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> religion is older than language and has a basis in biology This is the giant gaping hole in the ideas of enlightenment atheists like Sam Harris that think th

> religion is older than language and has a basis in biology This is the giant gaping hole in the ideas of enlightenment atheists like Sam Harris that think that we can just dispense with religion already. Religion will have us, via that label or otherwise; if you think we can elucidate our way out of the need to communicate and share our most base values you are simply mistaken. Religion is simply the name we use for the foundation of the basic human values, rejecting it wholesale because "religion" is a bad word to you after you've seen the sins of our ancestors is shortsighted and opens you up to attacks from a religious perspective. It's true that religion has stagnated, but that means we need to evolve religion into its next phase, pretending that what we're reinventing is not religion does nobody any favors.

kfprt 5y ago
I wouldn't say religion has stagnated, it's more of an invisible force. For example in the quote "like Saturn, the Revolution devours its children" it refers to the Roman God Saturn, a God of a religion that had been dead a thousand years and was never followed in France. Of course much like Indo European language descends from a common source so do the Gods, so the Celts would have an equivalent. This shows that Religion never disappears and only morphs with time. Atheism as practiced by the Sam Harris types is an appeal to rationalism divorced from any semblance of community and thus doomed.
nicoburns 5y ago
> Religion is simply the name we use for the foundation of the basic human values Is it? Doesn't religion imply belief in some kind of deity? Whereas you can have values without such a belief.
- kfprt 5y ago
  It is. If you examine the proto indo european pantheon you will find that the many gods are merely archetypes from early societies everyday life. Religion exists as stories to guide the human experience and is the cultural tradition of tens of millennia. The difference between god and man was intentionally blurred.

kfprt 5y ago

I wouldn't say religion has stagnated, it's more of an invisible force. For example in the quote "like Saturn, the Revolution devours its children" it refers to the Roman God Saturn, a God of a religion that had been dead a thousand years and was never followed in France. Of course much like Indo European language descends from a common source so do the Gods, so the Celts would have an equivalent. This shows that Religion never disappears and only morphs with time. Atheism as practiced by the Sam Harris types is an appeal to rationalism divorced from any semblance of community and thus doomed.

nicoburns 5y ago

> Religion is simply the name we use for the foundation of the basic human values Is it? Doesn't religion imply belief in some kind of deity? Whereas you can have values without such a belief.

kfprt 5y ago
It is. If you examine the proto indo european pantheon you will find that the many gods are merely archetypes from early societies everyday life. Religion exists as stories to guide the human experience and is the cultural tradition of tens of millennia. The difference between god and man was intentionally blurred.