Oct 9, 2019, 12:51 PM
(core)
Religion provides mindfulness. mindfulness is produced by personal sedation of powerlessness, interpersonal accounting of reciprocity, social accounting of position in hierarchy, and economic accounting of proportionality, and political insurance (defense).
So to say a religion provides morality is false. A religion provides the means of instructing us on a given strategy for the preservation of reciprocity and proportionality which always and everywhere describes morality.
So while we demand mindfulness across that spectrum, the only one that is not reproducible by law is personal sedation of powerlessness – which can be produced by any ritualistic means – the most scientific of which is what we call the stoic method of self construction, or what is called, cognitive behavioral therapy, and the epicurean objective (living within your means), and the social experience of collective feast, oath, sport, and festival.
The ‘evil’ in the abrahamic religions is insidious on at least the following counts: abrahamic lying, denial of reality, submission instead of achievement, surrender instead of action, and the falsehood of equality, the falsehood of man as fallen angel among evil humans, rather than man as risen beast domesticated by his betters.
Religion solves a problem native to consciousness which is the evolution of man in small groups where he and she have agency and full knowledge of one another and insurance of one another instead of anonymity in a chaotic world with none of the above. Institutional religion evolved as a pre-literate law code that could be taught by recitation of parables and stories, which was the only means of teaching in the era.
So religion evolves into law evolves into science. And in science (Truth) we are the gods – there are none other. And those we call gods are but the memories of those who came before us, and the visions of what we wish to become. Because that is all our brains are capable of creating.
I don’t err often and as far as I know all improvement in understanding of religion will simply continue to increase the precision of this description.
Cheers