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I was thinking how religion evolved to what it is today. In general it seems mormonism or religion in general has a knack for getting people to stop doing things they may enjoy and at the same time get them to do things they may not. Or maybe put another way they convince them they actually hate certain activities and get them to believe ones they dislike make them happy. I have a theory on why this is the case but what do you think? Quote:Sign, sign, everywhere a sign.
I think they do this when those things members like are in conflict with the things the Church as an organization likes. At one time, there was local “doctrine” that you shouldn’t be saving for retirement. That you should be building up the Kingdom of God now. I don’t know where that came from. But I think there must’ve been a fast-offering deficit or something and someone in authority started thinking everyone should cash in their 401K if they didn’t have the money at the moment.
Stuff like that. Ultimately, the Church comes first. Ray has been pretty good about pointing to changes that the upper eschelon has made that swing the pendulum a bit to the member, but as he says, the elephant doesn’t turn on a dime. Nor do I believe that when Church temporal issues are in conflict with individual interests that there is a lot of quarter given…but that is another frontier…
Control? Preservation of the species?
Preservation of the organization?
Hey, if religion can keep people from robbing my home and raping and pillaging the countryside, I’m all for it. As long I they don’t insist that I be a full fledged part of the religion. It’s my theory, that many, MANY people, need religion to modify their behavior.
I anxiously await Spock’s theory,
I think the church wants to create a subculture within the world / broader culture at large that is a place where people can live according to a shared worldview and set of values that differs from the larger culture. That’s the church at large. Within the church, there are some individuals who I think resent the sacrifices they’ve made (WoW, chastity, modesty, etc.) and want to impose their misery on others as well through judgment. The higher they estimate the difficulty of their sacrifice, the more likely they are to judge others for not “toeing the line” to make themselves feel better.
I understand what you’re saying, Cadence, and there certainly is merit in it, but . . . Amen, cwald.
I’ve seen firsthand the effects of no religion and anemic religion, and it’s not pretty. I know there have been horrible abuses in the name of religion, also – but, overall, I’ll take religion over the lack thereof – especially religion that really does try to curb our animalistic tendencies and make us more like Jesus is portrayed in the NT.
Let’s face it:
Biologically, we are carnivorous animals– so most things that blunt our biological tendencies and make us play nicer with each other are OK with me. Cadence wrote:I was thinking how religion evolved to what it is today. In general it seems
mormonism or religion in general has a knack for getting people to stop doing things they may enjoy and at the same time get them to do things they may not.Or maybe put another way they convince them they actually hate certain activities and get them to believe ones they dislike make them happy. I have a theory on why this is the case but what do you think? I don’t think this is something you can really blame entirely on religion in general as if stamping out religion would be guaranteed to make the world a better place. For example, many communists did the same basic thing you describe without depending on any supernatural claims to back up their authority (might makes right). In fact, I think there are almost universal human tendencies to want to regulate others’ behaviors and find some comfort and security in acting out familiar routines plus it seems like humans typically have natural instincts that lead them to work together in groups more often than not.
Even various criminal gangsters that completely disregard the rules of the larger society sometimes still have their own code of conduct and protocols they respect when dealing with each other in their own sub-culture. I don’t believe that widespread anarchy has ever survived for long and what usually happens is that one set of rules and rulers are inevitably replaced with another. The way I see it, Mormonism only exaggerates these basic human tendencies as well as fairly common ascetic tendencies mostly because of the idea that Church leaders are almost always right and should never be criticized or questioned. Because of this, it has been much easier to add more rules than to even consider defying or discrediting some of the established traditions.
