There was an unanswered resident answer...

...in this now closed thread: .



The easy answer is: Yes, they were and are delusional, judging by the definition of delusion as an obviously false belief that contradicts reality. In the Western World (at least Western Europe), they are no longer a majority though. And if we stopped the child abuse in form of religious indoctrination, if people were truly free to believe what they want, the delusional part of the world population would shrink to a small minority.

The longer answer: This particular delusion is an evolutionary side effect of our intelligence / imagination, our imperfect ability to judge cause and effect and the gullibility that enables us to believe the words of conspecifics when they warn us of danger. It also serves as a natural mental defense mechanism, developed to keep us from despairing when confronted with the death of conspecifics and the possibility of our own death.

The greatest evolutionary edge of our species is the desire to understand and explain everything. If we understand that a deer can't smell us if we approach it against the wind, we can hunt more effectively. If we understand that we can catch diseases by eating uncooked food, we can avoid getting sick. By evaluating cause and effect we learn about the world that surrounds us and pass the knowledge on to our children. To ensure that our children believe us without undertaking the same (and possibly harmful) experiments, our species also developed a certain gullibility: We believe our parents and other members of our tribe/herd/family without any doubt. We don't test if poison is really deadly.

Let's first deal with the urge to find understand and explain our environment. This strong need has a side effect: we can't live with holes in our knowledge. Our ancestors had no other choice but to find a way to explain all dangerous natural phenomena. Lightning? Must be thrown by a great hunter in the sky, in the same way we throw spears. A forest fire? Caused by an angry ancestral spirit or a god.
The reason for this urge is of course to find ways of protection and prevention. We can't accept that we are helpless and can't protect ourselves from lightning or the resulting forest fire. Before we had the technology to deal with such things, the only possible way for us to feel safe was to appease the angry spirits or gods that we invented as an explanation. Sometimes it worked, sometimes not, a game of chance. And here enters the second human trait into the equation: our unreliable ability to judge cause and effect.

Human prays for rain, knowing that this is the time of the year when he can expect it to rain and getting anxious because it didn't rain so far. Next week it does rain. Cause and effect: I prayed, it rained. Wow. It rained because I prayed. The god I prayed to must really exist. Yay! If it doesn't rain, I must have prayed the wrong way, or the god was angry with me.
That's the sort of religious experience shared by our ancestors and us modern humans. Even in our modern times, people still pray before undergoing a surgery and thank their god when they survive - not the surgeon who saved them. Guys like Aristotle or Einstein are the exception, not the norm; most of us think in simplified ways, i.e. "I prayed and I was cured". If the equation gets too complex, i.e. "I prayed, had a surgery and was cured, so either my god or the surgeon cured me", it causes more confusion than needed. Our ancestors might have wasted time pondering the equation, valuable time they could have spent on the search for food, on procreation or on spotting the predator in the bushes that was about to jump them.

Now to the third point, our gullibility in early stages of our lives and our ability to accept certain things as "truths" without questioning them. "The green snakes with brown dots are poisonous" - the offspring of our ancestors had to believe that without any doubt. It was enough that one ancestor died of a snake bite, 3 generations ago; the story was passed on from generation to generation, saving others from the same fate. Alas, religious beliefs are passed on the same way. "There's an evil spirit living in this tree, don't upset him". One doesn't kick the tree to find out if it's true, just as one doesn't risk to get bitten by certain types of snakes. This "better safe than sorry" thinking is also the source of Pascal's Wager, which leaves out the multitude of religions that all come with their own threats and dangers if one dares to follow another religion than the "right" one, which makes Pascal's thoughts pointless.

Finally, the mental defense mechanism. Humans are one of the few species (perhaps the only one) who can relate to their conspecifics as being a living, self-conscious being equal to themselves, not only other creatures we can interact with. Our ability to develop a language and share our thoughts and feelings inevitably leads to the realization: everything they think and feel I can think and feel to, and everything that happens to them might also happen to me. They feel a slight stomach ache after eating a certain fruit, it will possibly make me sick as well.
A great survival trait with a downside: we also realize that we can die in every way we watch someone else die - and in every way we're told that one could possibly die. We realize, unlike other animals, that our life span is limited. We know that we will age and die. We even know how long a human usually lives, thanks to our ability to measure time and to communicate our own age to younger conspecifics.

