[extropy-chat] Engineered Religion (was atheism in decline)

[Samantha Atkins]

On Mar 18, 2005, at 3:22 PM, john-c-wright at sff.net wrote:

> Samantha asks:
>
>> Aren't all religions engineered?
>
> If I were a wag, I would say, certainly religion is engineered, merely 
> not by
> any being inside creation.

That would be  a-historical and dishonest.  Your post seems to miss the 
point I was attempting to make.   Religions do not spring up fully 
formed straight out of revelation of some kind.  The initial 
revelation/vision/insight is shaped and molded to attempt to fit the 
times and needs of the people and, more cynically, of those who would 
claim to be the elite.   The practices of the religion and its impact 
are often consciously shaped to some extent by the few leaders and 
prophets and so on and further modified in actual practice, drift and 
mutation.   The conscious part, often with very good intentions and 
conviction of doing the work of God, is the engineering.   I wasn't 
using "engineered" in the sense of "totally made up" as you seem to 
have taken my remark.

>
> But I am not a wag, so I will answer the question soberly: no, 
> Virginia, there
> is no Santa Claus, because the adults who tell their children of him 
> do not
> actually think he exists. But, unlike Santa, people who preach the 
> word of God
> actually and sincerely think it is the word of God, and those who 
> revolutionize
> with religion attempt to modify an existing tradition to bring it into 
> better
> alignment with a spiritual vision they believe to be the case.
>
> The fatigues, persecution and penury of religious revolution is, no pun
> intended, legendary. I might tell my child about Santa, but I am not 
> going to be
> hanged to death on a Christmas tree defending the point. Heck, I would 
> recant
> Santyism if they merely showed me the red-hot stockings, or held the
> cruelly-sharped candy-canes too near my eyes. No one dies a martyr's 
> death
> defending snake-oil. No one embraces death to promote a confidence 
> scheme in
> which they have no belief.
>
> If you look to the roots of religion, you find figures like Buddha and 
> Mohammed
> and Jesus, not figures like Tom Eddison or the Wright Brothers. The 
> Wright
> brothers did not claim to be inventing a system for restoring man to 
> his ancient
> and pure right to flying. They were inventing something new. The 
> prophets who
> revolutionized religion were all claiming either to fulfill a previous 
> form of
> law, or to be restoring it to original purity.

The new is often presented in relation to the old especially as the 
fulfillment of the highest essence of the old.

> - samantha