Have we reached a point where all new religions are delusional cults that exist purely for the sake of radicalising thought?
Unlike the old ones?
but anon religions have always been delusional cults
Nah we reached the point where religion is useless unless you are a radical. Technology and government have cucked all territory that used to belong to skydaddy.
>>69332110
Old relgions actually made a huge amount of sense back in their day.
Take, for example, pork being haram.
Pork is a relatively dangerous meat, so it makes sense to discourage the consumption of it.
And Christianity was the basis for much of our modern values.
>>69332110
>>69332195
>>69332258
Have fun burning in Hell for all eternity just because you wanted to appear cool and hip :''''')
>>69332071
History student here.
I don't think their real purpose is to radicalize thought, but to control the poor/ignorant, this is by giving some meaning to their lifes and stopping them from seeing the pointlessness of everything (like, a numbing pleasure away from nihilism).
Many poor/ignorant people endure hardship and shit believing they'll be rewarded in heaven, afterlife, reincarnation, whatever, this seems to be a topic in many religions. 'The kingdom of heavens belong to the poor' 'If you are a loyal believer, you will be rewarded no matter what you get through'.
If you take that out, and the poor/neglected/abused realize this is their only life, and stop being kept in ignorance, they won't take shit anymore, which is 'bad' for society, since for the gears of society to turn there has always been the need of the 'lower' classes carrying on with the heaviest/shittiest work, mostly unrewarded and bordering on slavery, or even getting resources (money, belongings, land, etc) on behest of a leader or god.
Then comes spreading/evangelization/whatever, because there's many other religions and societies, and this 'heterogeneous' environment is bad for a given religion's/society's interests, so there's a need to get a bigger follower base to cement a religion/society as more believable or solid and get ahead of the others (since every religion/society has its own particular interests, sometimes mutual, and sometimes conflicting with other religions/societies interests).
Radicalization comes afterwards, which is a case of 'extreme' spreading/evangelization, in which if a society/religion feels threatened, diminishing, or at risk of being discredited, they take their fodder/poor/ignorant and make them believe other religions/societies (or even anything that doesn't agree with them) are enemies.
I believe this apply to all religions, old and new.
>>69332258
>>69332890
So, modern science and technology and less ignorance threatens religions, which make them become more radical in their spreading to survive.
>>69332633
All the cool people are in hell anyways
>>69332890
drunk bum here...
if you roll, maybe you beat me...
ha!
>>69332890
That raises an interesting idea, all religions go against nihilism, but what if there was a religion which embraced it?
It could become important in the far future.
Say, the situation where some very skilled soldier has been cloned a hundred times, each clone being sent to certain death but with one definite survivor: A strongly nihilistic religion would say that the deaths of the clones are meaningless if there's still one copy to carry that person's information.
>>69333237
Library computer?
>>69333237
hue
>>69333386
I think it would be just disregarded as mere 'atheism', without the benefits that a nihilistic point of view can bring, and we already know how it goes for the atheists when it comes to facing those whose beliefs of afterlife/reincarnation/heaven/religious reward/etc feel threatened, which practically is the majority, the bulk of society.
I believe the intrinsic fear of death (conscious or not) is so big that it would be really hard for most people for give up their own life for whatever reason, even knowing that there'll be an exact copy preserved.
>>69332436
Pagans in Europe werent lawless savages before Christianity. Those values were already there. Take Rome for example
>>69333386
Being monkeys with a relatively high level of awareness and understanding is headache inducing when you try to find meaning, and terrible when you start believing there's none (like, being conscious can be fucking burdensome).
I think religion's purpose is to give meaning, or take away the burden from a person from finding and validating it, even if that means the person will live deluded.
A religion that embraces nihilism sounds like an oxymoron to me. The proper way to put it would be a society in which there's not a religion, but the strong belief that this is our only life and there's no particular mysticism about it, and after becoming aware of that (which may be awful for some), start becoming more efficient, focused, doing things knowing that this is it, and making it worthwhile.
>>69334166
That doesn't make sense though.
>"decide that life is meaningless"
>"carry on as normal, making the most of it"
Honestly, the best approach is to decide that it's impossible to tell how meaningless life is, because the workings of the universe are weird as hell given that our most fundamental understanding of physics still leaves us with 17 arbitrary particles all with an arbitrary origin.
>>69334430
yeah, but what I mean with "making the most of it" even if one believes that it adds up to nothing and that awareness stops at death, is to IDK man, have some pleasure, some hedonism, learn stuff, further the progress of society, do things even if you believe there's no meaning in the long run, but doing it at least just to see how far can we get with it heh
Some people are like, if then everything is meaningless, and if awareness disappears at death, why pursue science, why write books, why learn, why experience stuff, why do shit, why live, if in the long run it becomes nothing, matter degenerates, protons may decay, the universe may go on forever expanding until either its heat death or a big rip (or a fucking big crunch, who knows heh)
But then, why not? Even if one believes that everything is meaningless, or at least that there's no mysticism or purpose or meaning or reason to do and to be, that shouldn't stop us from trying to make our brief awareness as enjoyable or full of experiences as possible.
But yeah as you say its better to not think how meaningless life is, I agree with you that the current state of physics is weird as hell and it will only get more convoluted with time (specially since there's a lot of physics fields which are increasingly getting outside of the measurable or testable and becoming more mathematical, or even philosophical) (I mean, fucking string theory. As if the standard model wasn't weird enough but at least observable). I wish I had more time to study physics, was doing it as a minor but time made me drop out of it...
