People don’ t necessarily worship a god or follow a religion because the god is supposed to be nice. It’ s because the god is powerful and people want something from it, or fear it. People worshipped gods in many cultures without the promise of an afterlife reward, as that was a rather late development, except in the case of Egypt. There was no heaven for dead people in the Hebrew Bible, for example. So a nasty god, but one who might use its power for your benefit, is worth placating. It might not work, but it’ s worth a try if there has been no rain in a while and you don’ t know what else to do or your enemies are better fighters than you are( as with the everpresent and never really defeated Philistines).
God May Be a Monster, but …
Much of what passes for atheist literature is in the form of“ your holy book says this, and isn’ t that wrong and / or terrible?” Who would want to worship a god who does or sanctions terrible things? While this is an entirely valid point, much of human culture has a slightly different moral compass than was present when the holy books were being written. Only slightly however; for example, if you look at the horrors of the last century, while we don’ t routinely impale people, skin them alive or break them on the rack, we are still killing each other in horrible ways. And while we don’ t go to an arena to watch people kill each other, we watch it in graphic simulated form as popular entertainment— often rivaling or exceeding in viciousness anything ever done in actuality. The Romans didn’ t have power drills or chainsaws or human incubating aliens. This is not true for all religions, as Campbell notes, heroes in some mythologies would disobey or even fight their gods when the gods were in the wrong. They would lose, but they fought for what they considered to be right. There is none of that nobility in the cringing, subservient monotheisms so prevalent today. If the Hebrew Job had been a Celt, he would have spit in YHWH’ s eye, called him a self-buggering maggot, and gone to his death reciting a poem about the joys of freedom. Okay, maybe that’ s a bit of an exaggeration, at least about the poem, but only a bit.
Like It or Not, Religion Does Have a Function in Human Affairs
Joseph Campbell approached religion from a totally different perspective than do most popular atheist authors. He asked,“ what is religion for?” It is present in every human culture we have ever studied. It must serve a purpose, and probably multiple purposes. Although Campbell didn’ t put it in
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