ren wrote: There were once two great super powers. both of them had access to terrible weapons, whose technology came from scientific study...
One of those super powers was predominantly christian (a religion that supposedly preaches love) and claimed to be tolerant of differing opinions.
The other super power, a totalitarian regime, prohibited religion (all of them).
Guess which of the two super powers did a very naughty thing (sin?).
Out of the 2 superpowers (postWW2) the USSR was much much worse. Stalin's rein saw estimates as high as 60 million of people within his borders being killed or deported to Siberia for religious, ethnic and political reasons.
People's consciousness comes programmed with instincts which tend to drive emotions, and these compete with logic in all decision making. Social logic is complex and includes the added burden of each person not fully knowing each persons own motivations and intentions, so emotions are a useful shared component of communication which can transcend logical constructs. Unfortunatly instincts (and thus most emotions) are inheritly selfish and so, without conscious intention we found society would struggle to progress. The benefit religion provided to early humanity was it became accepted widely as a conscious, intentional but also emotional logic. It seemed to connect the subconsciously seated instinct based emotions with humanities logical desire. The nature of its belief required such effort that it became a presence in the persons mind that overrode the persistant emotional instincts.
The problem is humanity seemingly is not born with instinctual morality, but instead morality is a logical construct sharing the same general place as religion in between conscious and subconscious spaces. Religion was, and probably is, the only institution to actually teach morality and in some cases even associated punishment to enforce its application. If society taught morality in its schools in a non-religious context then religion might have less of a place in society, but until it does society runs the risk of sliding downhill whenever religion starts to become sidelined. Listening to Campbell's myth lectures he points out that very same thing happens when a society looses a relevant myth. So while the myth speaks more to a persons individuals desire for self awareness and self expression, it might be that religions provide a necessary social construct for morality. So the author finds himself trying to wrestle with what is belief, well belief is about trust, specifically the personal experience of trusting and the opportunity to be trusted, and.... trust is central to morality.
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