Why the world is a better place than before

[Arrian]

[Kidlicious]

Originally posted by BeBro
Prove to me the the main cause for all this was religion.

Oh this is stupid.

[BeBMan]

You need food surplus, but you also need some justification to rule over people.

Like being the avantgarde leading the people into a great future?[

[aneeshm]

Originally posted by Jon Miller

I thought in most old religions that it was only the warriors/etc that were honored in the afterlife. I thought that the poor were their slaves there as well as in this life.

As a member of one of these "old" religions, I find this rather in bad taste.

In the afterlife, you reap what you sowed in the past life, and are then reborn, based on which direction you chose.

So anyone, poor or rich, meek or mighty, Brahmin or Shudra, can go to the same heaven, enjoy the same delights, or go to the same hell, and suffer the same sorrows, as the other, and then come back as someone else, to progress further along the path to enlightenment.

[BeBMan]

Originally posted by Kidicious


Oh this is stupid.

IOW you don't know how to answer it so you call it stupid.

[Arrian]

Originally posted by Kidicious

No Arrian. You need some justification for setting yourself up as an elite. You need food surplus, but you also need some justification to rule over people.

How does this in any way address what I said?

edit: oh, I see. You're hanging your hat on the idea that religion was designed to oppress the masses.

Look, as an atheist myself I think there is some truth to that. But it's a rather shallow analysis to claim that religion is responsible for nothing but death and misery. It's human beings who cause all that, and the religion (as you clearly agree) is merely the justification, not the cause.

-Arrian

[Kidlicious]

Originally posted by aneeshm


Again, I'd disagree. The reason why tribal people in India were simply assimilated into urban life, instead of being wiped out, was because of the osmotic influence of the Vedic religion, which acted as a source of progress and as an agent of change for a very long time to come, and is taking up that role again with respect to society even right now.



I'd say the positives outweighed the negatives.

You have a caste system and almost half of your children suffer from malnutrition. What progress? What benefit?

[Kidlicious]

Originally posted by BeBro


IOW you don't know how to answer it so you call it stupid.

More like I don't know where to begin, and that would probabaly be a different thread.

[aneeshm]

Originally posted by Kidicious


A very good and informative post. However, I don't see how that tells us why the society transformed from hunter-gatherer.

I was trying to address a different point you made, regarding your opinion that religion acted only as a retardant, or only as a negative influence. It was a Brahminical, or semi-religious tradition, which was the one which created this economic guidebook. The motivation was one of the four purusharthas (goals universal to the human condition).


As I said before, the minute the first agricultural society was formed, all hunter-gathering cultures on this Earth were doomed, because they could not compete.

[Kidlicious]

Originally posted by Arrian


How does this in any way address what I said?

edit: oh, I see. You're hanging your hat on the idea that religion was designed to oppress the masses.

Look, as an atheist myself I think there is some truth to that. But it's a rather shallow analysis to claim that religion is responsible for nothing but death and misery. It's human beings who cause all that, and the religion (as you clearly agree) is merely the justification, not the cause.

-Arrian

Good, then you will be the first one to agree with us when we say that communism does not cause suffering, people like Stalin cause suffering.

[Kidlicious]

Originally posted by aneeshm


I was trying to address a different point you made, regarding your opinion that religion acted only as a retardant, or only as a negative influence. It was a Brahminical, or semi-religious tradition, which was the one which created this economic guidebook. The motivation was one of the four purusharthas (goals universal to the human condition).


As I said before, the minute the first agricultural society was formed, all hunter-gathering cultures on this Earth were doomed, because they could not compete.

Ok.

[Arrian]

A bit of both, really. Note that I said that religion was just the excuse, mostly. MOSTLY.

Ditto with communism. There were good intentions there. Unfortunately, when the system was mixed with human beings (what we non-commies refer to as "human nature"), bad things happened. They happened repeatedly - not just under Stalin. This is also true under many other systems (feudal, for instance, and many capitalistic societies).

Basically, people really can suck. Given the opportunity to act like *******s, generally we will.]

Thus, while I'm not religious and generally dislike religion, I must concede that if there had been no religion as we know of it, we humans would've come up with some other reason to fight wars and whatnot.

And that is all I meant when I said human suffering is caused by humans.

-Arrian

[aneeshm]

Originally posted by Kidicious


You have a caste system and almost half of your children suffer from malnutrition. What progress? What benefit?

I'm talking about a rather long time ago, when religion acted as progress, when it motivated progress. Till nearly a thousand years ago, it was a force for good. Since then, it lost touch with reality and the outside world, it decayed, became rigidly conservative, and itself declined. Even during its period of waning, it still acted as an inspiration for many.

I'm trying to say that right about now, it is picking up again, reforming itself, liberalising, and acting once more as a source of progress instead of as a retardant to it.




But the caste system has been outlawed for the past sixty years, and all Hindu organisations have unequivocally rejected it, and whatever does malnutrition have to do with religion?

[LordShiva]

Originally posted by Kidicious
You have a caste system and almost half of your children suffer from malnutrition. What progress? What benefit?

In the Kidiverse, did the people who lived in what is now India never suffer from poverty, starvation, persecution, etc., until Whitey showed up?

[Arrian]

No, that's the aneeshmverse.

-Arrian