I don’t mind rules in general but the problem with many of the Church’s rules is that if you try to analyze the benefits versus the costs and ask why exactly they are so important it seems like we are basically expected to accept many of them simply because the Church said so. Even if you want to entertain their claim that they speak for God another follow up question is why should God really care so much about some of these Mormon traditions? Personally I think it would be better to err on the side of what most people can accept or live with when it comes to moral codes. However, the Church has clearly placed themselves on the fringe and outside the mainstream when it comes to extremely harsh and strict rules and personally I think this is really going to wreak havoc in an increasing number of cases as more and more members lose faith in the justification for these rules and their TBM family members have a hard time dealing with these unexpected differences.
cwald wrote:Hey, if religion can keep people from robbing my home and raping and pillaging the countryside, I’m all for it. As long I they don’t insist that I be a full fledged part of the religion. It’s my theory, that many, MANY people, need religion to modify their behavior.
Echoing Ray, Amen also to Cwald!
I’ll add my historical observations:
1. Sexual reproduction.
Before I even start into this, let me be clear that I
*LIKE*the modern world and the direction of culture towards more equality and the acceptance of our ability to decide when to have children. But the current world of control over sexual reproduction we live in has only been around maybe 60 years. That’s 60 years of our 20,000+ year history. Before that? Yeah, we created all kinds of rules, usually via religion, to control behavior. If a guy went around making babies all over the place, as is their natural instinct, and didn’t stick around to help support them, the community was left with a pretty crappy set of options: Watch children starve to death in their back yard, or step up with their own limited resources and feed them (and all too often everyone else were barely putting food on the table as it was).
So “God” made up all these rules. Hell and eternal torment were the consequences of disobeying the gods: no raping, no touchy touchy yourself because that might lead to breaking the next rule, no sex before you are married, no divorce, and you’re are a turd with no honor if you don’t feed the babies you make.
While they were at it: no kill people while they are sleeping to take their stuff. no tricking people to take stuff. no taking stuff when they aren’t looking. The gods are watching! You will be punished!
The rules of religion are born. Social structure is a good thing, really.
2. The balance of power.
Another thing we enjoy today is the rule of law. In stable first world countries, there’s a functional balance of political power and enforcement, and a respect for “due process.”
This is also a fairly recent phenomenon. For most of the past 2,000 years, “The Church” was the counterbalance of social power to the kings. Kings had armies and goons that would implement through brute force whatever their wishes were at the time. The balance was the “moral authority” of The Church which controlled the gates of heaven & hell and the reward/punishment system of the afterlife. Not even the kings were exempt from this power.
The king had rules. The Church had rules. All of these rules were there to collect resources (taxes) and control behavior.
I think there are a combination of several reasons for a religion convincing members to hate what they like & like what they hate: 1. Power over people… control through mental manipulation.
2. People have a desire for parental love & guidance (even discipline), even as adults. Religion may fill that role.
3. A habitual cycle inherited generationally to believe that only that which is unpleasant is good for us & to be ashamed of what is enjoyable.
Good that comes out of it:
1. Order & unity
2. Hope, love & morals… getting along in a civilized way.
3. Discipline, being tough.
Bad that comes out of it:
1. Creates more confusion mentally… & thoughts are the root of sin (“As a man thinketh so is he.”)
2. Lack of personal intellectual, moral & spiritual responsibility.
3. Lack of joy… & excessive misery… even if one is in denial.
DevilsAdvocate wrote:… I don’t believe that widespread anarchy has ever survived for long and what usually happens is that one set of rules and rulers are inevitably replaced with another. The way I see it, Mormonism only exaggerates these basic human tendencies as well as fairly common ascetic tendencies mostly because of the idea that Church leaders are almost always right and should never be criticized or questioned. Because of this it, has been much easier to add more rules than to even consider defying or discrediting some of the established traditions.
I don’t mind rules in general but the problem with many of the Church’s rules is that if you try to analyze the benefits versus the costs and ask why exactly they are so important it seems like we are basically expected to accept many of them simply because the Church said so. Even if you want to entertain their claim that they speak for God another follow up question is why should God really care so much about some of these Mormon traditions?
Good points.It does seem that everyone needs some type of structure to operate within.
Some need more structure than others & maybe those types are especially drawn to the lds church (or the military
🙂 ).Despite attempts to keep the gospel “simple” & the same… it has evolved many times & is quite complicated now. I really feel for non-members who join & want so badly to do everything right & get put down for not knowing everything that other TBMs were born into.
