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I don’t understand how anyone can call “various religious constructs” absurd. It’s a very “Reddit moment” thing to do. Religion has existed since the dawn of ma

I don’t understand how anyone can call “various religious constructs” absurd. It’s a very “Reddit moment” thing to do. Religion has existed since the dawn of man. The internal feeling that there is something more out there - something that created us, is something almost all of us have. As for the feeling that life is too short; I’ll offer a comparison to the early biblical figures: Adam and his sons lived almost a thousand years. Noah the same. Isaac lived almost 200 years. Compared to biblical figures, we live very short lifespans.

brutusborn 4y ago
That’s why he said “religious constructs” and not “religions”. I believe religious systems are useful, but I agree with the parent that concepts like the afterlife are absurd concepts used to alleviate existential dread. Maybe this utility means it isn’t absurd, but I would say that many religions don’t have the concept of an afterlife, so other less-absurd concepts may provide the same functionality without the same cognitive distortions.
- thinkingemote 4y ago
  Some might view something as a mystery that another views as an absurdity. I think a mystery is more interesting and less ... (Edits: hmm I don't know what the word is.)
  - brutusborn 4y ago
    In this case I think that the mystery of life requires something to avoid existential angst, and some people use the afterlife as that something. Other religions (like Buddhism) might view the entire question of “what is this?” as absurd, and so use methods like meditation to help alleviate the angst, thus avoiding absurd beliefs. TLDR: the mystery isn’t the absurdity but our reaction to it might be absurd.
    - feanaro 4y ago
      Buddhism has plenty of "absurd" beliefs of this sort. If anything, the delineation of "absurd" is anything but simple.
      - brutusborn 4y ago
        Yeah some sects can get whacky. I think the core Buddhist tenets are pretty much absurdity free but I agree that it’s not simple to determine. Are there any beliefs in particular you were thinking of?
        feanaro 4y ago
        The six realms of existence, hungry ghosts (pretas), siddhi, sacca-kiriya, the cosmic buddhas, the Pure Lands...
- dfadgasfdads 4y ago
  As you're portraying believing in the hereafter as a cope for existential dread, you could say the opposite. The disbeliever tries to ridicule the concept of an afterlife as to allievate the dread of being held accountable for their deeds on the day of judgement which would likely lead them to an eternal and painful hell. In Islam, it's very clearly mentioned that each individual will be judged according to their deeds. There are two destinations possible paradise or hellfire. Other religions that came before have often tried to tone down this reality by either removing accountability like Chrisitanity with the concept of Jesus (peace be upon him) having died for our sins or by simply removing the concept of an afterlife all together. The Quran clearly tells us that many prophets were sent in the past with revelation but as time passed on they were falsified by people. In light of this, one could easily see how polytheistic religions came about. In the end Islam is the last religion and it was intended to be preserved which makes it unlike any other religion in the world today. It has one book there a no multiple different versions. It is perfectly constructed and there are 0 inconsistencies and errors. No arab linguist can deny that. Allah sent the previous prophets specifically for their nations however the last prophet Muhammad peace be upon him was sent for all mankind until the end of times. Give the quran a read. https://quran.com https://quran.com Do some research on the topic. YouTube is a great ressource for this. Make your own opinion. In light of this, I still want to invite you to become muslim. Islam answers all the questions Chrisitanity and other religions couldn't. Most importantly it will save you in the hereafter. I'd suggest putting your hand on a hot stove (not too hot) and ponder. Do you really want something like this for yourself and for eternity?
  - brutusborn 4y ago
    I respect your passion and faith but I think you are very mistaken. I tried to read some of the Quran but couldn’t find anything that spoke to me. Can you recommend any good sections or translations? Maybe the parts that make you so certain of the afterlife? I will criticise one of your points since it seems fairly objective. Aren’t there many versions of Quran and countless hadiths? https://answering-islam.org/Green/seven.htm https://answering-islam.org/Green/seven.htm
    - erenyeager 4y ago
- feanaro 4y ago
  If you take a step back, it is a great and profoundly absurd mystery that there is existence at all. So given this background absurdity, how do you even delineate what's absurd and what's not, when it comes to concepts relating to the nature of existence itself? It's certainly fashionable to attempt putting everything in terms such as "cognitive distortions", but it's not clear it's sound reasoning when it comes to things like this. And I say this as a rather staunch irreligious person.
  - brutusborn 4y ago
    What kind of concepts would be hard to delineate? I like the Zen approach to mystery, which is to accept it and resist the temptation to rationalize the mystery away. Thus no absurd concepts are needed, since concepts are not needed. (I’m relatively new to Zen so I may be off the mark a bit here, but I think I got the essence correct)
onei 4y ago
Biblical lifespans seem nice, but only if you wholly believe the stories. Given how often the same stories come up across different civilisations, I'm sceptical they're accurate. For instance, Eve picking an apple is not too dissimilar to Pandora's box. The flood in Noah's lifetime is also part of Babylonian myth where the protagonist was Gilgamesh. I recall even the concept of hell was taken from Greek mythology - notice how we call this mythology today instead of religion. Answering questions like "where did we come from" and "where are we going" have always existed. Passing knowledge down through generations has always existed. Treating these stories as gospel makes little sense to me.
- stormking 4y ago
  > Biblical lifespans seem nice, but only if you wholly believe the stories. Given how often the same stories come up across different civilisations, I'm sceptical they're accurate. WTF? "Skeptical", probably not "accurate"? You have to be absolutely nuts to think that they're even remotely true.
  - ido 4y ago
    I think you're taking a humorous tone[0] too literally. The poster you answer to was saying that they think the biblical stories are myths/legends. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Understatement https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Understatement
    - stormking 4y ago
      I'm usually very good at detecting irony, tongue-in-cheek and similar "humorous tones". I see nothing indicating it here.
      - deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
      - onei 4y ago
        I'd call it understatement. Rather than write it all off as fabrication, I'm open to believing there's elements of truth mixed in. I don't believe Noah lived for 1000 years and had 2 of every animal on a boat. But I could believe there was a tsunami that killed thousands. I could also believe it was rationalised as a an act of god and eventually became the great flood that appears in the Bible.
selfawareMammal 4y ago
It's still a social construct. As knowledge and science advance, the need for religion decreases and it's really on us to accept there are some questions we cannot answer.
- AussieWog93 4y ago
  >As knowledge and science advance, the need for religion decreases Citation needed, massively! If anything, the powerful technology and knowledge we now wield (weapons of mass destruction, mass surveillance, modern logistics and coordination, global communications) only makes it more important that we don't forget the hard-earned scoial and moral lessons of our pre-scientific ancestors - lessons that were often encoded in evolving cultural systems like religion.
  - tobylane 4y ago
    Humanism fills that need. It doesn’t matter that it’s new, Islam and Christianity were new once, and corrupted since.
    - AussieWog93 4y ago
      There's an argument to me made that the age/popularity of a belief system does correlate with validity, given that their individual memes are subject to Darwinism. Of course it's not everything, but I don't think humanism on its own would work without an older religion as its "bootstrap".
      - rablackburn 4y ago
        I wouldn’t say it necessarily correlates with validity - Darwinism is about one thing: fitness of survival. I feel like if you squint a little you can see all the positive-memetic adaptations that get bolted on to organised religion. A commandment to “worship no other god but me” is a classic example of something that seems less like profound revelation and more like an effective memetic adaptation.
      - 4y ago
dmitriid 4y ago
Ah yes. Adam. Noah. Isaac. And yet, literally no historical record shows that anyone ever lived that long. And if you believe that the Bible is the only historical record we have of those times, boy do I have a bridge to sell you.
civopsec 4y ago
> something that created us, is something almost all of us have. Buddhism claims that nothing created us. Samsara is beginningless and wasn’t architected by anything. And that’s just 500 billion people or so.
- civopsec 4y ago
  > 500 billion people * million

