A religião como ficção prática

Abstract

Religion is present in the history of man, it is part of his culture, his world. The existence of a primitive mentality, and consequent adjectivation of religious as irrational, as some theorists still argue, does not clarify why there are still persistent religious manifestations still acting against the rational sense. Man can represent the universe and impose meanings and senses greater than the experience of other consciousnesses. Human consciousness allows us to give meanings to objects and situations, in general, more than they really mean. In addition, it permits to think in different senses for the same issue and even to adopt a different perspective, this is due to the work of the faculty of the imagination. The faculty of imagination adds diverse elements creating and recreating situations that help human survival and allow it to go beyond what is apparently perceived. Our study of religion comes from Henri Bergson and his work The Two Sources of Moral and Religion (1932) in which he seeks to understand the birth of religious thought and its contribution to the development of human society. Our research is centered on the discussions in the chapter entitled Static Religion, in which Bergson presents the concept of a fable function and corroborates the concept of bergsonian fable function that points out that religious thought is a by-product of the faculty of the imagination. Corroborating the concept of bergsonian's fabulous function, which points out that religious thought is a by-product of the faculty of the imagination, we point to Hans Vaihinger's The Philosophy of 'As if1 (1911), which presents a study of the origin of fictions. According to Bergson, the fable function originated the various forms of art, but has in religion its main reason for being. The fabrication of religion is the reason why men have the ability to fable. Religion is the best human fable and was created with the aim of providing a counterpoint of experience to intelligence. Fruit of the yearning for world ordering religious history is the first story created by man. The focus of our research is to demonstrate that religion provides the best integration of man with his fellow men and the environment in which he lives. The fictionalizing function in creating fictions would guide the individual to the need to improve group survival and discard what would put them at risk. In this way we maintain that religion is necessary, even if it was the work of the imagination.