Re: "Fear of Death" a Primary Motivator of Religions?
Posted: June 13th, 2017, 3:00 am
Philosch -
Yeah, there are many "motivators" that can be looked at. That is generally what I am posing to Spectrum. To give better weight to his thesis it seems reasonable to look at these ideas of "will to power", "will to pleasure", and such, as you've labelled them, and see how they relate to the human attitude of religion in a personal sense and in a broader political sense.
We would, I expect, hear religious folk protest and say their idea of religion is about love, faith and understanding. This may be ironic to us, or not, but it does show something other than fear of death needs to be addressed before it is pursued as the possible fountainhead of all religions. What is more there is basic psychological pattern we know about humans in which when we have an idea we hold to the information that supports our views rather than actively combat against our own views. The OP doe snot ask what is the primary motivation for religions, or religious people. It asks specifically about Fear of Death, so it is up to us to either chose to add weight to the proposition or weigh in against it. I am simply asking about other factors not being considered and going against surface appearances that sound fitting and pleasing to the reader.
I have to question how appropriate it is to say there is an "impulse" to live if there is no consciousness? I will further this position in my reply to Spectrum in the final paragraph, and have already alluded to it in my point about evolution in last post.
Then we have the broader item of neurological theories of emotions. There is a long history in science that looks at what emotions are. The celebrated names evade me right now though ... anyway the emotion is a "feeling", a body reaction known and felt consciously. I cannot remember who first said this, but it was basically something like "our hearts do not race because we are excited or scared, our hearts race and this combined with other sensory feeling is felt as 'fear'/'excitement'." This could get messy because it is addressing the ever popular debate about the philosophical tradition of the mind/body so I'll just leave it there.
I think I get the gist of what you're putting across here. There is no right or wrong answer, I agree! I just think it makes sense to address how fear factors into all human activities, not just religion, or how religion factors into other human condition, other than fear. To limit and confine the argument to one singular particular area is up to Spectrum. In a comprehensive thesis I would at least expect these kind of points to be touched on. If he outlines his investigation as being how Fear is used in religion that is not an issue for me. What I don't see useful is making the assumption that religion is ruled only by the fear of death, rather than the fear of death being a contributing factor to a complex human tradition of which the origins are obscured in history and within the machinations of the human condition itself in the present day. This is a problem of psychology, and I would argue as did Husserl, that the modern tradition of psychology suffers from trying to make itself an empirical pursuit in order to present itself as a physical science, when it is anything but a physical science and deals with the 'spirit' (in an none religious sense of the word) of humanity in general rather than collections of empirical data. Luckily we've had great strides made in reinforcing how we view human consciousness with neuroscience and the empirical and phenomenological attitudes towards consciousness have further revealed the schism between subjective and objective experience.
As an add on I think Jung made a very important point about Freuds linear view of human psychology. He said, in relation to dream analysis, that Freud's interpretation of a dream was focused on his theory of sex. He took a very sexual interpretation of the dream to be the underlying meaning. Jung said that this is a valid interpretation, but it is not necessarily the correct one. He went on to view the representation of his idea of Archetypes and came to a different interpretation. In some instances Freud's sexual interpretation will hold more weight than in others. In this sense I am viewing the OP and in this sense only. I am not saying it is a false proposition only that it is one of many ways of interpreting the question of religious motivations (which are essentially human motivations).
Spectrum -
I was being pedantic, like I said I was, in order to highlight other things you may be overlooking. If you are saying fear of death is the primary motivator for religions then I feel you should address other possibilities and show us how this fear of death over powers other drives, or relates to them. Drives such as the need to understand and pleasure.
You still seem to be avoiding my general point though. That is that if fear of death is the fountainhead of all human activities, then why are you only focusing on religion in regards to this? It doesn't make sense in the way you've presented it. Like I charitably said we can roughly see that religions tend to address the main questions of mortality and implant the idea of an afterlife. So here you are most definitely justified in saying what you are saying, but I think the reader would also have to ask other questions of what you are saying.
The point of the chocolate is to show that we don't generally say that we eat chocolate because we want sex and fear death. Of course I understand the pedantic nature of this statement, and I was equally hoping you'd understand this as an outlining the over all counter position to what you seem to be proposing. We are much more inclined to say that religion stems from existential crisis that wanting to eat chocolate does. This is obvious. What is not so obvious are the other factors that are buried under this premise (which is in itself perhaps flawed anyway, being an oversimplification - that is not directly important here though.)
To be clearer still one person may be diagnosed with cancer and fearful of approaching death try to make sense of their existence, thus turning to religion as a means of comfort and strength in reflection to their having to face the question of their mortality. Another person may simply find the community and brotherhood of some religious organization appealing and be drawn into the idea of some "immortal soul" at a later date.
