Thots on religion
I have been always fascinated by religion. Not its teachings, but by its motive. Let's assume, a few millenia ago, bunch of folks were sitting around a tree smoking marijuana. What would've inspired them to start off the phenomenon that we now call a religion?
Here's my hypothesis:
The bunch of guys were actually logicians who were trying to build up a theory to describe society. Meaning, they were trying to come up with a set of axioms i.e. stuff that would seem obviously and undeniably true then. For e.g. parents would love their children. They would then have come up with a set of rules to derive more statements about society. For e.g. x is a friend of y and y is a friend of z, x will come to know of z's existence and vice versa. Substituting particular instances of x,y,z would give a statement: "Ganesh knows laxman and laxman knows ram => ganesh would know of ram's existence".
The motive behind this, as with all logic, would have been to come up with a concise way to describe their society, so that further investigations or maybe even predictions may be made.
Now as time went on, they probably realised that their theories are fast becoming inconsistent and/or incomplete. Meaning some statements are no longer true or some obvious statements are not derived from their theory. So, their pride in their work made them enforce a set of rules on people so that they would behave as per the their theory. Thus came the job of the preachers and the priests who would threaten you with dire consequences if u did (or did not) do certain things which is practically what happens in most religions on a large scale.
In some vague ways then: laws:police::religion:priests.
Here's my hypothesis:
The bunch of guys were actually logicians who were trying to build up a theory to describe society. Meaning, they were trying to come up with a set of axioms i.e. stuff that would seem obviously and undeniably true then. For e.g. parents would love their children. They would then have come up with a set of rules to derive more statements about society. For e.g. x is a friend of y and y is a friend of z, x will come to know of z's existence and vice versa. Substituting particular instances of x,y,z would give a statement: "Ganesh knows laxman and laxman knows ram => ganesh would know of ram's existence".
The motive behind this, as with all logic, would have been to come up with a concise way to describe their society, so that further investigations or maybe even predictions may be made.
Now as time went on, they probably realised that their theories are fast becoming inconsistent and/or incomplete. Meaning some statements are no longer true or some obvious statements are not derived from their theory. So, their pride in their work made them enforce a set of rules on people so that they would behave as per the their theory. Thus came the job of the preachers and the priests who would threaten you with dire consequences if u did (or did not) do certain things which is practically what happens in most religions on a large scale.
In some vague ways then: laws:police::religion:priests.
posted by k2 at
6:56 AM
1 Comments:
Hi, my first time here. I liked the funda that religion is nothing but moral policing. But then I think that religion is something that is human. Its the sense of trying to fall in line with the majority which leads to the formulation of rules and that is what leads to religion and government. Anyways visit me at http://igotnoname.blogspot.com
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Neela, at 1:09 PM
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