Do you want to build a snowman? And other conflicts between religion and modernity.

Well, the language is pretty tame but it sure covers well-tread GWJ ground - religious people believe some crazy sh*t that is anachronistic in a modern age. I think everyone but the religious will agree with you, much like the last 5 "religious people believe some crazy sh*t that is anachronistic in a modern age threads/side discussions".

I am not a mod, so mock/discuss away.

SallyNasty wrote:

Well, the language is pretty tame but it sure covers well-tread GWJ ground - religious people believe some crazy sh*t that is anachronistic in a modern age. I think everyone but the religious will agree with you, much like the last 5 "religious people believe some crazy sh*t that is anachronistic in a modern age threads/side discussions".

I am not a mod, so mock/discuss away.

My point in bringing it up was not to mock what folks might see as irrational, but rather to try to ascertain motive behind what seems to be an increasingly common phenomenon. In a sense, I am trying to make sense of it rather than saying "hurrr. they're so crazy".

If you disagree with my analysis that seemingly irrational restrictions have religious utility (sort of in the similar way that deliberate misspellings in scam emails have a utility we don't normally consider), I would love to hear the nature of your disagreement and will consider it.

I just think it is worthy of discussion.

If you want an explanation for why it seems more common now I think the simplest explanation is that we're more exposed to other people's traditions. Religion tends to have some pretty strong traditions, but any kind of cross-cultural relations are going to have similar issues. You might as well ask why Americans don't eat dogs.

For what it's worth, my post was a statement of bafflement not derision. I never understand how these kinds of rules aren't obviously flawed and human in origin rather than of divine origin. The story at the start of this thread is a great example of that. I don't believe a God who made us to have fun and be creative through music, painting and snow sculpture would put an embargo on those things.

Religion is a massive force in the world, for good or bad and, arguably, as influential as politics, so it doesn't seem excessive to me to have a few religion based discussions. I admit they can become a bit echo chambery.

Gremlin wrote:

If you want an explanation for why it seems more common now I think the simplest explanation is that we're more exposed to other people's traditions. Religion tends to have some pretty strong traditions, but any kind of cross-cultural relations are going to have similar issues. You might as well ask why Americans don't eat dogs.

That isn't really my point though. I get that other cultures may have traditions that don't square with ours.

I guess what I am wondering is if there is a rational reason behind the irrational behavior. On an individual level, it doesn't seem to, but if you view the ideology as a collective entity, the use of often outrageous dogma seems to create an evolutionary advantage. Whether by design or by accident, one has to admit (or at least I do) that this phenomenon is worth researching.

I'm of the opinion that people perceive religion as a source of motivation (negative, positive, whatever) but those actual motivations would exist whether religion were there or not. While religion can serve to codify systems of rules and beliefs, what's underneath at a more fundamental level is far more interesting to me than the religion itself or what it says.

In the end we're all bits of the universe which happen to be conscious for a while. To me, one person's concept of what's logical and true is just as absurd as anyone else's given the scale at which we operate. Recognizing that keeps me grounded, and grants me the ability to keep on interacting with all of you clowns.

Paleocon wrote:

I guess what I am wondering is if there is a rational reason behind the irrational behavior. On an individual level, it doesn't seem to, but if you view the ideology as a collective entity, the use of often outrageous dogma seems to create an evolutionary advantage. Whether by design or by accident, one has to admit (or at least I do) that this phenomenon is worth researching.

I think there are definitely rational reasons for it (at least rational in the evolutionary sense).

Though I fall under the umbrella of atheist (I prefer non-theist if we're using label-makers), I myself harness a few areas of organized religion for my own purposes. What "rules" about self-discipline could be useful to me? Where do I want to choose to exercise that for myself? But I've also constructed a sphere of rather relentless self-examination around myself, so for now that has led to a smorgasbord approach to philosophy in general.

I can see how tying these structures to the idea of a deity is useful for those in power, but also for the relatively powerless who participate in them. Humans need routine and ritual, and we need a context in which we can find meaning. Religion just serves that up in a fairly neat package, while also benefiting the more cynical and power-hungry. It's no different from any other group that people form, in that sense.

