ADAM:
....that is my theory,that religion is an attempt to find Quality in the face
of SOM.
RICK: Sorry Adam, your theory just doesn't hold water... Pirsig places the
origins of SOM at around the time of Aristotle (384BC - 322BC).
Chrisitianity (obviously) doesn't show up for a few hundred years later, but
Judiasm goes back 3000+ years pre-SOM (Judiasm and Christianity are fairly
similar anyway). And religion itself goes back as far as history does.
Thus, it is impossible to give SOM any credit in the origin of the need for
religion. I think you were on the money with those first few reasons you
named.
ERIN: Could the origin of religion be linked with language?
The "need" for religion seems to be related to a need for meaning and it seems
it would makes sense that acquisition of language created this need.
Have you ever read Rollo May's "The cry for myth" - It's a nice summary for
this need for religion, I cut and pasted a summary from a personality
teacher's website. I found it interesting...
May’s last book was The Cry for Myth. He pointed out that a big problem in
the twentieth century was our loss of values. All the different values around
us lead us to doubt all values. As Nietzsche pointed out, if God is dead
(i.e. absolutes are gone), then anything is permitted!
May says we have to create our own values, each of us individually. This, of
course, is difficult to say the least. So we need help, not forced on us, but
“offered up” for us to use as we will.
Enter myths, stories that help us to “make sense” out of out lives, “guiding
narratives.” They resemble to some extent Jung’s archetypes, but they can be
conscious and unconscious, collective and personal. A good example is how
many people live their lives based on stories from the Bible.
Other examples you may be familiar with include Horatio Alger, Oedipus Rex,
Sisyphus, Romeo and Juliet, Casablanca, Leave it to Beaver, Star Wars, Little
House on the Prairie, The Simpsons, South Park, and the fables of Aesop. As I
intentionally suggest with this list, a lot of stories make lousy myths. Many
stories emphasize the magical granting of one's wishes (infantile). Others
promise success in exchange for hard work and self-sacrifice (neo-Puritan).
Many of our stories today say that valuelessness is itself the best value!
Instead, says May, we should be actively working to create new myths that
support people’s efforts at making the best of life, instead of undermining
them!
The idea sounds good -- but it isn’t terribly existential! Most
existentialists feel that it is necessary to face reality much more directly
than “myths” imply. In fact, they sound a little too much like what the great
mass of people succumb to as a part of fallenness, conventionality, and
inauthenticity! A controversy for the future....
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