The Need To Worship

[steve_bank]

Maybe it is genetic.

Joseph Campbell called the Christian god the top alpha male. The president becomes the alpha to his party amd mst get in lie to some degree. In the extreme Trump and republicans.

If not a god then a place or something natural.

'Nature lovers', those who go beyond practical environmental concerns and elevate natural reality to a god like status. Imbuing nature with human qualities.

In Australia a sacred mountain to the aborigines.

To Native Americans every once in a while complaints of violating a lpace scared to them.

 

[Gnostic Christian Bishop]

Maybe it is genetic.

Joseph Campbell called the Christian god the top alpha male. The president becomes the alpha to his party amd mst get in lie to some degree. In the extreme Trump and republicans.

If not a god then a place or something natural.

'Nature lovers', those who go beyond practical environmental concerns and elevate natural reality to a god like status. Imbuing nature with human qualities.

In Australia a sacred mountain to the aborigines.

To Native Americans every once in a while complaints of violating a lpace scared to them.

Tribalism and religious tendencies are synonymous to me and we express these needs with our desire for fellowship.

No?

Regards
DL

 

[Rhea]

What’s interesting to me is the difference between needing beliefs and needing to worship.

I am utterly befuddled by people who like to worship others. Whether it’s god(dess)(es) or people. I just am plumb flummoxed. It doesn’t compute.

In no small part because I have never ever, not once, ever, have met a person who liked to be worshipped who was a nice person.

So by the commutative property of relationships, I cannot imagine wanting to worship a person (or being) because if they liked it, they would be a horrible person (being), and if they didn’t like it, I’m a jerk for doing it.

So it just leaves me completely perplexed every time some religionist talks about worship with that faraway look and the bit of drool at their lip.

 

[steve_bank]

I love trees and r trees love me.

The sun gives me warmth, it loves me and I love the sun.

I love Jesus and Jesus loves me.

The general psychology -- I worship and love my beliefs, my beliefs give me love. The perceptions of love are primarily inducing endorphins and serotonin in the brain.

Experimentally demonstrated with the placebo effect. Beliefs and worship are placebo effect. The effect is enhanced by group think.

In an experiment a neuro scientist was doing brain scans on the relgious contemplating god and such. Uninettionaly he has secular scientists in control group.

Religius contemplatinggod and the secular contemplating the cosmos lit up the same area in the brain.

 

[steve_bank]

What’s interesting to me is the difference between needing beliefs and needing to worship.

I am utterly befuddled by people who like to worship others. Whether it’s god(dess)(es) or people. I just am plumb flummoxed. It doesn’t compute.

In no small part because I have never ever, not once, ever, have met a person who liked to be worshipped who was a nice person.

So by the commutative property of relationships, I cannot imagine wanting to worship a person (or being) because if they liked it, they would be a horrible person (being), and if they didn’t like it, I’m a jerk for doing it.

So it just leaves me completely perplexed every time some religionist talks about worship with that faraway look and the bit of drool at their lip.

I suspect it may be genetic. With wolves and chimps there are alphas and followers. Comfort in knowing one's position and obligations.

Watch Hitler's speeches online and pay attention to the faces of the crowds.

 

[Rhea]

What’s interesting to me is the difference between needing beliefs and needing to worship.

I am utterly befuddled by people who like to worship others. Whether it’s god(dess)(es) or people. I just am plumb flummoxed. It doesn’t compute.

In no small part because I have never ever, not once, ever, have met a person who liked to be worshipped who was a nice person.

So by the commutative property of relationships, I cannot imagine wanting to worship a person (or being) because if they liked it, they would be a horrible person (being), and if they didn’t like it, I’m a jerk for doing it.

So it just leaves me completely perplexed every time some religionist talks about worship with that faraway look and the bit of drool at their lip.

I suspect it may be genetic. With wolves and chimps there are alphas and followers. Comfort in knowing one's position and obligations.

Watch Hitler's speeches online and pay attention to the faces of the crowds.

Oh, I know they exist.

It just plumb evades me why they don’t feel uncomfortable in it.

 

[steve_bank]

Not believing in the supernatural, the answer has to be in brain chemistry. The Sherlock Holmes method, when you eliminate the improbable, whatever is left has to be the answer.

