Post by Dr Demented on Dec 31, 2003 10:00:35 GMT -5
(Note: This was originally posted on the nuvo board...but I hate how that board always fucks up my long posts...I call this one "part one" because I know that eventually I'll bitch about religion again...)
Religion as a whole is a means of "control." This is why you have your fervent believers, and your equally headstrong detractors. Some want, or even need to know that they are being controlled...while others resent it, and can only proclaim to the world that they are atheists, while searching for some meaning in science.
I've been reading some old sci-fi lately, and I've been trying to imagine a world without religion. It would seem great to those of us who despise the physical structure of Catholicism and Christianity....between your demi-gods wearing pointy hats and performing rituals that they stole from pagan religions to your holy-roller TV preacher begging for your cash to pay for his hookers while he ministers to them in Las Vegas...the world, and humans, might not be able to survive under an "anarchist" structure. Even Crowley who taught, "Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law..." added the caveat, "save that you harm none."
Could we have laws without religion? Probably not, if you look at history. People have always needed SOMETHING to tell them what was socially acceptable and what isn't. That these "laws" or "morals" had to be deified was possibly necessary to ensure enforcement...you can't tell a being who is purportedly "all knowing and all powerful" that he is wrong. You can't change laws purportedly made by "God". This was the genius of the persons who crafted RELIGION as a whole...even those that are older than the Bible itself. They were all made to give humans a moral center...something that couldn't be refuted.
To be continued...#nosmileys
Religion as a whole is a means of "control." This is why you have your fervent believers, and your equally headstrong detractors. Some want, or even need to know that they are being controlled...while others resent it, and can only proclaim to the world that they are atheists, while searching for some meaning in science.
I've been reading some old sci-fi lately, and I've been trying to imagine a world without religion. It would seem great to those of us who despise the physical structure of Catholicism and Christianity....between your demi-gods wearing pointy hats and performing rituals that they stole from pagan religions to your holy-roller TV preacher begging for your cash to pay for his hookers while he ministers to them in Las Vegas...the world, and humans, might not be able to survive under an "anarchist" structure. Even Crowley who taught, "Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law..." added the caveat, "save that you harm none."
Could we have laws without religion? Probably not, if you look at history. People have always needed SOMETHING to tell them what was socially acceptable and what isn't. That these "laws" or "morals" had to be deified was possibly necessary to ensure enforcement...you can't tell a being who is purportedly "all knowing and all powerful" that he is wrong. You can't change laws purportedly made by "God". This was the genius of the persons who crafted RELIGION as a whole...even those that are older than the Bible itself. They were all made to give humans a moral center...something that couldn't be refuted.
To be continued...#nosmileys