CaliforniaBride

Cheers!

I was here all along though. Just letting the guests speak their minds. Have just finished a mythology class and a religion class (finals yesterday and today) so it's been quite an interesting read. Enjoyed matching the points made with the various theories.

My position? Religion is societies worship of itself. All things we hold dear we project into the spiritual realm to validate our worldview. I look at the way religion functions, for the individual and society, cross culturally.

Religion enforces social cohesion by providing a foundation of shared beliefs, it relieves anxiety by providing explanations and meaning. It provides more than simple explanation, it provides comfort too. It helps people to face death and misfortune by providing meaning and hope. It acts on a social level in bringing people together and providing a moral code. Sanctions exist in societies that keep people in line but often these sanctions are not enough. The key to that problem lies in developing a system of beliefs that will act to contain natural selfishness and promote social cooperation. For a society to survive certain feelings need to be encouraged in people's minds and religion, through ritual, passes on the basic sentiments of a society from generation to generation.

For the individual religion is a logical system that they can turn to in times of uncertainty or emotional stress. It provides control and certainty in an otherwise uncertain world.

From a psychological perspective religion satisfies our cognitive, substantive and expressive desires. Cognitive desires include the desire to find meaning in life, to know and to understand the world around us. Religion answers those questions and provides meaning. Our substantive desires involve our desires to overcome difficult life situations. Our expressive needs are satisfied; our dependency needs and repressed aggression. Dependency, through our dependence on supernatural beings and aggression, well, you see that around you, there's plenty of aggression that comes from practitioners of organised religion.

For me, I see the purpose of religion how it serves people and that in itself explains it's existence.

camelot

Okay, Cheers

btw, I'm a girl.

camelot

I fancy more than 1....

Here I'll buy, they're my free cyber pints...cheapest round of drinks you can get...

rincewind

Congratulations.

camelot

Now, now, sarcee

I'm not bothered if you say he or she but I don't have a stick...tee hee..

rincewind

But that's the issue. It doesn't follow the model you have laid out. It all sounds nice and fluffy, but in reality it doesn't happen that way.

Enforces social cohesion by providing a foundation of shared beliefs

Look at the hatred amongst religions

It helps people to face death and misfortune by providing meaning and hope

Hope of punishment (hell) if you fail?

It acts on a social level in bringing people together and providing a moral code

Moral code? Now that's a subject for another thread.

Cognitive desires include the desire to find meaning in life, to know and to understand the world around us. Religion answers those questions and provides meaning.

Not in a logical way. Remember, the tree of knowledge is not to be eaten from.

It's interesting what you write, but I find no substance to it. But then, you knew I wouldn't

camelot

I know this isn't directed at me but I want to comment because I think it raises great points:

Personally, I separate religion from God for those reasons that rincewind has set out above. The model, very excellently outlined, is how it's supposed to be, so from a cultural perspective, I 'spose as an ethos, it has merit. But rincewind is right, because it often doesn't happen in practice people are so sick to death of religion because they find it, lets be diplomatic, hypocritical.

From my own personal experience, God isn't a scary, aloof, hell and damnation Creator. But often, religion portrays Him that way. That's why the Victorians, including Darwin, were sick to death of being shackled and beaten down by dogma, they wanted to assert their intellectual freedom, and its still the same for us today.

This is not to say that God doesn't have standards and boundaries, but religion, often shackles people because historically it was used to control people. We (as Westerners) live in a secular world, so our civil liberties don't rely on what our religion is, but we still don't like what we see as the hypocrisy of religion, and for that reason a lot of people stay separated from God as they think that God can only be found through religion.

I'm saying, it doesn't have to be that way, it is possible to separate God from the sewer of religion. After-all, Jesus himself rebuked the religious leaders in his day for bogging the people down in useless traditions and rules which only served their religion, not God.

CaliforniaBride

Yes.

Point being that I didn't say it was always like that. I also didn't say that I was talking about few of the well known religions. I was simply discussing the way religion functions. Religion is a cultural universal and I stand by by my remains for explaining my beliefs regarding the existence of religion and it's universality.

CaliforniaBride

I'll have a froo froo cocktail please! (But you knew I would didn't you? )

camelot

It was a very excellent critique of that too....

Pulaski

Me neither. As far as I am concerned science tells us how we came to exist, and religion tells us why we exist. The two anwer different questions and it makes no more sense to ask the church how we came to exist than it does to ask an evolutionary biologist why we exist.