How do intelligent people get involved in organized religion?

by easyreader1970 7 Replies latest jw friends

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  easyreader1970

  Is it because of the fact that once you're involved in the religion, when it comes to God, the Bible (or whatever religious text the religion is based on), thinking is no longer encouraged? That thinking is somehow wrong, immoral?

  I know plenty of really smart people who could just have easily been astrophysicists. Instead they're pioneers or elders. It seems like an astrophysicist could completely debunk the lack of logic in one dinner sitting. But these same people will be up on the platform Tuesday night convincingly telling people that Noah fit all of the species of animal on earth into a boat.

  In the Watchtower, there are always statements that highlight the scripture in Proverbs about not leaning upon "our own understanding". They usually use this verse when something absolutely makes no sense at all.
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  leavingwt

  MOST people are in the religion they're in because of their Zip Code, their Parents and their Culture.
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  easyreader1970

  MOST people are in the religion they're in because of their Zip Code, their Parents and their Culture.

  Well, that's fine. But even if they were born into it, I'm not talking about the ones that are just there because their parents brought them up that way or that is what is expected of them. I'm talking about the "true believers."
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  jws

  Even smart people sometimes subscribe to the "seperate authorities" view.

  I may be generally smart and maybe an expert in some field. But in others, I'm not really well versed. Maybe my mind doesn't even work that way. A very talented mathemetician may not even be capable of being an average biologist and vice-versa.

  I'm a very logical thinker and a good computer programmer. When it comes to some subjects like biology, I defer to the expertise of the experts. In some ways I put my blind faith in them. I don't know their methods, but I trust they are giving me info close to the truth.

  And so it is many times when it comes to religion. If you have gotten that gene or whatever it is, a need to have a God, then you may defer to a religious "expert" to teach you about religion. Because of your belief in a God, and the dilemas it might present to your intellect, you may even switch off your critical thinking so as to reconcile it into your life.

  There's also no way to "prove" any religion. Does God exist? Where's the proof? Did Jesus exist? Proof? The Bible can't prove itself. The Bible says it's inspired by God. Anybody can say that in their book. Doesn't make it true. Maybe God and Jesus do exist, but the people who wrote their story were winging it and messed up the Bible. Without an accurate Bible, who's to say who's right or wrong? Religion then, comes down to faith. Believing the Bible or Koran or Torah or <insert-holy-book> is correct and believing an interpretation of it. Faith is not a based on logic in the first place. So it would be reasonable that we don't require logic to prove it to ourselves.
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  Double Edge

  If you let religion control you then you're bound to have a negative view. On the other hand, there are many organized religions that are a positive experience beyond the "faith and belief" aspects. Many community outreach programs turning peoples lives around, giving them a fresh start with a support group - something a lot of people don't have but need. All depends on what group you're connected with.
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  zagor

  Many people seek answers to deep penetrating questions that no one can fully explain, most basic being "why are we here?" Religions unashamedly claim they know the answer and when someone speaks with an authority people listen. It takes being backstabbed by someone several times before you realize it wasn't an accident. Similarly when people are going through any sort of a crisis in an organized religion they don't automatically attribute it to ulterior motives but seek to find other explanations. While they are doing that time passes them by.

  that is my 10 cents on it anyway
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  WTWizard

  Most of them are involved because they have been told that they were born into sin from a very young age. This makes them feel indebted to God, in whatever form He takes--after all, Jesus is supposed to be the way out. Never mind that anyone that reads the first 9 chapters or so of Genesis with their heads screwed on right (and has the IQ of a cockroach or higher) is going to see right through it and view it all as a scam.

  Religion knows that, and they realize that if anyone were to objectively read the first several chapters of Genesis, they are going to become either atheists or Devil worshipers. And the religions will go belly up. So they plant such fear in people against doing so (even calling it "sin against the holy spirit") that no one dares do the thinking for themselves. So most people blindly accept the Original Sin scam, Cain and Abel, and all the other bulls*** about the lineage to Noah, and the Flood, as reality.
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  rmt1

  Not in a thousand years of digital computers will you separate the category of religion from the category of homo sapiens. Religion is evolutionarily inextricable from the social contract. When you see a person with huge potential sufficing themselves with intellectual pablum, it's because they are evolutionarily driven to not add additional stresses to themselves by poking the elephant in the room. That elephant is there for a reason - it got homo erectus up through homo sapiens by shrewdly wagering that moral right is justified and demonstrated by physical might, (opposite the JW formulation), a course which accrued greater fitness to those with that newfangled loquacious gene.