Is belief a necessity?

[louis]

What would the world be now if the concept of religion had never sprung up?

From Louis....
A question worthy of its own thread !!!
Since I, personaly, have never practised ANY sort of religion, maybe
such a world would have only people like ME in it.
What would that be like ?
well ... I have never killed anybody or deliberately tried to hurt anybody -
I have never had an alcoholic drink or smoked a cigarette - I have never
used a drug for any but medicinal purposes....
I may have offended some believers, but that was before I realized
there were people who actually took that stuff seriously...
Since then, I have avoided criticising any church, whether I agreed
with them or not - for all I know, one of them might actually be right...
I don't know about others, but such a world would suit me just fine .

[I, Brian]

Perhaps - but have you ever tried to motivate an entire nation to a certain form of action?

[suanni]

A very interesting question Louis.

I know what we would be lacking now without organised religion being in existance, some of the finest examples of architecture known to man.
We wouldn't be lacking wars. Homosapien is in his nature war-like. There would be another reason to go to war. For those wars that have pertained to be 'God-driven' were merely greed/politics dressed up as religion.
As for the rest, who knows? Would we have the laws that we have today? Would we have the prejudices that we have today? That is debatable.
Those people who have inspired major religions must have been exceedingly charismatic. Or were the people who drew the concept of the religion focused upon one particular particularly charismatic?
It would merely be conjecture to philosophise upon the rest.
How to get a body of people together? Threaten their freedom and they come to arms

[I, Brian]

In most immediate instances I can think of, war is motivated truly by little more than possession of resources - a "land grab". It applies to Iraq, it applies, to the Crusades, it applies to WWII.

Yes, it is a greatly simplified view, but the point I'm trying to illustrate is that religion is used as a justification, rather than a primary action - an excuse after the fact, rather than a true initiator, IMO.

[suanni]

Agree. World War II was motivated by a little man who felt wholly inadequate, who wanted world wide power and the wealth that would go with it to appease his inadequacies and how did he whip up support? Using an anti-semetic stance.
War regardless of how it is labelled is nothing more than the 'I want' syndrome. The people are whipped up in support by using god. We go to war to fight for god and country. I know in this country it is said monarch and country but the monarch is also the head of the church so it amounts to the same.
How come the real war mongers are very good spokesmen?

[lunamoth]

Being an amateur in religious studies, I was really surprised when I came across Pascal's wager for the first time not too long ago. I had gone through a similar kind of thinking as I grew from an agnostic into a believer, or I should say when I chose to become a believer.

As a child I was a natural believer and I can remember moments of yearning for the day I would pass into the next realm and all the things I did not understand would become clear. My idea of heaven was knowledge and wisdom. But then I was "educated" in religion and this lead me into doubt. Spirituality, it seemed, was some kind of inborn faith in all kinds of fantastic and supernatural things and I was disappointed because I was skeptical of all that. I drifted into agnosticism.

Interestingly, while my early religious training made me skeptical, the more I studied science the more amazed I was at the miracle of life and existence. Now, I don't believe God needed to somehow guide evolution for it to create life as we know it, but at the same time the intricacy and beauty of it all just puts me in awe. The day I learned how some genes in viruses can encode two different proteins, one in a forward-reading and the other in the reverse-reading direction, well, it was nearly a religious experience.

As for Pascal's wager, well, I guess I thought through a very modified form of it. I was not choosing between Catholicism or Atheism, potential heaven or potential hell. First, I just chose to believe in Something More. Some Purpose to give meaning to life, to make the choices I make matter. Something to explain compassion and justice and thankfulness. Realizing that choosing to believe was absolutely as rational as choosing not to believe was the liberating point. Faith is just that and God can not be proven (although as many demonstrate here, God can be experienced!). Just choose. After that journey begins. It's better than just sitting on your thumbs until you die!

I must confess to some envy of those of you who have tasted merging with the Godhead, or Ground of Being, or Ocean, or Nirvana, or whatever metaphor touches you in summing up the experience. Maybe someday I will experience something similar. But until then I will have to be content to stand on the shoulders of giants, giant thinkers, before me. In my very limited brain and heart I can not recreate the wisdom of all the sages and prophets and Messengers of the past. I will try to be content reading and meditating on their legacy, in the Bible, the Quran, the Sutras, the Kitab-i-Iqan, etc., in the light of science, with the assistance of the Holy Spirit.

"...in every face, he seeketh the beauty of the Friend; in every country he looketh for the Beloved. He joineth every company, and seeketh fellowship with every soul, that haply in some mind he may uncover the secret of the Friend, or in some face he may behold the beauty of the Loved One." (Baha'u'llah, The Seven Valleys)

Sorry for the long self-indulgent post!

lunamoth

"When our souls touch again in the Great What's Next, we'll have a good laugh over how wrong we both were."--me