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    21st Century Ideas: Superstruct: building on preexisting structure

    One of the biggest structures on the planet is organized religion, let's make it work for us.

    Started by: lux_aurumque Raves:5

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    Something I haven't seen much discussion on right now is using and manipulating the decaying superstructure of organized religion. In 2008, the top three World Religions were: 2.1 billion people Christian, 1.5 billion Muslim, 900 million Hindu covering 68% of the world's population. Along with that level of population is an excellent structure -- physical locations, local community, international organization, big honking piles of money. This is a wonderful platform from which to launch multiple solutions. What are the local religious communities up to in your neck of the woods? Are they drawing into themselves or reaching out to the greater community? How can you make this existing structure work for you?

    Does anyone know what Mission Aviation Fellowship has been up to in the past few years? I saved these links right after Hurricane Ike in... uh...2007? 2009? I forget. http://tinyurl.com/3gmoz6 The main page for Mission Aviation Fellowship: http://www.maf.org/

    Religion as a vehicle of universal ideas is a contradiction of terms. Religions serve their own ends. You work for religions - they do not work for you. They reserve the right to tell you what to do and withhold compensations and rewards. They thrive on antagonism, but wane with compliance. The subjective reality they espouse differ so much from the secular view that mere rationality as represented by IFTF/GEAS constitutes a threat to them.... the reason, however, that secular ideals are not gaining more leeway in the world is that rationalists fail to understand the compelling and highly addictive nature of mystical explanations, as well as the power of symbolic language. To fight religion you must create an ideology with religious appeal. Oh wait, it has been done. It is called either fascism, communism - or neoconservatism.

    @QuidProQuo -- Awesome! Only, you didn't answer my question. Religion is a major structure in many humans lives. We are fools to merely burn religion to the ground and not to take advantage of this existing structure. The World Council of Religious Leaders (http://tinyurl.com/3klgpw) caught a major boost after the break down of the MDGs and the discovery of ReDS. Religious orgs today seem be split between wanting to combine resources and contributing to the violence by panicking and withdrawing into their more fundamental aspects. How do we try to salvage "religions" as a helpful and already established NGO?

    There are many ideals, such as altruism, hard work, sacrifice, and even hope that secularists will feel the need to defend from religion, and that religious people will feel the need to protect from secularism (which is often viewed by the religious as amoral relativism). We need to change the terms of the dialogue to create a common ground between all ideologies--whether they are religious or secular in nature. When we say that religions are by their nature vehicles for destructive separatism, we are giving license to religious leaders to adopt that view and exploit it. If secularists, however, praise religion as a vehicle for charity, humanitarianism, and understanding, religious people will live up to the stereotype. In a way, they already do: religious people give more of their money and time to charitable causes, even if you only count contributions to non-religious organizations (http://tinyurl.com/2g5gsj). Yes, most religions often pay lip service to an us-versus-them mentality, but in general this does not result in outright violence. Call religious people bigots, and they will act like bigots. Yes, I know there are a large number of sects, especially here in America and in Great Britain, that are actually welcoming the current crises as signs of the Rapture, but these are the exceptions--not the rule. If we join forces with religious institutions to throw our collective weight behind specific initiatives we can all agree upon, we can really get something started. I think the first step is figuring out what those common purposes might be. Or am I overestimating the overlap between the values of various religions and secularism?

    I think it is shortsighted to think that people aren't already fighting the superthreats through faith based service organizations. I've worked with the Quakers, The UU Church and the Baha'i Community (and I'm positive there are many others) and none have required any kind of conversion or declaration of faith to participate in their service projects - or to be a recipient of services!

    In 2019 religions will be significant vectors of people's emotions. People are hardwired to see patterns. When faced with chaos and emotional peturbation, the human mind will find meaningful patterns in rorschach tests. Religions, whatever you think of them, have flourished from that given, and predated upon it. In a world where people starve (...) in the US (currently very few people starve in a place like brasil or southafrica - consequently the US of 2019 should be worse than either, a ludicrous hysterical and overly cinematic idea) the religious would find hysterica followers a la flagellants a dime a dozen. People would be very vectored towards demonization (finding enemy tribes) and acting out their fears. There will be literal scapegoating a la witchunts very fast after the first mass burials. Personally i'd stay far far away from religions under these circumstances. The big faiths has an unhealthy and welldocumented tendency towards open cooperating with outspoken fascists during large conflicts.

    Empiricus and I were discussing the Catholic Church. What other centralized organization has lasted 2000 years? No government, no other organized religion, no cult, no guild...love it or hate it, you have to respect the institution for it's ability to survive and find new members.

    Yes, as James Joyce said (paraphrasing!) you gotta be scared of a religion and a god that has built momentum over generations - (it sucks!!!) But still, how beautiful, he said; "Old Artificer, Old Father, Stand me now and ever in good stead, I go to forge in the smithy of my soul, the uncreated potential of our race - or something like that.. - I concur!!!!




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