3 ms·

Thomas Aquinas (just to name one) was a scholar of the highest order and was absolutely not just pretending to be a Christian. It’s a strange worldview to imagi

Thomas Aquinas (just to name one) was a scholar of the highest order and was absolutely not just pretending to be a Christian. It’s a strange worldview to imagine that Christianity provided no academic contributions to the world. To some extent, it invented academics. This is more or less z I am not a Christian and was for a long time a fairly militant atheist - but this point is historical fact.

Teever 4y ago
I don't think that this fact some how dismisses the likelihood that many people throughout history merely pretended to be Christian simply to avoid being burned at the stake. That's what organized religions did/do to non-believers. They burned them at the stake. Or stoned them to death, Or drowned them, or exiled them. If your goal is to make contributions to society, in that context you're damn well going to say whatever you need to say about your personal beliefs to ensure that kind of shit doesn't happen to you. Hell, even if you don't care about making contributions to society you're still gonna say what ever needs to be said to ensure you don't end up burned at the stake. The end result of all these theistic threats is that a lot of people who made great contributions to society did so under the auspices of religious organizations not because they genuinely believed in the tenants of those organizations, but because they had to. And those organizations made those threats, and continue to make those threats because they know that this is the outcome -- that people will do things in their name to avoid the shit that the religion can do to them. It's a racket, much akin to the mob coming up to a shop keep and telling them that it would be a shame if something were to happen to their business if it didn't have some kind of 'protection' that the mob can offer them. It's no coincidence that the Catholic church and the mob originate from the same part of the world.
- pempem 4y ago
  while these are interesting points, both posts are strongly euro-centric. Religion was one of the stronger organizing forces of the old world and so good and bad both have roots in it. It was more stable than the leadership of kings/queens/chieftans which was blood-run and disrupted by the murder of either the existing leadership or the entire bloodline. Chaotic at best. Learning/education has been shown to be part of religious teachings long before JC was even a discussed historical figure. For example, Buddha taught under Bodhi trees, Hindu philosophers under Banyans and so on. All kinds of 'modern' conceptions came from religious individuals, because most everyone was religious. It was deeply intertwined with early culture and simply belonging to a given geo-community Our rejection - and I do mean our - of religion and easier coexistence culturally as atheists and agnostics is relatively recent.
- watwut 4y ago
  Many people, yes depending on how you define many. But majority or them? No. But, no, in general people in the past believed their own religions. We are atheists culture and large atheist traditions at this point, we have hard time imagine it.
- slavik81 4y ago
  Isaac Newton clearly defies this theory. He dedicated a significant portion of his time to exploring religious ideas that practically made him a heretic. He would have had a lot less conflict with the church if we was just an atheist going through the motions, rather than a true believer with his own unique interpretation of the scriptures.
dmingod666 4y ago
Religion is a human need - maybe not an obvious animalistic one but because it crops up with every civilization, I think it isn't something on the outside, it's something within us. Wheather you think it's a means of social control, a way to create distinct in-vs out group, a means to cope with death or whatever you attributes you give to it.. Just because you can rationalise it doesn't mean it goes away.. just like you can't suppress base biological urges by "thinking them away", atleast not in the long term. Religion just comes back up in other places in forms that don't even look like the original thing but shows all the signs of it.
- WalterBright 4y ago
  The current belief in "The Simulation" has all the trappings of a newly forming religion.
- andrepd 4y ago
  Religion is far from a universal biological need. The proof of that is in the huge rise of secularity after (i) we began to rationally understand the universe, including deep questions such as how our bodies minds work, the origin the universe, etc, and (ii) religious freedom meant people could freely reject the dominant religion and not be killed for it, which is usually a pretty strong motivator to "love" the dominant religion.
andrepd 4y ago
Thomas Aquinas was a theologian, working purely within the circular Christian scholastic system to talk, essentially, about nothing. Where he did talk about concrete things (ethics, politics, even economics) he simply argued based on his religious dogmas. Meh, not very interesting. > To some extent, it invented academics. I'm not sure what you mean by this. Keep in mind Christians were responsible for the destroying huge amounts of books, temples, and cultural artifacts after they took power in the Roman Empire. The amount of knowledge lost to the murderous hands of Christian monks is incalculable. It was only really after the 10th century that Christian monks began to preserve and translate the classics to Latin (the common picture we have of the monk painstakingly hand-copying the classics to preserve them).

