MossMan4288
As someone who would consider himself agnostic I can agree with nearly everything you mention and how religion can be good for people on a societal scale, but the main thing that irked me was saying that most people don't want to be religious because they don't want to be held to any kind of moral standard. Do you really think the average person is living life in such a depraved and self ah way as to warrant saying that What exactly are we average people doing that's so morally reprehensible that we don't want to take accountability for I myself try to be kind, patient, understanding and compassionate towards others. I have a few vices like anyone having a couple drinks or something but I wouldn't consider anything I do to be morally degenerate to the point that I reject religion solely to avoid judgment or responsibility.
You're completely leaving out what I would consider the main reason people dont believe in God, and thats simply because they don't believe. How can you expect a person to adhere to a religious system of belief when belief is the one thing they lack It has nothing to do with morality or debating right and wrong, it's that we literally don't believe that there is an omniscient entity watching our lives and judging us based on our decisions. That doesn't mean we want to act however we want, it just means that we don't think it makes any sense at all for an all powerful creator to create an inifite universe all for the sake of some clever primates to live on a speck of dust and to care whether or not they mate with the right people and don't consume the wrong food and drink and to blindly listen to religious authorities without questioning their reasoning or using our imagination to open our minds to a more extensive world view. The story itself just doesn't make sense. So are we just supposed to delude ourselves into believing these stories Act like they're true Are we supposed to live in a society where potentially no one a tually believes God is real but we all just act like it and pretend anyways for the sake of the bigger picture Its not all about morality you just can't force belief.
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beveik
could this be that we as humans are striving to reach security and comfort, but it takes a while and on the way we use religion as a cushion to soften the blows to reach the eden When we do, religion becomes obsolete since new found social structures can replace purpose, moral guidance, social support quite well. I'd argue that decline of religion is not the reason of societal collapse by itself. It's more like a natural phenomena that occures once civilisation reaches modern age where comfort, security and prosperity is abundant for most and religion as institution doesn't hold up against competition. I tend to lean towards idea, that comfort and security is what destroys us and we have to start all over again from the bottom. Even though we strive for it, but we are not built for comfort at all. We have tools to reach good times, ability to survive in harsh environments, but to stay put, prosper for long and enjoy the fruits of hard labour that's where the challenge comes because we lack the tools. Then things start going back to shit, self sabotage, vices start to flourish, people become desperate and cry for strong hand to protect their dreams of living happy life, revolutions burn everything to the ground, structures fracture and collapse. And then we as humans are in the place where we thrive - survive, adapt and overcome. But we are vulnerable, need guidance, group identity and sense of safety. This very moment is when religions comes in to play. Religion is one of the greatest human invention and even though i'm an atheist i can't downplay it's absolute importance during horrific times humans have to suffer through to reach prosperity, safety and good times.
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whatifalthist
One of the biggest questions i always had, was to figure, how did the hindu's chakra model explain the functionality of the soul, body, life mechanism with the exact same model that TCP/IP protocol depicts functionality of machine, signal, Internet. as a darwinist one of the things very captivating to me had always been convergent evolution, to be a bird, a mammal or a fish you will end up with the same overall solution when living in water. the big question is, why everybody all over the history always ends up with a religion mechanisms as one of foundations to make the society work, not sufficient, but none the less vital. living under the heavy hand of a theocratic tyranny i have evolved to keep my atheistic method, helps greatly with keeping the demons at the doorway, but somewhere between what doctor Patterson and you speak of, i can sift to find the missing links of my satisfactory answer. the religion is a method, almost foolproof to guide the collective will power of a society in the direction of efficient survival against the world outside, it is not perfect, no solution in the game of evolution is, for life, good enough is the way to go, then on a lifespan as long as a civilization, those chinks get to play out their game, errors accumulate and system eventually crashes. religion is part of culture, culture is a less than perfect constantly evolving roadmap, it's a finger pointing to the moon, but eventually it is not fault of the finger if the espectator is only looks at the fingertip. I am yet to fully iron out my idea, but i will surely write it down cohesively one day soon.
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wraith1771
Two things I would like to say is
1: I think the USA will not collapse in the same way as Europe has. We have a strong small town and rural presence all throughout the country. As the major cities collapse in on themselves, the American identity will be preserved in the more religious small town/rural areas. US society will definitely be changed by the urban collapse, and it can’t come soon enough.
2: a single conversation from the original Deus Ex has left me thinking that this cycle of worship going from God, to fame, to collapse and back to God.
