Posted: Jul 16, 2016 7:39 pm
Keep It Real wrote:The culture is the main thing with religion imo - the orthopraxy - the behavioural instruction and tradition and ritual. The "existential beliefs" - ie, the invisible bit which doesn't actually do anything, is the secondary or even unnecessary part of religion. To abandon religion simply because one does not believe in a supernatural intelligence or miracles would be akin to throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Thoughts?
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All orthopraxy is designed around the "existential beliefs" of the whatever.
The simile you want isn't the "baby and the bathwater" motif. Maybe something more along the lines, that it isn't important whether there's a baby or not, as long as you make sure the diaper isn't wet, and that you still wake up five times a night for several years.
The way religion is commonly discussed, especially in this context, is always so narrow in scope and appreciation of the nature of human behavior over the history of this planet, it's discouraging. People get caught up in only one or two aspects of a few belief systems, and then run off on rants about how their own choice of limits to the discussion, naturally result in apparent absurdities being "discovered."
If you think that all religions are JUST magic-based notions that collections of people happened to have, and then pushed on their children, you will ignore over 99% of the truth of the world we infest. If you think they are ONLY about control of the masses, you are being intentionally obtuse. If you declare that the magical stories connected to them are the only reason why followers remain involved, you are short-sighted, and destined to remain deeply and intensely ignorant.