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| Will she experience an ironic amusement when she sees this sexist advertisement from the 1950s that is included here because Hoovers are vacuum cleaners and this post is about "explanatory vacuums"? |
Under what conditions is abhorring "explanatory vacuums" a bad thing? Isn't that feeling part of what drives people to learn more, to study harder and to find answers to challenging puzzles?
As I do not associate myself with any given religion, I probably found this a bit easier to read than some people will. Do I think that religion could have been created just to explain the big questions we can't answer? I think that could be a possibility. Gottschall is right, if you look at many of the religions across the globe they all seem to have the same basic principles, it's just the fine details that we argue on. Reading the evidence previous that our left-hemisphere loves to make up lies as truth and truly believe it, it could be quite real that religion is an explanation for our unknowns. However, I don't want to believe that. I want to believe that there is something more out there. I do not abhor "explanatory vacuums" like some people do. I love a challenge. Sometimes things challenges like "where do we come from?" make my brain want to explode and I just wish I had an answer, but I really don't. I think abhorring these gaps of knowledge is like hating sky for being blue. They will always be there and we can make up all the answers we want but it's not going to change.
ReplyDeleteThe feeling of having to fill an 'explanatory vacuum' is what makes us human. We live to explore the world and ourselves and others and to seek a purpose in life. We have to have this feeling in order to function, and religion is a natural response for that need because religion is based on truth and, at the same time, religion is based on something that can't be proven. I think religion is satisfying because not only is it a history of humankind, built on facts and stories that teach us a purpose, but it is also based on faith, which still allows room for us to explore those elements of life that we can't explain. I don't think you can say that some religions are reasonable while others are not. All religions have truth to them to the people that follow them because they are a history of stories that have taught people of that culture how to act and live for hundreds of years. Even if some of them sound bizarre, religion is a reflection of the people and the culture behind it that use it as a basis for determining right and wrong in their lives. How we treat religion, that is by acting on what it teaches us and by using it as a guide in our lives, is what gives it truth.
ReplyDeleteYes, in short, all religion can be considered “master confabulations of the storytelling mind.” One of the things that makes us human is the urge to wonder and find answers, meaning in the universe. Some of these deepest “wonders” – where we came from and what happens when we die, for example – of existence we can't help but find an answer to, whether it's right or wrong.
ReplyDeleteOne of the most likely factors responsible for the creation of religion is our need of comfort. Religion supplies all you need: a convent story of creation, meaning to one's existence, and the best life insurance coverage around. People don't necessarily care whether that their religious stories – stories they construct their entire existence on – are just that, stories. It makes people feel good.
Another major factor is an ignorance of the natural world. The heavens have driven man's thinking from prehistoric times, entire cultures based around them. Just imagine what it must have been like, early homo sapiens sitting there, to see a meteor strike the Earth causing fire. Couple that with our extraordinary urge to reason everything and you can see why there were, and still are, such wacky “confabulations” to explain simple natural unfoldings.