In the world our ancestors lived in, where sudden death through predators, diseases or other natural phenomena was a commonplace experience, they would have gone mad worrying about all the possible ways their own life could end. To avoid paranoia, obsessive compulsion or gloomy depression, we devolped a sense of immortality or rather a mental state of denial.
To support this "I can't die" illusion, we developed neurochemical mechanisms like NDEs (near death experiences). Whenever our body senses that we might be about to die, a drug cocktail is released by our brain, causing an epiphanic trip. Like the USAF pilots who reported NDEs after blacking out in a centrifuge: brain recognizes dangerously low blood oxygene levels and sends them on a drug trip, a little daydream with calming images of beautiful places or people they feel close to, often deceased relatives.

NDEs, out-of-body experiences and other euphoric states have also been replicated by injecting drugs like Ketamine, which come close to the natural "epiphany drugs" produced by our body. Similar states of mind can be reached by meditation and other trance-like stances; they also lower the blood oxygene level by slowing down our breathing, give our brain an "I'm possibly about to die" impulse and cause us to "see the light", or to enter the aboriginal dreamtime and communicate with ancestral spirits in our head. Of course, reports by people who either reached such a state of mind by meditative prayer or by getting close to death also helped to keep the delusion of immortality alive.
Few people who had such experiences ever stopped to think "I'm seeing a colorful virtual reality in my head each night when I dream, how is this any different?"

Overall, this may sound as if religion is indeed helpful, a natural mechanism that gives us a false sense of security and helps us on the deathbed. There are indeed harmless religions like Buddhism which do exactly that. But the abrahamic religions evolved (if one can call it evolution) to a point where they posed a danger to our survival. We started to kill our conspecifics over religious differences, since everything that endangers our religious world view endangers the sense of immortality that our ancestors badly needed in a cruel, deadly evironment. Religion was turned into a political instrument of power, able to justify the segregating and even the killing of unwanted minorities. Religion started to hinder the further progress of our species - think of the incarcerated Galilei.

Besides: if our ancestor who prayed for rain had spend some more thought on the subject instead of falling for an easy "prayer -> success" explanation, we might have developed an irrigation system much earlier. The bark of the supposedly spirit-possessed tree might have contained a fever-reducing substance, but our ancestors left it alone, died of fever and condemned future generations to die of fever as well.

Despite religion holding us back and temporarily throwing us into the dark ages with less knowledge than the ancient Greeks had possessed a thousand years before, we managed to shape our environment into something that is now less threatening and more worthwhile to live in. We don't need the delusion anymore. Most of us live to see their 70th birthday, in a world where diseases can be cured and sudden, unforeseen death has become an exception.

Religion holds us back. It keeps us from truly valuing not only our own life but also the lives of others. We no longer need a world view where life is expendable, since we have the chance to live in relative health and comfort.
As for the need to explain the world and the universe we live in: we (as a species, alas not as individuals; we need better education to change that) gathered enough knowledge to do without lightning-throwing gods and disease-causing evil spirits. Only knowledge of the real cause of lightning and disease enabled us to find reliable ways to protect us against them instead of praying.

and I think this thread should be closed..

This site is for resident to resident help and answers..

As the last post describes in the the link attached and the same conditions should apply to this thread.......

Before it gets locked, I feel the need to state that I strongly disagree with the original post.

Broccoli

I have to totally agree with the OP on this subject and before this thread gets locked as Broccoli suggests i also feel the need to add the caveat "This will not end well"

May i suggest also a good book to read on this subject called "The Origin of Consciousness in the breakdown of the Bicameral Mind" By Dr Julian Jaynes

The universe is a stranger place than we imagine.....

I saw a BBC (UK TV) documentary on this.......

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bose%E2%80%93Einstein_condensate

I frankly admit I do not totally understand the article. But thanks to the BBC I know what it does.

That is take some gas and cool it down to more or less absolute zero and a very interesting thing happens, the atoms loose their individuality and are everywhere at once. The experiment has been done (i.e. its no longer theory) and it has major longer-term implications for super quantum computing, because you can get the atoms to register events all at once everywhere. Hence massive parallel processing......It currently defy reason to accept something can be everywhere at once but it is so under certain conditions

Take this thing that we cannot measure (currently) which may be known as the soul. Let us say it represents a field, which derives from our individual sense of self-awareness powered by the brains electrical energy. It would be reasonable to assume this field could survive after physical death of the brain. If that is the case life becomes quite interesting.

That may also explain near death experiences and out of body events........

(Sorry moderator could not resist temptations)

So would 'recreational pharmaceuticals' ...