When a new pope is elected, people cry in St Peter's Square.

The mystery is how and why some of us end up outside of it. I went to Catholic schools for 12 years and it did not take root.

From a report on China, the Chinese people have taken to call the Chinese president 'the leader' with all that implies.

The mastery is how some of us end up outside of it. I went to Catholic schools for 12 years and it did nt take.

In pop culture there are personality cults. Musicians, athletes, and actors. People made Bob Dylan into a New Age prophet. When he went electric at the New[port Folk Festival he disillusioned his folk-hero worshippers.

 

[rousseau]

Having something/someone to follow gives us a sense of structure over top of what is a chaotic and meaningless world. It feels good to be a part of a community with a common purpose, which provides obvious survival advantages, and so therefore is likely embedded in our psychology. It also feels good to believe that there is a locus of control in the world.

I mentioned in another thread that the core driver of this is likely the initial point - building a comfortable facade over bare reality, that nature is hostile.

 

[steve_bank]

Having something/someone to follow gives us a sense of structure over top of what is a chaotic and meaningless world. It feels good to be a part of a community with a common purpose, which provides obvious survival advantages, and so therefore is likely embedded in our psychology. It also feels good to believe that there is a locus of control in the world.

I mentioned in another thread that the core driver of this is likely the initial point - building a comfortable facade over bare reality, that nature is hostile.

I think you hit it. Religion provides structure in a chaotic world that mekes no sense.

Maybe that is why the Brits hang onto the royals.

 

[rousseau]

Having something/someone to follow gives us a sense of structure over top of what is a chaotic and meaningless world. It feels good to be a part of a community with a common purpose, which provides obvious survival advantages, and so therefore is likely embedded in our psychology. It also feels good to believe that there is a locus of control in the world.

I mentioned in another thread that the core driver of this is likely the initial point - building a comfortable facade over bare reality, that nature is hostile.

I think you hit it. Religion provides structure in a chaotic world that mekes no sense.

Maybe that is why the Brits hang onto the royals.

More broadly than religion you could call it philosophy and ideology. Feminism, Marxism, Objectivism, Racism, and on and on, all conceptual frameworks that we land on that have us avoid engaging with the world more deeply.

 

[ideologyhunter]

Erich Fromm, with The True Believer (1951), hit a lot of points that explain the need to worship in the context of fanaticism. He described the personality types that are attracted to mass movements, and how they cling to the structure and mission such movements bring them. He notably pointed out the interchangeability of commitment to mass movements -- i.e., if you're Tex Watson or Susan Atkins, you can switch from Manson to Jesus and be just as fervent in your declarations.
I'm like Rhea above -- I can't for the life of me feel those feelings or understand that much about them. I have born again cousins who live in a dream world that is filled with compelling characters that they believe to be real, and whom they venerate. This fantasy animates their lives, hour by hour. They can't write me a social card or complete a phone call without some reference to their fantasies. Of course they've pushed this stuff on their kids and grandkids; no escape for the young, unless they have a strong inward questioning sense or, like me, a strong shot of cynicism. (One of my cousins studied a Bruegel print I have on my library wall, The Triumph of Death, and commented finally, "But I don't see a Christian message in this." This could've been a For-Fucks-Sake moment, but I restrained myself. There's no use confronting fanatics.)

 

[Gnostic Christian Bishop]

What’s interesting to me is the difference between needing beliefs and needing to worship.

I am utterly befuddled by people who like to worship others. Whether it’s god(dess)(es) or people. I just am plumb flummoxed. It doesn’t compute.

In no small part because I have never ever, not once, ever, have met a person who liked to be worshipped who was a nice person.

So by the commutative property of relationships, I cannot imagine wanting to worship a person (or being) because if they liked it, they would be a horrible person (being), and if they didn’t like it, I’m a jerk for doing it.

So it just leaves me completely perplexed every time some religionist talks about worship with that faraway look and the bit of drool at their lip.

If I am remotely correct, they idol worship to get close and depose whoever is seen as the best. of fittest.

