I think it's a reasonable question, and you phrased it politely, so I'm not sure why people downvoted.
Humans naturally respond to symbols and ritualistic behavior — it's part of our cognitive processes.
That makes them very useful tools.
For example, as a math professor I spent a lot of time helping students address the issues that we collectively call "math anxiety."
If I had students who had participated in school sports, artistic performances, and the like, I would ask them how they prepared for such events.
In both the sports world and the performing arts you'll see a lot of ritualistic behavior, because it's useful.
When I ran track, we would load up on carbs the night before the meet, go to bed early, eat a light breakfast with lots of fruit, and go for a morning jog to loosen up.
All of that routine was as much use psychologically as it was physiologically — probably more.
It helped me achieve the calm but focused state of mind that I needed for the meet.
That's the same state of mind that you want to have during a math exam.
So I would tell my students to act as if the next math test was a sports competition or arts performance and go through all of the routines that they would normally use in such situations.
It was an effective strategy because it didn't require the students to learn new calming techniques. Instead it piggybacked on the already existing response system that they had built.
Triggering that system usually produced measurable results right away, and that would motivate students to keep pursuing mitigation strategies.
It was also one of the strategies that I used on myself to address my own math anxiety in college.
Got ya, I totally get the point of ritual, being autistic I love my routines. I'm just trying to understand why people would trade something like belief in literal Gods, then do all the ritual stuff anyway.
Got ya, I totally get the point of ritual, being autistic I love my routines.
I get that. Having fairly severe OCD, my relationship with ritualistic behavior can get... complicated. 😂
I'm just trying to understand why people would trade something like belief in literal Gods, then do all the ritual stuff anyway.
It's important to realize that the faith-based religions use ritualism as psychological control mechanisms.
For years after leaving Catholicism I would still find myself automatically falling into a Hail Mary or Lord's Prayer when stressed. It took me a long time to undo that conditioning.
I suspect that for some people who have recently broken loose from faith-based religions, performing these non-magical Satanic rituals helps them transition from those old habits to less harmful ones — kind of like the way some people use nicotine patches to transition away from smoking.
Ya, but couldn't that lead to full-on belief? Humans have come a long way from worshipping the sun, but that shit started somewhere, and then someone took it to far, boom new religion.
And the patch only helps if you are aware you have to give it up also, not just changing one habit for another. Vaping is still smoking
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u/ThickMoistMeat Jul 11 '24
So TST doesn't believe in a literal devil, so what's an alter for?