| Urbane Guerrilla |
08-05-2011 11:05 PM |
Religion's origin has very little if anything to do with off-kilter mentation -- and very much to do with helping humans live in their societies without savaging each other, keeping a leash on greed, and other desiderata.
This is not to say some jackholes aren't going to try gaming any system around -- one example being the just-convicted, still-in-denial Warren Jeffs. Who is likely to be ill-treated in prison, possibly fatally, since murderers think they are better than child molesters. Ahem. Somebody back in the Bronze Age was probably gaming the system in Baal-worship too.
The great difference between religion and superstition is what you do with it. Superstitions are magical thinking; you don't have to do magical thinking to be religious. For some of you this distinction will be either subtle or outright baffling. All I can say to that is I've been trying to pay attention.
Religion works with an instinct among humans -- an instinct to be part of something greater than one's own limited self. This can be found in other societal endeavors too. We are not leopards, solitary, seeking others like ourselves only to mate with them and reproduce. We want, need and use more extensive social contact than that. An anthropomorphized capital-G God is imagined as a sort of super Man, endued with all the virtues, the bulk of which improve our social interactions, making these benevolent rather than predatory.
But who can limn the leopards' God?
So, back to the root of the thing: we want and need a road to social cohesiveness, lest our group or society fail in survival-promoting cooperation and amity. Look at just how many religious precepts are about being nice to people. In the fundamentals, that's damn near all of them. Morality is survival behavior -- often very closely reasoned survival behavior. Look how few root precepts are about cutting people off from benevolent consideration. Almost always, these are more political than religious. Even the ones that seem at first glance entirely religous -- well, once you start digging, you find them to be political somehow.
The be-nice and play-fair commandments are however not always of themselves convenient to actually practice. A sociopathic personality is defined by an inability to practice these, with the severely sociopathic being unable to do it at all, either with narcissistic thinking or with resentment at others for being existent enough to occasionally inconvenience. Those of us who can be socialized enough to follow the civilization-rules find these people a mighty inconvenience out of proportion to their small numbers.
The religious civilization-rules for how to treat your fellow man take on a great deal of importance when simply getting up and going far away isn't a good option, and when killing off the guy who makes you mad is bound to get you talked about. The importance attached to these things is so great that they must be made something sacred -- not to be transgressed no matter what. Elevating such principles to the level of holiness is an excellent psychological mechanism for keeping the good social ideas in place and in force.
Even those with an allergy to the sacred benefit infinitely therefrom, and for their entire lives. And it's smoothly enough done that the atheistic, who imagine themselves so sophisticated and rational, don't even notice it at work. Practically everyone else is thinking so as to make these sacred ideals work -- and so is the atheist for that matter, if he has even a lick of sense.
Even if religion were not yet invented, it would have to be invented in the end -- not mere majoritarian consensus, but keeping the best ideas beyond any political influence or fashion, or momentary passion.
Atheism is the thinking of the naïf. I won't indulge in it. It isn't satisfactory.
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