What mode of thinking or organizing human behavior is immune from corruption? Pointing out religion's corruption isn't saying much. The period of human history that, today, tends to emerge, as a symbol at least, of our most villainous - Nazism, was based on a distortion of Darwin's idea of survival of the fittest. And of course Hitler mixed religion in there too, because power-crazy tyrants will use anything and everything they can think of to manipulate people. He also poisoned business, education, art, and everything else in his reach.

If you throw out religion based only on its corruptibility, then you have to throw out just about everything else humans do. The drive to corrupt is not inherent in a single human activity. It is inherent in human nature.

All aphorisms are gross oversimplifications. The error is not in simplifying complex ideas into memorable triggers of insight. The error is in assuming any aphorism could ever perfectly or completely represent any field of thought as complex and multifaceted as religion. It isn't intended to do so.

@skado Who mentioned corruption. I made no mention of corruption at all. I am not saying that any of those things are a result of religion being corrupted, please do not put words into my mouth.

Since you raise the issue of Nazism, I would state that the Nazis did not corrupt religion at all, they simply took it as it was and used it in its pure form and for its main purpose. Just as, more than two thousand years ago, in the world of the Roman empire, when armed thuggery was the ruling order, and armed thuggery was seen as an ideal of human virtue, supported by existing philosophy and popular opinion, while enabling slavery, political looting, brutal bloody entertainments, public torture and empire. A criminal gang, called the early Christians, made a stand for humanity, the idea of human rights, and for kindness as the ultimate virtue. And many of those criminals were punished with torture and death for that stance, including their originator Jesus, if he ever existed.

Yet those early Christians did not attempt to enter into existing schools of philosophy and primitive science, nor did they make claims that they spoke for majority public or political opinion and that their ideas were obvious and mainstream. Rather they used the only thing available to the criminal, and those outside the existing institutions, namely, a (Yes corrupted. ) form of an existing religion. Because religious claims are the only ones that can be made by anyone, even the most criminal, without evidence, reason or the backing of any authority. Yet they can give an appearance of authority to anything that you care to imagine, whatever crime however extreme and outside. God, since he does not literally exist, the traditions and metaphors which really stand in his place, because they are so muddled as to be interpreted however you like, will lend his/their support and authority to any cause, however criminal.

And that was a great and wonderful thing, for the early Christians at least, enabling them to propagate their ideas, win over public opinion and eventually gain power in the state, aided by religious claims of tradition and godliness. Albeit that neither claim stood up to any real test. Yet over the last two thousand years, human rights, equality under the law, and charity have thanks in part to Christian tradition, but also perhaps mainly due to a naturally growing debate, aided by increasing technology in education, (Like printing.) become the mainstream, the political norm, and the main instruments of the state. (I know that may not always be so in your country, but American exceptionalism is a minor point.)

And in a world where those values are the values of the mainstream public opinion, moral philosophy, and the state, who are criminal today ? Not the kind hearted certainly. None of course but the Nazis, the thugs and the dishonest exploiters, and where do the criminals like the Nazis go for authority and support which will outflank reason and science ? They go to the natural resort of the criminal, the one great human institution which never asks for proof, evidence or even thought. The Nazis were using religion in its true and proper way, in exactly the same way the early Christians did, it is just that the times and the world have changed, and humanity is no longer criminal, quite the opposite.

The message feature here doesn't seem to be working. I sent you a ''hello''....and wonder how you're doing???

@pamagain Hello, I replied to your message, you must not have received it. I'm doing well, just found out that the site is back up.

@nogod4me THANKS! If I'd had your email...I'd've advised you that it's up again. Glad to see you, though and glad you're ok!

I will copy my reply above for your interest.
Literalism and symbolic expressionism have probably always been major parts of human understandings, including religion, and continue to be so. Human nature has not changed with the passage of so short a time, to paraphrase L. Tolstoy. Plus, there are in most religions observably many other elements, such as political and social propaganda, deliberate deception, and attempts at enhanced pleasure stimulation (fun) all worked into the mix.

When you encounter gross oversimplification, such as this, you can usually safely assume, folly or a clumsy attempt at deception.

@Fernapple Yes, I think Bigfoot and Nessie have suffered the same fate.

Very true. One reason why the Bible is so popular of course, and not the Greek philosophers, is that the Bible is open to interpretation, often contradicts itself and is frequently nearly unintelligible. Which is strangely an asset, which makes it popular. Because if you want, for example, Aristotle to agree with you, then you have to search his works very hard for that agreement, and you may not find it. Where in the Bible you can, and often with a very minimum of interpretation, find something to agree with, almost certainly, whatever you want. Then you can say. "See it says so in the Bible."

