How can we understand man if we do not understand religion?

Question

Thanks to all your answers. Have a great day!

Answer 1

I think that religion is way of explaining things that we don't understand. Like when there was thunder and early man couldn't explain it so he explained it by saying that the thunder God was speaking to them. When it moved to the matter of Christianity you have an Actual person saying that there is more to life than just what we experience on this earth that makes it a little more real. Understanding Man precludes both these things,you don't need to understand man to understand religion you need to understand man to understand the NEED for religion. There's a big difference! IF you want to understand the need for religion it's comes from a need to understand life and why we're here, and what happens when we die. Most people don't want to think that this is all there is to our existence The idea that when we die there is nothing else is scary to most people because in the scheme of things an 80 year or so life time is like the blinking of an eye when you think of how long life has been on this earth. There has to be more to life than this, if there isn't than why were we but on this earth and what did our lives mean? That's an intense question and it needs an answer Hench releigion. IT answers the unanswerable questions for those of us who need them. It explains things that can't be explained either by science or medicine. I've been sick enough twice in my life that I was supposed to die well since I'm writing this it must mean that I'm still alive but if you ask the doctors to this day why I survived they still can't tell you. Most people would equate this with a miracle that is understood under the guise of religion.

Answer 2

I would invert the question: how can we understand religion if we do not understand man? Remember Religion was invented by men! We must not confuse God and religion.

Religion, is supposed to be about and by God. But that's not necessarily true once you have an open mind and listen to everything man does and say daily!

Answer 3

Short answer.

The nature of man explains the nature of religion.

If you WANT a Darwinistic explanation, read on.

If the mental gene or 'meme' of religion evolves in virtually all societies, it must serve a purpose, right?

Now we know religion adapts to serve purposes like establishing law/morality, social identity, political authority and generic repositories for life's wisdom. But none of these things actually require religion.

I submit that any set of beliefs attempting to answer the question "What is the meaning of life?" is by definition, a religion.

The mind has evolved to enable animals to predict what actions create the best chance of survival. But humans see so far ahead, we realize our death is inevitable.

The fear of death is profoundly important to survival. So religion cannot have evolved to stop the fear of death.

Ah…but our awareness of the inevitability of our death implies our struggle for life is MEANINGLESS & evolution punishes any diminishment in the struggle for life.

Human survival demands a meme that maintains the capacity to see the future, while suppressing the resultant sense of meaninglessness. And that, my friends, is the purpose of religion.

How many times on Y!A does some confused kid say "What does it all mean?" Why do so many replies say "Get Religion"? We all try and tell the kid to find something to give their life meaning.

So if Darwinism explains the need for and benefits of religion, why do Darwinists hate religion?

Well, they don't. It's Socialists that hate religion.

Darwinists believe that evolution can take place without intelligent design (aka God). It rests on the Existential principal that life has a nature, (i.e. to collect energy, reproduce, and defend itself) but NOT a meaning. Now you might be able to get purpose from nature, but the bottom line is Darwinism is the opposite of religion because it accents, rather than suppresses man's meaninglessness. (aka existential crisis)

Ah but the revelation of the prophet Karl Marx, is that man's purpose/meaning is to serve society. Which makes modern Socialism a religion.

Marxism converts the "God not required" of Darwinism into "God doesn't exist" and uses it to combat God based religion, which are, as per Marx, seen as the enemy of man realizing his true purpose.

Socialist think they are Darwinists, but reject the Darwinistic implication that 'society exists to serve the individual' because it conflicts with the socialist credo that 'the individual exists to serve the society'.

This may not be the understanding of man you were looking for.

But you do have my best wishes in your search for meaning.

Answer 4

Perfect, yes, exactly: 'Works of Karl Marx 1843

Introduction to A Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right
Karl Marx in Deutsch-Französische Jahrbücher, February, 1844
For Germany, the criticism of religion has been essentially completed, and the criticism of religion is the prerequisite of all criticism.

The profane existence of error is compromised as soon as its heavenly oratio pro aris et focis [“speech for the altars and hearths”] has been refuted. Man, who has found only the reflection of himself in the fantastic reality of heaven, where he sought a superman, will no longer feel disposed to find the mere appearance of himself, the non-man [Unmensch], where he seeks and must seek his true reality.

The foundation of irreligious criticism is: Man makes religion, religion does not make man. Religion is, indeed, the self-consciousness and self-esteem of man who has either not yet won through to himself, or has already lost himself again. But man is no abstract being squatting outside the world. Man is the world of man – state, society. This state and this society produce religion, which is an inverted consciousness of the world, because they are an inverted world. Religion is the general theory of this world, its encyclopaedic compendium, its logic in popular form, its spiritual point d’honneur, its enthusiasm, its moral sanction, its solemn complement, and its universal basis of consolation and justification. It is the fantastic realization of the human essence since the human essence has not acquired any true reality. The struggle against religion is, therefore, indirectly the struggle against that world whose spiritual aroma is religion.

Religious suffering is, at one and the same time, the expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people. '

http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1843/critique-hpr/intro.htm




'Christianity knew only one point in which all men were equal: that all were equally born in original sin — which corresponded perfectly to its character as the religion of the slaves and the oppressed. Apart from this it recognised, at most, the equality of the elect, which however was only stressed at the very beginning. The traces of community of goods which are also found in the early stages of the new religion can be ascribed to solidarity among the proscribed rather than to real equalitarian ideas. Within a very short time the establishment of the distinction between priests and laymen put an end even to this incipient Christian equality. — The overrunning of Western Europe by the Germans abolished for centuries all ideas of equality, through the gradual building up of such a complicated social and political hierarchy as had never existed before. But at the same time the invasion drew Western and Central Europe into the course of historical development, created for the first time a compact cultural area, and within this area also for the first time a system of predominantly national states exerting mutual influence on each other and mutually holding each other in check. Thereby it prepared the ground on which alone the question of the equal status of men, of the rights of man, could at a later period be raised.'

http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1877/anti-duhring/ch08.htm#368

http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/subject/religion/index.htm

Answer 5

Hi
Religion, for all we know, is something concocted by man to appease a need in man for somethig to believe in or to believe there is 'something' outside this tangible world.
We can't understand man. We can't understand religion. That's why we're all 'searching' to understand spirituality and religion and to understand human psychology. We hypothesise, experiment, research, observe and still there is so much we have yet to understand about man.
Pollyanna

Answer 6

Man is a part of reality. Religion, a concept, was created by man. Some men subscribe to it, some don't.

How do we understand man if we don't understand any of his other million-plus creations? A spreadsheet, coffee table, etc...?
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Answer 7

In order to undersatnd we must all see from each other;'s point of view..if it has to deal with religion, no matter how preposterous it may seem we have to consider the possibility.We all need to be a little more open minded.
What we need to understand man is union

Answer 8

There's a scientific explanation for the irrational belief systems. It evolved in our primitive barbarian ancestors as a survival mechanism in a hostile environment. Recently, neuroscientists are able to artificially trigger the 'religious experience' or 'presence' by probing a certain area of the limbic system..that primitive part of our brains where our basic instincts and irrational belief systems reside.

The cerebral cortex is a more recent development of our species, say within the last 100,000 years. It is here that our logical thought processes reside and where atheists have found their basis in reality.

Answer 9

We can't understand man if we don't understand religion or man's need for it. It would be cutting out an essential piece of what makes the human animal tick.

Good Luck!!!

Answer 10

Not that we cannot understand man if we do not understand religion, but we'd just miss out a part.