[lit-ideas] Re: Bizarre Faith
- From: Paul Stone <pas@xxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Thu, 04 Nov 2004 12:48:30 -0500
At 12:19 PM 11/4/2004, you wrote:
>If there aren't religions to choose from, people develope them. A way of
>explaining the mysterious and frightening. Religion, I think, is
>our attempt
>to tell ourselves a story to make sense out of things, like a
>Mother tells her
>child a story at night wherein the bad guys lose and the good guys win, to
>help the child to feel all will be well. A kid's plea for a story at night
>comes from the same place in us that desires explanations for death and pain
>and everything else we grapple with that's bigger than us. If there's no
>....
>rhyme or reason, system, set of rules or way we can appease the powers or
>attempt to sway them.... we are too loosely flung in the universe. We
>psychologically need a tether. We are powerless over certain things --
>natural
>disaster, disease, death. If there can be some power greater than us
>that *does*
>have power over what we are powerless over, we want to know about it and
>petition aid or attempt to sway the forces that be in our interests. I
>love the
>way two books approach this -- Joseph Campbell's "Power of Myth" and "Why
>God
>Won't Go Away: Brain Science & the Biology of Belief" by Newberg & D'Aquili
>(I've mentioned it here before, but don't know if anyone else here has read
>it -- I thought it quite fascinating).
Ookay, that's a reason why we NEED to believe, but why do we believe? I
mean really, as Campbell points out, it's kid stuff. And I'm not talking
about people believing in God or being spiritual. I'm asking why people
actually let religion RULE their lives? Why is that?
paul
##########
Paul Stone
pas@xxxxxxxx
Kingsville, ON, Canada
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