I grew up in a tradition with a ton of weird/ridiculous rules but there is at least a nominal effort within it to capture the intent behind those rules and separate it from the "legalism" of mindless observance, so I carried that part out with me when I left.

I think the main reason religion is more socially powerful than other philosophical movements, and also why their irrational restrictions continue to exist on a large scale, is that religion is terribly effective at harnessing people's basic evolutionary need to belong to a tribe. Anachronistic observances then become a sign of "your" people.

clover wrote:
Paleocon wrote:

I guess what I am wondering is if there is a rational reason behind the irrational behavior. On an individual level, it doesn't seem to, but if you view the ideology as a collective entity, the use of often outrageous dogma seems to create an evolutionary advantage. Whether by design or by accident, one has to admit (or at least I do) that this phenomenon is worth researching.

I think there are definitely rational reasons for it (at least rational in the evolutionary sense).

Though I fall under the umbrella of atheist (I prefer non-theist if we're using label-makers), I myself harness a few areas of organized religion for my own purposes. What "rules" about self-discipline could be useful to me? Where do I want to choose to exercise that for myself? But I've also constructed a sphere of rather relentless self-examination around myself, so for now that has led to a smorgasbord approach to philosophy in general.

I can see how tying these structures to the idea of a deity is useful for those in power, but also for the relatively powerless who participate in them. Humans need routine and ritual, and we need a context in which we can find meaning. Religion just serves that up in a fairly neat package, while also benefiting the more cynical and power-hungry. It's no different from any other group that people form, in that sense.

I grew up in a tradition with a ton of weird/ridiculous rules but there is at least a nominal effort within it to capture the intent behind those rules and separate it from the "legalism" of mindless observance, so I carried that part out with me when I left.

I think the main reason religion is more socially powerful than other philosophical movements, and also why their irrational restrictions continue to exist on a large scale, is that religion is terribly effective at harnessing people's basic evolutionary need to belong to a tribe. Anachronistic observances then become a sign of "your" people.

Look at that. An opinion that doesn't take cheap shots at anybody and focuses on the core of the topic.

Intent is important when discussing a philosophy. People get bent out of shape when an argument turns toward implementation, because implementation can and often does have nothing to do with intent.

Why do we have religion? Clover points at some of the reasons. I'd also add that people have a natural tendency to search for meaning and religion provides a convenient launching point. Meaning is the make-believe we use to give our lives a purpose. It's a huge part of any story and, since all our lives consist of in the end are stories, that makes meaning an important thing. Hell, here we are picking apart religion to find meaning in it.

LouZiffer wrote:

Look at that. An opinion that doesn't take cheap shots at anybody and focuses on the core of the topic.

No one asked you. And you smell.

Paleocon wrote:
LouZiffer wrote:

Look at that. An opinion that doesn't take cheap shots at anybody and focuses on the core of the topic.

No one asked you. And you smell.

IMAGE(http://i.imgur.com/UEOP9ig.gif)

LouZiffer wrote:
Paleocon wrote:
LouZiffer wrote:

Look at that. An opinion that doesn't take cheap shots at anybody and focuses on the core of the topic.

No one asked you. And you smell.

IMAGE(http://i.imgur.com/UEOP9ig.gif)

LouZiffer wrote:

Why do we have religion? Clover points at some of the reasons. I'd also add that people have a natural tendency to search for meaning and religion provides a convenient launching point. Meaning is the make-believe we use to give our lives a purpose. It's a huge part of any story and, since all our lives consist of in the end are stories, that makes meaning an important thing. Hell, here we are picking apart religion to find meaning in it.

It stands to reason that any organized thing offering answers to big things (who are we, why are we here, etc) will inevitably be asked about smaller things (can I take my neighbour's stuff, is getting drunk bad-bad or just kinda bad, etc) and then smaller still (what shoes should I wear, can I eat dogs even though some people around really like them, etc). If your justification for the higher level answers is, "I'm getting messages from The Divine", it seems to me that the answers to the smaller questions must either be "Dunno" or "...I'm getting more messages from The Divine". I can't imagine many people with the power intrinsic to being a Mouthpiece would say, "I've only got big answers. I have been shown no opinion on eating garlic with mayo."