That is an excellent question about considering benefits vs. costs regarding church rules. Some rules are so extremely petty, yet I felt so ashamed about if I didn’t follow to a T. And when I consider a God (who IS LOVE)… I wonder, “Would a loving God get hung up on such silliness while not caring about how we & others are loving & being loved?” No way! Talk about “missing the mark”!
Brian Johnston wrote:cwald wrote:Hey, if religion can keep people from robbing my home and raping and pillaging the countryside, I’m all for it. As long I they don’t insist that I be a full fledged part of the religion. It’s my theory, that many, MANY people, need religion to modify their behavior.
Echoing Ray, Amen also to Cwald!
I’ll add my historical observations:
1. Sexual reproduction.
Before I even start into this, let me be clear that I
*LIKE*the modern world and the direction of culture towards more equality and the acceptance of our ability to decide when to have children. But the current world of control over sexual reproduction we live in has only been around maybe 60 years. That’s 60 years of our 20,000+ year history. Before that? Yeah, we created all kinds of rules, usually via religion, to control behavior. If a guy went around making babies all over the place, as is their natural instinct, and didn’t stick around to help support them, the community was left with a pretty crappy set of options: Watch children starve to death in their back yard, or step up with their own limited resources and feed them (and all too often everyone else were barely putting food on the table as it was).
So “God” made up all these rules. Hell and eternal torment were the consequences of disobeying the gods: no raping, no touchy touchy yourself because that might lead to breaking the next rule, no sex before you are married, no divorce, and you’re are a turd with no honor if you don’t feed the babies you make.
While they were at it: no kill people while they are sleeping to take their stuff. no tricking people to take stuff. no taking stuff when they aren’t looking. The gods are watching! You will be punished!
The rules of religion are born. Social structure is a good thing, really.
2. The balance of power.
Another thing we enjoy today is the rule of law. In stable first world countries, there’s a functional balance of political power and enforcement, and a respect for “due process.”
This is also a fairly recent phenomenon. For most of the past 2,000 years, “The Church” was the counterbalance of social power to the kings. Kings had armies and goons that would implement through brute force whatever their wishes were at the time. The balance was the “moral authority” of The Church which controlled the gates of heaven & hell and the reward/punishment system of the afterlife. Not even the kings were exempt from this power.
The king had rules. The Church had rules. All of these rules were there to collect resources (taxes) and control behavior.
I think this is great analysis…however, we can argue that the new world order lessens the need for such “should’s”, yet they persist. So, this means there must be other, underlying drivers.
And for me that driver is Church interest. Even though we have birth control, people still get involved with “goal-oriented behavior”. This leads to single-parents, many of whom (not all) struggle financially and yes, the Church organization ends up having to help them. I think this is a drain on Church resources, so the hellfire continues.
However, it goes well beyond this. I think the Catholic Church has nakedly shown what happens when the Church gets control of its membership through eternal consequences. They sell indulgences to fund the next Cathedral…etcetera.
In my OP I was was not necessarily saying it is a bad thing to prod people to do certain things or refrain from others, it just seems the nature of religion. I understand the need for rules and to create behavioral boundaries. These things are good if you are looking at adultery or robbery or bearing false witness. I think religion tackles those things the best they can. I was thinking more like skiing on Sunday. I really like to ski especially on Sunday, yet it is taboo. There is no historical evidence of a taboo that says refraining from skiing on Sunday keeps you from dying. It is not like robbery that creates havoc in the community so you can rationally say it is to be avoided. It is purely a religious notion. So now to my point of why religion creates a behavior model that gets you to conform in sometimes frivolous ways, and to do things that are against your nature, or at least things you do not enjoy. It is my belief that it is a control mechanism. Unintentional as it may be, control is at the heart of it. If a religion says that you can do all these enjoyable things then the religion becomes unnecessary. I would do those on my own. Real control comes from getting individuals to believe that doing things contrary to their nature is true happiness. It then takes a religion to spell out exactly the behavior model that is required to appease God. It is a matter of creating value for the religion. I see this in businees many times. A manager creates value in his position by creating work for you to do. Then he can look at all the processes he has created and feel value himself. Not saying all managers do this but I have seen some that do. To me this is exactly what religion does. It creates value for itself by creating the paradigm or behavior norms you must follow.
