Comment by brutusborn | Hacker News Reader

Comment by brutusborn | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

I think the utility of religious systems can be determined by looking at the reason for their continuity: Abrahamic faiths tended to continue via wars and forced conversions. Dharmic religions such as Buddhism tended to continue because adherents saw such immense value in the teachings that they spread them even despite resistance from authorities. They have both existed for millenia but I see eastern faiths as more useful because they were rarely forced on their adherents.

As to your point on designing your own system, I think it's just hard to design something as complex as a religious system well. Instead of reinventing the wheel, people just choose the best among the time-tested methods. For me Buddhism seems to best fit the bill. If you want examples of people designing their own Religions, look at Crowley's Thelema, or for more philosophy-focused look at Theosophy.

Everyone has a philosophical or theological code, but most people just use what they are given. Even people who don't explicitly have a system still implicitly use a value system to guide their decisions.

I think religious systems have primarily been useful for community management, and religious beliefs being passed down generation from generation works well in that context. Same way, religious persecution is more often than not a proxy for eliminating a group's identity and cultural assimilating it into a conquering group.

In that sense, a religion's continuity is basically that group's continuity. Individuals within that group can switch to another religion, same way people move countries, but I'm not sure there are any case of a group switching wholesale to another religion by it's own decision. A king changing faith could be the closest to that, but I think it's usually a political move to join a bigger group, more than just independently switching for the sake of it.

> designing your own system

In general I don't think a "system" needs to be complicated, all ecompassing, nor needs to be fully from scratch. I'd compare it to cooking, you could look at a steak and carrot recipe and decide to try arrangements, and end up with mushrooms instead of the steak. You're still not building a new school of cooking, just doing your stuff on your own, eventually mixing and matching recipes you've seen elsewhere, without having to tag yourself with any specific cooking style.

You are right in that generally a whole group does not spontaneously decide to change faiths, but there are plenty of examples of a gradual erosion of a faith in communities .

"The vast majority of U.S. adults (85.6%) say they were raised as Christians. But more than a fifth of them (19.2% of all adults) no longer identify with Christianity." [0]

I think a ~ 20% change within a single generation is pretty significant. And most of these people will use the 'recipe' method you describe because it is easier than learning an entirely new system. There are many historical examples of this. E.g. Taoism + Buddhism -> Chan Buddhism -> Zen Buddhism.

[0] https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2015/05/12/chapter-2-re...

Where did Judaism spread via war and forced conversion? Your historical claim is not entirely accurate and seemed very biased.

Buddhism was spread by missionaries throughout history. At times, much in the same way as Christianity. Undoubtedly the missionaries from both Buddhist and Christian societies thought they were spreading enlightenment and to some extent they stuck because other people agreed.

Lots of times, but much less than the Christians or Muslims. There's a lot of it recorded in the Bible: "When Judah attacked, the Lord handed over the Canaanites and the Perizzites to them, and they defeated ten thousand men at the city of Bezek."

You are correct about the Buddhist missionaries, but the critical point for me is Buddhist missionaries generally did not bring weapons, whereas most Christian and Muslim areas today are so because of invasions.

A better method to compare is to look at the actual scripture. All Abrahamix faiths have some equivalent of "worship no gods before me" and various levels of actions towards this (ranging from killing non beleivers to not eating with them). The Dharmic relgions do not have this requirement, so are less likely to be used as justification to subjugate another people.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com