This probably holds especially true when what appears to be trivial or random isn't (ie, don't eat milk and meat off the same unfinished clay dishes). If I'm going to be told how to plate dinner, it's not that big a stretch to be told just about anything.

Chumpy_McChump wrote:
LouZiffer wrote:

Why do we have religion? Clover points at some of the reasons. I'd also add that people have a natural tendency to search for meaning and religion provides a convenient launching point. Meaning is the make-believe we use to give our lives a purpose. It's a huge part of any story and, since all our lives consist of in the end are stories, that makes meaning an important thing. Hell, here we are picking apart religion to find meaning in it.

It stands to reason that any organized thing offering answers to big things (who are we, why are we here, etc) will inevitably be asked about smaller things (can I take my neighbour's stuff, is getting drunk bad-bad or just kinda bad, etc) and then smaller still (what shoes should I wear, can I eat dogs even though some people around really like them, etc). If your justification for the higher level answers is, "I'm getting messages from The Divine", it seems to me that the answers to the smaller questions must either be "Dunno" or "...I'm getting more messages from The Divine". I can't imagine many people with the power intrinsic to being a Mouthpiece would say, "I've only got big answers. I have been shown no opinion on eating garlic with mayo."

This probably holds especially true when what appears to be trivial or random isn't (ie, don't eat milk and meat off the same unfinished clay dishes). If I'm going to be told how to plate dinner, it's not that big a stretch to be told just about anything.

A great illustration of how implementation tends to part ways with intent.

Note that the religious systems that appear really involved to outsiders often have a large body of reasoning behind them. You might disagree with the conclusions, but stuff like the Orthodox Jewish Shabbat laws have documented reasons for every proscription. The Abrahamic traditions in particular are big on logical reasoning from prior principles and then writing them down; my guess is that many others are the same way.

It's a bit like veganism, if you want a secular system with rules that can appear odd if you're not party to the prior assumptions behind them.

I'm still not willing to give the (Not So) Fabulous Mullah and Pastor Silas f*ckstick a pass while they're able to peddle their poisonous product freely.

It seems that this noble "intent," sanctified by belief, degrades as copy after copy of itself is made to cover implementation, until the past implementations become part of the current intent and a guy can't make a f*cking snowman for his kid.

The religious don't want the hyperreligious to be mocked; I understand that. But doing so gives meaning and order to the universe for some of us and provides community--its own little mini-religion.

Gremlin wrote:

Note that the religious systems that appear really involved to outsiders often have a large body of reasoning behind them. You might disagree with the conclusions, but stuff like the Orthodox Jewish Shabbat laws have documented reasons for every proscription. The Abrahamic traditions in particular are big on logical reasoning from prior principles and then writing them down; my guess is that many others are the same way.

Ex post facto reasons, and highly debated in many cases. But you wanna know something *really* interesting in that regard? Scholars believe that the early Jews only saved about 10%-15% of the religious texts stored in the First Temple. Judaism in it's strong form - as practiced for the several hundred years after the fall of the Temple - comprises about 1/8 of what it was *before* the Temple fell. Even considering that they would have tried to save what they thought was most important (ie, it's unlikely there were another 600 rules left to burn), Judaism today is almost certainly just the core of what it was initially.

I guess that means that God is pissed at all of them, since they aren't following the rules they don't know about.

I wonder if anyone has theorized what those other rules were.

Chumpy_McChump wrote:
LouZiffer wrote:

Why do we have religion? Clover points at some of the reasons. I'd also add that people have a natural tendency to search for meaning and religion provides a convenient launching point. Meaning is the make-believe we use to give our lives a purpose. It's a huge part of any story and, since all our lives consist of in the end are stories, that makes meaning an important thing. Hell, here we are picking apart religion to find meaning in it.