Deus Ex proposed a different end point: AI
As is postulated in the conversation, God and the gods were entities of observation, judgement, and punishment. All other sentiments were secondary.
Today, people worship fame (the observation and judgement of others. To these people, God isn’t there to scold them when they commit sin, but other people are. Be it in the form of the Law or the Mob, man has replaced God in those aspects.
This new end point, AI, something that won’t come about for centuries, if it does at all, could be what replaces God and fame.
God and his punishments require faith that they will happen. Man is undeniably real, but is fallible.
An AI though one that uses data mining algorithms, and one day becomes intelligent enough. It will know you as only God can, and it will not require faith to punish you.
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NatTurner328
Europe is by far nowhere near the global cultural force, because technology doesn’t count as culture. Europe had a period known as the Dark Ages which lasted 600 years in which 1/3 of its population died off because they didn’t know how to bathe properly. Europe is the reason gangs ever became a thing in America, and no matter how many technological advancements Europe made through pilfering resources or information from outside continents including Africa, Africa is where the human genome evolved and to this day there is no accomplishment more significant to human history than that fact. Europe has only been globally economically dominant for about 500 years, which is insignificant compared to the 200k yearlong history of Homo Sapien existence. Wokeness, which isn’t real and to the extent that it is has only lasted 8 years, has nothing to do with the decline of Europe, or European-engineered capitalism, this was inherently baked into a system that stemmed from feudalism. You sound young and I’m guessing you never graduated from college, but good luck finessing all the high-school-educated MAGAts that are susceptible to pseudo-intellectual djangoism spewed from an insecure white male who’s at least smart enough to realize that his days of coasting on white privilege and mediocrity are over.
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RyanTravis23
Nice to see a logical, historical, and unbiased video. and by that, I mean insane, ahistorical, and severely biased video. It's not that whatifalthis is unintelligent. He knows history, but his bias is enormous. He has his a priori beliefs and those trap his understanding in many boxes. I used to believe the same things until I finally read sources outside of my echo chamber. Legitimately, outside of an ehco chamber. Read something as it, without looking for a gotcha moment or thinking they're wrong from page 1.
The opening part about the left and Muslims in the 2000s is laughably funny. I was an adult conservative Christian in the early 2000s and even then I knew that was a strawman view of the left.
I'm ranting bc I think whatifalthis is intelligent and its being wasted in bias.
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0WhiteKnight0
People believe in gods, deities and religion to explain their experiences and emotions.
A) You're more likely to believe in the religious denomination that surrounds you.
B) Religion is sought under times of turmoil and discontemt, therefore its an effective coping mechanism.
C) We use religion to explain things we do not know or what appears to be magic or divinity. There are writings of tribes that have seen aeroplanes and derived a belief system around them, etc.
D) Religious practice has declined in more developed nations due to better qualities of life meaning external meaning and safety mechanisms become less important.
Btw your take on atheism killing more people than religion is fundamentally flawed because atheism is not a belief system.
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GhostSamaritan
As a lifelong atheist, I don't deny the power of religion, but that's what makes religion (as well as other cult-like movements) so dangerous. However, trying to force myself to believe in souls, spirits, or gods is like trying to force myself to believe in the easter bunny.
I've had one near-death experience, nearly drowning, but I didn't experience any spiritual miracle stuff. I could likely take psychedelics and see super cool things but still understand those are simply products of the mind, just like when you dream.
I'm convinced that religious leaders often are atheistic themselves. They're simply selling religion to others to pursue their own ambitions, like the catholic priests who abuse their social position to touch little kids.
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danielbagyula4394
I do not remember where did I hear but it was a really eye opening idea: Cells in every living thing seem to believe in something bigger than themselves. In humans, for example, they work together to build the body, even though they cannot fully understand it. They work hard and sacrifice themselves, trusting that this greater purpose is essential for their own survival.
Sometimes a cell stops believing. It causes minor problems at first, but if this cell spreads its idea to others, we call this cancer. Cancer always ends in the death of these rebellious cells sometimes taking the organism they built with them, sometimes only the tumor itself. There is no happy ending for cells that reject the bigger purpose.
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matthewmaguire3554
It's ok dude. we have been using psychedelics in spiritual quests for thousand and thousands of years. In the archaic period before any of our Abrahamic religeons (many of their beliefs remnants of the archaic period) it was part of religeous ceremonies. Which brings me to the DNA breakthroughs which were discribed as during a fantasly. What happened was Francis Crick the Nobel Prize winning father of modern genetics who first deduced the double-helix structure of DNA nearly 50 years ago was on LSD when he made his discorery. It was no fantasy. It cleared away many scientific preconceptions he had and allowed him to see clearly what was already there but blinded by habit.
