RE: Is religion a crutch?
February 6, 2017 at 1:48 pm
(This post was last modified: February 6, 2017 at 1:50 pm by The Grand Nudger.)
(February 6, 2017 at 1:11 pm)Whateverist Wrote: If it is, it is one that people are taught to use as naturally as they are their legs for walking. But it could be that god belief actually accomplished some sort of breakthrough in consciousness for human beings, actually increasing our capacity for critical thought as Julian Jaynes suggests in The Origin of consciousness in the breakdown of the bicameral mind. Even if we don't accept the precise arc of events he describes there it could be a rough approximation for something positive which god belief played a role in. Of course, it would be still more positive if in the end we see through the whole god thing.
Trashing the entirety of bicamerial mind such would still be the case, as the morality plays of greek divine comedy (and drama) were nothing -if not- an exploration of human consciousness. They still stand, thousands of years later, as a subset of the most elaborate descriptions in the western tradition of what it is and means to be human, to be, and to be conscious of being human.
(I point out greek traditions simply because of wide familiarity, but such is the case with any pantheon..they're all explorations of being, and of humanity by proxy - even the christer ones)
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