It stands to reason that any organized thing offering answers to big things (who are we, why are we here, etc) will inevitably be asked about smaller things (can I take my neighbour's stuff, is getting drunk bad-bad or just kinda bad, etc) and then smaller still (what shoes should I wear, can I eat dogs even though some people around really like them, etc). If your justification for the higher level answers is, "I'm getting messages from The Divine", it seems to me that the answers to the smaller questions must either be "Dunno" or "...I'm getting more messages from The Divine". I can't imagine many people with the power intrinsic to being a Mouthpiece would say, "I've only got big answers. I have been shown no opinion on eating garlic with mayo."

This probably holds especially true when what appears to be trivial or random isn't (ie, don't eat milk and meat off the same unfinished clay dishes). If I'm going to be told how to plate dinner, it's not that big a stretch to be told just about anything.

My observation is that it tends to be the other way around - squaring with clover's observations. Many of you might balk at this, but most people don't want freedom. They want to be told what to do, right down to which shoes they ought to tie first. When we say "people want freedom," what we really mean is that people want the opportunity to do what they really want to do. When they don't know what to do, or can't decide one way or another, people really, really want someone else to tell them.

So what happens is if you're the defacto Life Leader on tap, people keep bothering you with meaningless questions that they ought to be deciding for themselves - like whether it's okay to make snowmen. Honestly, it's exasperating. I'm not a priest or anything like that, but I have been a small team leader at various enterprises and even there it was annoying. Nobody likes answering questions they consider trivial, whether or not they have the hubris to consider themselves the Voice of the Divine.

Then (and we've all seen this happen), dogmatic thinking sets in, and whatever you said is repeated (and often distorted) by the people you said it to, and suddenly You Said It and it's the Law of the Land and people start getting killed for drawing pictures.

It didn't actually start out this way, but I can easily imagine some priest somewhere getting exasperated and saying, "You know what? Yeah. Eating meat is sinful. You obviously just want to hear that, right? So yeah. Never eat meat on... Fridays! There. Happy now?"

Seth wrote:

I wonder if anyone has theorized what those other rules were.

Probably a lot of it was hymns, poetry and variant origin stories, that sort of thing. There are two Creation stories, two sets of law-giving stories, and so forth, that were saved and crammed together, so most likely there were other variants as well. But this is an area I don't know as well as some others. Certainly Judaism accreted from a number of different sects and previous religions, so it's not surprising. And later on, there were splits and factionalization, some of which survive today.

I can nerd out hard on that, but that's definitely a different thread.

Huh. Any good books to recommend me, Clover?

Robear wrote:

Huh. Any good books to recommend me, Clover?

No book would ever recommend you, Robear!

(Sorry. Had to.)

I've seen it claimed that many of the weird religious rituals have value because they are weird and inconvenient. They demonstrate your commitment to the faith, not just to others, but to yourself. It makes you part of a larger group, one joined by the hassle they're willing to go through in order to demonstrate that they'll fulfill the demands of their deity.

There needs to be a separation, the thinking goes, between 'us' and 'them', and ritual is how you maintain that separation. Without that strong sense of being distinct, the religion risks dying out.

Also, if you change the rules, you risk having one faction disagreeing with the change and splintering off to form their own version of the religion with both the anti-change and pro-change groups believing that God is backing their truer version of the faith.

Another way of expressing my last thought: if your religion allows you to act just like mainstream society, then there's no particular reason to be in that specific religion, as opposed to a different one. If everyone acted pretty much the same, then you'd probably just go to whatever church was closest.

It's a survival trait for the religion to have weird rituals, so it won't be assimilated by broader culture.

That's a little like saying if cycling allowed me to assimilate into mainstream society (which it does), then there's no particular reason to be a cyclist - I should just go to the nearest gym and work out there.

If you could get your exercise in a more convenient way, then bicycle use would tend to fall off, or perhaps disappear entirely.

Now, if you want to bring transportation in, that's fine, and would preserve bicycling, but that's not part of your analogy.

Precisely. You're assuming that I'm only cycling for exercise. I am, but I go out of my way to bike because I like cycling. See where that goes?

LarryC wrote:

Precisely. You're assuming that I'm only cycling for exercise. I am, but I go out of my way to bike because I like cycling. See where that goes?

I don't see where that goes. What are you saying, Larry?