Why is myth and ritual so important for humans? what is behind religious desires?

Severe anxiety and trauma bombarded by unavoidable ignorance.

>the redpill
>a delusion

Nice try, libcuck

It gives a bunch of gibbering monkeys on a rock hurtling through space the comforting delusion that there is meaning to their existence

When we evolved higher consciousness we gained an ability to perceive and communicate across dimensions to potential universes, the fifth dimension being that of the mind -- multidimensional communication being of course our 'free will' and speculative thinking based on what we know from these other universes. Rituals have a dual function of regulating variables so that conditions are constantly met for the most optimal universe, based in part on re-presenting the variables at a given moment of favourable conditions that one would want to have occur again; to keep that past alive and present. The second function is that idea of 'presence', in that people believe what they see, because what they see is what they know, and what they know makes up their world and how they perceive it. The regulation of variables is aided by the beliefs of those who witness, as those witnesses also engage in cross-dimensional communication -- in effect materializing a reality based on belief.

the sensation that we are part of something important.

You are deeply deluded if you believe that. Not everyone holds the nonsense belief in souls.

you are the world's worst satirist.

some (james frazer and the cambridge ritualists, etc.) say that ritual derived from a prehistoric attempt to get the gods to keep the flow of the seasons and therefore the bounty of the crops.

basically man acted out the coming and going of the seasons, and this was supposed to be reciprocated by the gods, who then fulfilled the wish with the aid of ritual sacrifice.

e.g. the abduction of persephone could be an aetiological myth explaining the seasons, but a ritualistic analysis would say it was man performing the drama of the myth in order to incite the coming of the seasons.

highly recommend looking up theories of myth and exploring them a little bit. no single theory works, so read a bit about each.

myth can be an expression of cultural taboos and unconscious desires, anxieties, fears, aspirations (carl jung; freud; psychoanalytic theory of myth.

myth can be stories about real people passed down until they become myth. e.g. euhemerus theorized posiedon, zeus, hades, etc. were real mythical kings responsible for fishing, weather etc. on the island of crete.

look into burkert's greek religion; maybe the most revered monograph on the topic.

The trick is to stop thinking of myth and ritual as categories separate from supposedly rational or pragmatic behavior. Myth and ritual are false categories to confer greater authority onto other types of behavior.

>Religion is just fear of death/meaninglessness

Atheism is just fear of hell/having to change your ways/losing the self. See, I can make blanket statements too.

We all have stories we tell ourselves that give ourselves an identity. Back then it was "we sacrifice to the rain god because if we don't have crops we're going to fuckin die", and today we have myths like "I'm a virgin because girls are roastie whores" or "I have all this money cause I worked really hard for it".

Myth is the carrier of ritual, it provides examples and justifications.

And in a society, which, unlike the modern one, doesn't have a strong overwhelming force dominating all social interaction, ritual is important to make human interaction beyond a personal level function. It provides a basic level of trust and cohesion. It's really nothing more than that, the rest is just stories and make-believe.