(September 5, 2023 at 5:12 am)Belacqua Wrote: It seems to me that in most times and in most places, religion is more about ritual and performance than about assent to propositions. It's something people DO.
So for example if a Japanese college kid is applying to a difficult grad school to study advanced physics, he'll probably go to the local shrine and write out a little plaque entreating the god for success on his application. Whether he believes in the god or the ritual's effectiveness barely matters. It's just something that's done.
Not in most times, but that's how it is done now. The victory of science has been so complete that our very idea of religion has changed.
If the child of a devout Hindu suffers from a severe case of measles, the father would say a prayer to Dhanvantari and offer flowers and sweets at the local temple -- but only after he has rushed the toddler to the nearest hospital and entrusted him to the care of the doctors there.
But in premodern times medicine fell within the religious domain. Almost every prophet, guru and shaman doubled as a healer. Whether you lived in ancient Egypt or in medieval Europe, if you were ill you were likely to go to the witch doctor rather than to the doctor, and to make a pilgrimage to a renowned temple rather than to a hospital. As was with farming. When an agricultural crisis loomed as a result of drought or a plague of locusts, farmers turned to the priests to intercede with the gods. But if Egypt is now struck by a plague of locusts, Egyptians may well ask Allah for help - why not? - but they will not forget to call upon chemists, entomologists and geneticists to develop stronger pesticides and insect-resisting wheat strains.
teachings of the Bible are so muddled and self-contradictory that it was possible for Christians to happily burn heretics alive for five long centuries. It was even possible for the most venerated patriarchs of the Church, like St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas, to conclude that heretics should be tortured (Augustine) or killed outright (Aquinas). Martin Luther and John Calvin advocated the wholesale murder of heretics, apostates, Jews, and witches. - Sam Harris, "Letter To A Christian Nation"