It thus gives absolute authority to anything you want. So that you have in religion, but especially Christian religion, absolute relativism, claiming to be perfect absolute objective truth. And whether you are a relativist, or you believe in the search for objective truth, through for example, science and philosophy, you would I think have to admit that that is the worst of both worlds, combined.

It’s a good question, and I can’t say I know the full answer, but maybe some contributing factors. One is probably that symbolic thinking developed much earlier in H.sapiens than did rational thinking. It appears to me that it is still mostly the prevailing mode even today. Reason is a learned skill, whereas image comparison appears to be innate.

These days, we tend to use literal thinking as our standard for sorting important things out, as in courts of law and in science, but I suspect that was not even an aspirational standard two thousand years ago, for the general public (some few brainy Greek geeks notwithstanding).

Secondly, even today, some concepts/relationships are extremely difficult to impossible to convey in literal prose, but that’s what we use art and poetry to express. We tend to think we are rational creatures, but a lot of our “thinking” is done subconsciously and with images rather than with words.

Then there is the known phenomenon of MCCs - Minimally Counterintuitive Concepts, which have been shown to be more memorable than either fully counterintuitive or non-counterintuitive concepts. So, as in all evolution, whatever works best, survives. And that which can be remembered will always survive that which can’t.

There are probably many other contributing factors.

It’s easy and tempting to construe things we don’t understand as evil or malicious, but it’s good to keep in mind that evolution favors systems that support survival and reproduction - not necessarily systems that meet human standards of intelligibility. And evolution itself has zero capacity for rational thought, even though it is what created us from scratch. That its movements should be easily discernible to our rational minds is, itself, not a rational thought.

@skado As you say. "literal thinking as our standard for sorting important things out, as in courts of law and in science, but I suspect that was not even an aspirational standard two thousand years ago" . Nor I suspect for many if not most is it so today, human nature having changed little over that time. As nogodforme points out above, new irrational cults are commonplace. But the reason why the "Greek geeks " began to formulate a system of training for rational thought, which they called philosophy, was because they could plainly see, the conspicuous failings of the thought systems of their own time, which you term symbolic thought, to address the problems of the increasing powers and problems that technology (mainly agriculture in their case.) brought. For if the old systems had not failed, to a very conspicuous extent, then there would have been no need or demand for philosophy and attempts to improve human thinking, the word philosophy would not even exist. (Nor natural philosophy, science.)

Given that we live in a world today, where that technology has advanced vastly further than the "Greek geeks" could ever have imagined. Giving us the potentially destructive power to change environments on a global scale, obliterate whole cities at the push of a button and fill every home with information overload. Then the need to improve our thinking, for everyone if possible, is even greater. And fortunately that technology, probably, gives us the means to do so, at least enough disposable wealth to send every child to a good school, if we will it. Mere hands in the air, acceptance of that is the way it always was, therefore we will accept progress in every field except education. We will have better cars on the roads, better ships on the sea and better lights in the homes, but let the people's minds wallow in ignorance, for they are not worthy of better, and we will fob them of with intellectual pacifiers, because it is cheap, easy and traditional, that is not good enough. Nor is it even safe today, not even for those doing the fobbing.

@Fernapple
I agree with just about all of that, except for perhaps the assumption of some “controlling others” that are holding all of society back.

Just as there is both applied science and pure science today, those two motivations are probably inherent in our human nature. Some of our thinking is aimed at practical problem solving, and some of our energies have probably "always" been directed at exploring development for development's sake.

The only part of religion that was failing to satisfy the growing development of human curiosity was its cosmological function - its role of explaining the nature of Nature. And so we developed, over the next couple thousand years, better ways of doing that... for those who happen to be interested. But most folks are really not all that interested in the specifics of cosmology. Those who work in science or technology can put it to good use, but the average citizen has little desire, or even need, to know anything at all about particle physics.

I think, as I believe you do, that the world would be a better place if critical thinking were to assume a more prominent place in public education. But unlike you (correct me if I have misunderstood you) I don't blame its absence on the reign of some all-powerful fobbers. The archetype of the "Evil Other" is a god I don't believe in.

Yes, there are good and not-good influences all around us. But I don't see any human collective that has the power to prevent the entire human population from advancing. The limitation appears to me to be in human nature itself. You can lead a human to knowledge, but you can’t make them learn.

