/lit/ - Literature

On religion:

Weak people need the old religions, for what are they to do in their hours of greatest weakness? They need an interpretation of existence that relieves their suffering. This interpretation must be based on a model of the universe, a schematic of the rest of the universe outside themselves, and this schema will of course be greatly simplified. All models are simplifications anyway, and given that we are talking about weak people here (which means: slow in the head and/or body, but above all in the head, since our species' greatest strength is intelligence) theirs will be an especially simplified model; an absurd caricature of reality, when all is said and done; a grossly simplified and exaggerated image of it, but still nevertheless an image of it, which is to say a view of the universe from a certain perspective. And just as a mole's view of the forest is extremely murky and basic and simple while an imaging satellite's is vastly clearer and more complex — but still depicts the same object nevertheless: the forest, and hence is by no means entirely dissociated from reality — is not a "pure fantasy" in other words, and certainly contains an amount of truth in it and useful information, such that for someone who had seen the satellite data and had the capacity to parse it and who was then given an image of the mole's viewpoint, he could identify, if he was perceptive enough, that yes, they depict the same forest, and here is a clump of trees that is common to both viewpoints, only at a different resolution and viewed from different angles, so will the philosopher treat the old religions' particular beliefs, examining each in turn and pronouncing them extremely murky and simplistic, yes, but still ultimately true, when all is said and done.