Religion

Quotes for inspiration:

- Alain "Nothing is more dangerous than an idea when you only have one."
idea.

- Alain: "All human evils, without exception, including war, come from
what one believes too quickly and with happiness. » III to finish
Alain: "Nothing is more dangerous than an idea when you only have one."
idea, I saw the most deadly of all ideas running... It is a
new theology that has its fanatics and its martyrs. A new
God who is the source of gods. And at the same time a god who speaks,
who commands, who rewards, who punishes, a god that one touches with the
main, a sensitive god at heart; a god that is sweet and intoxicating
to love; how bitter it is not to love" III civil religion is also
more dangerous than the other. Danger of the univocity of truth.
Valery What would we be without the rescue from
that which does not exist.

The bait:

The philosopher Kierkegaard writes that 'The opposite of despair is to believe.'

Etymology of the word 'religion':

- Religare: to attach, to connect, to join, to cement, to create a community, to bond

the individuals in the community.
-
- "Religere" Latin: "to reread": to reinterpret, to know, to hear and to understand.
give meaning.

The issue:

If religion allows men to connect and know each other, it turns out that
other means also allow it, consequently the two functions of attachment and
Does knowledge suffice to define religion? Does the latter define it?
universally the nature of man or is it just a possible modality of
the mind and spirituality that are not necessarily religious?

Religion reveals the metaphysical nature of man: the religious phenomenon makes
part of the nature of man and is constituted of his being and his essence in the
world

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 The emergence of beliefs and religious rites is contemporary to the emergence of
the homo sapiens who became aware of death, who thought of the possibility of another
a life after death and who has practiced rites and sanctified places and
territories

In this perspective, Leroi-Gourhan, ethologist, anthropologist, and historian of cultures

and civilizations, has demonstrated that the first homo sapiens had established rites
funerary and produced cave paintings. He deduces from his studies that our ancestors
were aware of death and also conceived the idea of life after death or of the
Renaissance because they always buried their dead with offerings, precious objects,
clothes, food and weapons. It follows that these primitive men had
necessarily a religious sentiment since they were aware of death.

This is, moreover, what allows Mircea Eliade, philosopher and historian of religions,
to affirm that since the beginning of the history of homo sapiens, every human community
is organized around the sacred expressed by ancestral practices established around the taboo and
of the prohibition that allows belonging to the community and realizes its rooting
In the long history: "The sacred, he writes, is not a stage in the history of consciousness,"
it is an element of the structure of consciousness (...). It is (...) the experience of a reality and
the source of the consciousness of existing in the world. It strengthens this vision by affirming that
The man of primitive societies has strived to conquer death by transforming it into a
rite of passage.

It is therefore the relationship to the scandal of death and the desire to justify it to console oneself or
learning to support it which would explain the need that men have for the religious. In
these prehistoric cultures, this work of transfiguration and symbolism of death by the
The process of sacralization has also affected sexuality and childbirth because these two
Phenomena are related to life and death: they constitute an affirmation of the will to
to live and to endure while imposing the experience of limits, the risk of loss, of
fragility and thus of death.

2- Mircea Eliade believes that man, naturally anxious, has found in the feeling
religious an effective derivative to his fears and anxieties:

At the most archaic levels of culture, living as a human being is in itself a

religious act, because eating, sexual life, and work have a sacramental value.
In other words, being – or rather becoming – a man means being 'religious.' So, the
religion is a necessary dependence on the anxious and worried nature of man, this
to be weak and helpless thrown into a hostile and unwelcoming world.

Many thinkers believe that the primitive man endowed with consciousness
superior to animals became aware of its smallness in the face of greatness
of nature and its weakness in the face of natural elements such as floods,
lightning, the flash, etc. In the face of the challenge posed by these frightening threats, man has tried to

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tame and neutralize their threat by perceiving them as supernatural powers
you divine. He was able to escape the destabilizing and harmful nature of the feeling of the
weakness and fragility. Based on this belief, man could ask for the
protection and the clemency of these powers and thus gain in assurance and security.
Moreover, in Greek mythology, Prometheus compensates for the inherent weakness of humanity.
by offering them fire, language, mêts (cunning) and wisdom, he
represents a natural force that humans transform into a protective force that
support and love them.

