r2i forum

I was listening to the below podcast in Hidden Brain - by Shankar Vendantam

https://www.npr.org/2018/07/16/629616978/creating-god


Kind of reinforces the thoughts I had about religion - how they might have originated and why some are thriving/expanding and relevance of religion in modern times.
Whether you are a believer or a non-believer, you have to wonder how religions might have come into existence? Its probably not an accident that religions were confined by geography - how did all Hindu's end up in India? Was the rest of the world invisible to our God? Same thing with Islam/Christianity.


Few paragraphs from the transcript -
"So for the vast, vast history of our species, we didn't live in large groups. We lived in very small groups, groups about 50 people, groups that never really got larger than 150. And the reason for that is because from a genetic standpoint, we're only built to be able to cooperate with as many people as we can know well. So when you start having anonymous strangers in groups, when you start having people whose reputation you're unfamiliar with, what that means is that people can free ride on the group. They can cheat on the group with impunity. And when you start having large groups of free riders and cheaters in a group, it can't sustain itself. You need a level of cooperation between the people in a group for it to act and to work harmoniously.
And so it was only in the last 12,000 years that we started getting groups that bubbled up from beyond a hundred, 150 people to a thousand, 10,000 people. And what that means is that it needed something more than just our genetic inheritance. It needed a cultural idea. It needed a cultural innovation to allow us to succeed in these larger groups. And so one of the things that me and my colleagues have been arguing is that religion was one of these cultural innovations."
"Basically, if only humans could be convinced that a god was going to punish them if they didn't act in line with the interests of the group, well, they would start to cooperate."

"So there are lots of examples when I look at modern societies today where I see other institutions, other forces that in some ways offer competition to religion. When I think about what will cause people to fight and die, you now no longer need religious faith. You can have nationalism. You can have patriotism - people willing to die for the flag. When it comes to trust, you know, it - you and I don't have to belong to the same religion anymore. We can both agree - you can sell a house to me and I can buy a house from you because we both believe that there are institutions organized by the state that will ensure that you will actually sell the house to me and I will actually give you money for it.
I put my money in a bank every month, and I actually only see a bunch of digits on a piece of paper. But I trust that the bank at some level is actually holding onto my money. And I have absolutely no idea what religion the bankers belong to. Are these all examples of how modern societies have come to essentially displace the need for religion?"

"And in terms of the governmental institutions that can spread trust, one of the interesting things you see is that if you look across countries, those countries that report having the least importance of religion to their daily lives are the countries that have the highest faith in the rule of law. So those are the places where you trust the institutions, like the bank or contract enforcement or the police or the justice system. But in those places where we are, we see ourselves moving towards a post-religious world where a lot of the functions of religion are accomplished by other means and potentially better means."

Hunter Gatherers still are present and live in small groups (handful). They are observed to have belief systems. That belief systems came about as larger society formed is suspect. Probably organized religion came about with larger society, but belief in supernatural likely predates the formation of larger societies.

Example: San Tribe (bushmen) have a belief system, including worship of moon. They live isolated and in small groups. Mbuti (pygmies) have a belief system. They worship the forest and totemic spirits of animals.

On the other hand, there are small tribal groups in South America's Amazon forests who have no belief system and God as a concept is alien to them.

It is a mixed bag.

Probably the thread title could be "Creating organized religion", instead of "Creating God".

Well I used the title of the pod cast - not sure if you got to hear the podcast but it talks about why these belief systems came along when the groups got larger. If the group was small enough, there was no need for a belief system as everyone knew everyone else and trust was easy to establish. Also larger groups led to the idea of a punitive god - you get punished (or go to hell) if you don't follow the rules. I guess there are always outlier examples to the contrary but the general rationale makes sense to me.
It will be interesting to me to hear the take of people who are very religious. To me religion and Spirituality are 2 different things. Spirituality is something I could get behind, but religion - not so much.

Samsan,

I don't know if I am "religious" or not but let me add my 2 cents here. I honestly do not care about the differences between "religion", "spirituality" etc - to me it just a matter of semantics. I think the core issues/questions that you are probably talking about are - "Is there a God?", "Who created us and what was the purpose of doing it?", "Is there a soul that is eternal and timeless unlike the physical body?"

I was born into the Hindu way of life and never had the time or interest to explore it when I was growing up - was an atheist for all practical purposes. Its only when I started reading about the Vedanta/Advaita Vedanta philosophy of the Hindus that I started getting hooked. Now, this was something that even very intelligent people would find hard to understand at first go. But, let me just focus on the basic parts here.

Firstly, I loved the message that there should be no blind belief in these things. If you have not seen God or seen the soul, there is no point in talking about it or preaching it. That is the reason only the most enlightened people are supposed to talk about it. Unfortunately, in the real world no one takes these suggestions from the Vedanta philosophy seriously. You have many arm-chair experts shooting their mouths off in the real world. I know you are just looking for a "curiosity driven" discussion here, but I can tell you that you will not find good answers to what you are asking here on this forum. I cannot give you those good answers too as I have never seen God and never seen the soul. But, some people have and they have written about it - one great example is Swami Vivekananda. Why don't you read him in his own words? Go with an open mind and then it if all seems like crap, throw the books away. If it makes sense, then you have found a treasure the depths of which you cannot comprehend even over multiple lifetimes.

