Quote:
Originally Posted by Yukon Cornelius
Ok you think about it... If you take all the faiths and belifes and put them together then you would see that these are all designed based on the design of culture. You have the Quran A muslim bible of sorts and it blatantly degrades women and tells Man that he is all mighty so on and so forth. There are obviously to many religions to believe that yours is right. How about religions that have sacrifice is that ok? Suicide is a sin in our bible punishable by going to hell. These are so jacked. Alah is supposed to give x amount of virgins to ppl who prasie him such as suicide bombers... Thats really far out there. Like I said made to keep ppl in line (brainwashed to do what is requested of them for there god(s)) You have to understand that so many things that are human nature are considered sins which to me is really strange. Either way its ultimatly up to you. This earth was formed after the big bang. The big bang its self is where space and time collided ... Before that there was nothing.
|
There may be a little truth here, but I don't think you really understand where religions come from. What you mention is only a part of the story.
I'm sure you agree that if people know nothing, they are gonna come up with something to believe. When you have a lot of people who don't know what they are, what the meaning of life is, what happens when you die, etc. an idea like a proto-religion should be very attractive because it helps explain all those questions so it will be popular and spread. Let's say a religion is then made up by numerous ideas that are being spread from believer to believer or even to non-believers that are converted.
What kind of ideas is the religion gonna be made up of? Aside from just answering the questions, they are gonna be made up of ideas that are naturally attractive to the people who believe in them and that people will spread. If a religious message is trivial, people forget about it. If it's important, people won't and they'll likely tell others. What makes an idea attractive? The most important stuff are the ideas that engages you emotionally. The fear of you or people you care about going to hell or otherwise getting punished after death (most religions), rituals like sacrifice which is an incredibly powerful and direct way of worshipping for the clergy and the audience (like the aztecs did), the idea that you will gain power over things you normally don't have power over (such as christianity, voodoo or santeria), anything that will help elevate suffering in your life (again, lots) and so on. Ideas that help spread the religion more directly should also become popular like missioning other peoples or an aggressive attitude towards non-believers.
In other words, if a religion was made up of lots of trivial, unimportant thoughts, had no interest in spreading their religion, had no aggression towards nonbelievers .. that religion wouldn't be able to compete with a major religion like christianity. It could survive perhaps if it was isolated from competitors such as having followers in a secluded part of a rainforest where no other religions intrude.
At this point in history, the big religions we are left with are the ones that were able to compete and survive. The've had to adapt to the changes in culture andthey do that by incorporating new ideas and abolishing old ones. In a way, the religions are evolving as well. The major ones we have will have to adapt in the future as well if they wanna be around.
Thus, most religions now have to adapt to a society in which we have science .. In Norway, that has so far been accomplished by abolishing old ideas. Christianity at large accepts science and generally says stuff like "don't take the bible so literally, it's an old book that has been through a lot of links and it speaks in riddles and metaphors". In USA, the adaptation seems to have been more anti-scientific and instead of abolishing old ideas, it's now gathering anti-scientific ideas and practices such as indoctrination, anti-scientific propaganda and the general attitude that science is even less right than religion, despite it being empirically established.
Anyways, while some people certainly use religion to manipulate, a lot of the "unattractive" ideas and practices in religion are predictable because you would expect them to be part of any healthy (competitive that is) religion .. People don't have to make them up to manipulate, believers do it themselves and they become parts of religions in a more natural way. Salvation, suffering, healing, exorcisms, other kinds of "magic", missioning, isolation, alienation, aggressive attitudes towards other religions (and their cultures), etc. etc.