--- enoonan <enoonan@kent.edu> wrote:
> ADAM:
> ....that is my theory,that religion is an attempt to
> find Quality in the face
> of SOM.
>
> RICK: Sorry Adam, your theory just doesn't hold
> water... Pirsig places the
> origins of SOM at around the time of Aristotle
> (384BC - 322BC).
> Chrisitianity (obviously) doesn't show up for a few
> hundred years later, but
> Judiasm goes back 3000+ years pre-SOM (Judiasm and
> Christianity are fairly
> similar anyway). And religion itself goes back as
> far as history does.
> Thus, it is impossible to give SOM any credit in the
> origin of the need for
> religion. I think you were on the money with those
> first few reasons you
> named.
>
>
> ERIN: Could the origin of religion be linked with
> language?
> The "need" for religion seems to be related to a
> need for meaning and it seems
> it would makes sense that acquisition of language
> created this need.
>
> Have you ever read Rollo May's "The cry for myth" -
> It's a nice summary for
> this need for religion, I cut and pasted a summary
> from a personality
> teacher's website. I found it interesting...
>
>
> May’s last book was The Cry for Myth. He pointed
> out that a big problem in
> the twentieth century was our loss of values. All
> the different values around
> us lead us to doubt all values. As Nietzsche
> pointed out, if God is dead
> (i.e. absolutes are gone), then anything is
> permitted!
>
> May says we have to create our own values, each of
> us individually. This, of
> course, is difficult to say the least. So we need
> help, not forced on us, but
> “offered up” for us to use as we will.
>
> Enter myths, stories that help us to “make sense”
> out of out lives, “guiding
> narratives.” They resemble to some extent Jung’s
> archetypes, but they can be
> conscious and unconscious, collective and personal.
> A good example is how
> many people live their lives based on stories from
> the Bible.
>
> Other examples you may be familiar with include
> Horatio Alger, Oedipus Rex,
> Sisyphus, Romeo and Juliet, Casablanca, Leave it to
> Beaver, Star Wars, Little
> House on the Prairie, The Simpsons, South Park, and
> the fables of Aesop. As I
> intentionally suggest with this list, a lot of
> stories make lousy myths. Many
> stories emphasize the magical granting of one's
> wishes (infantile). Others
> promise success in exchange for hard work and
> self-sacrifice (neo-Puritan).
> Many of our stories today say that valuelessness is
> itself the best value!
> Instead, says May, we should be actively working to
> create new myths that
> support people’s efforts at making the best of life,
> instead of undermining
> them!
>
> The idea sounds good -- but it isn’t terribly
> existential! Most
> existentialists feel that it is necessary to face
> reality much more directly
> than “myths” imply. In fact, they sound a little
> too much like what the great
> mass of people succumb to as a part of fallenness,
> conventionality, and
> inauthenticity! A controversy for the future....
>
>
>
> NARGESS:as far as I understand your speeches
U have forgotten one important case about religion and
it
is sth mare than MYTH.I don know,may be it is due to
my
different religion but I dont like your idea about the
role of religion in life.U pay attention just to
mythus & methaphysical points of religion and it is a
one dimentional point of view.
so with this sight of it U deduce that there is 1 way
to substitute sth instead of religion .but if U had a
different view of it,sth more than myth ,U would have
another idea about it .today all of the religions are
fading away because of this interpretation .and it
will have no advantages for man .
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