Secondly, reading Vedanta philosophy made comprehending the real world and religious beliefs a lot easier for me. Once you get introduced to the four systems of Bhakti yoga, Raja Yoga, Hatha Yoga and Jnana Yoga - most things start to make sense. You will understand why the so called "blind beliefs" exist. You will understand that everyone is different and might prefer one of the 4 paths that appeal to them. Some people prefer more than one. They all have the same goal - to find the real truth behind everything.

Thirdly, I also went through a phase where I thought all this knowledge was impractical and had no use in day to day life, but now I feel differently. This knowledge and awareness removes deep rooted insecurities, removes the fear of death, the fear of disease etc. The only way to explain is by giving you the example of what it feels like when you shine a light in the darkest of places. Only the people who know that experience will comprehend the value of having light in dark places. Most people who are used to the dark and never experienced the feeling of brightness cannot understand this concept.

Fourthly - I could go on and on but need to stop :) I hope this encourages you to dig into the works of Yagnavalkya, Pathanjali, Adi Shankara etc. If you don't have time for those, just read the 9 volumes of Swami Vivekananda. Its the entire Vedanta philosophy of the Hindus summarized in a very palatable form for the modern, fashionable, intellectual, english speaking crowd. I wish you the best on your spiritual journey and hope you find the answers to all your questions and more.

Yagnavalkya;678302 but I can tell you that you will not find good answers to what you are asking here on this forum. I cannot give you those good answers too as I have never seen God and never seen the soul. But, some people have and they have written about it - one great example is Swami Vivekananda.

He has seen god and that's the reason he died young at 40?
Wonder why god Krishna Shiva Kali took him early while his presence would have helped humanity and Hinduism in India.

Human minds are inquisitive, so they ask questions and then they dream up answers. The answers may make sense to some and be nonsense for others, but still if those answers are nothing but dreamt up then they hold no value unless they come from deductive reasoning.

God is a creation of human mind just like ghosts, soul etc. Creation of God was due to search of a cause, rather a first cause and first cause is a self defeating proposition unless time itself was created. Time is relative and and result of the big bang - that comes from scientific analysis and data. Also dreaming up God as a first cause is again just a creation of human mind.

There is no evidence of God's existence.

Logically, it is pure nonsense to think that someone existed always and one day decided to create billions of galaxies with each galaxy containing billions of stars with a poof and then created various species and then is either sleeping and or controlling these species. When we have children dying of hunger and diseases around the world, when we have 80 year old ladies begging for food on streets, this logic of God is pure hogwash. If God is the end point of asking questions who created the world, universe etc then why avoid the question who created God? Oh well, no, no we do not avoid it, God always existed, he was the first cause :). So we must believe what people dream up that makes no logical sense. Just continue scientific research and we have gone from days of Aristotle when stars were seen as hanging lights to steady state to expanding state and big bang and so on.

As years have passed by and as number of humans who leave knowledge behind for other humans has grown, mankind has amassed much greater knowledge than it ever had and will continue to do so. So we have now over last century have reached to using the scientific method of data, hypothesis, theory and evidence and a factual determination. Scientifically and logically, God is a creation of human mind as much as a unicorn or dog with diamond teeth.

People believe in God for a variety of reasons. They do not get logic, they do not understand proper method and science, they were taught about it since childhood, confirmation bias, belief in people who claim to have seen God because they are famous etc etc.

So one day here a member wrote something about this guy below:



So, I just started reading his book and read about perhaps 10 to 20 pages and came to the conclusion that the guy was suffering from schizophrenia and stopped reading further. Now of course many will claim that I am confusing a high attainment of spirituality with mental derangement, that is fine. So far, no one has been able to describe spirituality in a meaningful way to me. We have had many discussions on spirituality in this forum, yet no one can provide a meaningful definition of spirituality.

Below I am posting a link, I totally agree with response #1. The remainder 2 responses - umm.

It is amazing that today we have amassed huge knowledge from billions of people, yet people go back to 3000 years back when we had no electricity, no machinery, primitive tools, very little knowledge, and we think the upanishads and vedas etc are great knowledge sources :)

https://www.quora.com/Did-Swami-Vivekananda-and-Ramakrishna-Paramahamsa-suffer-from-temporal-lobe-epilepsy

Desi;678312Human minds are inquisitive, so they ask questions and then they dream up answers. The answers may make sense to some and be nonsense for others, but still if those answers are nothing but dreamt up then they hold no value unless they come from deductive reasoning.

God is a creation of human mind just like ghosts, soul etc. Creation of God was due to search of a cause, rather a first cause and first cause is a self defeating proposition unless time itself was created. Time is relative and and result of the big bang - that comes from scientific analysis and data. Also dreaming up God as a first cause is again just a creation of human mind.

One could dispute God as "first cause".
But are you saying search for origin of universe itself is self defeating?

Out of some 8+ million living species, only one has coined the word - God. That speaks for itself. I'm not considering some 99% of species that have already become extinct.

Now that evolution is no longer a theory, religious institutions have started crediting God for mastering the art of change through evolution. Some call God an artist. What is next - the bionic robotic human with AI will also be considered as creation of God.