Meanwhile, the social and psychological functions of religion (the core functions) still haven’t found equal secular replacements, and even the cosmological hasn’t broken 20% worldwide.

@skado I am sorry no. That is simply not true. The ancient Greek philosophers were not by any means only addressing cosmology. Having read many of them I will quite plainly state, that their main interest was moral philosophy, and that it was the failings of tradition to address that, which generated the need. The stepping of philosophy away from moral subjects into an obsession with abstract cosmology, is almost entirely a modern thing. Moral and human issues, were not merely a major part of classical philosophy, but it main occupation, and the clash with religion over moral issues their main conflict. Socrates, Pythagoras and Hypatia were not killed, because of their stands on the shape of the celestial spheres, but over their positions on moral issues and religion, which were all important in classical philosophy.

@Fernapple That's true. I'm currently reading the excellent book Beyond the Individual: Stoic Philosophy on Community and Connection by Will Johncock which shows that for Greek and also for many Roman philosophers, morality and cosmology are but two aspects of something larger: The cosmos, the Logos, our human world, God, matter, happiness (!) .... these were all intertwined and connected, all are aspects of the same Reality, a world-view that is totally alien to us

For your interest, here is my above reply .

Literalism and symbolic expressionism have probably always been major parts of human understandings, including religion, and continue to be so. Human nature has not changed with the passage of so short a time, to paraphrase L. Tolstoy. Plus, there are in most religions observably many other elements, such as political and social propaganda, deliberate deception, and attempts at enhanced pleasure stimulation (fun) all worked into the mix.

When you encounter gross oversimplification, such as this, you can usually safely assume, folly or a clumsy attempt at deception.

@Fernapple
Thank you. More or less the point I wanted to make apparently as angrily and ineloquently as possible.

The constant back-bending by @skado that would make a contortionist jealous to praise religion gets old. By his own tacit admission, it's seemingly nonsensical and unnecessary. If it's this amazing product of evolution that's withstood the test of time and even those pesky smart people that would have us do away with it then it probably doesn't need cheerleaders. If, however, it does need the cheerleaders to survive, then isn't it a relic that's unnecessary and unwise to preserve? If there was a way we could do away with the survival instinct of the human body to store as much fat as possible, to a detrimental and debilitating degree, would we decline simply because that process formed by evolution used to provide an advantage for survival and reproduction.

@ChestRockfield Agreed. I myself have often used the diet metaphor for religion, in that, what was once useful for survival could under different circumstances become a threat to survival, or at least to happiness and wellbeing. And the harm religious belief is causing in the modern world, is as obvious caused by our ancient evolved tastes, as the diabetic symptoms are caused by our love of sweet foods. But both are equally capable of being combated. (We can learn to diet, however hard that may be. )

Understanding the narcissistic mind is difficult. But the appeal of religion, especially esoteric religion, is not too hard to understand. Since the narcissist has to find and believe that there is special knowledge, not available to most people, or there is nothing to make them special. Mainstream knowledge, science and poplar moral philosophy, simply will not do, because that is freely available to all, and the narcissist can not get to be the exception special person they want to be, from that. And naturally they will defend their chosen outsider world view to any degree.

In which they are aided by a second important feature of narcissism. From their earliest youth, a narcissist finds that one of the main threats to their wish to be exceptional, placed above others and free from normal restraints, is reason and evidence based truth. As people often say, they tried to, "reason with " a child when its demands become extreme. Therefore the narcissist learns from the earliest childhood, that reason and truth are weapons that are going to be used against it, when it tries to make selfish demands.

Most children adjust, grow up and learn to truly value what they are taught, but the narcissist instead becomes adept at dogging twisting and manipulating, what it sees only as weapons in its war with human norms. They naturally try to turn, what they see only as weapons, and nothing more, like science and philosophy around and use them to counter truth and reason. Grabbing the real authority that these things have, because of the time, thought and effort that people have put into them, while still themselves living in a totally relativist world where whim and prejudice are the only values. Nobody therefore likes to quote science and philosophy more than the narcissist, or shows less interest in learning from them. So that you can encounter examples where the narcissist quotes, a so called, authority, and you are taken aback when the, article or experiment does not even seem to be about the same subject, let alone to reach the same conclusions. Which is actually tragic for them in many ways, because they can never know the joy that objective learning can bring, or even the deep but real joy of adulthood.