If somehow all memory of belief in gods & all references to gods in books, movies, etc were gone, would it start again?
1111
1111
If all memory of belief in gods were gone?
- Thread starter StrangerInAStrangeLand
- Start date
Yes, it would start again. How do you think it started in the first place?
If one could erase all human curiosity, then perhaps it wouldn't.
Baron Max
What no prayers in Parliament, no 'In God we Trust' on a one dolllar nore, no religious wars!! GEEEESH, I think a number of cults would spring up, 'cause there's just too much narcissm around; somebody gonna invent some dogma and some succors are just gonna follow. But hey, imagine there's no religion, I wonder if we can
You could just move to China where they have no religions that believe in a God at all.
Ophiolite
Valued Senior Member
Right.............
There is Buddhism though .
There are Christians in China.
1111
1111
How many out of 3.5 billion people?
What no prayers in Parliament, no 'In God we Trust' on a one dolllar nore, no religious wars!! GEEEESH, I think a number of cults would spring up, 'cause there's just too much narcissm around; somebody gonna invent some dogma and some succors are just gonna follow. But hey, imagine there's no religion, I wonder if we can
Narcissism is 1 significant cause of belief in gods?
Can there be dogma without belief in gods?
I can imagine it.
1111
Ophiolite
Valued Senior Member
Irrelevant. You said "they have no religions in China". Absolute statements are liable to trip one up.
Well that is true but does anyone know how many Church's are in China today practicing their beliefs about God? I was not thinking about a few missionaries spreading the word but actual bonifide Church's.
Religion would start again but in doing so might prove something for a change.
Ophiolite
Valued Senior Member
A church isn't a building it is a congregation. Despite suppression by the state there are between 10 million (an old official census) and at least 40 million (a recent CIA estimate), or over 130 million (an internal Christian estimate).
yes
BG 4.8 To deliver the pious and to annihilate the miscreants, as well as to reestablish the principles of religion, I Myself appear, millennium after millennium.
Re-establishing religiosity when we make a grand mess of things is one of god's eternal duties
How does it (re)establish religiosity?
1111
1111
by appearing directly or through an empowered representative
Fraggle Rocker
Staff member
Yes. As I've pointed out before, a religion is a collection of archetypes, instinctive motifs that nearly everyone is born with. An archetypal instinct may have been a survival trait in an era whose dangers we can't imagine, or it may simply be the random preset of a synapse that was passed down through a genetic bottleneck like Mitochondrial Eve.
Whatever the case, the same archetypes occur in almost all societies in almost all eras. That's why they're so powerful: They feel true. This makes those beliefs stronger than beliefs that result from learning, experience or reasoning.
Apparently not everyone is born with the God archetype because I certainly wasn't. My family had been atheists for a couple of generations and I never heard of religion until some kid told me about it in school. Even after the exhaustive proselytism I was subjected to in the benighted culture of the 1950s and the natural curiosity and rebellion of a teenager--I even had a Catholic girlfriend--I never found anything appealing in religion, much less something that resonated with my very "soul" and compelled me to believe.