Intriguing

[Pollux V]

As of now I have a massive project on Islam due in several days. Earlier I was spending enormous amounts of time in my school's computer lab, researching and answering the various questions required for research. After educating myself about Islam, I want to say now that if I were into the whole religion thing then I would want to be a Muslim. It's seriously cooler than any western religion. Anyway....

The pure nature which is mentioned in this verse is probably the most convincing proof of a divine creator to any sincere seeker of truth. Which person can deny (atheist or otherwise) that when he/she is in dire trouble, when life is about to be taken away from them, when the pressures are unbearable - that then do they turn to that force above the skies. How many times are we confronted by a scenario in which the words: "Please God help me, and I promise that Iwill always pray to you and be good." roll off our tongues with such sincerity? Every time something bad happens, words such as these come out of the people's mouths. Yet as soon as the harm is removed the very same people beseeching the help of their creator, turn away:

Here

The fellow writing the webpage is a bit looney and...eccentric, but he makes somewhat of an intriguing case. I think he has somewhat of a point. Humans, influenced by religion or not, have a tendency to do what he is speaking of or something similar. If a person feels angry, he damns the gods, if he feels sad, he damns the gods, and if he feels happy then he praises them. The word for god or gods may be different, but in every case we're still talking about the same thing: Something above humanity that controls everything. And every human born on Earth at one time or another believes in something like that.

Two conclusions can be reached from this thesis. A)--It's some kind of a social disorder thing, a need that humans must express, a want to find a reason for problems or joys, etc etc. Or B) it's something supernatural, and it has imbued us with an automatic tendency to pray to or worship it.

I'm not sure that it can be proven, that all men and women have worshipped something during their lives and really believed in it, but I don't doubt that a very, very significant portion of the population did so. Most of this can be explained by parental influences, going to church, however--all of the religions started from something. There were undoubtedly people in existence at one time or another who prayed to a supernatural being without outside influence.

Religion, early on, was probably the easy way to explain things without doing all the scientific work accumulated over the few thousand years of civilization. But there always remains the possibility of there being more to the world than what science can find. And if it really is a natural instinct to pray to god, then there is merely just a little more evidence to prove the existence of the great something-or-other.

Sorry, a bit scattered, but, meh....

 

[MooseKnuckle]

Why God/Religion- Short answer- That is how our minds were prepared by evolution.

Many religious concepts were and still are very plausible in many people's minds, and you have to remember how humans evolved.....in circumstances unlike anything that modern humans now face.

Memes can explain a good deal about religion being adapted in human thought.

This is from Richard Dawkins-

"The survival value of the god meme in the meme pool results from its great psychological appeal. It provides a superficially plausible answer to deep and troubling questions about existence. It suggests that injustices in this world may be rectified in the next. The ‘everlasting arms’ hold out a cushion against our own inadequacies which, like a doctor's placebo, is none the less effective for being imaginary. These are some of the reasons why the idea of God is copied so readily by successive generations of individual brains. God exists, if only in the form of a meme with high survival value, or infective power, in the environment provided by human culture."

When religion is explained this way, it seems to amount to an extradordinary conspiracy. Religious concepts and norms and the emotions attached to them seem designed to excite the human mind, linger in memory, trigger multiple inferences in the precise way that will get people to hold them true and communicate them.

Religious concepts just work that way, no conspiracy, other variants were created and forgotten all along, the popular trains of religious thought had staying power.

 

[Donati]

Hey Pollux, I’m new here, actually I’ve been inactively wandering sciforums for many months now, I just don’t have a lot of time to get immersed into deep debate. I’d like to say that I’ve enjoyed the intellectualism of your posts, and many of the other sciforum members as well.

I believe all humans are born non-theistic and are spoon fed religion, be it Islam or any other, by society all throughout life. I, for one, have absolutely no need to believe in a divine creator, whether one exists or not, and I’d say not. Yes, I shout out “thank god” from time to time, however it is merely a figure of speech just like any other we become accustomed to in language. I don’t fear death either, not looking forward to it, but I certainly won’t ever pray for a longer life under any circumstances. When I’m feeling angry or depressed, I blame no one other than myself, and I realize that only I have the power to control the direction of my life. I believe the main hub of society suffers from mass delusion, instilled from birth by their ancestors who had no scientific knowledge of the natural world or universe. So I guess I’m an extreme radical of the (A) conclusion. I definitely don’t agree that it’s instinct to worship any deity. Good topic though.

-N-

 

[heflores]

Pollux,
I'm glad you liked Islam. The concept of submission to a creator is very grounding. It's not really a crutch as many Atheists claim. A crutch for those who are not smart enough. I believe that admitting to the fact that we are created by a supreme being that is repsonsible for the universal order is crucial to any technological advances. You may call it the seventh or eighth dimension....but it's necessary.

If we assume that the dimension of god who is the creator or uniter of forces exist, then we have found the black box. Filling in the details and understanding the inside of the box happens with time.

Please be carefull with Hadith when studying Islam. I really believe that those books were not protected from corruption and are not accurate. The Quran is the only book that god promised it's protection...It's really the only scope into Islam. Some people think that they should mimic the life of Prophet Muhammed, that is one of the main reasons that the arabs remain stuck 1500 years ago and don't real emerge and apply their great religion correctly to their modern lifes.

You'll find good information on http://www.pearls.org/
for your paper.

 

[Pollux V]

Heflores,

Thank you for the information, I do understand that I have only gathered the tip of the iceberg. There is so much beyond what is taught in our hellenistic civilization, more than I thought, at least. I will be careful and I do understand how religious scriptures--all of them, tend to be reinterpreted over time, for better or for worse. The project is due tomorrow but I'm not quite sure that I'll be able to get it done because my partner is sick....

Donati,

Thanks man Welcome to sciforums. The problem with this whole idea is the challenge of finding someone who hasn't been influenced by a religion, which is almost definitely an impossible task. However, the results would be interesting if an experiment could be undertaken of some sort...