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Politics : View from the Center and Left -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: NAG1 who wrote (405230)	4/11/2019 9:17:22 PM
From: cosmicforce	1 Recommendation Recommended By pocotrader Respond to of 541520

That sounds about right - here's my take - Marx was right in that it is the Opiate of the Masses. Why? Two reasons. The first is the one you point out - it is an obvious way to ensure that all the birds flock together and transmit their values to the next generation through ritual. The second, more primitive, is that out in the savanna we have unknown and known horrors waiting to pick us off. Belief in a natural order and appeasement of the gods provides a reduction in anxiety. We see that today - agnostics and atheists are a lot more stressed by the world. Numerous studies show that. People who have the credulity genes active seem copacetic with the natural order of their god's Will. I was not raised an atheist or agnostic. I came to that from an unremarkable secular Christian environment. My loss of what little faith I ever had followed a similar arc as not believing in the Easter Bunny. At first - inklings - why does the Easter Bunny bring things that are available from the store? Why does it and Santa only appear when no one is around? And so forth. There is a lot of pressure in our society to conform with the societal norms but the evidence became overwhelming and a lifetime of unanswered prayers and what seemed to be random acts led me to just give it up completely when I was about 13. I wasn't forced to be agnostic, it became apparent that if there were an interventionist God that it was fickle, random, cruel, unfair, lacking compassion, etc. Buddhism had some appeal but it is a philosophical view and less religion, IMHO.