I totally forget how Jainism works, so let's give you that one too, just for the hell of it, pun intended.
We're up to five whole religions, and I'm being really generous to you here, that work in the manner you describe, i.e. an omnipotent god who will punish you eternally. So let's start looking at some other modern religions that don't work like this at all. Confucianism, Daoism, Shinto, all forms of Buddhism, most forms of Hinduism, pretty much any indigenous religion I've ever read about which covers huge chunks of the world including all of North and South America, Africa, Oceania (Australia, Polynesia, Melanesia, Micronesia and so on), and large parts of Asia. Basically find a people still practicing their indigenous religion, and you don't have any of this.
Moving right along, if we consider historical religions, you're up to five and a half, because in ancient Egyptian religion you could be eaten by something called Amemet, which devoured you if you didn't live according to Maat, truth, righteousness, law. That's assuming you got to go through the whole post-death ordeal for a shot at eternal life. That's not eternal punishment, but I'll grant you that having your soul devoured, so to speak, is pretty final, if not eternal, and it's certainly a punishment.
Other than that? Sorry my friend. I've already covered the Sumerians in a previous post, ditto the Akkadians (Babylonians) and Assyrians (pretty much the same theology as the Akkadians). I've also covered the ancient Hebrews. I'm not super up on what happened to people in Canaanite theology, e.g. Ugaritic or Phoenician, but considering that the ancient Hebrews were mostly indistinguishable from their older Canaanite forebearers, I think it's safe to assume that what happened to you after death was somewhat similar. I can go digging through texts if you're really curious.
I'm assuming most of the other ancient Near Eastern peoples, e.g. Moabites, were pretty similar as well. The Hittite empire might complicate things, more properly ancient Anatolia, because you had at least four languages, Hittite, Hurrian, Hattic, and Luwian. However since both Hittite and Luwian were Indo-European languages, and no Indo-European theology that I know of has eternal punishment, with the possible exception of Zoroastrianism which didn't exist until some five hundred years later, I think we can safely rule those out as candidates at least. That also covers things like Germanic and Celtic religions.
Should I go on? Your thesis isn't looking too good right about now.
-- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
