Citation needed, massively!
If anything, the powerful technology and knowledge we now wield (weapons of mass destruction, mass surveillance, modern logistics and coordination, global communications) only makes it more important that we don't forget the hard-earned scoial and moral lessons of our pre-scientific ancestors - lessons that were often encoded in evolving cultural systems like religion.
Nobody was making the argument that extremely specific religious quirks like this are encode knowledge important to the wise use of modern technology.
It doesn't make the discourse more interesting or enlightening, and frankly doesn't belong on this site.
Of course it's not everything, but I don't think humanism on its own would work without an older religion as its "bootstrap".
I feel like if you squint a little you can see all the positive-memetic adaptations that get bolted on to organised religion.
A commandment to “worship no other god but me” is a classic example of something that seems less like profound revelation and more like an effective memetic adaptation.
UsefulChart's video on humanism may help. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UWhz3SXPWkg
Absolutely not, because the fitness, in an evolutionary sense, of those memes does not correlate with their truthfulness but with how easy they are to believe because they appeal to our fears, hopes and dreams.
Take that "life after death" trope. The hard truth is that there isn't any, when you die, everything that made up "you" will be gone for good. But no religion based on that truth would ever thrive because the thought is just too scary and bleak.
If he isn't, then he's a powerful (yet imaginary) social construct that has evolved over the past 4,000 years to encode the wisdom of many past generations through a set of rules and stories that happen to match up with the stories and rules of many other cultures. It's also an incredibly fast and low-cost way to reach a solution.
Either way, there's definitely some validity to the claims of any major religion.
The Atlantic slave trade started in the 1500s and ended in the 1800s. Even then, it was controversial and faces opposition from certain Church groups (while getting support from others).
Vilification of gays based on Christian religious grounds apparently goes back to the 11th century (based on a quick read of Wikipedia, TBF), and is only starting to come undone now. I don't really have an answer for this, it was unfortunate.
I don't see how those high-level values help in solving modern crises of global scale. Believers searching for specific advise on modern day problems need to work hard and read though a lot of "code" to find a few nuggets - ultimately failing to get satisfying specific answers.
If I do a web search on what the bible says to homosexuality, for instance, I get walls of text discussing precious few bible verses. In my view what religion does here is allow those in charge to enforce their individual preferences and opinions on their believers by means of laying out suitable interpretations of the code. This does more harm than good.
The other context is as a tribal marker, for practical purposes. In this context, the “religiousness” is not about agreeing with the set of assumptions, but pretending to agree and/or going through the motions of various customs as a signal of how committed they are to the tribe.
In societies where individuals need to rely less on the tribe, it might be posited that there is less reason for people to put on a show for the latter reason, so they can afford to be less “religious”. So if, on average, children of Christians are more likely to be economically independent, then they may tend to being less religious, and children of Muslims, who are more likely to be economically dependent on each other, tend to be more religious.
"Humanism" highly correlates with lock sales worldwide as far as I can tell. It's not defense at all vs drug addiction. Humans feel great when drugged up.
Answering questions like "where did we come from" and "where are we going" have always existed. Passing knowledge down through generations has always existed. Treating these stories as gospel makes little sense to me.
WTF? "Skeptical", probably not "accurate"?
You have to be absolutely nuts to think that they're even remotely true.
I don't believe Noah lived for 1000 years and had 2 of every animal on a boat. But I could believe there was a tsunami that killed thousands. I could also believe it was rationalised as a an act of god and eventually became the great flood that appears in the Bible.
TLDR: the mystery isn’t the absurdity but our reaction to it might be absurd.
Are there any beliefs in particular you were thinking of?
The disbeliever tries to ridicule the concept of an afterlife as to allievate the dread of being held accountable for their deeds on the day of judgement which would likely lead them to an eternal and painful hell.
In Islam, it's very clearly mentioned that each individual will be judged according to their deeds. There are two destinations possible paradise or hellfire.
Other religions that came before have often tried to tone down this reality by either removing accountability like Chrisitanity with the concept of Jesus (peace be upon him) having died for our sins or by simply removing the concept of an afterlife all together.
