were the founders mad or bad

MooseJam

Every religion is a pack of lies, it's understandable why people follow it nowadays but what about in the beginning when these religions were founded, what were the motives of the founders, they knew it was lies and yet they professed it as truth, were they a bunch of nutters ? did they see it as a way of getting rich and powerfull ? , anbody know the answer to this ?

robindch

Have a read of Jared Diamond's "Guns, Germs and Steel" -- I think it explains it all quite well. Don't have time to write a full reply now.

Bottle_of_Smoke

Something tells me bad. I'm starting to think of Jesus Christ as an evil Derren Brown.
Other possiblities though.
Nation of Islam is a good example. Elijah Muhammed was probably bad, Malcolm X wasn't bad or mad but he was certainly very misled.

lookinforpicnic

robindch wrote:

Have a read of Jared Diamond's "Guns, Germs and Steel" -- I think it explains it all quite well. Don't have time to write a full reply now.

I hear that is a very good book i must read it, but one of the most thorough accounts of the evolution of religion has to be Daniel Dennetts new book "Breaking the spell: religion as a natural phenomena", he devotes about a 150 pages to the evolution of religion in his book and it makes a very interesting read.

To answer your question about were the founders mad or bad, dennett takes the meme eye perspective [digression: alot of people don't like the idea of memes but its just a way to break the infinite regress from ideas which leads back to meaning/understanding or intrinsic intentionality (if you are a philosopher of mind) i.e. a meme could spread not be cause its a good idea or well understood but simple for its own benefit..just because it can] and argues that at the start where there were folk religions that these emerged without conscious foresight or weren't the creator of a single mind but emerged liked languages emerged due to the complex interplay between biological and cultural evolution. Where the main drive for religion is the instinct (which probably emerged from a social interactions and language) to attribute agency to anything that moved.

This hyperactive agency detector is the root but then to quote dennett "Only the best, most mind-friendly variants propagate, by meeting-or seeming to meet-deep psychological and physical needs, and then these are further refined by the incessant pruning of selection processes"
He goes on to explain the benefits of these imaginary entities (Gods) that the hyperactive agency detector spews out, such as they can act as decision aids for example but he gives a number of examples.

But all this occured with very little foresight in the part of any human minds but simply emerged, and its how it emerged can be seen by taking a memes-eye perspective. Anyway the next step then was to domesticate these folk religions, and his analogy here is that early folk religions were like folk songs, no individual creator but emerged through cultural evolution based on some biological music appreciators, so just as folk music eventually became organised music with professional musicans, composers, written representations and rules, concert halls, critics etc, folk religion too went under a similar reconstruction or analysis again not overnight this would have been a long process, but this then lead to a certain degree of organisation in the religion and deliberate direction of the religion and its rituals etc, and this where lies can start or deception as the motives of what he calls the stewards come into play.

Then he goes onto talk about groups and their benefit etc, and finally he goes onto talk about an important effect that the stewards of religion had on there now domesticated religions and this is the emphasis on the value of belief in belief (related to dawkins faith-protection mechanism of religions)
And finally just to quote dennett again about this

"The belief that belief in god is so important that it must not be subjected to the risks of disconfirmation or serious criticism has led the devout to "save" their beliefs by making them incomprehensible even to themselves. The result is that even the professors don't know what they are professing. This makes the goal of either proving or disproving god's existence a quixotic quest-but also for that very reason not very important"

Well that is a very quick summary of dennetts stuff on the evolution of religion but the book is full of lots of ideas and he emphasises that it is merely a sketch and that the empirical work has to start regarding religion, actually that is one of the main points of his book is that religion shouldn't be given special status as something not to investigate but should be investigated like any natural phenomena.

Anyway I can't believe I am after giving a brief summary of Dennett on religion, i just bought resident evil 4 for the wii a couple of hours ago and choose writing about dennett over playing that..i have to get my priorities straight.

Edit: Here is a video a lecture by then dennett which goes over it..its worth a watch here,

MooseJam

very informative thanks , I'll have to pick up those books

robindch

Dennett wrote:

The belief that belief in god is so important that it must not be subjected to the risks of disconfirmation or serious criticism has led the devout to "save" their beliefs by making them incomprehensible even to themselves. The result is that even the professors don't know what they are professing.

Yes, I've made that point more than a few times around here over the last while, no doubt to the indifference of the A+A crew, and the incomprehension or derision of the religious set. That religion's very descriptive meaningless is actually one of its principal strengths.

Dennet has plenty of ideas in his book, but he sure as hell needs a better editor to put them in order. Reading him is like poking through a skip.

Tzetze

woops

Tzetze

I think the original founders were pretty smart actually. The pagans advanced their astrological technology to a stage where they were able to map out the course of the god's sun (son) through the (what was to become biblical) ages of the constellations.

There are many many religions since those initial ideas that use many characteristics of what the pagans saw in the stars. Many of these are explained in the Zeitgeist movie, and also on this site which seems to quote from sources of merit such as this example

My point is, that the original founders were far from nutters. They were the original scientists. Learning through observing, and then using their knowledge (based on many observations) to successfully time events accurately.

I have no idea what happened to cause the demise of paganism and which was the first of the many religions to come between it and christianity, but all successive religions have been based on numbers and events which the pagans believed to be sacred numbers which were 'obviously' an integral part of the gods' observable movements.

So, numbers like 12 and 30 and easter and the date for christmas and the ages of the constellations all survived through and are still here to this day.

Knowing this might not seem so bad to christians, except for the fact that the pagans were fundamentally flawed in their thinking the sun (god's son) moved around the earth, which unknowingly led to the conclusion that they were sitting in the centre of it all - watching from the best seats. I wonder how different would things have been had they have managed to get their model of what was going on around them to be a little closer to what we know it to be. Still, you gotta hand it to them for going with the obvious route to trying to understanding... observing, measuring, and plotting.

The sooner all those religions realise that they've based themselves on some grave errors with regards to how things really are actually moving around out there, and let the scientists get back to figuring it out, the better!

rockbeer

They could have been mad and bad

Someone like Hubbard who not only should have but did know better was bad in my view. Whereas the early religious proponents probably didn't know they were propogating lies because of the limited information at their disposal. You don't have to be bad or a nutter to misunderstand how complex systems work.