Before everyone thinks I am taking a negative approach, I do not think this is always a bad thing. Like I said if religion can help to control truly bad behavior then kudos. It is just interesting how it feels compelled to go beyond needed behavior modification to the mundane and frivolous.
I was thinking that my naturalistic explanation for religions do’s and don’ts didn’t express my full thoughts. My post above was how I think religion got to where it is now sociologically. I mainly wanted to add in that isn’t the only dimension to the question in my opinion. I am open also to there being a spiritual and divine element to lists of rules. We are all ingrained with a desire for spiritual development, for seeking enlightenment and wisdom. I think actions or lack of actions DOES effect the quality of our “soul.” Doing harm to others, anger, violence, uncontrolled appetites, etc. do have a spiritual impact on us. Also the opposite: love, compassion, intelligence, knowledge, wisdom, kindness, those all have an expanding and uplifting effect on our nature.
I don’t think “rules” are only about social control.
Amen, Brian. I see this as further proof that there really “must needs be opposition in all things”.
Cadence wrote:In my OP I was was not necessarily saying it is a bad thing to prod people to do certain things or refrain from others,
it just seems the nature of religion….So now to my point of why religion creates a behavior model that gets you to conform in sometimes frivolous ways, and to do things that are against your nature, or at least things you do not enjoy. It is my belief that it is a control mechanism. Unintentional as it may be, control is at the heart of it. If a religion says that you can do all these enjoyable things then the religion becomes unnecessary. I would do those on my own.Real control comes from getting individuals to believe that doing things contrary to their nature is true happiness. It then takes a religion to spell out exactly the behavior model that is required to appease God. It is a matter of creating value for the religion…To me this is exactly what religion does. It creates value for itself by creating the paradigm or behavior norms you must follow…Before everyone thinks I am taking a negative approach, I do not think this is always a bad thing. Like I said if religion can help to control truly bad behavior then kudos. It is just interesting how it feels compelled to go beyond needed behavior modification to the mundane and frivolous.Maybe the control creates value for some people especially if they are already inclined to get a sense of satisfaction from rigorous self-discipline or if they don’t like making too many independent decisions. However, my guess is that for every person that can’t get enough of being told what to do there will be at least 2-3 that either put up with the Church mostly for other reasons in spite of the inconvenience and not because of it or that don’t want anything to do with the LDS Church anymore precisely because they associate it with being expected to do things they don’t really want to. There are other things various churches typically do that will probably keep people coming back for more long after I am gone that do not involve nagging people to jump through too many hoops such as the following:
1. They sometimes fulfill people’s desire for a sense of community or feeling like they belong to a group they identify with. 2. They tell people what they want to hear such as that they are going to heaven and their life has meaning and purpose above and beyond what they typically see and experience in their everyday lives. 3. They sometimes generate entertainment value or personal interest for people that like to read scriptures, listen to and talk about different doctrines, and/or listen to devotional music almost as an occasional diversion or hobby.
There are probably many more things that attract people to religion that I didn’t think of yet but personally I think this whole debate about “what is religion good for?” is directly related to one of the main reasons that religion is much more popular in America than in Europe. For a long time it sounds like European governments often saw religion as a means to an end such as being a convenient way to help control the masses and promote national unity so they wanted to have one predominant church. Because of this influence, the European churches did not necessarily have as much incentive to really compete for the hearts and minds of their followers so then when religious freedom became more common the established churches didn’t really do much for many of them anymore. However, in America religion was often more of an end in itself where if people liked one church more than another (or no church) then that was already reason enough for its existence.
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