Nonsense. Ernest Becker was basically saying people relied on belief systems as a way of handling the universal fear of death and that a need to deny mortality was fundamentally detrimental to human beings, and responsible for most of the iniquity in the world. It can reasonably be said to be his argument for bringing philosophically, the universality of the fear death into a religious focus, as the means to represent the sum total of psychology after Freud. However he was probably right for the wrong reasons. It's clear for instance young people simply and effectively dismiss notions of immortality generally without course to such reasons of (religious) belief. The whole subject doesn't in a very general way represent any substantial concern to them. Many people also don't find a need to think any more of death than to recognize it sometimes only as a possibility, though usually as an inevitability, with no extra requirement for it to be dwelt upon any more than the reality of life itself. To support Ernest Becker's theory, you would need to first alter any understandings which were adequately enabling the human psyche to generally deal with immortality without introduction of extra belief systems. Those handling mortality that way by not denying death, according to him were not necessarily consequentially contributing to evil through the fear of death. So you would need to create a fear of mortality, on top of the survival instinct which the universal fear of death is there primarily to invoke. Religion does that. First promoting fear then offering its own solution. But the higher power, the need to deny mortality, to make it a problem, wouldn't necessarily be there especially in a developed, knowledgeable society unless entrenched by tradition, or the fear of mortality was still being actively promoted by hijacking the universal fear of death with a religious belief system for example. A case of believe and be damned.
Maybe, but then why are most of ET's atheist so utterly desperate to convert others? That doesn't sound like an individualist to me.
Please. Your bias is showing based on probably one or two atheists you know. I don't believe in god and I despise government.
Indeed. I consider the purpose of my life just to enjoy life as much as possible for the short amount of time I'll be on Earth. I keep it simple. Do more of the things that make me happy, do less of the things that don't make me happy.
Was it on the news, I must of missed it. I looked at the reviews of Beckers book on Amazon and wasn't interested to invest my time buying and reading the book. I'm not one of those searching for the meaning of life. And you know what Mav, I don't feel any smarter or in the know now that I've heard about the immorality project.
It's not "the" immortality project, it's "an" immortality project. Mav's right, everyone worships one.
What exactly are you talking about when you say worship. It couldn't be in the traditional use, because not everyone worships something. Stop the worry and live, you don't need a book to have a good life or someone else to tell you what to think.
I'm not worrying, thanks though. I meant worship in the sense that Mav used it, more generically, not in the sense of mantras and incense, etc.