Broccoli

Sneaking in before the lock to recommend Julian Jayne's _The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind_ ()
for a classic exploration of the fundamental relationship between beliefs and experience (or, perhaps, "sanity"--whatever that is). The theory itself is quite completely bogus, but it's been influential in the philosophy of semantics and consciousness for three decades now.

[edit: Holy crap! Lord Sullivan, I *swear* I didn't even see your post already recommending the same text. Evidently, minds with similar disorders do indeed think alike! ]

check also "the God delusion" and "the virus of faith", both BBC documentaries available on DVD. They are condensed versions of the book by the same title.

religions are stories to scare the kids into conformity. When are humans going to evolve beyond this and finally grow up. People who need religion as an excuse to do good lack imagination. Religions are too easy to hijack in the name of selfish causes. Look around the world.

I pity the OP.

How empty their life must be.

Well thank you so much for that, now I know I'm not only delusional but also stupid.

You and me both, it would appear.

I thank God for my delusional stupidity.

IBTL

How exactly does this topic affect Second Life again?

(Oh ya, the belief the grid will be stable on any given day)

Mari

I think it's quite sad really that some people feel that "religion" has no place in a virtual world, whilst quite happily supporting other aspects of reality coming to Second Life, such as sex, gambling, weapons, vehicles, homes, etc etc.

I am part of a group working towards a build in Second Life from another Christian group. The island will be clearly marked as to what it's all about, and with several notices and whisperers at the landing point so that people are under no illusion that they are going to be seeing things, receiving information, and talking to people whose aim is to discuss the Christian faith with visitors. In a similar way to many "adult" areas in Second Life, if you choose to ignore the warnings and proceed anyway, then it's your own fault if you decide to be offended by the content that you see once you enter the main build, and have absolutely no right to 'abuse report' anything or anyone inside.

Broccoli

It affects SL because SL is a meeting place for many different people. All of which bring their RL with them. For LL to say these discussions are off topic is the height of stupidity. When people meet, thorny issues will be discussed. To limit these discussions limits the community.

Aleister - I do not know why you wrote this essay.

I do not understand what you are trying to prove.

Even if you are right - that there is no supernatural - it doesnt make people mentally Ill.

It would just make them wrong.

As to the supposed benefits of having a largely Aethiest society. I only need to point to the Soviet Union. Non-Belief in God doesnt change what people are. It didnt give Lenin or Stalin and others an appreciation for all human life.

You shouldnt blame human nature on Religeon. Instead blame the excesses of Religeon on human nature.

Instead of attacking the religeon, attack the abuses of the people who did what they did.


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People should be able to believe what they want to believe, free from the harassment of Christains, Mormans, Bhudists, Pagans and Aethiests trying to change them.

If someone comes to you saying christianity isnt for them , teach them the way to non-belief, then go into your diatribe.

Dont try to impose it on others who didnt ask for it.

But perhaps that is human nature too - the inability to allow others to have their own kind of Spirituality without challenging them on it.

As for me - I wont tell you not to be an Aethiest. I wont tell Chris not to be a Christian.

And I ask you to stop trying to convince me to stop being somewhere in the middle.

Not at all. Nothing is stopping the community from debating religious issues in-world.

edit: oh crap, wrong account. way too accountable an account.

Is it just me, or is there absolutely no question whatsoever posed in the original quoted text?

Not exactly the most compelling display of non-delusional thinking here. Beyond that tasty bit of irony, I'm staying out of this.

In world communication does not lend it's self to deep debate.

One man's opinion - and one I disagree with strongly, having had some of the most fascinating discussions on very deep subjects in SL.

Nor does a forum where the subject is off-topic. Much as I'd love to see the general forum back, miscellaneous debate does not belong in RA, and if a locked thread is continually resurrected, I would expect to see a few SL accounts suspended. Particularly considering the last one was forwarded to Linden Review "with recommendations". Very sinister, those appended words.

Among many religious sorts such as Christians for example they are indoctrinated from an early age, they don't question any of it until they are adults, and by then its too late. They live a Christian life, marry a Christian, indoctrinate their own children, belong to a Christian community, etc. etc. etc. They simply cannot accept that they are wrong or were mislead because that would require them to literally break from their entire lives.

Adolf Hitler said that people will doubt the truth of a small lie, but never a big one.

This would actually have been off topic in General once it got to religous debate-

But there was an off topic forum.

Which was actually less flamey than the General , usually.

Whether true or not - the only alternative is to start telling people how they can raise their kids.

Which would be opression in its purest sense.