By all accounts there is a spirit in the sky
In the sky,
In the sky!
That's what you see whe-en you die
When ya die,
When ya die!
Oh it's, allabout that spirit in the sky...
or at least under the earth, inside of you, or in a neaby dimension-- at the very least, there IS one. religion it is so fundamental a part of human society (and all human societies have it) that even atheism is widely considered a religious affiliation, and the statement there is no god does require a leap of faith to grant it certainty. I do not think that this excuses the agnostics from religious activity or adherence, because the assertion that there is even a question that could be answered, or even that it could not be answered, requires faith for it's coherence.
by faith i mean having intellectual/emotional certainty that defies proof.
so for example if we believe that the X number of grams that a body looses when it expires is due to the departure of the soul and then find out that this is not the case it is not the existence of the soul that is disproven but rather the corporeality of the soul.
the human mind is a machine designed to make sense of stimuli and leap to safe conclusions. god is our attempt to make sense of stimuli too wide and too much for us to make sense of, so wide and too much that any plausible conclusion we could leap to would have no bearing whatsoever on the human condition.
Still, we cannot help but try for that is our nature.
Sometimes and some people jump to conclusions that are useful for other reasons: do not kill, do not adulterate, etc., which are especially useful when disemminated through the community created by the cultural unification that common religion provides.
because we use our (non)sense of religion to define and draw conclusions about the world as a totality, sometimes people think that they will not be able to make sense of the world without their religion, or that if their religion changes or is challenged the sense of the world will collapse. This is not the case, and apart from the behavioural proscriptions that a given religion advocates there will be no change whatsoever if a religion is changed or collapses.
This is because religion, being not-real, cannot compete (except in examples which are exceptions that prove the rule: martyrs and saints) with the concerns of real existence. religion is a comparatively weak instinct when compared to eating and reproducing, as it's constant battle with these shows--even with the full blessing of society and culture, relition is still notoriously bad at enforcing it's prohibitions against inclinations "through faith alone".
Religion as a cultural entity is extemely good at modulating itself around the things that we were going to do anyway. it does this because if it did not or could not it would cease to exist and be re-invented by our continuing need for it.
but the truth is that when you die your brain stops working and you don't think any more :p
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2 comments:
What if when you die what happens is that your brain stops, but your consciousness qua non-physical thingamajig migrates to the next ahem [field]? All I'm saying is, show me the non-evidence, youse doubting Thomases. Perhaps our access to the adjacent [plane] is wholly dependent on our belief in it? In such a scenario, religion would have more than a psycho-sociological function as you justifiably suggest...belief being the only pathway to the next [level]. Anyway, it is up to the individual to cover his-her own ass, or conversely, to leave it exposed. Good luck!
"Perhaps our access to the adjacent [plane] is wholly dependent on our belief in it?"
Perhaps. Perhaps if you wash your hair tonight the sun won't come up, keep thinking that way and you'll go crazy.
As I said, belief is a weak instinct. You can believe that only by not eating (or being nice to people) are you gonna get to the next level, but once you get hungry, you (most people) will eat, or defend your own at other's expense. Ergo, he next level doesn't matter as much as your body.
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