The Quran clearly tells us that many prophets were sent in the past with revelation but as time passed on they were falsified by people. In light of this, one could easily see how polytheistic religions came about.
In the end Islam is the last religion and it was intended to be preserved which makes it unlike any other religion in the world today. It has one book there a no multiple different versions. It is perfectly constructed and there are 0 inconsistencies and errors. No arab linguist can deny that.
Allah sent the previous prophets specifically for their nations however the last prophet Muhammad peace be upon him was sent for all mankind until the end of times.
Give the quran a read. https://quran.com Do some research on the topic. YouTube is a great ressource for this. Make your own opinion.
In light of this, I still want to invite you to become muslim. Islam answers all the questions Chrisitanity and other religions couldn't. Most importantly it will save you in the hereafter. I'd suggest putting your hand on a hot stove (not too hot) and ponder. Do you really want something like this for yourself and for eternity?
I tried to read some of the Quran but couldn’t find anything that spoke to me. Can you recommend any good sections or translations? Maybe the parts that make you so certain of the afterlife?
I will criticise one of your points since it seems fairly objective. Aren’t there many versions of Quran and countless hadiths? https://answering-islam.org/Green/seven.htm
The Quran is multi form. Oral texts tradition and from the Hadith we know that the Quran was recited in different modes by the Prophet Muhammad pbuh. But these are all valid revelation. Actually one of the “miracles” linguistically about the Quran is how the authentic Qiraa’aat (the reading-out of the Quran) can be traced back to a chain of reciters authentically. And each Qiraa’aat adds eloquence to the Quran and it also speaks to the people of a certain dialect. Think about British English and American English and how the same word can be pronounced differently, and you begin to approach an understanding of Qiraa’aat.
Actually, different Qiraa’aat are essential to the revelation of the Quran and giving evidence about how it has been revealed as an “Arabic Quran” in which many examples of mankind and prophets are related.
These qiraa’aat add enhancement to the meaning of the Quran. For example, if you look up tafsir Al-Qurtubi [not sure if there is an English translation but you can find the Arabic text on Quran.com] (tafsir is an explanation of the Quran), of (verse 87 from chapter 20)[https://quran.com/20/87 ] you will find that the word ملكنا has three different readings مِلكنا ، مُلكنا، مَلكنا which when we transliterate to English we get: mulkinaa, milkinaa, malkinaa. Malkinaa and milkinaa translate to “our will”. Mulkinaa translates to “our power”.
And all together in the verse it enhances the meaning that shows that the Children of Israel were made to carry the burdens of weight of the jewelwery/ornaments from the Pharoah’s people.
Also in this verse, we have two readings for حملنا which are: حُمِّلنا and حَمَلنا which is hummilnaa, and hamalnaa, respectively. Hummilnaa is the passive voice and means “we were forced to carry”. While “Hamalnaa” translates to “we carried”.
Both of these convey a similar meaning of carrying, they enhance aspects of what is happening in the verse. Passive voice focuses on how people were forced to Carry while the active voice focuses on how people indeed did carry.
This is just one example of how important and helpful knowing Qiraa’aat are and Arabic.
So given this background absurdity, how do you even delineate what's absurd and what's not, when it comes to concepts relating to the nature of existence itself? It's certainly fashionable to attempt putting everything in terms such as "cognitive distortions", but it's not clear it's sound reasoning when it comes to things like this.
And I say this as a rather staunch irreligious person.
I like the Zen approach to mystery, which is to accept it and resist the temptation to rationalize the mystery away. Thus no absurd concepts are needed, since concepts are not needed. (I’m relatively new to Zen so I may be off the mark a bit here, but I think I got the essence correct)
Buddhism claims that nothing created us. Samsara is beginningless and wasn’t architected by anything. And that’s just 500 billion people or so.
As for the feeling that life is too short; I’ll offer a comparison to the early biblical figures: Adam and his sons lived almost a thousand years. Noah the same. Isaac lived almost 200 years. Compared to biblical figures, we live very short lifespans.