[ExI] [Extropolis] Religion

[Will Steinberg]

Mysticism is the basis of religion.  All religion starts with a ‘prophet’
type who realizes some kind of deep truth about reality or society.  This
truth is so compelling to people that they continue to listen and they
spread the word.  I can’t just say that a magic unicorn controls the world
by pissing on a magic globe and make a movement—maybe a small cult of
idiots.  But powerful religions are based on powerful truths.  As I
mentioned, monotheism had incredible power based on the simple truth
“everything looks different but it’s actually all one thing”.  Animism
before that was based on the simple truth “different natural objects [gods]
are different and have consistent patterns/behavior”.

On Wed, Aug 7, 2024 at 3:46 AM efc--- via extropy-chat <
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:

>
>
> On Tue, 6 Aug 2024, Dylan Distasio via extropy-chat wrote:
>
> > There are alot of additional directions I could go in as to why early,
> primitive religions exist in terms of explaining and
> > controlling your environment (or rather the appearance of control) but I
> think the crux of my answer is in my argument above.
>
> I agree. My bet would be that the origin is safety/control and
> explanation. Eventually it led to science, and hence the antagonism
> between religion and science. Religion feels threatened.
>
> I'd also add that it's a nice tool to control society and
> ensure a homogeneous culture and cooperation.
>
> But within the phenomenon of religion, you also have the mystics, which
> I think started with the above, but found their way to an incredibly
> strong internal experience, which kind of lessened the need for safety
> and explanation for them, but they have always been a tiny minority so
> perhaps not so relevant for the original question.
>
> > Memento mori.
> >
> > On Tue, Aug 6, 2024 at 7:58 PM Keith Henson <hkeithhenson at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> >       The interesting question is why do humans have religions at all? I
> >       make a case that it is a side effect of selection for war.
> >
> >       Religion is a class of mutually exclusive memes. I.e., it is seldom
> >       that a given person has more than one of them, so you don't expect
> >       someone who identifies as a Catholic to also be a Methodist. This
> >       brings you to the interesting conclusion that communism is a
> religion
> >       since being one makes it unlikely to have any of the common
> religious
> >       memes.
> >
> >       This classification does not help with the question of why humans
> have
> >       (or are infested) with such memes. From how common this is,
> religious
> >       memes (or something related) must have been important to survival
> in
> >       the Stone Age.
> >
> >       Religious memes seem to be descended from xenophobic memes.
> >
> >       Xenophobic memes are the first step in the path to war. I think
> >       genetic selection for war is the origin of susceptibility to
> religious
> >       memes.
> >
> >
> >       Keith
> >
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