posted on May, 3 2010 @ 12:45 AM
My Formulated Opinion:
The purpose of religion is the same purpose that science serves in relation to human beings.
In the beginning of time, before science and observation through technology, humans created their own explanations about how the world worked, aka
mythology, metaphors, and various allegorical stories.
This explaining of the world around them was a natural part of the humans intrinsic desire to attain knowledge. The knowledge I speak of is the
knowledge of origin and reality. People created these ideas because with the knowledge laid before them we were able to advance and grow, holding onto
these beliefs to give us a purpose and further understanding of who and what we are. Language also played a huge role in how we began to use thoughts
with words to shape the way we viewed the world around us.
Over a period of time we began to explain the world around us using inferences made with the discoveries found through observation with technology.
This philosophy of nature and the world around us was given the name "science." Over time we use the anomalies discovered within our current
paradigms of the age to either expand and further explain our findings within the paradigm, shedding new light to our current beliefs, or through
destroying the original paradigm and moving on to new systems of belief. When we break out of our current paradigms we experience what many have
called throughout the centuries as "enlightenment." This process begins with the culmination of thought pertaining to the philosophy of reality.
With the new scientific knowledge, and new paradigm to work in, the world as we view it entirely takes on a new form, and society evolves with it.
Back to Religion:
When all of this began to occur, there was a divide in the way of thinking leading some to embrace, maintain, and even prefer their original ideas of
myth and legend to the new developments of science. The reason why people cling to these beliefs is simple: the eldest of the society have experienced
a lifetime thinking in one way, and would rather die believing what they've always known (who wouldn't?) The generations younger than that who
believe these ideas do so out of genetics, their own upbringing, and life experiences.
So essentially what we can conclude is that science and religion serve the same core value to all humans, as before science advanced our ways of
thinking, most all society embraced the values of their respective cultures and schools of thought.
Let's shift this conversation now the modern day:
Our educational process is filled with subjective learning and knowledge. There is no learning about science, what it means, how it started, what its
goals are. You simply learn what you're told are facts. Beginning with the Aristotelian/Ptolemaic school of thought we progressed through the
Renaissance with the Copernican Revolution. Two hundred years later we enter the Newtonian Age of Science, to be followed again in two hundred years
with the Einsteinian Age, which lasted all up through the forties, where the newest forms of science exist in the areas of wave mechanics, quantum
physics, quark theory, and string theory. Every single time society enters a new age of science, it takes time for the philosophy of reality to
emerge, but when it does people eventually spread these new ideas and ways of thinking. However, throughout history there have been two main enemies
to this process. Our good old friends of science, government and religion. Now depending on specific religious beliefs, you might find that ancient
ways of thinking connect with the newer forms of philosophy on reality, which had to do with chakra, energy, and waves. My point is that religion
fears new scientific developments because there is always even more potential to damage or take away from its established "legitimacy." (ex. not
believing humanity was the center of the universe)
--- BREAK