The Cause of Religiosity

[James_S_Saint]

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So why are so very many people religious?

@James S Saint; East Meets West

Many years ago when I would stand between the software engineers and the hardware engineers to resolve in which area a computer problem might exist in the rather large system, I had to very carefully examine every subtle detail of both of their arguments because neither of their groups could understand the other. Strictly hardware engineers usually have a very difficult time picking up on why software works the way it does and strictly software engineers typically have a little trouble understanding the hardware concerns, but usually they just don’t care.

I find similar issues when dealing with different races. Is it the hardware or the software causing the arguments and incompatibilities?

I can sense some of the very, very subtle “wetware” differences that yield differences in their thinking. I can tell that it isn’t strictly a cultural issue or upbringing. The East Indian is very distinct from others when I try to discuss technical details. I can tell that it is not a matter of education. Often it is an issue of perceived priorities and thus concepts are taken differently. But there is no doubt in my mind that there are wetware differences at the root of it all.

I had no trouble at all understanding Buddha, a little more the Hebrews, but the Hindus have such an odd set of priorities to me, that I tend to not want to go to the trouble of interpreting the intent of most of what they have assembled. Aristotle felt like just a down home country boy, much like a Abe Lincoln. Plato required a little more, “why is he saying those particular things?”. The Italians, French, English, and Germans, I have no trouble understanding, but again there is an issue of priority differences.

Within each of the races and cultures, I can still detect very slight wetware differences that, no doubt, lead to some of the cultural and priority differences, usually involving the direction of passions. In America especially, but largely throughout the West, the neurology of the people these days has become so scrambled and corrupted that there is great differences merely between neighbors raised in the same town. That is clearly an issue of the wetware.

Of course all of that plays into their former and current philosophies. Although it should be understood that it is almost never, especially these days, a case of the average person causing this philosophy or that being predominate, but rather which group has gained control of their media exchange and thus their mindset. A great deal of social and psychological dissonance arises when one group somewhat forces their set of priorities onto another group with a different set of priorities, especially when they are wetware inspired. So the historical result is often today, not indicative of the actual people of that region, but rather due to philosophies being injected into them.

As I discuss things with zinnat13, I am constantly reminded of our physiological differences (the wetware) as well as our cultural differences.

Note that the direction of passion is one of the more serious issues that leads to differences in mindset and thus in religion types. That passion difference is largely an issue of the neurology or “wetware”. But the real question is more of why religion at all?

The issue is actually one of the complexity of reality, especially with other similar beings competing within it. If reality were truly and always simple, no one would bother with anything that we call Religion, nor Science. But obviously things can get pretty confusing.

When things get too complicated and are perceived as important, people first decide what idea to accept based upon its immediate appeal, “pathos”. And that usually involves accepting what someone else has said. So the passions involved concerning that other person gets involved as well. Then the issue is one of the perception of anything even close to being logical or consistent with what is already believed, which includes a great deal of superstition (a superstition is merely the naming of a cause for associated events when the details are unknown).

What the individual mind is attempting to do is find a simple means of deciding truth so that decisions can be made concerning otherwise uncontrollable events, such as weather or disease. When they have decided who to get their wisdom from, they have chosen within who to place their faith. And Science is every bit of a religion as any other. Science was supposed to be an “open source” religion wherein everyone could see why anything was to be believed, but it is very far from that these days and supported almost entirely by cult behavior.

The proposal to do away with religion is the proposal to merely yield decisions into the hands of the religion of Science for the sake of your simplicity in decision issues. People need a simpler means to understand what to do and when. They don’t really care all that much about why, but that question gets into the mix and needs to have an answer handy when it rises. Simple-minded and often erroneous answers are then provided so as to meet the needs of the simple-minded person who was inquiring.

The average person lives in a reality that is complex enough that he will never really understand it, yet will always need to be able to make reliable decisions. Accepting the ideas of other people is really his only option. And that is called “having faith” in those ideas and/or those people and their methods and intentions. Unfortunately, finding any “others” who have sufficient methods and intentions can be tough.

In addition some of the methods of the “others” involves keeping people simple-minded and/or confused so as to maintain the social order concerning who is to be believed and accepted as authority. Of course social and personal egos get involved immediately merely due to the perceived need to respect the order or the person.

So the bottom line is merely that people, due to the mismatch between the mental capacity and the complexity of their lives, requires that they accept a religion, whether it is called “Science” or not.

[Dan1 (Dan~)]

To me your “cause of religiosity” sounds more like the process of a positive or good faith mechanism.
During a child-like state, we depend on others, and believe in others. As we grow older this may reduce, but it’s still there.
In my own post about religion, I said basically that we believe in something beyond us, and that manifests in religions. But I did not mean that was the only thing at hand. There is crap in religions too. You see, each religion isn’t the same, or equal. People made up the word religion and categorized it, but that category is itself not perfect, and it is not knowledge, it is just a class of something in a language. There is not a ‘source of all religion’, or ‘source of all religiousity’. What there is is culturally unique ideologies. Old ideas that developed long ago, but stuck with the civilization, even though they may have changed. Well, not all religions stick, but some do. Sometimes they are re-invented. This happens in the US, with all those odd sub-versions of christianity which say the other christians are wrong or maybe even evil.

I’m not trying to be disagreeable with you, I am just trying to clarify that “religion” is not a thing. Even if people see it that way.

[victorel21]

i think you over complicate things, religion ascended in the same way science did, to control nature.

[Amorphos]

So why are so very many people religious?

Because those who aren’t expect to find solution within the material ~ which is ludicrous. Religion though ~ for me at least, is more about our human failure to comprehend the incomprehensible [which we actually dont even need to do].
Native Americans would name let us say, ‘ultimate divinity’ as ‘the great mystery’, druids as the ‘divine infinite’ [caugant], Buddhists as ‘Buddha being [nirvana]’, Hindu’s as ‘brahman’ etc.

We simply have no way to describe that which has no cardinality, and even when we do it becomes farcical as we try to say that e.g. infinity [the unlimited] has limits [can be described mathematically].

If I may though, I don’t think we even need to, it is within as it is without and hence part of us. It is futile to understand a thing in any other terms than what it is, and within us we have what it is, no? [man in man in your terms perhaps].

This is not a learned thing, it is something we touch [know by itself] and hence have faith in.
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