I have a new O.P. on this.

https://talkfreethought.org/showthr...me-of-desire-is-to-be-named-the-Greatest-I-am

Regards
DL

 

[Gnostic Christian Bishop]

Having something/someone to follow gives us a sense of structure over top of what is a chaotic and meaningless world. It feels good to be a part of a community with a common purpose, which provides obvious survival advantages, and so therefore is likely embedded in our psychology. It also feels good to believe that there is a locus of control in the world.

I mentioned in another thread that the core driver of this is likely the initial point - building a comfortable facade over bare reality, that nature is hostile.

Nature is hostile to life that is not the fittest.

It is anything but hostile to the fittest. It is a challenge for us to show our fitness.

Nature demonstrably creates for the best possible end.

The gods on offer should be so good.

Regards
DL

 

[Gnostic Christian Bishop]

Having something/someone to follow gives us a sense of structure over top of what is a chaotic and meaningless world. It feels good to be a part of a community with a common purpose, which provides obvious survival advantages, and so therefore is likely embedded in our psychology. It also feels good to believe that there is a locus of control in the world.

I mentioned in another thread that the core driver of this is likely the initial point - building a comfortable facade over bare reality, that nature is hostile.

I think you hit it. Religion provides structure in a chaotic world that mekes no sense.

Maybe that is why the Brits hang onto the royals.

??

The world makes sense. Ask any scholar.

What do you see amiss, given that we are to continue competing to evolve to our fittest?

I seer things being as close to perfection as our history allows.

It is demonstrable that we live in the best of all possible worlds, because it is the only possible world, given our history.

Regards
DL

 

[steve_bank]

Amen brother Gnostic..Amen!!! Tell man, tell it..the truth brother.

By the way what do yiu mean by perfection? Asa secular science person evolution made us what we are, natural as rocks and water.


Seeing reality as 'perfection' is just another mind created delusion. Refresh my memory, what is that word for attributing human feelings onto reality? Anthropomorphize or something like that maybe ? Attributing human qualities to inanimate reality.

Just another form of self worship. Christians worship god that is a perfection of the human male patriarch.

Again you are no different than Christians.

As to perfectin, that would imply an active creator with intent, a designer.

As I say to Christians, if god created the universe he did a lousy job. Extinction level asteroid strikes, super nova, gamma ray bursts that could destroy life on Earth, storms, plagues, earthquakes.

Christian say god as creator is demonstrable, you say your view is. I am sooooo confusers I don't know know what to belive.

Not my idea of perfection.

How woud you know it is perfection, by what objective standard?

 

[Gnostic Christian Bishop]

"Again you are no different than Christians"

They honor genocide, homophobia and misogyny.

[removed]
Regards
DL

 

[steve_bank]

What is perfection? Sounds like a self serving myth. Nature is perfect, all things are as perfect as can be, therefore I am perfect.

God and Jesus are perfect, I am made in god's image.

Are you familiar with the American philosopher P.E. Sailor who once exclaimed "I am what I am!". He along with Bunney shaped the thinking of my generation. We are what we are.

Plants should be considered with respect for the simple fact we depend on them for life. Nothing mystical about that unless yiu make it so.

 

[Gnostic Christian Bishop]

What is perfection? Sounds like a self serving myth. Nature is perfect, all things are as perfect as can be, therefore I am perfect.

God and Jesus are perfect, I am made in god's image.

Are you familiar with the American philosopher P.E. Sailor who once exclaimed "I am what I am!". He along with Bunney shaped the thinking of my generation. We are what we are.

Plants should be considered with respect for the simple fact we depend on them for life. Nothing mystical about that unless yiu make it so.

He must have been a Gnostic.

Regards
DL

 

[DBT]

If Yahweh is relegated to the status of evil demiurge....how does that resolve the PoE?

 

[steve_bank]

What is perfection? Sounds like a self serving myth. Nature is perfect, all things are as perfect as can be, therefore I am perfect.

God and Jesus are perfect, I am made in god's image.

Are you familiar with the American philosopher P.E. Sailor who once exclaimed "I am what I am!". He along with Bunney shaped the thinking of my generation. We are what we are.

Plants should be considered with respect for the simple fact we depend on them for life. Nothing mystical about that unless yiu make it so.

He must have been a Gnostic.

Regards
DL

Running low on things to say?