Religion

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Religion

Religion is an institution that, like all Institutions is, designed to meet certain individual and societal needs. Individually, religions meet certain of the Seven Essential Needs, like cognitive needs for truth, and inner needs for alignment and connection.

Concept Map

Key Concepts

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Spiritual Theory > Religion, Spirituality

Religion > Authentic Religion, Elite Religion

Syncretic Terms

Religion >

Related LP Terms

Religion > Boundary Fetish, Boundary Problem, Sacrilization

Non-LP Related Terms

Religion > Boundary Fetish, Boundary Problem, Sacrilization

Notes

What it is

Like all institutions, religion is designed meet several of humanity's Seven Essential Needs. Individually, it is designed to meet for

• cognitive needs for truth and understanding, particularly of oneself and one's relationship to the cosmos,
• emotional needs for belongingness, inclusion, love,
• inner needs for alignment, and connection.

It does this within a conceptual framework that provides answers to to life's Big Questions, thereby ostensibly satisfying our need for truth.

At a societal level, as Emile Durkheim said, religion also helps maintain and stabilize the social order social solidarity.

Religions may be more or less successful at meeting individual and societal needs.

Whether or not a particular religion, or religion in general, is successful at meeting these essential needs in an authentic and open question. Note that truth is not equal to fantasy and any religion that offers a fantasy orientation based only in faith fails out of the gate.

Colonization

Religion may or may not have, at one time or another, been an authentic effort to meet essential needs. these days, the various religions that exist are colonized institutions. Colonization occurred at various time. Zoroastrianism, for example, was colonized by emperor Aradashir. He took control of the grass-roots, anti-elite spirituality of the mystic Zoroaster and turned it into a thing that supported his imperial ambitions. Centuries later Emperor Constantine did exactly the same thing, colonized the grass roots spirituality of Jesus Christ, dethorned it, and used it to help control the population and build a post-roman empire.

What it currently does

In the hands of the Accumulating Class, religion functions as

• an opiate,
• a wish-fulfilling, behaviour controlling "illusion,"
• Mechanism of Reproduction an ideological tool designed to help create a moral, intellectual, and societal order conducive to the operation of any particular Regime of Accumulation. In this case, religion functions as an Ideological Institution (and sometimes Symbol Factory designed to help propagate a specific Existential Narrative.

Does humanity need religion to understand the cosmos? No. But a well organized, grounded, decolonized Knowledge System maintained by expert Human Stewards with the symbiotic assistance of evolving CPS systems can help.

Classes

Religion may be broken down into two sub-classes, Elite Religion and Authentic Religion.

Elite Religion

Elite Religion serves the agenda of the AC, helping to create the social order required for operation of their regime.

Elite religion may be broken down into Esoteric and Exoteric categories.

• Esoteric Religion is is aimed to teach members of the accumulating class the narratives they need to operate the social order.
• Exoteric Religion is aimed at the masses and use to teach them narratives designed so that they can serve that control and shape their behaviour. taught to the masses.

Authentic Religion

Authentic Religion services the agenda of humanity by helping to meet, in a grounded, ethical, inclusive, humanistic way,, the Seven Essential Needs of humanity, including but not limited to humanity's need for Connection.

To be clear, authentic Religion is an Institution devoted to the satisfaction of essential needs.

Additional Comments

Sigmund Freud believed that religion arises as a consequence of

1. an expression of the son-father relationship (see totem and taboo, related to religions where "totem animals" become sacred)
2. the need to defend oneself against the "crushingly superior force of nature."
3. The "urge to rectify the shortcoming of civilization..."

This is no partly true in the sense that most humans have a need

Other Definitions

"Religion tends to be conceptualized as an external, community-based phenomena in which a particular organized set of beliefs, behaviors, and rituals are institutionalized by individuals sharing similar spiritualities."

Erich Fromm: Religion is an "group-shared system of thought and action that offers the individual a frame of orientation and an object of devotion."

Quotes

"Every fully developed religion exists simultaneously on several different levels. It exists as a set of abstract concepts about the world and its governance. It exists as a set of rites and sacraments, as a traditional method for manipulating the symbols, by means of which beliefs about the cosmic order are expressed. It exists as the feelings of love, fear and devotion evoked by this manipulation of symbols.

And finally it exists as a special kind of feeling or intuition—a sense of the oneness of all things in their divine principle, a realization (to use the language of Hindu theology) that “thou art That,” a mystical experience of what seems self-evidently to be union with God."

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Footnotes

References