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| quote: | Originally posted by pkcRAISTLIN
Well, I didn’t really intend to get into this debate (especially since your knowledge far far outstrips my own) but it’s a quiet afternoon at work….
I think the central issue I have with your post here is that there is an assumption that religion caused or created these things, when in reality is was merely the fact that religion was the governing ism of the pre-enlightened eras. I think there is an argument to be made that had religion never existed such great works of art or engineering could and would have been created, just with a different focus or motivation. Sure, the great tombs of the Egyptians were built because of their beliefs concerning the afterlife, but imagine what could have been created had they been motivated by other forces? When I see massively huge awesome church structures all I can think of is how much better that time, effort and money could have been spent. Sure, the pyramids are fantastic structures that everyone knows and loves, but take a minute to think of the thousands of peasants that had to build them; what positive role was religion playing for them? Hell, Yahweh thought it was fine for his chosen to slave away in Egypt for 400 years! 
You rightly identify the fact that religious belief was the governing zeitgeist of the time, but do we praise Nazism for building the autobahns? Nazism didn’t build the autobahns, they just happened to be built during the (thankfully brief) era of Nazism. |
I'm not saying that religion caused or created these things. I'm simply saying that it was the motivation at the time. Ancient egyptians lived to die. The afterlife for them was filled with dozens of gods and an eternal living. The argument of slaves building the pyramids and what not is false. There was a work system developed where egyptians worked and got paid for their duties and took pride in construction. It was a huge engineering feat to create these temples and scupltures. I doubt it was simply persecution of slaves to construct them.
You're argument for no religion sprouting culture and civilization cannot be proven or falisfied since we have yet to have any isolated culture without a religious belief system. We can talk about the evolution of religion and it seems that human curiousity is sprouted with ideas to philosiphize and experiement. Without the capability of sophisticated empirical analysis, the easiest route was taken for all isolated tribes and that was simply mythology which with some cultures evolved into a set standard religion. shakespeares sonnets were inspired by the unknown and his wonder to intepret emotion and nature. He was more of a thinker, philospher. Not a scientist. His curiosity lead him to his own religious beliefs (although some may claim he was an atheist) His ideas were not empirically based.
When Religion comes to the point where it herds masses and independent thought abandoned, it begins to degrade society. But up until that point it gives people the motiviation to develop a civilization. History has shown it with the rise and fall of empires.
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