Indeed, since man has been aware and endowed with the ability to speak, to come to
The world constitutes for him a traumatic experience marked by loss.
This is what the psychologist, Oto Rank, sought to demonstrate through his theory of the
birth as original trauma. He indeed considers that for man there is a
disadvantage of being born because one's arrival in the world is a painful event and
traumatized marked by the separation from the mother. However, to get out of this state, man is
forced to be excessive in relation to his nature and condition: he acts, reacts, and fights for
to exist and affirm one's power. Religion would be a modality of realizing this desire to
persevere in being. In the same perspective, Pico della Mirandola had demonstrated that
The essence of man is not to have an essence. He thus stipulated the fact that since
Man is nothing, that made him capable of becoming everything he wanted to be: religion
would thus be a modality of this power of perfection.

3-Besides this, religion would be a trick of nature to encourage men to bond in the
the aim of increasing their strength and power and also increasing the chances of the species
to resist and endure:

The survival function: Schopenhauer had shown that the love that men
overvalue and idealize excessively, is in truth just an instinctive program inscribed in
we to push us towards reproduction and thus ensure the survival of the species. It
It is possible to think that religion could also fall under the same.
Logic since by linking men it would allow to add their powers.
individual and to pool their resources and strengths in order to compose a
collective force that benefits them in the struggle for survival, in the search for the
food, in the protection of the weakest and the management of conflicts and violence
interindividual.

The linking function of religion is also valid for modern man as emphasized
Mircea Eliade in his book The Sacred and the Profane: "The unconscious activity of man
modern keeps presenting countless symbols to him, and each has a message to
transmit, a mission to accomplish, in order to ensure the balance of the psyche or to restore it.
As we have seen, the symbol not only makes the world 'open', but also helps
The religious man has accessed the universal. It is through symbols that man emerges from his
specific situation and opens up towards the general and the universal. The symbols awaken

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individual experience and transform it into spiritual action, into metaphysical grasp of
World.

Therefore, religion allows man to accept living and to admit his

condition in the world based on the belief that its existence in this world has
a meaning and holds a value: "it is difficult to imagine, states Mircea Eliade at this
proposal, how the human mind could function without the conviction that there is something
something irreducibly real in the world; and it is impossible to imagine how the
Conscience could appear without giving meaning to the impulses and the
experiences of man. The awareness of a real and meaningful world is intimately linked to
the discovery of the sacred. Through the experience of the sacred, the human mind grasped the difference between
what reveals itself as being real; powerful, rich and significant and what is devoid of it
qualities, that is to say the chaotic and dangerous flow of things, their appearances and
fortuitous and meaningless disparities. This means that an existence is 'open' towards the
the world is not an unconscious existence, buried in nature. The 'opening' towards
the world makes the religious man capable of understanding himself by knowing the world, and this
knowledge is precious to him because it is 'religious', because it refers to Being.

In summary, historically, homo sapiens has always been a religious being like the
shows its attitude towards death and the place given to the sacred and to rites in the
primitive communities. Thus, religion has allowed men to adapt to their
hostile environment to strengthen their survival capacity. However, this aspect veils the
thus, religion is also a system of norms and dogmas, based on laws and
prohibitions that limit the natural power of man, alienate him and deprive him of his will and
of its ability to operate freely in the world. That is what will be necessary now.
interrogate.

In some of its aspects, religion has weakened men, deformed them, alienated them.
and causes them suffering and misery:

1) Religion conditions man to be a passive being locked in a

negative and limiting essence

On one hand, religion teaches men passivity: Alain writes: "there is some
passivity in religion. There, noise and the new are feared. One sleeps soundly.
This does not lead to strong thinking, at most to a somewhat soft poetry, too
. human.

- on the other hand, it locks them into a negative essentialist definition and
depreciative: "One of the mistakes of our Western religions, as noted by Auguste
Count, it is having taught that man is always and irreparably selfish, unless
of divine help.

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- not forgetting that it constitutes an authoritarian device of domination and training.
submission as Freud writes when he declares that 'We know that there exists in the
human mass the strong need for an authority that we can admire, in front of which we
is inclined, by which one is dominated and even possibly mistreated. Psychology
The individual has taught us where this need for the masses comes from: it is the nostalgia for the father.

