The Evolution of Religion

[RCSaunders]

Your view of what art is is too narrow. There was a time when art, science,religion,and feeding and sheltering the family were all the same activity in which rituals helped to sustain life.

Not in this world.

Perhaps in the worlds of sword & sorcery fantasy there might be such a things, but there was never anything like that in the history of this world. Unless you consider the pagan rituals of medicine men and tribal spiritual leaders, like sacrificing young virgin girls to their Gods to insure a good harvest, art, science, and religion, there was never any such thing as you describe.

[Nick_A]

Your view of what art is is too narrow. There was a time when art, science,religion,and feeding and sheltering the family were all the same activity in which rituals helped to sustain life.

Not in this world.

Perhaps in the worlds of sword & sorcery fantasy there might be such a things, but there was never anything like that in the history of this world. Unless you consider the pagan rituals of medicine men and tribal spiritual leaders, like sacrificing young virgin girls to their Gods to insure a good harvest, art, science, and religion, there was never any such thing as you describe.

Wealthy men sacrifice young virgins for a ritual we've come to know as cash. Sometines art can make some aware in their conscience of what they are doing and question the value of this ritualistic sacrifice. It is a losing battle.

[RCSaunders]

Your view of what art is is too narrow. There was a time when art, science,religion,and feeding and sheltering the family were all the same activity in which rituals helped to sustain life.

Not in this world.

Perhaps in the worlds of sword & sorcery fantasy there might be such a things, but there was never anything like that in the history of this world. Unless you consider the pagan rituals of medicine men and tribal spiritual leaders, like sacrificing young virgin girls to their Gods to insure a good harvest, art, science, and religion, there was never any such thing as you describe.

Wealthy men sacrifice young virgins for a ritual we've come to know as cash. Sometines art can make some aware in their conscience of what they are doing and question the value of this ritualistic sacrifice. It is a losing battle.

I have no idea what you are talking about. Can you provide explicit examples of:

--men sacrificing young virgins for a ritual we've come to know as cash.
--how "cash" is a ritual. (If you mean using money to buy things, the alternative, "ritual," is stealing. Is that what you recommend?)
--art making anyone aware of anything (conscience, values, etc.).

What, "battle," are you talking about?

[henry quirk]

--men sacrificing young virgins for a ritual we've come to know as cash.

Human traffickin' is a thrivin' industry: women & children are grand commodities.


--how "cash" is a ritual. (If you mean using money to buy things, the alternative, "ritual," is stealing. Is that what you recommend?)

Gold is simple: a consistent reservoir of value; rare, beautiful, functional.

Tangible commodities, while not so lovely, have a utilitarian beauty; they directly enhance and further living.

And no central bank is required.

Scrip (paper, numbers in a hard drive, etc.): I.O.U.s, backed by nuthin' but faith, faith generated through the ritual of banking and economic science.


--art making anyone aware of anything (conscience, values, etc.).

Art, real art, is a peek behind the curtain. There's very little of it (by design).


What, "battle," are you talking about?

What is most precious, RC?

[Nick_A]

RC, Henry gets it. The valuable commodity people were willing to sacrifice to the Gods are young virgins. This same commodity are young virgins who receive cash from those who own them including themselves. Either way a valuable human commodity is exchanged for another good; either security or cash.

[Nick_A]

Can humanity ever learn to reason like Socrates? It would be a path opening a person to experience objective conscience rather than defending blind subjective morality.

The character called Socrates in the dialogues of Plato illustrates well a ‘comportment of soul’ towards understanding the world that is usually taken to be ‘without presuppositions’ and ‘completely able to enter into the perspectives taken by other people’. He is so flexible in his ability to look at a topic in the way that another person has chosen that he is often depicted as seeing aspects and consequences that the person, whose thought he is following, has not noticed and that person is surprised when Socrates raises the thinker’s awareness to some difficulty or contradiction. Socrates claims to have no knowledge except a certain gift for helping others to bring ‘out into the open’ the knowledge that they possess.

If we could reason like Socrates then maybe the contradictions it reveals would open the door to conscience.

[RCSaunders]

RC, Henry gets it. The valuable commodity people were willing to sacrifice to the Gods are young virgins. This same commodity are young virgins who receive cash from those who own them including themselves. Either way a valuable human commodity is exchanged for another good; either security or cash.

