Tag Archive for 'religion'
- Religion is a human construct.
- Religion means many things.
- Religion manifests on the level of the human mind, derived from innate presuppositions, intuitions and biases. In other words, the human mind naturally believes that the world is filled with supernatural agents and powers.
- Religion manifests on the level of the society. Tribes pray together, and their relationship to the common god binds them together.
- Religion manifests across history, evolving as a multi-dimensional phenomenon.
- Religion and its intersection with philosophy results in theology and the textual foci of “higher religoins.”
- Because of religion’s phenomenological scope it is nearly impossible to easily extricate it from other aspects of human affairs.
- Due to the fact that in many early modern societies, such as the American republic, there was a relative uniformity of religious practice but variations along fine details of orthodoxy, a separationist logic based on neutrality in terms of matters of belief was practicable.
- When the variation in religious traditions increases this makes such a minimalist separationist ideology impossible.
- Because of religion’s psychological grounding it is difficult to banish or extinguish without a great deal of exogenous pressure; e.g., the persecutions under Communism. And in situations where religion is supplanted, it is usually replaced by an ideology with quasi-religious characteristics.
- Atheists are often psychologically peculiar. In “officially atheist” cultures like North Korea there tends to emerge quasi-religious personality cults.
- The fact that a thorough skeptical scientific materialist Weltanschauung is going to be unappealing or unnatural for most of humanity has to be taken as a starting position or axiom about the nature of the universe.
- This implies that “militant atheism” is a vacuous and futile position.
- So from a stance of radical materialism the question is how to accommodate the instincts and inclinations of most humans; how to appease and compromise, establish common sets of norms.