How Can Billions Of People Be Wrong ? Ego

[Donald]

This question has always haunted me . How can entire institutions and societies be totally wrong ? Wrong not in the sense that I'm right , wrong in the sense that this humanly made structures do not realize the damage in the long run . What is religion ? I will quote Durkheim " A religion is a unified system of beliefs and practices relative to sacred things " . Believe it or not but religion is the foundation of modern societies , it helped hunter - gatherer groups to be cohesive and strive and it helped most of "modern" societies keep a unified system of beliefs / symbols . Religion kept societies together .Now that was sociology , let's take a look at " group selection", it is the same idea of evolution but in a wider sense , that of the group rather than the individual .In a evolutionary context it would make sense that the most cohesive /cooperative groups will have the bigger chances of survival .It means that now people have to stick together in order to survive ,now lets go back to Durkheim " a unified system of beliefs and practices ", that's what kept groups together . But why religion ? Well because almost every religion offers the distinction between the profane and the sacred . what is profane and what is sacred ? It all boils down to "disgust" ... just stick with me !!!                                                 Humans are omnivore , it means that we need to learn what to eat . Let's take again evolution into account , it would make sense that humans will use disgust as a defense mechanism against bacteria and disease , so disgust evolved with humans to help them distinguish " clean " and " polluted " . 

"We are 90 % chimps and 10 % bees " a quote I read on Jonathan Haidt 's book The Righteous Mind . Humans are groupish but when it comes to the" outgroup "we can be pretty " cruel " . Evolution structured us to be groupish  , my group , my city , my team , my nation , my religion etc . Our moral is organized upon experience and since we are social creatures , our society shapes our morality . To close it , there is nothing wrong with religion per se , but when we take religion as an ingroup thing we start to act  with " cruelty " upon the outgroup . And if you thing that something is right becasuse the majority said so , well go and read about " groupthink" . 

P.s : I don't claim to be right , I just want to see where my rationality will take me . 

Edited September 11, 2016 by Donald

[Empty]

No one is right. No one is wrong. Some live. Some don't. Simple as that. 

When I look at my religious father, or my religious neighbors, I see people who are living a simple life and happy about it, but as soon as I mention to them that things are waaay bigger than they think, they become biased, and they even get angry at me. So, I realize that their spiritual practices are great, but LIMITING at the same time as long as they think they are the only right people, or the "CHOSEN ONES" And I still don't understand ego very well 

[Donald]

@Muhammad When it comes to religion it's not enough to see at the individual level , religion is a social thing, it is not only about ego / individual . 

[philosogi]

@Donald This could be a good place to investigate.

http://www.npr.org/sections/13.7/2016/09/06/492779594/what-if-evolution-bred-reality-out-of-us

[Prabhaker]

No society wants you to become wise: it is against the investment of all societies. If people are wise they cannot be exploited. If they are intelligent they cannot be subjugated, they cannot be forced in a mechanical life, to live like robots. They will assert their individuality. They will have the fragrance of rebellion around them. They will like to live in freedom. Freedom comes with wisdom, intrinsically. They are inseparable, and no society wants people to be free. The communist society, the fascist society, the capitalist society, the Hindu, the Mohammedan, the Christian — no society — would like people to use their own intelligence because the moment they start using their intelligence they become dangerous — dangerous to the establishment, dangerous to the people who are in power, dangerous to the ‘haves’; dangerous to all kinds of oppression, exploitation, suppression; dangerous to the churches, dangerous to the states, dangerous to the nations. In fact, a wise man is afire, alive, aflame. But he cannot sell his life, he cannot serve them. He would like rather to die than to be enslaved.