Interesting what Baruch Spinoza wrote many, many years ago, regarding how superstition and religiosity affects people.

It sadly aplies to the modern advanced societies as well


From his Theologico-Political Treatise:


(3) This as a general fact I suppose everyone knows, though few, I believe,
know their own nature; no one can have lived in the world without observing
that most people, when in prosperity, are so over-brimming with wisdom
(however inexperienced they may be), that they take every offer of advice as
a personal insult, whereas in adversity they know not where to turn, but beg
and pray for counsel from every passer-by.

(4) No plan is then too futile, too absurd, or too fatuous for their adoption; the most frivolous causes will raise them to hope, or plunge them into despair - if anything happens during their fright which reminds them of some past good or ill, they think it portends a happy or unhappy issue, and therefore (though it may have proved abortive a hundred times before) style it a lucky or unlucky omen.

(5) Anything which excites their astonishment they believe to be a portent
signifying the anger of the gods or of the Supreme Being, and, mistaking
superstition for religion, account it impious not to avert the evil with
prayer and sacrifice.


(7) Thus it is brought prominently before us, that superstition's chief
victims are those persons who greedily covet temporal advantages; they it
is, who (especially when they are in danger, and cannot help themselves) are
wont with Prayers and womanish tears to implore help from God: upbraiding
Reason as blind, because she cannot show a sure path to the shadows they
pursue, and rejecting human wisdom as vain; but believing the phantoms of
imagination, dreams, and other childish absurdities, to be the very oracles
of Heaven.




(9) Superstition, then, is engendered, preserved, and fostered by fear. If
anyone desire an example, let him take Alexander, who only began
superstitiously to seek guidance from seers, when he first learnt to fear
fortune in the passes of Sysis (Curtius, v. 4); whereas after he had
conquered Darius he consulted prophets no more, till a second time
frightened by reverses.


(23) I have often wondered, that persons who make a boast of professing the
Christian religion, namely, love, joy, peace, temperance, and charity to all
men, should quarrel with such rancorous animosity, and display daily towards
one another such bitter hatred, that this, rather than the virtues they
claim, is the readiest criterion of their faith.



(27) Every church became a theatre, where orators, instead of church teachers, harangued, caring not to instruct the people, but striving to attract admiration, to bring opponents to public scorn, and to preach only novelties and paradoxes, such as would tickle the ears of their congregation.


(28) This state of things necessarily stirred up an amount of controversy, envy, and hatred, which no lapse of time could appease; so that we can scarcely wonder that of the old religion nothing survives but its outward forms (even these, in the mouth of the multitude, seem rather adulation than adoration of the Deity), and that
faith has become a mere compound of credulity and prejudices - aye, prejudices too, which degrade man from rational being to beast, which completely stifle the power of judgment between true and false, which seem, in fact, carefully fostered for the purpose of extinguishing the last spark of reason!

Doesn’t it just mean that we are thinking more for ourselves? Religion was based in superstition. We no longer need to be a part of a flock. We have much more information available today and can therefore make up our own minds about what to believe. Just because we stop being religious doesn’t mean the world will fall into anarchy.

Bluerose wrote:



One would think so, but the sad truth is that many require the idea of a God to keep them in line. Great chunks of the human population are terrified of a change in the status quo and will follow anyone who will save them the bother of an original thought.
They make a good show of " defending free speech" by attacking anyone who tries to tell them the truth.

I say to each his own Some are ready to move on and some are not. Some are more evolved than others. There’s no right and wrong here, it’s about personal and spiritual development. The words “Old Souls” come to mind. I think there is an ‘awakening’ process to go through where we come to think beyond our own needs and desires.

mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm

Bluerose wrote:



The problem is the "enlightened" in the past tended to get thrown in jail, nailed to crosses, have molten lead poured down their throat, or in modern times " Renditioned".
I think all great teachers either wandered about or lived in remote locations (Guru's or hermits on mountain tops)for a good reason.

www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/features/in-our-time/archive/philosophy

www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0079ps2

Melvyn Bragg discusses the Dutch Jewish Philosopher Spinoza. For the radical thinkers of the Enlightenment, he was the first man to have lived and died as a true atheist. For others, including Samuel Taylor Coleridge, he provides perhaps the most profound conception of God to be found in Western philosophy. He was bold enough to defy the thinking of his time, yet too modest to accept the fame of public office and he died, along with Socrates and Seneca, one of the three great deaths in philosophy. Baruch Spinoza can claim influence on both the Enlightenment thinkers of the 18th century and great minds of the 19th, notably Hegel, and his ideas were so radical that they could only be fully published after his death.

But what were the ideas that caused such controversy in Spinoza’s lifetime, how did they influence the generations after, and can Spinoza really be seen as the first philosopher of the rational Enlightenment?

With Jonathan Rée, historian and philosopher and Visiting Professor at Roehampton University; Sarah Hutton, Professor of English at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth; John Cottingham, Professor of Philosophy at the University of Reading.

jetsetjason wrote:




That's what I like about the idlerfoundation, its membership have actually read a few books after graduating from school and have a balanced view on things. It's so refreshing after years of reading forums populated by people whose brains are in stasis, stored a locked box.....When one reads the works of great minds of the past
it would appear they must have felt great frustration with the public of their time.
I can't imagine what it must have been like to have any enlightenment at at all in a era where having a bath on a regular basis would get you burned at the stake...

Absolutely, Tink. Also, remember that we (or some of us - jolly difficult to figure out which, given how many of the major thinkers were unappreciated in their own lifetimes) are tomorrow's great minds of the past.

One day, the writings of Jetsetjason will be discussed on message boards throughout all the planets which are inhabited by humans. His voice will be heard across galaxies, and the Radio 3 programme schedule from way back in 2010 will be pored over by historians.