Teever 4y ago

I don't think that this fact some how dismisses the likelihood that many people throughout history merely pretended to be Christian simply to avoid being burned at the stake. That's what organized religions did/do to non-believers. They burned them at the stake. Or stoned them to death, Or drowned them, or exiled them. If your goal is to make contributions to society, in that context you're damn well going to say whatever you need to say about your personal beliefs to ensure that kind of shit doesn't happen to you. Hell, even if you don't care about making contributions to society you're still gonna say what ever needs to be said to ensure you don't end up burned at the stake. The end result of all these theistic threats is that a lot of people who made great contributions to society did so under the auspices of religious organizations not because they genuinely believed in the tenants of those organizations, but because they had to. And those organizations made those threats, and continue to make those threats because they know that this is the outcome -- that people will do things in their name to avoid the shit that the religion can do to them. It's a racket, much akin to the mob coming up to a shop keep and telling them that it would be a shame if something were to happen to their business if it didn't have some kind of 'protection' that the mob can offer them. It's no coincidence that the Catholic church and the mob originate from the same part of the world.

pempem 4y ago
while these are interesting points, both posts are strongly euro-centric. Religion was one of the stronger organizing forces of the old world and so good and bad both have roots in it. It was more stable than the leadership of kings/queens/chieftans which was blood-run and disrupted by the murder of either the existing leadership or the entire bloodline. Chaotic at best. Learning/education has been shown to be part of religious teachings long before JC was even a discussed historical figure. For example, Buddha taught under Bodhi trees, Hindu philosophers under Banyans and so on. All kinds of 'modern' conceptions came from religious individuals, because most everyone was religious. It was deeply intertwined with early culture and simply belonging to a given geo-community Our rejection - and I do mean our - of religion and easier coexistence culturally as atheists and agnostics is relatively recent.
watwut 4y ago
Many people, yes depending on how you define many. But majority or them? No. But, no, in general people in the past believed their own religions. We are atheists culture and large atheist traditions at this point, we have hard time imagine it.
slavik81 4y ago
Isaac Newton clearly defies this theory. He dedicated a significant portion of his time to exploring religious ideas that practically made him a heretic. He would have had a lot less conflict with the church if we was just an atheist going through the motions, rather than a true believer with his own unique interpretation of the scriptures.

dmingod666 4y ago

Religion is a human need - maybe not an obvious animalistic one but because it crops up with every civilization, I think it isn't something on the outside, it's something within us. Wheather you think it's a means of social control, a way to create distinct in-vs out group, a means to cope with death or whatever you attributes you give to it.. Just because you can rationalise it doesn't mean it goes away.. just like you can't suppress base biological urges by "thinking them away", atleast not in the long term. Religion just comes back up in other places in forms that don't even look like the original thing but shows all the signs of it.

WalterBright 4y ago
The current belief in "The Simulation" has all the trappings of a newly forming religion.
andrepd 4y ago
Religion is far from a universal biological need. The proof of that is in the huge rise of secularity after (i) we began to rationally understand the universe, including deep questions such as how our bodies minds work, the origin the universe, etc, and (ii) religious freedom meant people could freely reject the dominant religion and not be killed for it, which is usually a pretty strong motivator to "love" the dominant religion.

andrepd 4y ago

Thomas Aquinas was a theologian, working purely within the circular Christian scholastic system to talk, essentially, about nothing. Where he did talk about concrete things (ethics, politics, even economics) he simply argued based on his religious dogmas. Meh, not very interesting. > To some extent, it invented academics. I'm not sure what you mean by this. Keep in mind Christians were responsible for the destroying huge amounts of books, temples, and cultural artifacts after they took power in the Roman Empire. The amount of knowledge lost to the murderous hands of Christian monks is incalculable. It was only really after the 10th century that Christian monks began to preserve and translate the classics to Latin (the common picture we have of the monk painstakingly hand-copying the classics to preserve them).