That pretty much sums it all up.

I hate to imagine how far our civilization would be advanced without religion. Just our very existence disproves the notion of intelligent design.

It was an important force for people to unify around.

However, the concept is now dated and unnecessary now that we --should be-- more intellectually sophisticated.

...I don't think humans would have become so scientifically advanced without first embracing religion thousands of years ago. Now, of course, it is indeed a hindrance to further human advances.

Because we have no way of testing what would have happened if people had taken a predominately secular path. It is worth remembering that religion was more of a by-product of civilization because an uneducated populace is more prone to superstition. When you think about all the ways in which those superstitions hindered, rather than helped scientific advancements, I don't think it's too much of a stretch to imagine we might have walked on the moon hundreds of years prior to when we actually did.

When I say "dated", I mean by a couple thousand years. I would think an anthropologist could find strong evidence that religion could have been a unifying force to glue society together socially. Once that social construct evolves towards a civilization (eg the Roman Empire), religion has served its usefulness and can be dispatched - though the rulers of said civilization tends to find religion useful for other reasons.

Ignore any authoritative sounding comments from me - I am really just speculating, but would be interested in what anthropologists could have to say.

It still is in some places in the world. Uneducated people will believe that leadership is a divine right because they are told this by people who use religion to gain power. So while the anthropological study tells us that organized religion was at some level the glue that held society together, it is worth considering an alternate reality where organized religion didn't exist.

there is still way too much fundamentalism all over the world.

Of course neither you nor I were there when religion was invented.

I'll bet a lot of early civilizations didn't need some graybeard to tell us what to do, or off with your head.

We probably understood raw power and allegiances to the stronger/wiser/helpful individuals but the trappings of religion would have come later.

In any case, this disease has only helped the otherwise impotent potentates. And only because the masses let them get away with it - or have some benefit in the spoils.

Moses was ripped off a famous old Babylonian myth. Jesus is based on the Egyptian god Horace. "Allah" was a pagan moon god before Muslims claimed him.

I will give the first humans to invent a god some points for creativity!

We can recite the entire history of the world and sound like we have all the evidence to prove it in hand...got it all figured out...by divination perhaps?

I am from the school of philosophy of Terrence McKinna that says we don't know jack shit about what is real.
But I guess it makes us more comfortable to think that we do.

Must be why I find Hinduism fascinating.


Of course both are ancient guesses that are obsolete these days....except for entertainment value...

But Hindu mythology is amazing.


Perhaps because it's exotic to us occidentals.

So many asians know Abrahamic mythologies. But not many of us over here even know who Rama is or what his story is. We might have heard of Krishna, but really don't know the stories about him. It's embarrassingly pitiful.

Of course, Hinduism isn't a salvation religion that insists you spread the word....so it doesn't get pushed in your face as much. Even after the Beatles went to India and dropped acid, westerners still didn't get much of the rich Hindu traditions and stories.

They just converted what they already had.

Those two are backwards in this graphic.

================

I often star gaze... and I am filled with more awe than anything I've ever learned or experienced standing here on the surface this world. I think of the Drake equation and it utterly blows my mind.

I wonder how many beings are probably 'out there'... that we have no evidence for yet ? We use science like the drake equation to theorize about the probability other life elsewhere...but when you consider all the recent extra solar planets we have found it becomes even more clear that we are not likley to be alone in the vastness of the stars, and galaxies we have yet to even see. I am looking forward to the launch of the James Webb Space telescope and i feel it will only show us more that we need to put our focus as a race of 'intelligent living beings' on things beyond this world, and our striving to put our footprint in the stars was more than just an assumption of intelligence but was a living devotion to it. In so doing we can more easily shed the superstitions, and fears that haunt us in this world, which should bring us all to a greater perspective on life here, and beyond here.

I ponder specifically sometimes how many like us have come and gone already, how did they live, will we ever know they existed with the unfathomable amounts of time erasing everything they ever were, before it could ever be discovered by others like us, that even they thought surely were out here somewhere.



(top post at reddit , ironically.)

This is section we can see of our own galaxy, and completely erased all the subjective things I used to irrationally fear in this life on this planet rather they be 'gods', ghosts, or demons, Heaven, or Hell. It made me live in the now, and realize that NOW is all we ever have. I make the best i can of NOW and feel much better without the burdens of superstition that used to weigh on me so heavily. It's liberating and humbling to understand the true nature of things.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drake_equation.


http://www.planetary.org/multimedia/space-images/universe/extent-of-human-radio-broadcasts.html


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voyager_1
http://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/

that's "religion" enough for me. And what makes it even better is we know it actually exists.

like a little perspective on how small we really are compared to the known universe (I frequently think of the ending credit scenes in MIB for that)

in a 14-billion-year-old universe never cease to amaze me.

I've never understood this meme...usually from religious people.

It doesn't matter how big things are or how small things are when it comes to the fact we live in this size zone and with each other. So, duh! of course things we do, to and for each other, matter. We're stuck here!


It DOES matter when it comes to our notions of the universe and existence, however. It should make killing each other over who's made up sky fairy is the best, unquestionably seem as astronomically stupid as it is.

Wait -- is that too pro-gun?



It's still pro-cool.

====================

So that whenever some young whippersnapper calls me an old white misogynistic colonialist Western shitlord or somesuch, I happily point them to the Japanese creation myth:

The deities descended from the bridge of heaven and made their home on the island. Eventually, they fell in love and wished to mate...Izanagi and Izanami circled the pillar in opposite directions, and when they met on the other side, Izanami, the female deity, spoke first in greeting. Izanagi didn't think that this was proper, but they mated anyway. They had two children, Hiruko ("leech child&quot and Awashima ("pale island&quot , but the children were badly formed and are not considered gods in their original form. (Hiruko later became the Japanese god, Ebisu.)

The parents, who were dismayed at their misfortune, put the children into a boat and sent them to sea, and then petitioned the other gods for an answer about what they had done wrong. They were informed that Izanami's lack of manners was the reason for the defective births: a woman should never speak prior to a man; the male deity should have spoken first in greeting during the ceremony. So Izanagi and Izanami went around the pillar again, and this time, when they met, Izanagi spoke first. Their next union was successful.