Indeed, through its system of values, its dogmas, and its doctrine, religion demands the
submission to the divinity and to a unique and indisputable truth. However, the stance of
Submission does not encourage action and does not permit the use of critical thinking.
thought and yet will and power. Indeed, the essence of religion is to
to keep man in the state that Kant calls minority. Nietzsche proposes
also a powerful critique of the alienating character of man through religion.
he founded his radical critique of the religious fact on the unveiling and the
condemnation of the culture of fear, shame, and guilt that the systems
religious doctrines install in minds and hearts. The philosopher has thus
demonstrated that men, by creating religions, have transferred onto the fantasized figure
From God all possible human excellence making it de facto inaccessible to effort.
human. It follows, according to Nietzsche, that religion has taught man to despise himself
and to settle for weakness and littleness. Likewise, he considers that
the invention by religion of the idea of afterworlds (the world after death, the one where
God reigns and where men will live forever in heaven or hell and who
opposes the material world and real human existence), resulted in
to push men to hate earthly life, to live it under the sign of guilt and
of bad conscience and to want to leave it as soon as possible. This feeling
is explained by the fact that religion, by presenting the afterlife as an ideal and salvation,
installed in the consciousness of men the conviction that their earthly life is what
he frees himself to access paradise and immortality. It follows that religion
prevents men from living the only life they actually have and instills
poison in the pleasures that the world grants them and this by linking them to sin, to the
Aside from that, it is also important to highlight guilt and the fear of
that God and religion are suspicious and little punishment. That's what
credible because they correspond so much shows Nietzsche when
he well to our strongest and craziest desires critique of the demonization
of the that there is reason to believe that we have them sexuality by the
invented to satisfy our illusions, our Christianity: the
imagination and our deliriums: Religion is Christianity, he said, has
a soteriology, a doctrine of salvation that given poison to drink
à promised the man to save him from all this Eros. He is not dead,
he a who makes him suffer. Similarly, she chooses her degenerate into vice.
great strength due to the fact that it guarantees
-Dan
the man she can offer him in the other s
the world everything he desired in vain in this
low world without ever obtaining it. Religion
is therefore a powerful sedative.
 The Future of an Illusion, Freud: considers that religion is a neurosis
general obsession that belongs to authority systems
whose function is to tame and train the desirous nature
and instinctual drive of man. This work of domestication harms
the psychological and physiological balance of individuals and groups
and generates frustrations and sufferings. In another book of
Freud titled discomfort in civilization - culture, Freud demonstrates
that man has made himself sick and frustrated by inventing culture and the
civilization that are in truth only systems of laws and rules
which prohibit men from satisfying themselves without feeling guilty
and without guilty conscience, their natural desires and particularly
sexual desire. Therefore, religion makes man sick by
forcing him to despise his own nature and compelling him to denigrate it and
to distance himself from it. It follows that religion saddens man, causes his
suffering and its misfortune instead of improving one's condition or
to unleash its powers, its freedom, and its willReligion, he writes,
prejudices this game of choice and adaptation [to the principle of
reality], because it imposes its own way on everyone in the same manner
for the acquisition of happiness and the protection against suffering. Its
the technique consists of belittling the value of life and distorting it.
delirious the image of the real world, which presupposes intimidation of
intelligence.
-
2) Religion teaches that hope is such that it kills will, thought, and
courage to live

Emile Cioran: "hope is the virtue of slaves." He means

through this that religion as soteriology promises and does
hope for wonderful things that will come true for the
men in the other world, but by making them hope for her
they are forbidden to react in the earthly world. Indeed, the
religion prevents men from despairing, and therefore from
to think, to act, and to assert their freedom and their
responsibility. By this hindrance, religion distances
the man and what is greatest and noblest in him:
its vitalism, its freedom and its will to power. So
Even if it were natural, it could not
constitute what is best and highest in nature
humane.

Thus, religion is a univocal and dogmatic doctrinal system that is

structurally violent and hegemonic. The Egyptologist anthropologist Assmann has
demonstrated that all monotheistic religions are violent since their inception because
they need, he said, to be counter-religions, in other words, they must, to
assert itself and gain audience and legitimacy, violently attack the religions that
the previous ones. When they establish themselves and become dominant, they unfold
like intolerant and belligerent tyrannies.

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 Thus, religion corresponds to a part of human nature, but seems to stifle.
and to alienate what he has of the most powerful in this same nature since it forces one to
submit and to renounce himself and his own freedom. It teaches him to
to rely on providence and salvation and to unlearn wanting and acting. Certainly
Religion is valued as a soteriology, but should it claim to be the only possible one?
Is it not permissible to think about the legitimacy of a soteriology and a spirituality without
God?

