The Atheist Delusion

[hunter s.durden]

Must just be me.

Go on, you were saying something about the inner working of 5 billion or so brains...

[Triple Zero]

6.66 billion actually.

[hunter s.durden]

I don't know how many are actually religious.

Everyone on this board is being annoyingly didactic today.

[Triple Zero]

I don't know how many are actually religious.

Everyone on this board is being annoyingly didactic today.

Not everyone, right?

[hunter s.durden]

Exactly.

[Cain]

[hunter s.durden]

So like 5.6 billion.

[Golden Applesauce]

Religion is the expression of a group's collective fear of the unknown.

It would be more accurate to say that religion is an expression of or reaction to the belief that there is something 'more' to this world than the obvious physical bit.  Some religions do react with fear, but I think most don't.  Most of the religious people I've met fall into the latter category.

It seems kind of odd to say that Buddhists meditate only because they are afraid of something, doesn't it?

[tyrannosaurus vex]

Supernatural religions aren't the only religions. A religion can be anything that gives people a sense that they can reliably predict what's going to happen next. Whether that means what is going to happen after death or what is going to happen if somebody makes a gaffe at a dinner party, the basic mechanism is the same. People cling to the familiar, and tend to deal with the "unknown" only when forced to do so.

Buddhists meditate because they seek peace, they seek peace because they do not have it, and they do not have it for a lot of reasons, all of which boil down to the fact that they feel threatened by forces and factors outside of their control, which are themselves spurred on by still more forces which are not only out of their control but outside their very awareness of them. They meditate for the same reasons that Christians pray for God to cure their sister's cancer. Simple lack of control over one's situation.

Life can be too complex and nuanced to approach without any kind of system. Religion, through repetition and meditation can effectively create the illusion that you have control over things you do not have control over -- even if you are still threatened, the fear is relieved, because once you are aware of something you can at least take it into account. Humans think that if they know what is going on, even if they can't control something, they can avoid disaster -- which isn't true, but that doesn't stop them from thinking it is.

Fear is so clearly the most effective and most common motivator of almost all human activity, and religion (even Buddhism, which isn't as 'enlightened' as it would like you to believe) so easily devolves into fear-based violence and exclusion, that I cannot see how fear is not one of, if not the most important factor in the formation and propagation of large religions.

[Cain]

There is actually a Buddhist meditation where you are to imagine yourself being killed in various horrific ways.

[tyrannosaurus vex]

to desensitize you to the fear of your own death, maybe?

[Golden Applesauce]

I guess I've just seen to many people who express their religion with love to believe that it all boils down to fear.

Out of curiosity, what fear would you say prompted Discordianism?

[tyrannosaurus vex]

The fear of being like them, of course.

[Cain]

to desensitize you to the fear of your own death, maybe?

When asked, I was told it was "for the lulz"

[tyrannosaurus vex]

"to demonstrate the transient nature of both life and death, and to prepare the initiate for his eventual flaying at the top secret Mormo-Buddhist Temple of Gutting"