Dragaera

The Religion Debate

Thu Nov 28 18:36:17 PST 2002

On Thu, Nov 28, 2002 at 11:29:52AM -0800, Penney, Sean wrote:
> Thursday, November 28, 2002 10:47 AM:  Damien Sullivan 

> >> civilizations used religion as a catapult to greatness.  The pyramids of
> >> Egypt and the ziggurats of S. America would not have been built without
> >> faith in something.  
>  
> >This cuts both ways.  "Oh no, we wouldn't have built giant useless piles of
> >rock without religion!"
> 
> Not sure what you're saying here - if I take out the negatives I think it
> means "because of religion we have built giant monuments".  I think this is
> what I stated above.
 
The negatives were the point.  It's traditional to see giant useless piles of
rock as a sign of high civilization because they're obvious and impressive and
still around -- hard to do much to a pile of rock -- and obviously at least
took a lot of organization.

But if you think about the utility of giant piles of rock, you can see
pyramids and ziggurats as signs of decay or stagnation.  A religionless
civilization at the same tech level might both have accomplished more in terms
of quality of life and not left giant monuments to impress us with, because of
the lack of religion.

Or for a different phrasing, "yes, you can have high civilization without
religion, it just won't be a high civilization which leaves giant piles of
rock saying 'Dig here' around."

> Well that's pretty much what I was asking - can a civilization attain a
> state beyond that of mud huts and root grubbing without religion?  Is
> religion necessary as a catalyst to great works in architecture, social
> engineering and art?  All evidence seems to point towards religion being an
> intrinsic part of the formula.  I was wondering if anyone knew of any
> exceptions.
 
I don't, but I'm not sure what it means.  Like I said, religion is an
intrinsic part of all the formulas, high civilizations or not.  It's not like
there was some religionless state which didn't advance beyond mud huts and
root grubbing; there just weren't any religionless states, until recently, and
not entirely even now.

-xx- Damien X-)