Thoughts on Religion
I thought since I have been talking about religion I thought I would share some of my thoughts about the subject(and sorry guy, this is part one of a series).
I identify as a Christian but can't confess to being overly devout and my thoughts on Christianity are based on my time at Sunday School, my occasional worship since then, and my eclectic reading and learning. I don't really expect any of this to have too much in the way of intellectual rigour, and I am certainly not prepared to defend it in any scholarly manner; although please deep free to comment and criticise at any time. To proper theologians or historical researchers much of what I say may seem obvious, trite or muddle-headed. I hope I don't bore you.:)
First I thought I would expound upon an idea I once had about the way peoples relationship with God has changed as their circumstances changed. The way I see it, there are four phases(possibly 4.5)
Phase One: The Early Years
I think there has always been a tendency by human to believe in something greater than themselves and in the beginning the focus on deities is as beings of nature. Explanations about storms and lightning, winter and spring, flood and famine all come with entities attached that are either responsible for or can ameliorate conditions and events. As life was capricious so were these beings and while people told stories of The Thunderer or The Forest Lord they realised they were outside mortal scope.
Really these stories and beliefs were attempts at finding order where there is none and explanations for what at the time was inexplicable. But by associating the idea of humanity with these entities rapidly brings people to...
Phase Two: Worship
I said above that early people believed that the spirits or gods of nature were capricious, and while this seemed true, when they examined the people around them and saw similar traits, they saw something else also.
People can be bribed.
This leads to actual worship of Gods. Perhaps with the right prayers, or a little blood spilt in the right places whatever it is that controls the weather can hold off the rain for a week or two extra. And given a couple of other habits of humanity-seeing patterns where none exist and a willingness to rationalise irrational behaviour-it is easy to see why during good times the worship "works" and the value of worship becomes fortified in peoples minds, while in bad times the fault lies not with the God but with the worshipper(1)
Phase Three: Carrot and Stick.
Up until relatively recently the lives of most people were pretty brutal and harsh affairs. Even going back as short anyone as 1000 years(some of this thinking came as a result from reading The Year 1000, an account of typical British peasant life at the turn of that millennia) life of many was strictly tied to the seasons, and while people didn't live exactly hand to mouth, hard work year long was required to manage. And in an environment of small communities without much leisure time and not much contact from the outside world only a fairly simple religious structure is needed.
But what happens when people develop better than subsistence level farming or are opened up to trade?
We get leisure time and outside influences(2).
People with additional leisure time have time to think outside the constraints of they know and with the traders come ideas and stories where things are different. This is a challenge to a resident religious culture, particularly ones which follow the injunction "Thou shalt not subject thy God to market forces."(3), since some of those new ideas may be religious ideas.
So what can religion do to survive?
Most religions have incorporated a reward system to stop straying - Heaven.
In one way you can look at the promise of heaven as the ultimate con. When the priest tells you "Sure life sucks now, but later you will be rewarded with another life where everything will be hunky-dory." And if one religion has an eternal reward better than yours-promise something better! No one is ever going to come back to prove you wrong.(4)
The problem with heaven is while there is probably no limit to what people will tell you it holds there does come a point where he promises get too extravagant(5). This is where the stick comes in.
If you can't stop people from straying with a promise of better times to come, perhaps they will listen to a threat of eternal damnation.
As current political advertising shows, negative campaigning works. So when you tell people who live pretty hard lives already that if they don't toe the line things will get even worse. There may be limits to how many promises that people will stomach but as Murphy's Law shows things can always get worse. Looking at the history of the Middle Ages especially you can see how successfully the Christian church instituted the idea of Hell. The most vivid religious imagery for a period of around 600 years was that of the torments that Satan could inflict upon the un-devout.
There is a more complex Carrot and Stick game that religious movements practice apart from the Heaven/Hell gambit. By integrating the worship of choice into secular life the religion becomes the primary influence in rewards and punishments imposed by the government. These secular rewards and punishments while not perhaps increasing the spiritual well-being of people certainly more and more increase the influence of the religion over the populous. Time after time we can see religious ideals go from a part of social dialogue to a pivotal role in decision making, pushing a self-serving agenda which while genuinely addressing matters it sees as concerns, enriches itself in wealth, power and influence. Even in places where theoretically religion is officially divorced from a role in government we can see the carrot/stick system in play as religious organisations use their influence of their congregations to advocate for causes, money and candidates that they believe will suit their purposes best.
Phase 3.5: Atheism
This is the 'possibly 0.5' that I referred to near the beginning. While not exactly a religious position, it is an important option that must be available to people if religious thinking is to evolve. If you have questions I hope they will be answered when I outline my final phase of religious evolution.
Phase 4: Independence
Up until now the one factor that has been present in the worship I have described is Need. People turned to religion since they had very real mostly physical needs that had to be met. Institutions encouraged and at various times created that Need to keep or convert people.
