Bloozcrooz

Just guessing but I think he is referring to us as humans. Kind of like the myth's of some man made diseases put out to control population. The same could be said for maintaining humanity?? Religion put into effect to instill some sort of ground rules for what to live by.

Guybrush

It makes more sense to think of religion as a byproduct, a consequence of our natural needs and capabilities. I believe humans evolved, so then we got smarter and smarter because it's adaptable, it's a good strategy for survival and genetic perpetuation. With that smartness comes curiosity, a desire to learn and understand our environment and the world we live in. If we have a desire to understand, then we have a desire to be able to explain it. Religion is a quick route to explain and answer many of life's questions and more, for example what happens when we die.

Humans evolving culturally and so on without the emergence of religion .. now that would've been a mystery.

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Dr_Rez

We would be so much farther as a race. I truly think technology and understanding of science in general would be far past where we are now. Think of all those years the church tried suppressing any scientific progress, then think if they hadn't how much extra time there would have been to discover everything. Theres a chance my motorcycle wouldnt have been wrecked and car wouldnt suck because I would have a hoverboard that fit in my pocket.

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khfreek

Just because he disagrees with you doesn't make him a troll, don't be disrespectful.

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RVCA

This is not a theory. It is a fact. Religion has been widely used as an instrument in controlling populations and societies.

-Karl Marx

Guybrush

Actually, I wouldn't be so hasty with concluding that. There's scientific theory which is perfectly able to describe the "evolution" of culture and also religions (showing they do not have to be "designed" to appear), for example meme theory first hypothesized by Richard Dawkins (it's also where the word "meme" comes from).

I can sum it up very roughly and anyways I may not remember the finer parts. In the collective mindscape (the combined minds of mankind) there are lots of thoughts and ideas, memes. These ideas are able to replicate themselves, for example you tell your idea to someone else. These ideas are also able to mutate and change into new ideas. Such ideas are sometimes competing against eachother for minds or people in the mindscape of which there is a limited amount (some billions). One such idea could be "there is a God" while another such idea could be "there is no God". Very few believe in both at the same time, so they are usually in direct opposition.

So which idea has the competitive advantage? At our most basic, ideas which are tied to emotions are labeled as more important in our brains and we have an easier time believing and remembering them. For example ideas that conjure up feelings of love, fear or anger. The reason is simply because that's the way we are wired; if a thought or idea has an emotional tie, it means it is important in our lives. This can be exploited as a strategy. For example, if you want a girl to like you, it may be a good idea to do something exciting or even scary as a first date. The heightened emotions of such experiences may bleed over into your attemps at courting. In addition to that, the competitiveness of a meme is also influenced by the environment which the meme exist in. This environment is part made up of our physical environment, but it's also made up of all the other memes in existence. For example, the idea that there is no God is more likely to gain believers today than it was 1000 years ago. The reason is summed up as a change in environment. The physical environment may not be that different, but the memes in the mindscape are.

So, memes "compete" (though not consciously) for humans, but they may not have to do so on their own. Just like humans are made up of many genes, cultures and religions are made up of many memes. If you have two memes, one which is "there is a God" and the other which is "there is a hell", well. The idea there is a hell probably wouldn't do so well on it's own, but if you pair it up with the God meme, then you could get something like "there is a God and if you don't believe in him, you'll go to hell". This is a collective idea made up of some memes where the emotional punch of the whole is a lot greater than it's individual parts. You now have an idea which plays on fear and which is a lot more competitive as a result. So, as a consequence, memes group together for their common good and become large meme constructs like religions and cultures. You may think the idea that you can go to hell for doing wrong things looks like design, but that's probably not the case. Because it adds to much competitiveness to other religious ideas, it could easily evolve, even though it's message is not exactly a positive one. Basically, it's popularity is mostly just a consequence and was not created and spread by anyone by conscious intention.

Ghost stories, alternative medicine, religion - all these generally owe their success to and are perpetuated because of their ability to play on the emotions of humans, for example through the intensity and speaking in tongues that might go on at a prayer meeting. The scientific ideas competing against them generally don't have this edge. Instead, it has to appeal to reason which is much harder because we're not robots. Scientific ideas have become more popular as the environment changes, but that takes more time.

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MoonlitSunshine

There's also a chance that due to the lack of a controlling factor we'd still be in a Dark Age of Feudal warfare where due to the shifting power and constant struggle to survive no real advances had been made. Consider the Greeks, the Romans, the Egyptians, the Chinese... you name an ancient, great civilisation, responsible for any of the pre-Dark Age discoveries, and they will have had religions. They will have had gods with their own ways and demands, but that didn't stop them from becoming fantastic centres of learning, education and invention.

I think people are often far too quick to shove all the blame for everything on Religion. In the words of The Eagles:

In Essence, religion may often be a catalyst for warfare, discrimination, and oppression, but it has never done anything that mankind couldn't and hasn't done of its own accord. When religion is used in a negative way, it is very rarely due to the religion itself. It is much more likely to be as a result of Power. Those at the head of a religious body have a frightening amount of power over their followers, and there is truth to the phrase "Power Corrupts". Given the opportunity to exert one's will on a large number of people, many will take that opportunity with no hesitation. For Catholicism, all it takes is for the Pope to state one thing, and then it is infallible law within the religion. Don't blame the religion itself, blame those who continue to abuse its power.

It is not religion that is responsible for all our woes, it is the people who use this concept to further their own aims, and if religion didn't exist, I'd be willing to bet that they'd just find something else to use to the same effect.

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Janszoon

On a little bit of a tangent, I was just at the grocery store a few minutes ago and there was a woman in front of me in line paying for her groceries with food stamps. She didn't have enough to pay for all of her food and had to put a lot back, but yet she was telling the cashier a story about how great god is because she won a bunch of money in Atlantic City playing blackjack recently and was able to buy a new TV. Aside from the obvious thoughts about why the hell this woman is gambling, taking trips and buying electronics when she can apparently barely afford to eat, this really got me thinking about how incredibly cheap and shallow the idea of god sounds the way many believers talk about it. We're talking about a being of infinite power and knowledge who built the entire universe and everything in it and yet people insist on thinking that things like winning at blackjack is an example of his power? All around the world there are cases of famine, war, disease, natural disasters, death and destruction and god is great for fixing a card game so some idiot can blow the money on a TV? How ridiculous and sad that someone would believe in such a piddling little deity.

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Bloozcrooz

She's obviously mixed up her thinking into rationalizing gambling. Which is not condoned as far as I know. Not defending her or anything. You seem almost angry at the fact people beleive in something greater than ourselves. Is it that your trying to win people over to your way of thinking? Or is there no possibility that anything else could be right? Or im missing the point all together. Which could very well be.

Janszoon

Yes, I think you're missing the point altogether. What I'm saying is that, whether there is or isn't a god, a lot of believers have this incredibly shallow, self-serving take on it. Thinking god helps them win at blackjack, god helps their team win the Superbowl, god gets them a raise, etc., etc. It's so incredibly self-absorbed, anti-philosphical and self-contradictory that it's pretty sad, and it's very much the antithesis of believing in "something greater than ourselves".

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