Another distinction I was trying to allude to was the difference between the motivation of the religious practitioner and the institution of a religion. The motivations of the individuals undoubtedly differ from the over all founders, but there is at least some wider appeal. Over all the institution of a religion is set out with a political motive of some kind, as it necessarily must being something taken on by the people. The individual idea, the Holy Man's idea, may differ quite drastically from the spin off of his thoughts. What we do see is a common theme in religion that most certainly addresses very human questions about personal meaning in life and how we came to be here on Earth asking all these questions. If anything in this line of thinking it is not any kind of FEAR that drives us, but rather wanting to KNOW.
If you are to propose that Fear of Death is the Primary Motivator for Humans I am open to this discussion. This is what I am considering in my responses. I am asking you about the specification of religion, and in what sense (personal subjective appeal or as an institution with a pervading authority, which necessarily would stem from an individual with a point of view of the world they feel inspired to share and/or impose on others.)
I cannot say conclusively that religious people are motivated primarily by Fear of Death or that religious institutions are based on the idea of the Fear of Death. Although I have to admit the later is certainly a very ripe fruit to weigh in on as we know fear can override our rational minds and be used to control swathes of people. This would be appropriate as a conclusion if we viewed religious institutions intents as being merely to control masses of people (which I am in no doubt many religious figures, and political figures, have historical done!)
To add in on what I previously said in my last post about evolution ... bacteria don't have fear of death nor a desire to reproduce. We can view bacteria "as if" they do, but they don't. This shows the fallacy of assuming that evolution has an intent. The fact that we have brains to question our own existence is the primary motivator, a singular cell organism does not possess any "motivation". When we are talking about the primary motivation for religions we are most certainly talking about the intent of the founder and the institutional bodies that represent, justly or not, what the fountainhead of the religion is to be viewed as. We can clearly see that religious institutions played a significant role as a political body, but the founder may very well have been against the idea of such a political institution or may not even have considered this as an issue. Also, these founders may not even have imagined their ideas, experiences and beliefs would be so influential on future generations and I very much doubt that who they were is in anyway reflected in religious texts. We know they were human, or simply made up. There is some evidence for some and little evidence for others. All religions present a very obvious heritage and we can see how historically their views and ideologies consume and dismiss other religious attitudes, based on geopolitical climates.
note : I am still to offer my views publicly or privately once you've finished your thesis. I am not an expert and my authority is only my own, but the offer is there and I am willing to offer critic of the style and substance of what you write - although my grammatical know how may not be great I am reasonably familiar with philosophical texts and giving critique is just as useful to me as receiving it. I expect nothing and hope for everything
Yeah, there are many "motivators" that can be looked at. That is generally what I am posing to Spectrum. To give better weight to his thesis it seems reasonable to look at these ideas of "will to power", "will to pleasure", and such, as you've labelled them, and see how they relate to the human attitude of religion in a personal sense and in a broader political sense.
We would, I expect, hear religious folk protest and say their idea of religion is about love, faith and understanding. This may be ironic to us, or not, but it does show something other than fear of death needs to be addressed before it is pursued as the possible fountainhead of all religions. What is more there is basic psychological pattern we know about humans in which when we have an idea we hold to the information that supports our views rather than actively combat against our own views. The OP doe snot ask what is the primary motivation for religions, or religious people. It asks specifically about Fear of Death, so it is up to us to either chose to add weight to the proposition or weigh in against it. I am simply asking about other factors not being considered and going against surface appearances that sound fitting and pleasing to the reader.
I have to question how appropriate it is to say there is an "impulse" to live if there is no consciousness? I will further this position in my reply to Spectrum in the final paragraph, and have already alluded to it in my point about evolution in last post.
Then we have the broader item of neurological theories of emotions. There is a long history in science that looks at what emotions are. The celebrated names evade me right now though ... anyway the emotion is a "feeling", a body reaction known and felt consciously. I cannot remember who first said this, but it was basically something like "our hearts do not race because we are excited or scared, our hearts race and this combined with other sensory feeling is felt as 'fear'/'excitement'." This could get messy because it is addressing the ever popular debate about the philosophical tradition of the mind/body so I'll just leave it there.
I think I get the gist of what you're putting across here. There is no right or wrong answer, I agree! I just think it makes sense to address how fear factors into all human activities, not just religion, or how religion factors into other human condition, other than fear. To limit and confine the argument to one singular particular area is up to Spectrum. In a comprehensive thesis I would at least expect these kind of points to be touched on. If he outlines his investigation as being how Fear is used in religion that is not an issue for me. What I don't see useful is making the assumption that religion is ruled only by the fear of death, rather than the fear of death being a contributing factor to a complex human tradition of which the origins are obscured in history and within the machinations of the human condition itself in the present day. This is a problem of psychology, and I would argue as did Husserl, that the modern tradition of psychology suffers from trying to make itself an empirical pursuit in order to present itself as a physical science, when it is anything but a physical science and deals with the 'spirit' (in an none religious sense of the word) of humanity in general rather than collections of empirical data. Luckily we've had great strides made in reinforcing how we view human consciousness with neuroscience and the empirical and phenomenological attitudes towards consciousness have further revealed the schism between subjective and objective experience.
