4 ms·

People preferred religious philosophy as a framework to model the universe because it has proven to hold families and villages together for thousands of years.

by meric 9y ago

People preferred religious philosophy as a framework to model the universe because it has proven to hold families and villages together for thousands of years. The non-religious philosophy - in those times there was no scientific method and it basically amounted to what Aristotle said. And by the Middle Ages, what he said has become increasingly irrelevant, while Christianity have been refined for the past thousand years. It boils down to an ideology that was adaptive (at least evolutionarily speaking) versus and ideology that was nothing more than dogma. Of course almost a thousand years has passed, and people in this time see the situation has completely reversed, religion now seen as dogma and non-religious philosophy is the ideology that has adapted to humanity's changing needs.

losteric 9y ago
Religion fulfilled two roles in the primitive world: Explaining how the world worked, and how an individual should behave in the world. It took a long time for society to mature and learn. The accumulation of knowledge enabled rationally explaining the world from scientific first principles, and rational self-governance from philosophical first principles. Holy books are an artifact from a more primitive time, when experience was spread so thin it had to be accumulated across generations in singular books. If anything, those ideas survived because they lacked flexibility - their persistence reflects built-in error-correction that minimized mutations over time.
- dredmorbius 9y ago
  If I can amplify on that second function, it also had a few components. One was guiding people in how to live within typical social and community structures -- mostly smaller towns. The other was providing for people to act in a reasonably predictable way, across great distances or times. Realise that a typical large pre-industrial empire might span a few thousand miles, meaning that a journey from one region to another would take days, weeks, sometimes months. Sea and river travel was preferred to land, but ships were restricted to harbour from November to May, in the Northern Hemisphere. Which meant that a provincial regent or magistrate might be on his own for months at a time. As business and commerce expanded, those also required trust. (It's not surprising that the first financial networks developed either among specific subcultures, particularly the Jews, who had dispersed throughout Europe, were restricted from owning land or participating in trades, and had strong ties to other areas, or families, such as the Rothschild banking empire, founded by brothers in London, Paris, Vienna, Frankfurt, and Naples.) Religion effectively provided that structure, firmness, to both social relations and political and business behaviours. With the addition of considerable other overhead.
dredmorbius 9y ago
Is this a personal theory or do you have referernces or citations on this? Asking as I'm curious. And have arrived at somewhat similar conclusions. I'd also note that science suffered under the handicap that it was difficult to conduct with tools available at the time. And that the matter of questioning dogma itself was considered heretical -- see the case of Giordano Bruno, for example, if you want to get all fired up.
- meric 9y ago
  It's my philosophy - if our ancestors were strongly religious, it was because it was necessary for survival. If they were attached to particular religious theory for a long period of time it's because that particular theory held society together. If they preferred religion over Aristotle it was because Aristotle's philosophy was outdated and mostly baloney. I believe our ancestors are intelligent human beings who did their best to live as I do. These days humanity is preferring observation/evidence to religion because the latter has become dogma and the former is helping us survive. People in each time try to do the best in their time. Our evolution involves both our physical bodies and DNA as well as the knowledge we are passed down from our ancestors. I am wary of the modern perspective that everything old is obsolete. These days people are more cautious about avoiding removing their tonsils or appendix unnecessarily than in trying to keep the experience and mystical knowledge our ancestors have given to us, because we assume their knowledge is old and must be obsolete. Personally I am not a Christian and I'm religious and spiritual, at least I try to be. But I do believe Christianity was given to us because we needed it, and we ought to be careful when discarding our religions and practices we don't do it too quickly in a rushed manner. Just because our appendix seems extra and have some obvious disadvantages and no obvious advantage doesn't mean we have to rip it out of every newborn. Can singularity be reached before humanity collapse in disaster? I think it depends a lot on our spirituality. Anyway, personally I'm content to live with and pray with my wife each day, raise a family together, and just enjoy the sights we see, the sounds we hear and the food we eat until the day we pass.
  - dredmorbius 9y ago
    Keep in mind that path dependencies can lead to outcomes -- peacocks have tails and songbirds specific songs not because those specific patterns or sounds are necessary to survival, but because the dyanmics set up promote them. (Evolution is not teleological. Self-selection and trend-propogation occur.) That said, multiple societies, and virtually every major empirical society (Egyptians, Persians, Hittites, Greeks, Romans, Muslims, Indians, Chinese, European, Aztec) have had some form of religion, though the specific form (polytheistic, monotheistic, ancestor-worship, mystic, meditative) has varied considerably. (I'm not sure if the Mongol civilisation had a core religion ... a quick check suggests that Genghis Khan himself was shamist and the culture generally was permissive: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion_in_the_Mongol_Empire https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion_in_the_Mongol_Empir...) But the thought occurs that where literate knowledge and communications were limited, religion provided critical social structure. I'm aware of some research and literature on this, mostly Weber and Durkheim. I'm meaning to explore further. I find your thoughts interesting, though I'd like to find more substance. I'm also fairly certain a collapse of some nature is inevitable. Spirituality probably won't change that, though it may affect the outcome. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_(book) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_(book) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sociology_of_religion https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sociology_of_religion