brutusborn 4y ago

That’s why he said “religious constructs” and not “religions”. I believe religious systems are useful, but I agree with the parent that concepts like the afterlife are absurd concepts used to alleviate existential dread. Maybe this utility means it isn’t absurd, but I would say that many religions don’t have the concept of an afterlife, so other less-absurd concepts may provide the same functionality without the same cognitive distortions.

thinkingemote 4y ago
Some might view something as a mystery that another views as an absurdity. I think a mystery is more interesting and less ... (Edits: hmm I don't know what the word is.)
- brutusborn 4y ago
  In this case I think that the mystery of life requires something to avoid existential angst, and some people use the afterlife as that something. Other religions (like Buddhism) might view the entire question of “what is this?” as absurd, and so use methods like meditation to help alleviate the angst, thus avoiding absurd beliefs. TLDR: the mystery isn’t the absurdity but our reaction to it might be absurd.
  - feanaro 4y ago
    Buddhism has plenty of "absurd" beliefs of this sort. If anything, the delineation of "absurd" is anything but simple.
    - brutusborn 4y ago
      Yeah some sects can get whacky. I think the core Buddhist tenets are pretty much absurdity free but I agree that it’s not simple to determine. Are there any beliefs in particular you were thinking of?
      - feanaro 4y ago
        The six realms of existence, hungry ghosts (pretas), siddhi, sacca-kiriya, the cosmic buddhas, the Pure Lands...
dfadgasfdads 4y ago
As you're portraying believing in the hereafter as a cope for existential dread, you could say the opposite. The disbeliever tries to ridicule the concept of an afterlife as to allievate the dread of being held accountable for their deeds on the day of judgement which would likely lead them to an eternal and painful hell. In Islam, it's very clearly mentioned that each individual will be judged according to their deeds. There are two destinations possible paradise or hellfire. Other religions that came before have often tried to tone down this reality by either removing accountability like Chrisitanity with the concept of Jesus (peace be upon him) having died for our sins or by simply removing the concept of an afterlife all together. The Quran clearly tells us that many prophets were sent in the past with revelation but as time passed on they were falsified by people. In light of this, one could easily see how polytheistic religions came about. In the end Islam is the last religion and it was intended to be preserved which makes it unlike any other religion in the world today. It has one book there a no multiple different versions. It is perfectly constructed and there are 0 inconsistencies and errors. No arab linguist can deny that. Allah sent the previous prophets specifically for their nations however the last prophet Muhammad peace be upon him was sent for all mankind until the end of times. Give the quran a read. https://quran.com https://quran.com Do some research on the topic. YouTube is a great ressource for this. Make your own opinion. In light of this, I still want to invite you to become muslim. Islam answers all the questions Chrisitanity and other religions couldn't. Most importantly it will save you in the hereafter. I'd suggest putting your hand on a hot stove (not too hot) and ponder. Do you really want something like this for yourself and for eternity?
- brutusborn 4y ago
  I respect your passion and faith but I think you are very mistaken. I tried to read some of the Quran but couldn’t find anything that spoke to me. Can you recommend any good sections or translations? Maybe the parts that make you so certain of the afterlife? I will criticise one of your points since it seems fairly objective. Aren’t there many versions of Quran and countless hadiths? https://answering-islam.org/Green/seven.htm https://answering-islam.org/Green/seven.htm
  - erenyeager 4y ago
feanaro 4y ago
If you take a step back, it is a great and profoundly absurd mystery that there is existence at all. So given this background absurdity, how do you even delineate what's absurd and what's not, when it comes to concepts relating to the nature of existence itself? It's certainly fashionable to attempt putting everything in terms such as "cognitive distortions", but it's not clear it's sound reasoning when it comes to things like this. And I say this as a rather staunch irreligious person.
- brutusborn 4y ago
  What kind of concepts would be hard to delineate? I like the Zen approach to mystery, which is to accept it and resist the temptation to rationalize the mystery away. Thus no absurd concepts are needed, since concepts are not needed. (I’m relatively new to Zen so I may be off the mark a bit here, but I think I got the essence correct)

