Why are there still so many of humanity that are immersed onto the lies, ignorance and delusions of religion ?

by Finkelstein 37 Replies latest watchtower bible

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  Brokeback Watchtower

  Well it(religion) has been with us for ages and we didn't always have science. And since only recently has science been able to disprove certain religious ideas and now with the internet religions days are seriously numbered.

  Even Isaac Newton believed in the God of the bible and he was a very great scientist, but that in the 17th and 18th century. This things take time to ripple thru society until it becomes so well established in their collective knowledge that only a very tiny minority don't understand it. I think this is what will eventually happen.
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  Finkelstein

  I would agree with that BW, all the indications are that religion is on a down turn around the world.
  
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  shepherdless

  Why are there still so many of humanity that are immersed onto the lies, ignorance and delusions of religion ?

  I agree with a lot of what others have already said. I think there is an additional factor. Most of human existence (and certainly virtually all of recorded human existence) we have had community based gods and religion. They have helped to pull a community together. I am sure that 3000 years ago, or even 1000 years ago, a united community would have been a far far safer place to live, than in a disunited community.

  Thus as far as the forces of natural selection, for most of human history, it has been an overall advantage to be inclined to faith. In other words, it is in our genes to be religious.

  That will change, over time. For virtually the first time in history, the disadvantages of being religious (eg being open to manipulation and exploitation) outweigh the advantages (community protection). Nevertheless, i think religious superstition will be around for many centuries to come, yet.
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  Finkelstein

  Would be fair to say that the awareness of human psychology is evolving and broadening ?
  

  I do agree that religion has played a part of unifying established civilizations with both advantages and perils.
  
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  Brokeback Watchtower

  Also let not forget that religion & government have been bedfellows since recorded history and before that even so these ideas about gods and what they can do to you or for you,,, has been assimilated into human consciousness for a long time thousands of years, you can't just shake those beliefs out like a dusty carpet something that is so universal to the human condition. It takes time if you were from infancy taught the 'holy writings' like Timothy as a model for your life. I still feel remnants of these things influencing me, even though I have been an unbeliever for over a decade even though tried to embrace science and learn as much as I can from it. For some people it is perhaps better that they remain as they are particularly those old in years, but the young one almost always will do better because they have a long life ahead of them. I only wish their road was easier and not with undue restrictions due to being in a mind control cult that allows no decention.

  Bottom line, guaranteed the WT is in some deep doo doo with the advent of the information age, information that clearly shows they are delusional frauds.
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  Phizzy

  Most people who are reasonably educated, are involved in a religion for emotional reasons, rather than it being true to the rational part of their mind.

  Those who lack education, especially where their mind is controlled to reject 21st Century knowledge, as in the High Control/Mind Control groups like the JW's, Islam, Scientology etc etc, may actually almost fully believe their particular brand of nonsense.

  But still it is the emotional cage/prison of family and community etc that prevents them from self-educating and freeing themselves.
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  Phizzy

  I wish to add that it is my gut feeling that the Human Mind is still evolving, that before too much time has passed, we will see that superstition and religion etc will be replaced by rational, evidence based thinking.

  I do hope that along with this we see the demise of nationalism,tribalism and all forms of divisive thinking so that people just feel they are part of the whole Human Race.
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  jeanniebeanzz

  "Why are there still so many of humanity that are immersed onto the lies, ignorance and delusions of religion ?"

  Because self-aware entities do not want to die and cannot, for many, come to grips with it. It 'feels right' to believe in the supernatural because death feels so unnatural. Basically, we think too highly of ourselves.
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  Finkelstein

  For the JWS it all about wagering on God to rectify all of humanity's problems in their life time, they have been proselytizing though the last part of the 19th century, all throughout the 20th century and still going strong to this day.
  

  Some have spent their entire adult life preaching this with full expectation of this to occur..

  Would that be considered a wasteful endeavor with no possibility of actualization ?

  Its easy to fold up are arms and say well god will be correcting things pretty soon, so why bother to help out humanity to what we can do personally are selves, simply playing a role as a devoted messenger to what is supposedly happen.
  
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  A Ha

  I think there are two related things at work. 1. We have evolved to detect agency. The brain has been called a pattern-recognition machine. The brain that interprets measured footfalls and snapping twigs as a potential predator lives while the brain that thinks it's the wind ends up as someone's lunch. 2. We alone have evolved the ability to invent, talk about, and believe in fictions.

  The following is cribbed from Yuval Harari's book, Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, though I'm paraphrasing and maybe doing some editorializing.

  Between 70,000 and 30,000 years ago, Homo sapiens underwent the single greatest change in our history--the Cognitive Revolution. During that period we learned to think--and more importantly--express ourselves differently, with immensely more variety and fluidity of information transmission.

  Without this breakthrough, archaic Homo sapiens would likely have not been able to sustain groups much larger than 150 because that's the limit to how many relationships we can keep track of, and this is vital to such intensely social animals.. Most chimpanzee troupes max out at about 50, and Neanderthals would have probably been somewhere in between the two numbers.

  The ability to think and speak abstractly--to invent fictions, 'imagined realities' or 'social constructs'--is what allowed us to work collectively in very large groups. It is interesting to note that other fictions besides religion--art, social stratification (governments), commerce--all appeared at roughly the same time.

  To answer the question, so many humans are still immersed in religion because it's at the core of who we are. In a very real way, it was religion that allowed us to expand beyond small hunter-gatherer groups and take control of our environment.

  Personally, what I would like to see happen is for a different fiction to overtake and replace religion--that of worldwide community and balance with the environment. But I don't think that will ever happen. I think religion is with us until the end. Ironically, the same thing that played such a large part in our success may also be what eventually dooms us as a species, though perhaps that's not fair, since what's at play in religious strife is in-group out-group thinking, and if we didn't have religion we would find another reason to hate the "other."