I saw yesterday night a show about the psychology of religion, hosted by the well known illusionist Derren Brown.
Mr. Derren Brown claimed in the show that religion is fake and useless.
Useless?
In the same show 2 teams were assigned the same task: make a difficult test and report voluntarily their mistakes:
To one team it was suggested existence of supernatural (They told them that in the old armchair from the room sits the ghost of an old lady whom died.)
In the control group 3 of 4 people cheated, in the group primed with supernatural fact, all the participants were honest.
So a simple ghost story increased ethics with 75%.
Imagine if we apply a complex religion to the whole world:
75% of the total population (7 billion) is 5.25 billion people who behave more ethic.If we save a dollar for each, we have a gain of 5.25 billion dollars just because people believe in supernatural and they are behaving more ethic.
Mr. Brown is so rich that he consider 5 billion dollars not useful?
In my opinion the main downside of religion it is the social part.
Because in religion many people are participating, a competition between believers starts to form, and if this t competition is not checked, either by internal moral views either by law and a secular government, the religious fanaticism flourish, and destroys country future.
A good example is the catholic Spain, were the kings allowed unchecked development of catholic church, in order to control a highly fragmented territory.
The catholic church first persecuted the muslims and the jews, the minorities who could challenge the official doctrine. The after finish with them it started to persecute the internal free thinkers, and Spain from a leader among nations is now a follower.
I wonder what will happened if all religious acts will take place indoors.
They will be bloody religious ceremonies like Ashura? With the occasion of Ashura some shia muslims flog and cut themselves in public.
(If you want to see more gruesome images it is follow the link)
Let's imagine that the Ashura ceremony will be indoors.
I imagine a believer cutting once, twice, and then realizing that it is not necessary to cut deep, and then one day he will realize that is not necessary to cut at all, because you don't have to prove your faith to anyone.
(I think french done right baning of all religious symbols in public space. They prevented having Ashura on Champs Elysee)
But let's come back to secular England, ruled by head of Church of England, and were the atheist Derren Brown says that religion is useless.
Recent discoveries show that the people are ruled by emotions.
This is not a bad thing: suppose you see a man laying on the street unconscious.
The mind will tell you to avoid to get in trouble (it could be an insane that pretends to be helpless in order to attack people), but the heart tell you to help him, after all it is human as you are
.(If he is dead the mind will tell you to take his money because he doesn't need them, but your moral grounds will stop you, if you have any.)
Without the feelings a society won't work, because you cannot have a social care system to help everybody, and you cannot have a police to prevent everybody from stealing.
They are also negative feelings like rage, lust, greed and envy. Feelings that have produced many literary works alongside many personal and public tragedies (see Shakespeare for reference).
So for your own and common good we must damp the negative feelings and increase the positive ones.
Let's look at the religion and how the religion solve this problem.
All religions have meditation/prayer techniques that have proved successful in reducing stress and anger.
All religions encourage charity: first toward the clergy, then to the believers, then to the non believers and last to the infidels.Giving charity increase social bonds between people, and increase well being of the donor because he feels that he has money. (Here there are big differences between religions, in some clergy is very rich, other don't give anything to not believers, other persecute infidels).
All religions have period of fasting from food, from sex or other pleasurable things. This increase self control.
We could say that religion if it used for your own wellbeing and not for proving something or for converting and controlling , is a psychotherapy for the masses.
Mr. Derren Brown claimed in the show that religion is fake and useless.
Useless?
In the same show 2 teams were assigned the same task: make a difficult test and report voluntarily their mistakes:
To one team it was suggested existence of supernatural (They told them that in the old armchair from the room sits the ghost of an old lady whom died.)
In the control group 3 of 4 people cheated, in the group primed with supernatural fact, all the participants were honest.
So a simple ghost story increased ethics with 75%.
Imagine if we apply a complex religion to the whole world:
75% of the total population (7 billion) is 5.25 billion people who behave more ethic.If we save a dollar for each, we have a gain of 5.25 billion dollars just because people believe in supernatural and they are behaving more ethic.
Mr. Brown is so rich that he consider 5 billion dollars not useful?
In my opinion the main downside of religion it is the social part.
Because in religion many people are participating, a competition between believers starts to form, and if this t competition is not checked, either by internal moral views either by law and a secular government, the religious fanaticism flourish, and destroys country future.
A good example is the catholic Spain, were the kings allowed unchecked development of catholic church, in order to control a highly fragmented territory.
The catholic church first persecuted the muslims and the jews, the minorities who could challenge the official doctrine. The after finish with them it started to persecute the internal free thinkers, and Spain from a leader among nations is now a follower.
I wonder what will happened if all religious acts will take place indoors.
They will be bloody religious ceremonies like Ashura? With the occasion of Ashura some shia muslims flog and cut themselves in public.
Let's imagine that the Ashura ceremony will be indoors.
I imagine a believer cutting once, twice, and then realizing that it is not necessary to cut deep, and then one day he will realize that is not necessary to cut at all, because you don't have to prove your faith to anyone.
(I think french done right baning of all religious symbols in public space. They prevented having Ashura on Champs Elysee)
But let's come back to secular England, ruled by head of Church of England, and were the atheist Derren Brown says that religion is useless.
Recent discoveries show that the people are ruled by emotions.
This is not a bad thing: suppose you see a man laying on the street unconscious.
The mind will tell you to avoid to get in trouble (it could be an insane that pretends to be helpless in order to attack people), but the heart tell you to help him, after all it is human as you are
.(If he is dead the mind will tell you to take his money because he doesn't need them, but your moral grounds will stop you, if you have any.)
Without the feelings a society won't work, because you cannot have a social care system to help everybody, and you cannot have a police to prevent everybody from stealing.
They are also negative feelings like rage, lust, greed and envy. Feelings that have produced many literary works alongside many personal and public tragedies (see Shakespeare for reference).
So for your own and common good we must damp the negative feelings and increase the positive ones.
Let's look at the religion and how the religion solve this problem.
All religions have meditation/prayer techniques that have proved successful in reducing stress and anger.
All religions encourage charity: first toward the clergy, then to the believers, then to the non believers and last to the infidels.Giving charity increase social bonds between people, and increase well being of the donor because he feels that he has money. (Here there are big differences between religions, in some clergy is very rich, other don't give anything to not believers, other persecute infidels).
All religions have period of fasting from food, from sex or other pleasurable things. This increase self control.
We could say that religion if it used for your own wellbeing and not for proving something or for converting and controlling , is a psychotherapy for the masses.
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