onei 4y ago

Biblical lifespans seem nice, but only if you wholly believe the stories. Given how often the same stories come up across different civilisations, I'm sceptical they're accurate. For instance, Eve picking an apple is not too dissimilar to Pandora's box. The flood in Noah's lifetime is also part of Babylonian myth where the protagonist was Gilgamesh. I recall even the concept of hell was taken from Greek mythology - notice how we call this mythology today instead of religion. Answering questions like "where did we come from" and "where are we going" have always existed. Passing knowledge down through generations has always existed. Treating these stories as gospel makes little sense to me.

stormking 4y ago
> Biblical lifespans seem nice, but only if you wholly believe the stories. Given how often the same stories come up across different civilisations, I'm sceptical they're accurate. WTF? "Skeptical", probably not "accurate"? You have to be absolutely nuts to think that they're even remotely true.
- ido 4y ago
  I think you're taking a humorous tone[0] too literally. The poster you answer to was saying that they think the biblical stories are myths/legends. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Understatement https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Understatement
  - stormking 4y ago
    I'm usually very good at detecting irony, tongue-in-cheek and similar "humorous tones". I see nothing indicating it here.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - onei 4y ago
      I'd call it understatement. Rather than write it all off as fabrication, I'm open to believing there's elements of truth mixed in. I don't believe Noah lived for 1000 years and had 2 of every animal on a boat. But I could believe there was a tsunami that killed thousands. I could also believe it was rationalised as a an act of god and eventually became the great flood that appears in the Bible.

selfawareMammal 4y ago

It's still a social construct. As knowledge and science advance, the need for religion decreases and it's really on us to accept there are some questions we cannot answer.

AussieWog93 4y ago
>As knowledge and science advance, the need for religion decreases Citation needed, massively! If anything, the powerful technology and knowledge we now wield (weapons of mass destruction, mass surveillance, modern logistics and coordination, global communications) only makes it more important that we don't forget the hard-earned scoial and moral lessons of our pre-scientific ancestors - lessons that were often encoded in evolving cultural systems like religion.
- tobylane 4y ago
  Humanism fills that need. It doesn’t matter that it’s new, Islam and Christianity were new once, and corrupted since.
  - AussieWog93 4y ago
    There's an argument to me made that the age/popularity of a belief system does correlate with validity, given that their individual memes are subject to Darwinism. Of course it's not everything, but I don't think humanism on its own would work without an older religion as its "bootstrap".
    - rablackburn 4y ago
      I wouldn’t say it necessarily correlates with validity - Darwinism is about one thing: fitness of survival. I feel like if you squint a little you can see all the positive-memetic adaptations that get bolted on to organised religion. A commandment to “worship no other god but me” is a classic example of something that seems less like profound revelation and more like an effective memetic adaptation.
    - 4y ago

dmitriid 4y ago

Ah yes. Adam. Noah. Isaac. And yet, literally no historical record shows that anyone ever lived that long. And if you believe that the Bible is the only historical record we have of those times, boy do I have a bridge to sell you.

civopsec 4y ago

> something that created us, is something almost all of us have. Buddhism claims that nothing created us. Samsara is beginningless and wasn’t architected by anything. And that’s just 500 billion people or so.

civopsec 4y ago
> 500 billion people * million