I do kind of share the sense that people mostly just want frisbee and tea, but I am still confused about it. Wasn’t religion a huge deal for people for most of history? I could see a world where they were mostly just going through the motions, but the amount of awe I feel going into European churches feels like some evidence against this. And it’s hard for me to imagine that people were kind of just mindlessly sitting there through e.g., Gregorian chanting in candlelight, but maybe I am typical minding too hard. It really seems like these rituals, the architecture, all of it, was built to instill the sort of existential intensity that taking God seriously requires, and I have to imagine that this was at least somewhat real for most people?
And I do wonder whether the shift towards frisbee and tea has more to do more with a lack of options as compelling as cathedrals (on this axis at least), rather than the people’s lack of wanting it? Like, I don’t think I would get as much out of cathedrals as I expect some of these people did, because I’m not religious, but if something of that intensity existed which fit with my belief system I feel like I’d be so into it.
the amount of awe I feel going into European churches feels like some evidence against this.
This sounds to me like selection bias. Most people did not build churches. And I suspect you do not feel awestruck in every church. I suspect that you remember the new most awesome ones, built by exceptional people who felt exceptionally religious.
It really seems like these rituals, the architecture, all of it, was built to instill the sort of existential intensity that taking God seriously requires, and I have to imagine that this was at least somewhat real for most people?
It may have been built for that purpose. This does not mean that most people felt the existential intensity. It is conceivable that many people felt “wow, the church sure is rich and powerful; I’d better obey” whereas many others felt nothing and stayed quiet about it.
(Vague shower thought, not standing strongly behind it)
Maybe it is the case that most people as individuals “just want frisbee and tea” but once religion (or rather the very broad class of ~”social practices” some subset/projection of which we round up to “religion”) evolved and lowered the activation energy of people’s hive switch, they became more inclined to appreciate the beauty of Cathedrals and Gregorian chants, etc.
In other words, people’s ability to want/appreciate/[see value/beauty in X] depends largely on the social structure they are embedded in, the framework they adopt to make sense of the world etc. (The selection pressures that led to religion didn’t entirely reduce to “somebody wanting something”, so at least that part is not question-begging [I think].)
I do kind of share the sense that people mostly just want frisbee and tea, but I am still confused about it. Wasn’t religion a huge deal for people for most of history? I could see a world where they were mostly just going through the motions, but the amount of awe I feel going into European churches feels like some evidence against this. And it’s hard for me to imagine that people were kind of just mindlessly sitting there through e.g., Gregorian chanting in candlelight, but maybe I am typical minding too hard. It really seems like these rituals, the architecture, all of it, was built to instill the sort of existential intensity that taking God seriously requires, and I have to imagine that this was at least somewhat real for most people?
And I do wonder whether the shift towards frisbee and tea has more to do more with a lack of options as compelling as cathedrals (on this axis at least), rather than the people’s lack of wanting it? Like, I don’t think I would get as much out of cathedrals as I expect some of these people did, because I’m not religious, but if something of that intensity existed which fit with my belief system I feel like I’d be so into it.
This sounds to me like selection bias. Most people did not build churches. And I suspect you do not feel awestruck in every church. I suspect that you remember the new most awesome ones, built by exceptional people who felt exceptionally religious.
It may have been built for that purpose. This does not mean that most people felt the existential intensity. It is conceivable that many people felt “wow, the church sure is rich and powerful; I’d better obey” whereas many others felt nothing and stayed quiet about it.
(Vague shower thought, not standing strongly behind it)
Maybe it is the case that most people as individuals “just want frisbee and tea” but once religion (or rather the very broad class of ~”social practices” some subset/projection of which we round up to “religion”) evolved and lowered the activation energy of people’s hive switch, they became more inclined to appreciate the beauty of Cathedrals and Gregorian chants, etc.
In other words, people’s ability to want/appreciate/[see value/beauty in X] depends largely on the social structure they are embedded in, the framework they adopt to make sense of the world etc. (The selection pressures that led to religion didn’t entirely reduce to “somebody wanting something”, so at least that part is not question-begging [I think].)