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The evolution of religion: Why belief systems are literally false and metaphorically true . .

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skado 9 Apr 19
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Cause humans enjoy fairytales??? 😂

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I can't because the flaws in it can not be from a supreme being so it is flawed

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I believe that to some extent that statement has some truth, but is an overstatement about the virtues of its metaphor. The literal aspect is what prevents it from vetting itself and self-correcting as science and political discourse can. The literal aspect aids compliance, but fosters intolerance. And it's ossified nature comprises the truths of it's metaphor. What may have once contributed to our advancement is now one of our biggest hindrances. Unless we wish to be complacent with our current state, instead of humanity reaching its full potential, literal falsehoods must abandoned and replaced by open inquiry. And then we can keep the metaphor which still holds value, throw out the ones which don't, and perhaps create some new ones.

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Is this like when Jesus returns riding that white horse in the sky and he has angels with him and they are ready for that last battle? Certainly this is a metaphor but the Evangelicals take it literally. I tell my religious friend this is impossible and he tells me that isn't what the scripture really meant. OK, what did it mean? The term "the heavens" and a place called heaven are different things. Why would you believe in the place called heaven if it has walls and a large pearly gate? Yes, even in heaven god is protecting you from enemies.

Religion has evolved enough in my lifetime and I have witnessed a lot of it. Now will it please just evolve itself away into the myth that it is. Most of the other religions are becoming myth except for the Christians and Muslims. Nobody rose from the dead and nobody flew to heaven on a winged horse.

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Skado, I believe you are getting a bit lazy. Why didn't you give us a direct link?

"Despite the fact that human beings think that they have escaped the evolutionary paradigm, they’ve done nothing of the kind, and so we should expect the belief systems that people hold to mirror the evolutionary interests that people have," Weinstein says.

You would think, but I'm not sure I agree with the last part of this statement. Perhaps when we as a species do something unforgivable, evolutionary lineage stops. I can't wait around to watch, though.

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A few lines from Denis Diderot:

"Men will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest."

and

"It is very important not to mistake hemlock for parsley, but to believe or not believe in God is not important at all."

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Equally often metaphorically false as well.

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As long as it evolves into extinction, I'm all for it.

and then the end will come, after He has destroyed all rulers, and powers, and authority i mean whaddya want eh

@bbyrd009 some reality?

@Mofo1953 ah sorry, in English that means as soon as those who presume to ordain ppl into a religion catch aids and die or whatever, being as they hold themselves to be "authority," then the kingdom will come

@bbyrd009 that's a lot of bs

@Mofo1953 ah well idk, you might be right there, but fwiw now you are posting as the authority, see, "that is"

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Yes, like ancient myths were meant to tell a story deeper than face value, religions perhaps were meant to convey messages beyond the literal word. It's when we take a religious text literally instead of in a literary sense that the world gets a bit out of sync with reality.

Especially true when people just take the religion as passed down from the generations, out of habit, and follow along blindly, without even thinking about whether (and how) it pertains to the world we live in today, as opposed to understanding it in terms of when it was written.

Religious texts are great as for understanding historical events and perhaps the minds of historical figures, but should be left in the historical fiction section, in my opinion.

"It's when we take a religious text literally instead of in a literary sense that the world gets a bit out of sync with reality."
"Religious texts are great as for understanding historical events"

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