garrisonjj Posted January 16, 2007 Share Posted January 16, 2007 What defines guilt? Would religion exist today without guilt and the fear of hell? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest JP Posted January 16, 2007 Share Posted January 16, 2007 I would say no. Religion does seem to thrive on guilt. I think if it didn't have as much to do with guilt as it did making people live better, happier lives, it would be more apealiong to me. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Piprus Posted January 16, 2007 Share Posted January 16, 2007 Guilt in its natural sense is a good and positive thing. Feeling a sense of remorse is what motivates us to grow and become better people. Those who never feel guilty over anything are sociopathic. But christianity is built on irrational and undeserved guilt, as it tries to convince us that we're all evil sinners before a perfect god, deserving of eternal punishment unless we plead for forgiveness. What a crock! Without that unrealistic guilt, shame, and fear, I don't think christianity could exist. There would be no basis for it, at least in its present form. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Amethyst Posted January 16, 2007 Share Posted January 16, 2007 What defines guilt? Would religion exist today without guilt and the fear of hell? Not organized religion, anyway. Sure, there will probably always be cults in some form, like the UFO-worshipping ones. But that's because in addition to the stick, there are always going to be those who are just looking for the carrot, no matter if there's no proof the carrot exists. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
R. S. Martin Posted January 16, 2007 Share Posted January 16, 2007 I think religion originated because humans needed an explanation for the seemingly random things that threatened their lives. Life was "short, brutal and nasty," as they say. Crops or food was undependable. Starvation and desease were just around the corner and pounced at random. Believing that a supernatural almighty deity was in control and favoured "me and mine" was a way to feel somewhat more in control. If the calamities that assaulted me and my life was "my fault" in some way or other, then I was in control. All I had to do was please the deity. Today via science we have extended the life expectency many times over, we have control over most deseases, nobody "dies of old" age but rather from a nameable reason. We know how the weather operates, we can produce food on a very reasonable consistency, we know how the universe came into being, we've walked on the moon and have machines in space watching out for us. Religion has been robbed of all its proper except guilt and sin. Bad things still happen. People still get sick and die. Accidents seriously injure, disrupt, or annihilate lives. Economies crash. People are born, live their entire lives, and die in grinding poverty, wars, famine, and desease rage. If we can write these things off as "the result of sin" we feel more in control. All we have to do is evangelize the world and all will be well. The only problem is that we can't agree on which religion we should use to evangelize the world. In answer to your question: Would religion exist without guilt--yes I think so. However, in our time the fundy religion seems to feed off guilt and fear because it has lost all other meaning due to science. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
garrisonjj Posted January 16, 2007 Author Share Posted January 16, 2007 I think religion originated because Ruby, thank you for answering this question beautifully! You really made me think on a different level with your response.. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lycorth Posted January 16, 2007 Share Posted January 16, 2007 What defines guilt? Would religion exist today without guilt and the fear of hell? Without the concept of guilt, the Abrahamic religions would certainly not exist. All of the thrive partially on some version of the "humans-are-scum-and-need-God" premise that leads to the concept of "sin" and the need therefore for God and his religion. Judaism may not have the concept of Hell, unlike Xianity and Is-lame, yet all of them promote the idea that human beings need God and to defy God in any way is horribly wrong, thus the offender needs to be browbeaten back into the fold. Other religions would certainly exist. Few Pagan religions teach the concept of guilt that I'm aware of; I'll go out on a limb and say none do (with the slight exception of Wicca's "Threefold Law" or the Hindu concept of Karma). Other religions, like Buddhism, would still exist, as Buddhism attempts to address many philosophical and psychological issues that would still exist without guilt, and it is possible that LaVeyan Satanism might exist, though in a severely altered form. Even though much of Satanism has little to do with showing off one's opposition to Xianity and does try to address human psychological and philosophical topics, it came to exist partially as a response to Xianity and to the guilt complexes it has fostered. Religion per-se would exist, but the Abrahamic religions wouldn't. Judaism, maybe, but Xianity and Is-lame would most surely not. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JGJ@ReligionisBullshit Posted January 16, 2007 Share Posted January 16, 2007 Christianity is more about fear of punishment than the pleasures of heaven. Look at the disparity between the number of times hell is mentioned, how writers have described hell, and what heaven is like. You wont find many passages in the "Good" Book about what heaven is like but you will find plenty on hell. The Jews had no concept of heaven and hell early on, it is a concept that was added much later in their history and expanded upon by Christians. That is one of the reasons why I say that God is nothing more than we make of him. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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