[ExI] [Extropolis] Religion

[efc at disroot.org]

On Wed, 7 Aug 2024, Will Steinberg via extropy-chat wrote:

> 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”.

Mysticism I think fits nicely with monotheism due to its "unifying" 
experience. I was thinking about mentioning it, but then I thought, what 
about if we go further back? As you say, spirits, animism etc. Do you 
still think those come from mystic experiences, or from accidents like "I 
pet this rock, and I caught 2 fish today, why is that?".

I think it is very uncontroversial to say that "modern" religions tend to 
come from mysticism, but what about nature religions? Then you have 
of course the grey areas of Daoism and Confucianism, which to me (but I'm 
definitely not an expert on religion) seem to sit uncomfortably in the 
line between philosophy and religion (daoism). I could accept that 
Confucianism is leaning more towards philosophy, but I think they have 
some kind of ancestor worship, don't they?

> 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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