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Hughzaa9
A point worth keeping in mind is that these atheist regimes you mention like communism and fascism occurred in deeply Christian countries and almost all followers of those regimes were Christian
Always seems like the silliest double standard to me that Christians proclaim modern western society as Christian, yet conveniently dodge responsibility for any problems caused by Christian societies both past and present
You either have a Christian society or you don’t, you can’t just flip back and forth for the sake of a convenient contrived argument that makes Christians always perfect, and the flaw of society always a lack of Christianity
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joshtyler1300
6: 08 Northern Ireland has a sizeable Protestant Ulster Scot population but they actually have more Catholics than Protestants.
Europe is still a strongly Christian society. Demographically, almost all Europeans are Christian.
Not quite. Highly influential, former great powers like the UK, France and the Netherlands are majority non-religious as are Czech Republic and Estonia. All the Western and Northern European countries that are majority religious have sizeable non-religious/non-Christian populations. Even Spain is at least 25% non-religious. And of the people who call themselves Christians, many are Christian in name only.
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user-xi5ej4ox5s
3 reasons why all traditional human societies are religious:
1. Because human brains works the way which has a cognitive bug which leads to people believing supernatural things.
2. Because vast majority of humans cannot accept that their lives has no true meaning and that their existance will inevitably end so they embrace every alternative to this, no matter how fake it is.
3. Majority of people want to have some highest moral authority which everyone must follow.
4. If all traditional religions cannot apply to people they have a tendency to chose some idiotic ideology as pseudo-religion.
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varkonyitibor4409
Imagine a tribal world before the dawn of civilization.
Every tribe can randomly have or don't have has some kind of religion. Later we see the map and see every tribe or civilization has religion. This could mean two things:
1, people have an internal need for religion, if you leave a group of people alone they will invent it anyway, religion is a natural behaviour of humans
2, even if there were nonreligious tribes they were outcompeted by religious ones, religion is a darwinian advantage
Both of these statements contradict the current leftist mainstream cultural view
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kitsunetengoku1467
I would like to believe that eventually from the chaotic structure that are power struggles us as humans have the capacity to to think ahead and have culpability of free thought and choice, and by that I mean we are the only creatures that can premeditate actions regardless of lack of knowledge of evil, we are capable of great goods and give to those who need it even if it costs us our own safety or lives. Even when lack of morality and evil prevails we are capable of dreaming for something better, even if we crumble and rise from the ashes.
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threesixnine369six
Yeah man I totally get how society needs some form of common spiritual direction and belonging, I just wish it was more of the Indian inclusive loving type spirituality and less of the Abrahamic exclusive hateful type religion, I know, gross generalisation and simplification but kinda true. Can we really say we need more religion when Christo-fascism is now deeply political and on the rise in the US and beyond And I’m not using the term Christo-fascism lightly since we see it galvanizing against some of America’s most basic freedoms.
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Bronze-AgeSigma
Where one finds a temple - one finds civilization. - Joseph deMaistre.
From the Cahokian mounds tof Mississippi valley to Ziggurats in Eridu. This serves the human element of life - the emotional, psychological, and spiritual life of humans. This also goes hand in hand with cultural development until the civilizations dying phase when new alternatives develop which reject tradition and society and lead to some other degenerate set of theories on existence.
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umwha
24: 00 = I love the idea that a civilisations childhood is where it develops its spirituality based on its georgaphic envirnoment. However I foind it strange that all the examples included here, not one centres on the symbol of the 'World Tree' concept. Probably the most core and ubiquotous human cosmological symbol. Relateldy, I think the idea of the three-leveled world - the underworld, the normal world, and the divine-world, is also extremely ubiqutous.
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jimhalfpenny442
Because you don't get to get out of the religion game if you're a human being. You just get to accept the ways in which you're participating in it or deny it. The questions religion has answers to are questions of moral and philosophical importance, and those questions exist independent of whether you have an organized religion or not.
Always beware of thinking that you can out of the religion game or that you can transcend religious dogma.
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kalvinragnar4131
One thing I would find useful would be a definition of degeneracy within this context. If it's moral decay, as you've pointed out in previous videos, the U. S. /West is living on one of the most dogmatically moralistic eras it's seen, just not traditional christian morals. However, perhaps if it's something like the moral decay specifically from the original founding culture perhaps that would still work. Interested in your thoughts.
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