(May 6, 2015 at 1:40 am)dahrling Wrote: I think this is the primary way religious organizations keep themselves afloat.
They intimidate people into accepting their ways by telling them they'll be punished by a god...if they don't comply....
One can call that "negative control." But I think religions have generally switched their emphasis away from fear as tool for coercion. People just aren't afraid of hell the way they used to be. They need to see a benefit to belonging, a positive reinforcer. Even Islam in its mainstream incarnations relies more on affirmations of faith such daily prayers, alms, and the pilgrimage to Mecca than it does on fear of damnation. (IS is a brutal exception of course; they've brought hell right up to the Earth's surface for immediate terror. Fortunately they're still a minority.)
(May 6, 2015 at 3:18 am)Salacious B. Crumb Wrote: What you're going through is perfectly normal, especially if you're in the process of de-converting. All I can say is, knowledge is power...
The Egyptians thought so. They didn't bother much with conversions and de-conversions, simply plastering each new deity into their increasingly syncretic system. Since afterlife judgment was by a panel of 42 gods who asked the blessed deceased a series of questions about wrongdoing to which the latter invariably answered "no," the heart-eater Ammit didn't get too many meals; Thoth, the ibis-headed god of writing, found every heart lighter than the feather of Maat. Having a committee of gods to make the afterlife a routine bureaucratic affair is much smoother than dealing with a capricious guy who keeps making smoke on Mt. Sinai.
