Thinking about religion

[andrewducker]

I'd been thinking about religion and its origins (something which occasionally springs to mind, and was pushed thataway this time by Douglas Adams in one of the essays in Salmon of Doubt). I was, as per usual, writing an LJ entry in my head as a background task.

And then I bumped into this, which obviated any need for me to write anything at all:

I finished reading VALIS by Phillip K. Dick last night (which I neither loved nor hated, despite predictions) and formulated my own theory of myth (which I’m sure has been formulated by others many times over). Western myths, it seems to me, assume the following:

1) Death is scary.

2) The world is horrible and imperfect.

3) Humans are special.

4) Since humans are special and the world is horrible and imperfect, something has clearly Gone Wrong.

5) Someone who isn’t us will fix this.

That’s the 200+ pages of revelation of VALIS, pretty much in a nutshell. Oh, it’s a pretty entertaining time getting there, but that’s the gist of it. In all its talk of pink lasers, rock star messiahs, living information, escape from time, and such, the driving theological/mythological idea is, “Something is Wrong and someone needs to fix it.”

You can find the rest here, if you're interested in VALIS, or the myths people create to make themselves feel better.

Comments

[adders.livejournal.com]

I find it fascinating, because religion really isn't about life after death and Christianity certainly isn't about things being someone else's problem. Quite the reverse in fact.

Still, uniformed pontificating about things people, at best, half-understand is what the internet if for, right?

[andrewducker]

Religion (including Christianity), to many people, is about the comfort of life after death. And also about the fact that there is someone out there, above us, who we can turn to. That being, after all, what both prayer and hymns are about.

[octopoid-horror.livejournal.com]

Plenty of hymns are about celebrating life, yourself and each other.

Item five is often predicated on things being fixed only for those who believe and do everything right, so it'll still suck for those damn unbelievers.

I don't know many people who say "I believe in God, so I'll be okay". I do know/have known some who say things that can be summarised as "I believe in God and do/don't do X, Y and Z so I'll be fine"

[andrewducker]

Well, duh. Just because there _is_ someone who can sort everything out, it doesn't mean they will. Or that _everyone_ will be ok. God (or whoever) has to be able to do so, for the religion to work in the first plce, but if the religion is going to (a) work as a force for social control and (b) fit with people's moral beliefs then salvation has to only be for those that act within prescribed rules.