Why do people say that religion is "just a part of humanity" or that it is a natural development?

Why do people say that religion is "just a part of humanity" or that it is a natural development?

Human beings seek patterns and meanings from everything. They take in information through stimuli and experience, process that information by constructing narratives in their own head, and then act upon that narrative. This is how religion formed, but this is not that only thing that has formed from this flawed process. Everything we do and experience is limited by how our biological functions work.

Pattern seeking is good for early humans/civilizations as these narratives provide better survival rates and cooperation, but as a civilization develops these same pattern seeking behaviors become destructive and limiting where they were once helpful and expanding.

Essentially what I am saying is that once human beings develop past a certain point, these behaviors and religion itself become limiting forces on what society can actually accomplish.

Sage

Here's an example of this:

In early civilizations, populations were a lot smaller and many people did not make it to adulthood. This meant that religion needed to encourage stable relationships between a man a woman, and it also needed to encourage lots of childbirth so that civilization could grow.

In modern day we have plenty of people to accomplish the tasks that we need to. Infant deaths are extremely low compared to even just 100 years ago. So when religion says, "Only a man and woman can be married, and they can use contraceptives" it doesn't make sense anymore. If you were to limit the use of contraceptives for religious reasons, the population would skyrocket. And most of these would be uneducated poor people. (Nothing against them, we just don't really benefit from more of them). In modern context, a lot of things in religion just don't apply anymore. Sure the basic stuff like don't kill, steal, etc. still apply, but that information can be conveyed without religion.

And they can't use contraceptives*

You should spend more time reading and less time listening to ""punk"" music.

Not an argument

cuck

What do you think the Icarus story is about and can you guess why I would bring it up? I assume you're at least somewhat familiar with classical literature.

A thousand arguments could be given agaisn't your posture. But what would be the point? You would just ignore them and proceed to call the user a faggot or a cuck or whatever the fuck is the fad nowadays.

I mean I thought the story was about naivety. Icarus was carried away by his own newfound abilities that he wanted to get the most from them, and ended up getting his wings melted and he fell to the sea. He was supposed to follow Daedalus, who urged that he not get too close to either Sun or sea and that he follow his flight path instead.

I assume one of two things

1) Stories can convey abstract morals (which I already touched on)

2) You equate the abandonment of religion with Icarus's naivety and assume it will cause us to bring upon our own destruction.

That's my guess anyways.

Name 3 arguments. Also I'm not from /pol/ so faggot and cuck are not in my vocabulary.

>This meant that religion needed to encourage stable relationships between a man a woman
More like encourage stable relationships between people outside of their extended family.

I was thinking more along the lines of that human beings are inherently flawed and will consistently overestimate our abilities.

Furthermore, homo sapiens have proven ourselves to be a religious species. People inevitably worship even in the absence of theistic religions because we will simply direct our desire for devotion toward crasser things.

David Foster Wallace put it well when he wrote:

Because here’s something else that’s true. In the day-to-day trenches of adult life, there is actually no such thing as atheism. There is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship. And an outstanding reason for choosing some sort of God or spiritual-type thing to worship — be it J.C. or Allah, be it Yahweh or the Wiccan mother-goddess or the Four Noble Truths or some infrangible set of ethical principles — is that pretty much anything else you worship will eat you alive. If you worship money and things — if they are where you tap real meaning in life — then you will never have enough. Never feel you have enough. It’s the truth. Worship your own body and beauty and sexual allure and you will always feel ugly, and when time and age start showing, you will die a million deaths before they finally plant you. On one level, we all know this stuff already — it’s been codified as myths, proverbs, clichés, bromides, epigrams, parables: the skeleton of every great story. The trick is keeping the truth up-front in daily consciousness. Worship power — you will feel weak and afraid, and you will need ever more power over others to keep the fear at bay. Worship your intellect, being seen as smart — you will end up feeling stupid, a fraud, always on the verge of being found out. And so on.

>natural
spooks

>will
>will
>will
>all these wills
I'd rather see for myself, thanks. But so far I haven't felt especially unsatisfied with life.

I'm trying to help save you the trouble.

Pattern seeking behaviors aren't destructive.
They're how humans fucking work.
It's what led to religion, but also what led to philosophy and science.

Of course religion isn't a natural, "obligatory" development, it's just one possible outcome of human attempt to understand the world around us.

>Of course religion isn't a natural, "obligatory" development,

Yet it develops independently in every human society.

Really makes you think.

My counterpoint is that with the age of information, and with increasing technological and sociological understanding there are even less crass things to worship than God, Buddha, Shiva, ethical principles, etc. It is better to worship God than something like wealth, power, or beauty, that is true. But do you really not think there is something even better for humans to worship that can be uncovered by a better understanding of ourselves?

I would argue its already starting to bud with science and techno worship. I believe that science and logic itself are slowly developing to the point where they themselves can be worshipped. The sheer awe of knowing how things work is far more powerful to me than a simple story or set of ethics relayed to me.

But perhaps I'm just projecting my values onto other people. I guess some people value comfort over truth (not saying that science is truth, but it at least tries to scrutinize and filter itself).

So even acknowledging that humans need something to worship, you must admit that there could be better things to use than the shit we have now.