No, neither you are Henry, "get it."

Human trafficking is not in any way the equivalent of superstitious ritualistic human sacrifice to appease Gods. The thread is about religion, not social corruption.

Money is not a God to be appeased, money is an objective to be acquired. Henry confuses fiat (government) money with real money, the medium of exchange and storage of wealth. Gold, or any other stable real commodity, can be used as money.

I continue to wait for just one real example of art actually making anyone aware of any value, or providing insight (peek behind the curtain).

I understand perfectly well the point you were trying to make, Nick, but is was irrelevant to my point about religious ritual, which was, that no religious ritual actually served to improve life, as Belinda claimed. I said:

Perhaps in the worlds of sword & sorcery fantasy there might be such a things, but there was never anything like that in the history of this world. Unless you consider the pagan rituals of medicine men and tribal spiritual leaders, like sacrificing young virgin girls to their Gods to insure a good harvest, there was never any such thing as you describe.

What you wrote in no way addresses the fact that no religious rituals ever made life better.

[Nick_A]

RC

I continue to wait for just one real example of art actually making anyone aware of any value, or providing insight (peek behind the curtain).

How about the Ninth Wave painted by Aivazovsky? What are the sacred depths of hope which distinguishes hope IN something as opposed to a developed human quality?

Ivan Aivazovsky’s great painting, The Ninth Wave, is a striking portrayal of Hope itself. It depicts survivors of a shipwreck struggling to hold on to a piece of wreckage in a violent storm. The name relates to a nautical tradition in which successive waves grow in strength up to the ninth, after which the cycle repeats. Even though the subject of the painting is a brutal struggle against nature, the treatment of the scene is dramatically beautiful, and in a sense, heartwarming. In the horizon we see the bright light of the sun radiating through clouds like a giant flame. The blaze of the sky is reflected on the surface of the water, touching it with a flickering glimmer of light. The men fighting for their lives may perish at any moment, but the sense of imminent death is dispelled by an even stronger sense of hope, a sense that one’s struggle will not be in vain if only one keeps his resolve to carry on. In this way, the bright, warm, burning sun is a personification of Hope, the rays of which keep the survivors’ will afloat just as the remaining part of the ship carries their bodies. The physical piece of wreckage is essential for their survival, but what is more essential is the ever present hope that keeps their efforts going, for once the spirit surrenders nothing else will matter.

https://artsandculture.google.com/asset ... 0005%7D%7D

[Sculptor]

Your view of what art is is too narrow. There was a time when art, science,religion,and feeding and sheltering the family were all the same activity in which rituals helped to sustain life.

Hopelessly naive and rose tinted view.
The Golden Age when everything was perfect?

[Belinda]

Your view of what art is is too narrow. There was a time when art, science,religion,and feeding and sheltering the family were all the same activity in which rituals helped to sustain life.

Hopelessly naive and rose tinted view.
The Golden Age when everything was perfect?

Why do you presume that would be a specially pleasant way to live?

[henry quirk]

Henry confuses fiat (government) money with real money, the medium of exchange and storage of wealth. Gold, or any other stable real commodity, can be used as money.

No, I didn't. Read again.

[henry quirk]

Human trafficking is not in any way the equivalent of superstitious ritualistic human sacrifice to appease Gods. The thread is about religion, not social corruption.

You need to reconsider.

[henry quirk]

I continue to wait for just one real example of art actually making anyone aware of any value, or providing insight (peek behind the curtain).

The Individual and His Own

It's a broken work, but it qualifies.

[henry quirk]

no religious ritual actually served to improve life

There are members of my family who take great solace in their religion, and in the ritualistic expressions of that religion.

Would you condemn the psychological bolstering they experience as unimportant, as meaningless, as sumthin' to be cast off?

[Nick_A]

no religious ritual actually served to improve life

There are members of my family who take great solace in their religion, and in the ritualistic expressions of that religion.

Would you condemn the psychological bolstering they experience as unimportant, as meaningless, as sumthin' to be cast off?

Which ritual serves the human good? Going to church on Sunday and listening to scripture designed to nourish our being or being parts of protests demanding the impossibility of secular equality? Which path can open the door to conscience and which path leads to statist slavery?