a curious institution

One of life's most everestean challenges is to view oneself objectively. Most of our behaviors seem natural or logical to us, but to a stranger they might be ridiculous or fantastical. This is true both as an individual, and as a society. There are a million and three assumptions inside your head: what you're entitled to, and what will happen if you go left or right or up or down. Assumptions are the foundation of human behavior, they're how we choose our actions. What assumptions do you make about the nature of physical reality? Will those ten pies fall if you set them on that stack of Rolling Stones? Will you get fat or sick if you eat them? (the pies, not the magazines)
Social constructs are a framework of assumptions. Is sex beautiful, or dirty? Is aging good, or bad? Should you strike a bully? A child? An eye for an eye? Turn the other cheek? Any society as pluralistic as ours will contain conflicting assumptions.
And if you think i didn't intend for you to imagine Keith and Mick and the boys tossed on top of one another two paragraphs ago, and then then imagine eating them, you don't know me very well.
Are there universal assumptions, shared by every society? There certainly aren't any universal social constructs - we can't even get together on "don't kill your child" (see female infants, China). The needs of a given society will always outweigh moral imperatives. What does that leave us with? Physical universals.
Jump off a cliff, and you fall (we may disagree about the cause, but not the consequence).
The sun comes up in the morning, and goes down at night.
Humans need air, food, and water.
Humans cannot live where it's too hot, or too cold.
Spring follows winter.
Babies become children.
Children become adults.
Adults get old and die.
That's pretty much it.
But hold the phone.
Those aren't all universals.
What would you say if i informed you that there exists a society based on the assumption that aging is a lie? That aging is only the result of erroneous belief...because humans BELIEVE they will age, they do so? It's all the result of millenia of false propaganda? And that this society has been trying for centuries to prove that theory, saying they've failed because the propaganda is too deeply instilled in the human psyche. They feel they're coming closer to being validated, however...they now forbid any baby from coming into contact with anyone over the age of five, and all their children's literature has been re-written to show only five-year olds (they believe a five year-old is the ideal manifestation of a mature human being). They're considering mandating the euthanization of any child who ages beyond five years.
Would you call them crazy? Delusional, psychotic, wrong?
You may not realize it, but you've just stepped outside yourself. In doing so, you may now understand religion a little better.
Religion doesn't deny aging.
Or the need for oxygen.
No religion has ever been founded on the principle that spring doesn't follow winter.
But...
Almost all religions are based upon the notion that humans don't die.
Right now, if you had a religious upbringing, your mind is flooding with rationalizations and obfuscations. Little alarms are going off, saying "NOT THE SAME THING, NOT THE SAME THING, NOT THE SAME THING". Walls are popping up, saying that religion's denial of death is NOTHING like a society that denies aging. But it's the same, precisely and exactly. Championing religion is the intellectual equivalent of becoming a citizen of a country that calls our need for water a lie.
Religion is thus more than a supplement or guide to human knowledge. It's an attack on the very IDEA of knowledge.
If one of the primary assumptions of existence is fair game, nothing can be true or false. Religion becomes self-negating.
How can such an institution possibly be tolerated?
Because calling death a lie taps into our most primal fear, and because no other primary human assumption is so slippery. If someone denied gravity, they'd get a shitload of bruises and no converts. If someone denied winter, they'd be laughed out of town come the first snowflake. If someone denied the need for air or shelter, they'd die and save the townsfolk the trouble of laughing.
But to deny death, to say that someone who looks dead isn't REALLY dead? How do you argue that? It ends up as your word against his...and because of the "fear of death" thing, the death-denier has always been able to find some who will go along (and tithe 10% too...a nice gig if you can get it).
Now, is it possible that any of our most basic human assumptions are wrong?
Absolutely. If history teaches us anything, it's that the human capacity for getting it wrong ought never ever EVER be underestimated. Is it possible that day is night, up is down, Canada is Jersey City, and that we're mistaken in the most profound ways, vis a vis our understanding of life?
Yes.
But humanity has achieved amazing things, based upon observation and experimentation. We fly though the air, cure horrid disease, and watch re-runs of M*A*S*H. Observation and experimentation is what did that. It's what makes us climb a tree when a tiger comes at us. Observation. Then we got tired of climbing, and invented a hypodermic dart. Do you want to turn your back on that?
Are there times when turning your back on an assumption is a good thing? Great googily, yes. Doing just that, is often a key element on the path of knowledge.
No one said this would be simple.
Is it possible that death isn't the end of life? Yup...just as it's possible that we only age because we think we will. Try starting a religion around that, though. You won't get very far (except perhaps in Hollywood).
If you would understand religion the way an alien in orbit would...well, imagine it's twenty years from now, and you're orbiting some other planet. You observe a society based upon the idea that getting pregnant is the result of sticking flowers and olives and very small rocks in your hoo-hoo...is that really a planet you want to set down on?