That's my argument. What worked in the past, is not guaranteed to work in the future. And the numbers show it. Much of the Western world doesn't give a fuck about religion, but are very interested in science, technology, and even ethics. (many youth are very passionate about developing an ethical society, perhaps to too much of an extreme)

>But do you really not think there is something even better for humans to worship that can be uncovered by a better understanding of ourselves?

And our origins are an essential aspect of that and our intelligence begs the question of a higher intelligence. Those who dismiss our intellect as a product of chance are entitled to do so but they are making just as much of a leap of faith as religious people are.

I didn't mean to convey that pattern seeking behaviors are destructive in general. It's just that people should recognize that it is both a gift and a curse. And we should do more to recognize the darker side of our own behavior.

>Pattern seeking behaviors aren't destructive.
>They're how humans fucking work.
They're destructive when they fail.

Religion is a failed attempt at explaining natural phenomena and destructive because it fails while nevertheless demanding to be the foundation of society.

But it's a leap of faith built of certain logical principles. Sure, at the end of the day "you can't know nuffin". But religion does not follow any logical framework for our understanding of the universe. Whether or not our intellect is a product of chance is irrelevant. Over the years we have developed methods into which we can understand things (mathematics and science). Our understandings are probably flawed, but at a basic level there are things we can uncover about the world we live in. Religion requires a leap of faith too, but it has no methods by which one can determine such a probability of it being true. You either believe it or you don't, and that's the sure sign of some bullshit going on.

>But it's a leap of faith built of certain logical principles.

Exactly like a belief in God; see Aquinas, Spinoza etc. . .

>But religion does not follow any logical framework for our understanding of the universe.

This must be a joke. You do realize that oceans of ink have been spilled on the subject of various logical frameworks for religious belief. I've already given you two geniuses who wrote on this exact subject above and I sincerely hope that you continue to study this more thoroughly and listen to (((punk))) music less.

Have you accessed reality from outside your brain to determine that your brain coincidentally has an accurate picture of reality?

Have YOU?

How do you know you're not the subject of either self-delusion or being deceived by some other human?

That's because we automatically label every pre-modern conceptions of the world that were successful over a long period of time "religions", like Confucianism.

Those people wrote in times we need not understand the nature of the world as well as we do today. While they make convincing logical, arguments, they still don't hold up to modern logical or scientific methods. Basically what it amounts is someone who is very intelligent and also very religious going through extreme cognitive dissonance. So they convey religious theology and very convincing manners, and people like you fall for it because you, like Thomas, want to fall for your own bullshit because life without religion is inconceivable to you.

Also nice /pol/ meme faggot. Maybe you should go back there.

Did not understand*

Confucianism isn't a religion, it's a philosophy. Perhaps a political philosophy, even.

The great thing about logic is that its most basic principles are unchanging but you are free to subscribe to whatever flavor-of-the-month theories you'd like.

Also please watch you language, this is a blue board.

You don't always prove things by the most basic principles of logic. It's the finer details that change, and that is what has allowed progression. Religion holds up under basic principles of logic. But once you start thinking about what logic is, by what methods humans are capable of "knowing things", and generally how we process information, it becomes clear that at the very least the current religions we have are not true. I do not deny that there could objectively be a multitude of explanations for what this world is, how it was created, and what higher intelligences possibly exist. I deny that we had the capacity to find these explanations before the development of modern science (which itself is flawed). I also doubt that the further development of science will ever find these other explanations. The only way we could possibly know would be if we could experience the universe outside of our human mind, which is impossible. So all you are doing is assuming things you can't possibly know because it makes you feel better. I don't hate you for that, I just think less of your opinions on the origin of mankind.

You're overstating your case because religious truth are non-falsifiable which is why they fundamentally rely on faith.

However it is important to remember that all worldviews rely on faith to varying degrees.

What is your definition of religion?

Some cultures did not have, for instance, a belief in an afterlife, and some did not believe in gods.

Religions are fundamentally ritualistic behavior associated with "unseen" forces and this is found throughout all human cultures.

>fundamentally ritualistic behavior associated with "unseen" forces
but, for example, lots of modern Protestant groups have no rituals at all and instead revolve around conforming one's belief to what a set of books says. And Confucianism had no independent rituals of its own, but only referenced preexisting rituals of old Chinese tradition. So if this definition is meant to encompass what we colloquially call "religion", it seems a bit lacking, although it's a good start

>these behaviors and religion itself become limiting forces on what society can actually accomplish
I would disagree with that. I'd say some form of spirituality is actually essential for the well being of people. We're not robots, people need meaning in their lives. Some find it in scientific awe of the cosmos and philosophy, some find it in the myriad of religions. Either way it's unlikely we're ever going to get to a point where people are satisfied with a rote mechanical existence devoid of any internal reflection, so religion will continue to play an important part in the life of many people.

Why are you equating scientific awe of the cosmos and philosophy with religion?

What the fuck, do you actually think that people who reject religion reject all internal reflection and ALL MEANING?

Religion is how we codify the supernatural, OP. Without religion, how would we know what to make of the things that go bump in the night?

>Why are you equating scientific awe of the cosmos and philosophy with religion?
Don't put words in my mouth. I said it's a form of spirituality, and it is.

>What the fuck, do you actually think that people who reject religion reject all internal reflection and ALL MEANING?
No, they find it in other forms of spirituality, like I said. Religion is a single form of spirituality and you're being dumb because you're obviously conflating religion with spirituality and thinking they're synonymous.