III/ religion remains a knowledge and a possible soteriology, but it is not

the only one to be because a soteriology without God is also and logically accessible
to man. Furthermore, religion does not have to claim, for this very reason, the
neither the monopoly of truth nor that of spirituality since the latter is possible
even without god a spirituality (everything that is not related to the senses is spiritual,
of the earthly and the corporeal; spirituality also refers to the fact that man, being
finite, limited, and incomplete possesses the power and capacity, through language and to
thought, to conceive and to formulate the infinite and the absolute

As long as religion is humble and tolerant and refuses the posture of truth
unique, it is worth as a possible solution to console man and him
allow to overcome one's fears and anxieties
The religious soteriological proposition is evidently the most
powerful of all doctrines of salvation because it is a messianism
providentilist who promises divine protection in the lower world and
the beatitude and immortality in the beyond. But it is like
all the others limited and fallible and worth only by love and the
freedom of the faithful. It is not the only one either. Certainly, its
The proposition is powerful and very seductive as Valéry writes:
a religion provides men with words, actions, gestures,
thoughts for the circumstances where they do not know what to say, what to do,
What to imagine. But it is important to emphasize that it is like everything
human choice necessarily uncertain, fallible, not definitive and
therefore liable to be criticized and questioned. Likewise because
that there exists, necessarily its opposite which constitutes a
concurrent proposition. It is a product of freedom,
the imaginary and faith, religion cannot constitute a subject of
the understanding since we cannot apply to it the
categories of reason nor demonstrate it. For, as André points out
Comte-Sponville :If the absolute is unknowable, what is it that us
allows us to think that he is God? This is the limit of fideism. If faith
exceeds all reason, how to know what one believes?
consequently, theOne cannot subject religion to the test of truth.

Religions are certainly imaginary but that does not prevent them from being real:

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- because they are revealing the truth of our humanity, that is to say
the basenesses of which we are guilty and the nobleness of which
we are capable. In any case, religions us
they say at least what we are, what we can be, or
we must be. Therefore, and if only for this reason, the
religions cannot be false: "religion, writes Alain in this
proposals are like stories. Stories have a great meaning, but
no one asks if they are real.
But it is important to emphasize that this matters to us learn more about
Humanity, alas, only on religion or God because religion, like the
declares André Comte-Sponville, is a 'doctrine that explains'
something we do not understand (the existence of the universe, of the
life, of thought...) by something that we still understand
less (God)". Moreover, it resembles our desires greatly and in
as such, it can create an illusion: "Religion, emphasizes
the philosopher corresponds exactly to our strongest desires, which
are not to die, or not definitively, and to be loved. It is
one of the reasons to beware of it. A belief that fits so well with
our desires, there is every reason to believe that it was invented for that purpose,
to reassure us, to comfort us, to satisfy us at least
by anticipation. This is the definition of illusion (...).
Freud in 'Civilization and Its Discontents' says the following: 'There is, like
we have said it, numerous paths that can lead to happiness,
as it is accessible to man, there is none that leads to it
sure thing. Religion, it too, cannot keep its promise. When
the believer is ultimately forced to speak "of the decrees
"unfathomable" of God, he thus admits that he has left him, in the
suffering, as the ultimate possibility of comfort and source of
pleasure, that unconditional submission.
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 In truth, the essential question of Being goes much further than
the question of God and religion:

In philosophy, talking about the question of Being is

ask the following question: "why is there
something rather than nothing." Religion chooses the
first chooses the first of the alternative in
admitting the existence of a divine power
superior / But the question also assumes the choice of
So nothing, God is not the solution that resolves this
question, it is part of the problem and the latter is
insoluble for understanding and knowledge of
men.
-André Comte-Sponville writes about this: "why y
Is there something rather than nothing?" The question goes
beyond God, since it includes him. Why God
rather than nothing?
-
Moreover, the sacred and spirituality are not necessarily and
exclusively religious because man can possess a spirituality
without God. Moreover, even in the realm of religion, the summit of
Saintliness is knowing how to do without God to be in sincere faith.
and a morality of the free man who acts out of love and not out of interest
or out of fear.

In truth, man is inconsolable and nothing can assure him salvation even if
even he would find a first or final cause for everything, for a cause can explain a
beginning, an origin or a conclusion and ends, but it cannot
justifying by providing man with a meaning that would cancel out his despair, his fears, his doubt
and its uncertainties.