by meric 9y ago

losteric 9y ago

Religion fulfilled two roles in the primitive world: Explaining how the world worked, and how an individual should behave in the world. It took a long time for society to mature and learn. The accumulation of knowledge enabled rationally explaining the world from scientific first principles, and rational self-governance from philosophical first principles. Holy books are an artifact from a more primitive time, when experience was spread so thin it had to be accumulated across generations in singular books. If anything, those ideas survived because they lacked flexibility - their persistence reflects built-in error-correction that minimized mutations over time.

dredmorbius 9y ago
If I can amplify on that second function, it also had a few components. One was guiding people in how to live within typical social and community structures -- mostly smaller towns. The other was providing for people to act in a reasonably predictable way, across great distances or times. Realise that a typical large pre-industrial empire might span a few thousand miles, meaning that a journey from one region to another would take days, weeks, sometimes months. Sea and river travel was preferred to land, but ships were restricted to harbour from November to May, in the Northern Hemisphere. Which meant that a provincial regent or magistrate might be on his own for months at a time. As business and commerce expanded, those also required trust. (It's not surprising that the first financial networks developed either among specific subcultures, particularly the Jews, who had dispersed throughout Europe, were restricted from owning land or participating in trades, and had strong ties to other areas, or families, such as the Rothschild banking empire, founded by brothers in London, Paris, Vienna, Frankfurt, and Naples.) Religion effectively provided that structure, firmness, to both social relations and political and business behaviours. With the addition of considerable other overhead.

dredmorbius 9y ago

Is this a personal theory or do you have referernces or citations on this? Asking as I'm curious. And have arrived at somewhat similar conclusions. I'd also note that science suffered under the handicap that it was difficult to conduct with tools available at the time. And that the matter of questioning dogma itself was considered heretical -- see the case of Giordano Bruno, for example, if you want to get all fired up.

meric 9y ago
It's my philosophy - if our ancestors were strongly religious, it was because it was necessary for survival. If they were attached to particular religious theory for a long period of time it's because that particular theory held society together. If they preferred religion over Aristotle it was because Aristotle's philosophy was outdated and mostly baloney. I believe our ancestors are intelligent human beings who did their best to live as I do. These days humanity is preferring observation/evidence to religion because the latter has become dogma and the former is helping us survive. People in each time try to do the best in their time. Our evolution involves both our physical bodies and DNA as well as the knowledge we are passed down from our ancestors. I am wary of the modern perspective that everything old is obsolete. These days people are more cautious about avoiding removing their tonsils or appendix unnecessarily than in trying to keep the experience and mystical knowledge our ancestors have given to us, because we assume their knowledge is old and must be obsolete. Personally I am not a Christian and I'm religious and spiritual, at least I try to be. But I do believe Christianity was given to us because we needed it, and we ought to be careful when discarding our religions and practices we don't do it too quickly in a rushed manner. Just because our appendix seems extra and have some obvious disadvantages and no obvious advantage doesn't mean we have to rip it out of every newborn. Can singularity be reached before humanity collapse in disaster? I think it depends a lot on our spirituality. Anyway, personally I'm content to live with and pray with my wife each day, raise a family together, and just enjoy the sights we see, the sounds we hear and the food we eat until the day we pass.
- dredmorbius 9y ago
  Keep in mind that path dependencies can lead to outcomes -- peacocks have tails and songbirds specific songs not because those specific patterns or sounds are necessary to survival, but because the dyanmics set up promote them. (Evolution is not teleological. Self-selection and trend-propogation occur.) That said, multiple societies, and virtually every major empirical society (Egyptians, Persians, Hittites, Greeks, Romans, Muslims, Indians, Chinese, European, Aztec) have had some form of religion, though the specific form (polytheistic, monotheistic, ancestor-worship, mystic, meditative) has varied considerably. (I'm not sure if the Mongol civilisation had a core religion ... a quick check suggests that Genghis Khan himself was shamist and the culture generally was permissive: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion_in_the_Mongol_Empire https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion_in_the_Mongol_Empir...) But the thought occurs that where literate knowledge and communications were limited, religion provided critical social structure. I'm aware of some research and literature on this, mostly Weber and Durkheim. I'm meaning to explore further. I find your thoughts interesting, though I'd like to find more substance. I'm also fairly certain a collapse of some nature is inevitable. Spirituality probably won't change that, though it may affect the outcome. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_(book) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_(book) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sociology_of_religion https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sociology_of_religion