Personally, my take on religion is that it has been an extraordinarily successful means of organizing groups. I don't religion has ever been any one person's Machiavellian scheme, rather I think religion (and other cultural institutions) have been selected for in the evolution of culture. I also tend to see collectives of humans as organisms-in-themselves, in roughly the same way that a hive of bees can be seen as an organism in itself; and that human genetics has co-evolved with the cultural memetics.
As such, I tend to run religious dogma through this filter: does it promote values in individuals, that, taken collectively, make the collective more likely to persist. When I run the above prayer through that filter I find that it is a pretty good fit for that idea. Terren On Tue, Jan 29, 2013 at 11:13 PM, Kim Jones <[email protected]> wrote: > This is a pretty well-worn, oft-used, school prayer. Given it is recited > or sung by the entire student body and staff at a good many schools and > other institutions you would have to assume that it's all fundamentally > good stuff. > > > > Teach us, good Lord, to serve thee as thou deserves; > to give and not to count the cost; > to fight and not to heed the wounds; > to till, and not to seek for rest; > to labour, and not to ask for any reward, > save that of knowing we do thy will. > > > Amen. > > > But it's all incredibly bad advice, really - don't you think? Why do > people assume God wants Earthlings to be such a bunch of try-hards? > I hate this prayer. It advertises values that no one can live up to and no > one need live up to. Surely we can invent a better, less servile, less > obsequious, less cringing, less Gollum-like take on what we think God wants > for us. > > All this servility, this grovelling at the feet of somebody. Is God really > into all that? I don't believe it. > > > > Kim Jones > > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "Everything List" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to [email protected]. > To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. > Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. > > > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
