History of religion
Insightstitle: History of religion created_at: 2021-04-13T14:52:16.823Z updated_at: 2021-04-13T14:52:16.823Z tldr: Religion did not come before me. Our mother thought us a version of it is_published: 1 star: true category: Insights share_type: add
I believe religion should exist. It's a great discovery of humankind and equally disturbingly used.
If we compress the entire existence of living things on this earth from single-cell organisms, fish, frogs, reptiles, and Homo habilis to us sapiens, into a 24-hour day, we only existed for the last 4 seconds. The modern man from the era of cave paintings existed for only 1 second. And probably the internet you are reading this on, only a fraction of a millisecond.
In those last 4 seconds, our human brains have put out the ideology of religion and god. Got us to idolaters, believers, and a sense of calm in this ever-changing chaotic world. It is incredible to be able to organize things just by an ideology.
Religion is universal, all human societies believe in the supernatural. They all have created it in one way or another. It has been a part of the brainy monkeys before us... we can trace it back with some measure of confidence to Neanderthals. It is kind of a meta-magical faith-based thing.
So What is it?
Imagine waking up every day and deciding what to wear, who to talk to, who to ask for help, what should I believe in, how to get out of these troubled things, What values do I believe in. That is a lot of choices to make in a day. What religion does is create this framework to bring together a community of people and groupings, a sense of belonging. This sense of safety net is required for our ever-threatening world.
Let's walk back 10000 years, Imagine being at night with no light, complete darkness, and wild forests all of a sudden there is fire in the wild. How the hell do you explain that? How do you justify this chaos?
Imagine getting bitten by a rat and a week into it all your family is dead, where do you find the will to survive?
These beliefs give a way to blame the "supernatural" or "God's doing". There is nothing we mortals can do about it though. Other than to trust his plans and move on!
Morality and Stories
As we started living in larger settlement groups there was a dire need to create morality among them. It's not right one of them brings in food, one cooks it, and one bad person among the group steals. Or how about when got into a disagreement didn't like how things went and started killing each other? The whole settlement is paranoid!
Well in a small settlement, we can keep an eye on each other. This doesn't scale when the settlement grows. And not all of them are reasoning.
Solution, Stories.
Every religious story is written by the literates. It never existed in books, only spread mouth to mouth. There are thousands of iterations of these stories. But all of them have two things in common. There is a concept of a nice place - Heaven and a bad place - Hell. And a supernatural, "God", the one who sees everything always. The one who needs to be feared.
In the modern era, Batman is a great example of this. He fights evil and sends them to jail. He an idol of which all bad people need to be afraid in the Gotham.
Power, Fear and Greed
Religion gives us a sense of superiority over other creatures. This empowers us with security and power. When this security is questioned, fear makes us resort to doing unbelievable things. They made us attack each other on the validity of God, put people in prison just because their ideology in the belief of god was questioned, and the ever-going fight between religion and science...
Galileo Galilei was convicted in 1633 for publishing his evidence that the Earth revolves around the Sun. His research was criticized by the Catholic Church for going against the established scripture that places Earth and not the Sun at the center of the universe. Galileo was found "vehemently suspect of heresy" for his heliocentric views and was required to "abjure, curse, and detest" his opinions. He was sentenced to house arrest, where he remained for the rest of his life and his offending texts were banned.
Turing was famously chemically castrated after admitting to homosexual acts in the 1950s.
Einstein was a non-practicing Jew. His work on the General Theory of Relativity and his pacifist politics roused violent animosity from right-wing members of German society. When Hitler came to power in 1933, Einstein was in California and was almost immediately deprived of his posts in Berlin and his membership in the Academy of Sciences. His property was grabbed and his books were burned in public. Einstein never returned to Germany.
Anti-vaccination narratives against smallpox in India: There is a temple of the goddess Kali the Terrible in the rural town of Cranganore in the Cochin State, South India, where, in the Malayalam month of Mina (March-April) devotees from all parts of the country flock with offerings of money and sacrificial cocks for the terrible Mother, and turmeric powder for Vasūri Kandāra, otherwise known as Ghanţākarna, in fulfillment of vows made in fear of cholera and smallpox. The goddess herself is supposed only to direct and control the work of a demoness Vasūrimāla, who is the agent through whom she inflicts the scourges on her people. Astrologers believe that, when a person is under the evil influence of the planet Mars, he becomes susceptible to infectious diseases of the skin; Mars and the goddess Kāli are closely associated, thus providing people with an astrological raison d'être for the worship of the latter for immunity from smallpox.
And many more...
In the modern era, people with this ideology are promoted to politics, people with money and power. This is not good at all.
Modern times and liberalism
Do you know how many people are despairing, lonely - and want to escape reality every day? All they want is that rapture. And the problem is some people play power. They create false hope and modern technology puts them right in the hands of people who are searching for them...
osho ... nityananda ... ram rahim singh and many more... I cannot write about these animals please google yourself!
How do I escape?
Workout, Music, and a hobby.
Working out makes you feel better about yourself. Music is music. A hobby makes you care deeply about what you're doing. Gets your attention from the negative things. Thats it.
Its really easy to forget we are just monkeys with clothes - Jamie wheal
References and further reading
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