In First World counties today that Need has pretty much gone. Religions find themselves operating in environments where people mostly no longer look to them and their creed in terms of something necessary. The choice of Atheism in an increasingly materialistic world means that religions can't rely on promises and threats any more to keep parishioners faithful. People either don't believe or don't care any more.
We know that God isn't sitting on a cloud above us looking down or that the stars are the light of heaven shining through holes in the floor-boards.
This is an important time for religions since now they need to engage us intellectually and emotionally. We need to see positive values within how they preach and act; values that don't have anything to do with promises or threats but offer something we can't find in the secular world. Faiths must welcome the questioners, the doubters, mist be ready to admit that they really on a day to day basis aren't really needed.
If faith isn't needed it has to make itself relevant to people's lives in new ways. It needs to be open and honest about its limitations. It needs to show people that their belief, while not required, will make them better people. It needs to throw Judgment out the window, it needs to look everywhere and find value. If it can't prove its worth Today I can't see it surviving to become the faith of Tomorrow.
One of the questions I asked myself when I started developing these ideas was: If I were God, whose worship would I value more? The faith of someone who came to belief through fear or need, where worship they feel comes with tangible rewards either now or later; or someone who doesn't need belief to thrive, but who chooses to believe anyway?
(1) While the idea of blaming worshipper may seem harsh and unjust(it is), it if you look at it in another way you can see the beginnings of what I think is one the most valuable traits of humanity-the ability to examine ourselves and our society with a critical eye and strive to change behaviours and practices we see as wrong. While there is evidence that we are still evolving in body the more important evolution I see is that of the mind, and the evolution our spirituality, ethics and reasoning.
(2) I wonder if the stories of mass conversion of the natives by missionaries has not so much to do with the religious message but with the values that come with them. If as I suggest there is an evolution of religious thought(with all the dead ends and failures that typifies any form of evolution) it may make sense that people would convert to a religion or value system that is an improvement on the current system. This idea could also be argued to have occurred with the uptake of Greek philosophical thought in the middle ages.
(3) Terry Pratchett-Small Gods
(4) I always thought the moslem promise to martyrs that they will be served by 72 virgins when they enter heaven as being along these lines
(5) Hard to believe I know and something I want to test the boundaries of one day by starting the cult of the Racing God with a Heaven where everyone has Lamborghini and will spend eternity racing Formula One against Saint Schumacher.
Postscript: Bloody LJ! Bloody stupid posting problems. It shouldn't take 1 1/2 hours to get a post accepted.
I identify as a Christian but can't confess to being overly devout and my thoughts on Christianity are based on my time at Sunday School, my occasional worship since then, and my eclectic reading and learning. I don't really expect any of this to have too much in the way of intellectual rigour, and I am certainly not prepared to defend it in any scholarly manner; although please deep free to comment and criticise at any time. To proper theologians or historical researchers much of what I say may seem obvious, trite or muddle-headed. I hope I don't bore you.:)
First I thought I would expound upon an idea I once had about the way peoples relationship with God has changed as their circumstances changed. The way I see it, there are four phases(possibly 4.5)
Phase One: The Early Years
I think there has always been a tendency by human to believe in something greater than themselves and in the beginning the focus on deities is as beings of nature. Explanations about storms and lightning, winter and spring, flood and famine all come with entities attached that are either responsible for or can ameliorate conditions and events. As life was capricious so were these beings and while people told stories of The Thunderer or The Forest Lord they realised they were outside mortal scope.
Really these stories and beliefs were attempts at finding order where there is none and explanations for what at the time was inexplicable. But by associating the idea of humanity with these entities rapidly brings people to...
Phase Two: Worship
I said above that early people believed that the spirits or gods of nature were capricious, and while this seemed true, when they examined the people around them and saw similar traits, they saw something else also.
People can be bribed.
This leads to actual worship of Gods. Perhaps with the right prayers, or a little blood spilt in the right places whatever it is that controls the weather can hold off the rain for a week or two extra. And given a couple of other habits of humanity-seeing patterns where none exist and a willingness to rationalise irrational behaviour-it is easy to see why during good times the worship "works" and the value of worship becomes fortified in peoples minds, while in bad times the fault lies not with the God but with the worshipper(1)
Phase Three: Carrot and Stick.
Up until relatively recently the lives of most people were pretty brutal and harsh affairs. Even going back as short anyone as 1000 years(some of this thinking came as a result from reading The Year 1000, an account of typical British peasant life at the turn of that millennia) life of many was strictly tied to the seasons, and while people didn't live exactly hand to mouth, hard work year long was required to manage. And in an environment of small communities without much leisure time and not much contact from the outside world only a fairly simple religious structure is needed.
But what happens when people develop better than subsistence level farming or are opened up to trade?
We get leisure time and outside influences(2).
