(September 7, 2015 at 12:50 am)Chuck Wrote:(September 7, 2015 at 12:47 am)Whateverist the White Wrote: Logic doesn't and never will tell you what moves you or what will bring you fulfillment. For that you have to look to something within which is not answerable to logic. That is where religion got its toe-hold.
In other words, people need religion to lie to them, to reassure them things whose real basis in reality can't be admitted to is well founded upon something made up that is putatively glamourous.
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I've never thought religion served an empirical function. It isn't just a primitive science substitute. I think the conscious mind is such a huge departure from every other creature and our reliance on collaboration was so great that we needed to harmonize our sense of purpose and meaning. Religious experience and later religion filled that role. I don't think it is 'needed' but I suspect the images and ideas, any and all of them, are so time tested that people can still find meaning and purpose with them. Culturally I think many people still find comfort in symbols and stories which are shared by their whole community. It doesn't work for me but it is important to me to understand what other people get from it that isn't dismissive. I think we can do better than critique its weakest cases.