As an add on I think Jung made a very important point about Freuds linear view of human psychology. He said, in relation to dream analysis, that Freud's interpretation of a dream was focused on his theory of sex. He took a very sexual interpretation of the dream to be the underlying meaning. Jung said that this is a valid interpretation, but it is not necessarily the correct one. He went on to view the representation of his idea of Archetypes and came to a different interpretation. In some instances Freud's sexual interpretation will hold more weight than in others. In this sense I am viewing the OP and in this sense only. I am not saying it is a false proposition only that it is one of many ways of interpreting the question of religious motivations (which are essentially human motivations).
Spectrum -
I was being pedantic, like I said I was, in order to highlight other things you may be overlooking. If you are saying fear of death is the primary motivator for religions then I feel you should address other possibilities and show us how this fear of death over powers other drives, or relates to them. Drives such as the need to understand and pleasure.
You still seem to be avoiding my general point though. That is that if fear of death is the fountainhead of all human activities, then why are you only focusing on religion in regards to this? It doesn't make sense in the way you've presented it. Like I charitably said we can roughly see that religions tend to address the main questions of mortality and implant the idea of an afterlife. So here you are most definitely justified in saying what you are saying, but I think the reader would also have to ask other questions of what you are saying.
The point of the chocolate is to show that we don't generally say that we eat chocolate because we want sex and fear death. Of course I understand the pedantic nature of this statement, and I was equally hoping you'd understand this as an outlining the over all counter position to what you seem to be proposing. We are much more inclined to say that religion stems from existential crisis that wanting to eat chocolate does. This is obvious. What is not so obvious are the other factors that are buried under this premise (which is in itself perhaps flawed anyway, being an oversimplification - that is not directly important here though.)
To be clearer still one person may be diagnosed with cancer and fearful of approaching death try to make sense of their existence, thus turning to religion as a means of comfort and strength in reflection to their having to face the question of their mortality. Another person may simply find the community and brotherhood of some religious organization appealing and be drawn into the idea of some "immortal soul" at a later date.
Another distinction I was trying to allude to was the difference between the motivation of the religious practitioner and the institution of a religion. The motivations of the individuals undoubtedly differ from the over all founders, but there is at least some wider appeal. Over all the institution of a religion is set out with a political motive of some kind, as it necessarily must being something taken on by the people. The individual idea, the Holy Man's idea, may differ quite drastically from the spin off of his thoughts. What we do see is a common theme in religion that most certainly addresses very human questions about personal meaning in life and how we came to be here on Earth asking all these questions. If anything in this line of thinking it is not any kind of FEAR that drives us, but rather wanting to KNOW.
If you are to propose that Fear of Death is the Primary Motivator for Humans I am open to this discussion. This is what I am considering in my responses. I am asking you about the specification of religion, and in what sense (personal subjective appeal or as an institution with a pervading authority, which necessarily would stem from an individual with a point of view of the world they feel inspired to share and/or impose on others.)
I cannot say conclusively that religious people are motivated primarily by Fear of Death or that religious institutions are based on the idea of the Fear of Death. Although I have to admit the later is certainly a very ripe fruit to weigh in on as we know fear can override our rational minds and be used to control swathes of people. This would be appropriate as a conclusion if we viewed religious institutions intents as being merely to control masses of people (which I am in no doubt many religious figures, and political figures, have historical done!)
To add in on what I previously said in my last post about evolution ... bacteria don't have fear of death nor a desire to reproduce. We can view bacteria "as if" they do, but they don't. This shows the fallacy of assuming that evolution has an intent. The fact that we have brains to question our own existence is the primary motivator, a singular cell organism does not possess any "motivation". When we are talking about the primary motivation for religions we are most certainly talking about the intent of the founder and the institutional bodies that represent, justly or not, what the fountainhead of the religion is to be viewed as. We can clearly see that religious institutions played a significant role as a political body, but the founder may very well have been against the idea of such a political institution or may not even have considered this as an issue. Also, these founders may not even have imagined their ideas, experiences and beliefs would be so influential on future generations and I very much doubt that who they were is in anyway reflected in religious texts. We know they were human, or simply made up. There is some evidence for some and little evidence for others. All religions present a very obvious heritage and we can see how historically their views and ideologies consume and dismiss other religious attitudes, based on geopolitical climates.
note : I am still to offer my views publicly or privately once you've finished your thesis. I am not an expert and my authority is only my own, but the offer is there and I am willing to offer critic of the style and substance of what you write - although my grammatical know how may not be great I am reasonably familiar with philosophical texts and giving critique is just as useful to me as receiving it. I expect nothing and hope for everything