People with additional leisure time have time to think outside the constraints of they know and with the traders come ideas and stories where things are different. This is a challenge to a resident religious culture, particularly ones which follow the injunction "Thou shalt not subject thy God to market forces."(3), since some of those new ideas may be religious ideas.
So what can religion do to survive?
Most religions have incorporated a reward system to stop straying - Heaven.
In one way you can look at the promise of heaven as the ultimate con. When the priest tells you "Sure life sucks now, but later you will be rewarded with another life where everything will be hunky-dory." And if one religion has an eternal reward better than yours-promise something better! No one is ever going to come back to prove you wrong.(4)
The problem with heaven is while there is probably no limit to what people will tell you it holds there does come a point where he promises get too extravagant(5). This is where the stick comes in.
If you can't stop people from straying with a promise of better times to come, perhaps they will listen to a threat of eternal damnation.
As current political advertising shows, negative campaigning works. So when you tell people who live pretty hard lives already that if they don't toe the line things will get even worse. There may be limits to how many promises that people will stomach but as Murphy's Law shows things can always get worse. Looking at the history of the Middle Ages especially you can see how successfully the Christian church instituted the idea of Hell. The most vivid religious imagery for a period of around 600 years was that of the torments that Satan could inflict upon the un-devout.
There is a more complex Carrot and Stick game that religious movements practice apart from the Heaven/Hell gambit. By integrating the worship of choice into secular life the religion becomes the primary influence in rewards and punishments imposed by the government. These secular rewards and punishments while not perhaps increasing the spiritual well-being of people certainly more and more increase the influence of the religion over the populous. Time after time we can see religious ideals go from a part of social dialogue to a pivotal role in decision making, pushing a self-serving agenda which while genuinely addressing matters it sees as concerns, enriches itself in wealth, power and influence. Even in places where theoretically religion is officially divorced from a role in government we can see the carrot/stick system in play as religious organisations use their influence of their congregations to advocate for causes, money and candidates that they believe will suit their purposes best.
Phase 3.5: Atheism
This is the 'possibly 0.5' that I referred to near the beginning. While not exactly a religious position, it is an important option that must be available to people if religious thinking is to evolve. If you have questions I hope they will be answered when I outline my final phase of religious evolution.
Phase 4: Independence
Up until now the one factor that has been present in the worship I have described is Need. People turned to religion since they had very real mostly physical needs that had to be met. Institutions encouraged and at various times created that Need to keep or convert people.
In First World counties today that Need has pretty much gone. Religions find themselves operating in environments where people mostly no longer look to them and their creed in terms of something necessary. The choice of Atheism in an increasingly materialistic world means that religions can't rely on promises and threats any more to keep parishioners faithful. People either don't believe or don't care any more.
We know that God isn't sitting on a cloud above us looking down or that the stars are the light of heaven shining through holes in the floor-boards.
This is an important time for religions since now they need to engage us intellectually and emotionally. We need to see positive values within how they preach and act; values that don't have anything to do with promises or threats but offer something we can't find in the secular world. Faiths must welcome the questioners, the doubters, mist be ready to admit that they really on a day to day basis aren't really needed.
If faith isn't needed it has to make itself relevant to people's lives in new ways. It needs to be open and honest about its limitations. It needs to show people that their belief, while not required, will make them better people. It needs to throw Judgment out the window, it needs to look everywhere and find value. If it can't prove its worth Today I can't see it surviving to become the faith of Tomorrow.
One of the questions I asked myself when I started developing these ideas was: If I were God, whose worship would I value more? The faith of someone who came to belief through fear or need, where worship they feel comes with tangible rewards either now or later; or someone who doesn't need belief to thrive, but who chooses to believe anyway?
(1) While the idea of blaming worshipper may seem harsh and unjust(it is), it if you look at it in another way you can see the beginnings of what I think is one the most valuable traits of humanity-the ability to examine ourselves and our society with a critical eye and strive to change behaviours and practices we see as wrong. While there is evidence that we are still evolving in body the more important evolution I see is that of the mind, and the evolution our spirituality, ethics and reasoning.
(2) I wonder if the stories of mass conversion of the natives by missionaries has not so much to do with the religious message but with the values that come with them. If as I suggest there is an evolution of religious thought(with all the dead ends and failures that typifies any form of evolution) it may make sense that people would convert to a religion or value system that is an improvement on the current system. This idea could also be argued to have occurred with the uptake of Greek philosophical thought in the middle ages.
(3) Terry Pratchett-Small Gods
(4) I always thought the moslem promise to martyrs that they will be served by 72 virgins when they enter heaven as being along these lines
(5) Hard to believe I know and something I want to test the boundaries of one day by starting the cult of the Racing God with a Heaven where everyone has Lamborghini and will spend eternity racing Formula One against Saint Schumacher.
Postscript: Bloody LJ! Bloody stupid posting problems. It shouldn't take 1 1/2 hours to get a post accepted.