On Sunday, September 1, 2019 at 6:38:31 AM UTC-5, Bruno Marchal wrote: > > > On 31 Aug 2019, at 20:41, Lawrence Crowell <[email protected] > <javascript:>> wrote: > > On Wednesday, August 28, 2019 at 9:46:21 PM UTC-5, Samiya wrote: >> >> فَاذْكُرُونِي أَذْكُرْكُمْ وَاشْكُرُوا لِي وَلَا تَكْفُرُونِ >> >> So remember Me, I will remember you and be grateful to Me and (do) not >> (be) ungrateful to Me. >> [Al-Quran 2:152 <https://www.islamawakened.com/quran/2/152/>] >> >> The Quran does not discourage the HOW questions, rather it encourages >> humans to ponder upon the creation, but it emphasises the WHY questions. >> God does not need our help in creating, sustaining, destroying or >> recreating everything. What He wants from us is realisation and >> acknowledgement for all He has done, and is continuously doing, and to >> realise that there is great purpose in all of this. >> > > For this reason religion has the effect of dulling minds. Science is about > asking how, it is not really about why questions that are more in the > philosophical domain. > > > There is no reason to not exige as much rigour in philosophy than in any > other domain or inquiry. Theology has been rigorous for one millenium, but > 1500 years of dogma made us forget this. > > > > > Paul in one of his epistles admonishes against study of the world because > one is worshiping the "creature" and not the creator. As such this sort of > religious ideology induces people to focus on "the Truth," or really some > illusion of such, and they lose the ability to ascertain whether some > proposition has some probability or reason for being true or false. When > religion takes over you get a dark age. > > > When fake religion, or dogmatic religion, takes over. That leads to > absence of (genuine) religion. > > > The term genuine religion makes about as much sense as a “dry hurricane.” I have to give my low down on religion now.
I think it stems from the evolution of the brain and in particular with the development of language. At some point in hominid evolution language developed to a level of sophistication that our ancestors started to tell stories. Fouts et al showed with sign language that Washoe and other chimpanzees communicated elemental language, and later it was found the chimps in the wild appear to sign to each other. However they do not appear to tell stories. With our hominid ancestors these stories were important because they communicated information about the environment in narratives the projected human beings onto nature. This makes the stories interesting and relative, so this means aspects of the natural world were anthropomorphized. These are spirits, totems and demiurges and so forth. To cut to the chase, with the developments of large scale societies, city states, nations and empires religion matured from simple forest gods called upon my shamans to organized social systems with big gods or later with the “BIG GOD.” So I do think there is an evolutionary basis for mythic narratives and this includes religion. However, religion starting in the ancient world became totalitarian social control structures. Both Christianity and Islam are complete totalitarian systems, and it works by instilling the commands of an infinite authority into the minds of people. Eric Blair wrote a fascinating treatise on the social psychology of totalitarian power, where he noted how this is the most effective way of controlling people. Eric Blair wrote this in fictional form as *1984* under the pen name George Orwell. His catch phrases about THOUGHT CRIME and the rest are references to the sort of internal control over minds based on terror, and in religion this is called sin. Religion though has ultimately this “emperor's new clothes” problem in that our examinations of the world have revealed how religious ideas about the world are wrong. The cosmology of the Tanach, or old Testament, is based on Sumerian cosmology of a flat earth covered by an iron dome all submerged in water. Ever wonder why the Israelis called their anti-missile system Iron Dome? So much else is just wrong as well. The intellectual power of religion has weakened since the 15th or 16th century. Religions, thought of as memes or sort of brain viruses are fighting back hard these days. I would compare the state of religion as similar to WWII Germany during the Ardennes offensive in late 1944. At least intellectually this is the case, and over half of young people raised religiously are leaving. Christianity and Islam are worn out mythic narratives, which will in time if we survive pass on as did the Orphic gods of the ancient Greeks.. What I see emerging is a new paradigm for mythic systems, and we see it in superheroes Yugio and Magic cards etc. It is a suspension of rational thought to imagine super-powered people, who are almost like gods, but it does not command your complete attention and it is largely a systems of games and entertainment. This fulfills the psychological need for mythic narratives, but without the totalitarian ideology. LC The expansion of the influence of Christian fundamentalism is one reason > the US has this orange baboon, or Godzilla, as President. People are > becoming stupid, and this unfortunately appears to be a trend in the rest > of the world as well. > > > It is just that we have not yet transformed the Renaissance. Not all > science have come back to reason. We are still leaving theology in the hand > of people advocating (if not imposing) dogma. > > The entire God/Non-God debate hides the original questioning of the greek, > where the question was about the existence of the universe, not of God, > which is a nickname for the truth that we search, with the (enlighten) > understanding that nobody can claim to have found it. > > It is the separation of theology from science which has made some people > thinking that science = truth, and religion = fiction, when (of course) > science is doubt, especially about the ontology commitment, be them > personal and impersonal. > > > > > > Please, I wish this religious stuff were taken somewhere else. Religion > has no more sense than if I wish upon a star my fairy godmother will come, > transubstantiate mice and a pumpkin into a horse drawn coach and take me to > eternal bliss --- or happy ever after. It is all just magical thinking and > ultimately preposterous nonsense. > > > It can be, but biology has become a similar non sense in the materialist > dogmatic USRR. It is not the domain which is a problem, but the use of > dogma, and the discouragement of the doubt, and that is insane, but is not > “religion”, it is the fake religion that we deserve as long as we don’t let > the domain to come back to reason and experiences. > > Bruno > > > > > > > LC > > -- > 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] <javascript:>. > To view this discussion on the web visit > https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/09e49351-9bd8-41b4-b6c0-d640dd0f7531%40googlegroups.com > > <https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/09e49351-9bd8-41b4-b6c0-d640dd0f7531%40googlegroups.com?utm_medium=email&utm_source=footer> > . > > > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. 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