June 13th, 2020, 05:22 PM
Tbh, I hear a lot of (maybe most) atheists tout very cynical views on why religion exists or its origins i.e. it was made up to explain things or it was made up to try and control people. Noone can really say for sure how or where religion comes from, but I find it very unlikely it went like that. SJ's video is amusing but misrepresentative imo. I think these narrow explanations stem from the fact most atheists view religion as a collection of empirical statements. However, religious people don't necessarily view their religion that way, nor have they necessarily ever. I'm not simply asserting that they blindly believe these things out of emotion, either. That again is still viewing it in terms of empirical statements.
Faith isn't an assertion of some statement or an emotional thing. It's more like a mood. If statements are the foreground objects in a painting, and the colours are the emotions, then faith is like the background. Whether you believe or not affects how you contextualize everything in the foreground without fundamentally changing the items in the foreground. Though it has no effect on the objects of the foreground, it totally changes the painting. I think the loss of faith in our society has less to do with what we've learnt about the foreground objects and more how we contextualize those objects.
this video is okay [url]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fJZ8ib93vSk[/url]
p;edit Well, there are a lot of empirical statements in religion too I guess lol. I guess I'm trying to say there's more to it than just a collection of empirical statements. And "faith" doesn't represent some kind of axiomatic belief.
Tbh, I hear a lot of (maybe most) atheists tout very cynical views on why religion exists or its origins i.e. it was made up to explain things or it was made up to try and control people. Noone can really say for sure how or where religion comes from, but I find it very unlikely it went like that. SJ's video is amusing but misrepresentative imo. I think these narrow explanations stem from the fact most atheists view religion as a collection of empirical statements. However, religious people don't necessarily view their religion that way, nor have they necessarily ever. I'm not simply asserting that they blindly believe these things out of emotion, either. That again is still viewing it in terms of empirical statements.
Faith isn't an assertion of some statement or an emotional thing. It's more like a mood. If statements are the foreground objects in a painting, and the colours are the emotions, then faith is like the background. Whether you believe or not affects how you contextualize everything in the foreground without fundamentally changing the items in the foreground. Though it has no effect on the objects of the foreground, it totally changes the painting. I think the loss of faith in our society has less to do with what we've learnt about the foreground objects and more how we contextualize those objects.
this video is okay https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fJZ8ib93vSk
p;edit Well, there are a lot of empirical statements in religion too I guess lol. I guess I'm trying to say there's more to it than just a collection of empirical statements. And "faith" doesn't represent some kind of axiomatic belief.
June 10th, 2020, 04:17 PM
Do you ever wish you could see simulations of other human earths with the parameters changed slightly, to see what other possible cultures humanity created? The world we exist in is one where one tiny cult in Israel happened to have a dominant effect on the religious beliefs of most of the world. Maybe in another world, monotheism wouldn't enjoy such indisputed dominance. Or maybe the dominance of monotheism is inevitable. Maybe the dominant world's religions could have ended up having a totally different view of human sexuality, good and bad, the afterlife.
Do you ever wish you could see simulations of other human earths with the parameters changed slightly, to see what other possible cultures humanity created? The world we exist in is one where one tiny cult in Israel happened to have a dominant effect on the religious beliefs of most of the world. Maybe in another world, monotheism wouldn't enjoy such indisputed dominance. Or maybe the dominance of monotheism is inevitable. Maybe the dominant world's religions could have ended up having a totally different view of human sexuality, good and bad, the afterlife.
June 10th, 2020, 04:09 PM
The bible, particularly the old testament, is quite fascinating when viewed as a small, unreliable window into the ancient mind rather than an authoritative text. In fact, the mere authorship of the old testament is itself a source of great intrigue.
[url]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Documentary_hypothesis[/url]
From what I understand, there were loads of gods and religions floating around the Middle East 3000 years ago, before dominant empires formed and started to unify the world's faiths. Wouldn't it be amazing to know what they thought about the world? And to think that Judaism, one tiny religion amongst many, would go on to have such a profound effect on world history...
The bible, particularly the old testament, is quite fascinating when viewed as a small, unreliable window into the ancient mind rather than an authoritative text. In fact, the mere authorship of the old testament is itself a source of great intrigue.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Documentary_hypothesis
From what I understand, there were loads of gods and religions floating around the Middle East 3000 years ago, before dominant empires formed and started to unify the world's faiths. Wouldn't it be amazing to know what they thought about the world? And to think that Judaism, one tiny religion amongst many, would go on to have such a profound effect on world history...
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