This concept is actually what pushed me very far from religion. I visited Spain and France for two weeks in the summer years back for some religious thing. I visited some of the "sacred" places in the Roman Catholic belief, and it was pretty much then I knew it. You had massive cathedral in poor towns, and while the people struggled here stood these monuments to earthly things. After that I began to question why the church was so dead set on building monuments for God. God is a god, and I can't imagine there being a physical way in existence to laud him that would be sufficient. I took to the simpler forms of faith that there was prayer in good deeds, prayer in loving/respect one another (even when its tougher to do so). Community, meditation, and all of those other things have their place, but I believe there is a lot more to it. I'm a firm believer that expressions of positive emotions in our daily lives is among the strongest ways to worship God.
A god doesn't need anything. Worship is for us. If you believe in god as some singular entity worship sounds weird. If you believe in a god as a grand all encompassing entity then worship becomes our way of attuning ourselves with the world around us. At least that's the way I see it.
Often, I think the desire to build monuments is less about pleasing any dieties (though I'd like to hope they appreciate the effort and enthusiasm on our part) and more about our desire to create, period. There are beautiful buildings and projects all over the world, both religious and mundane, spanning hundreds and thousands of years of our history. The religious buildings just happen to be a form of religious art, and if with buildings, if you can go big, you're often tempted to. At the same time, some of these buildings are often big partially by necessity, because many of them are more than just places to worship. They're also administrative buildings, schools, hospitals, community centers, what have you. I agree.I'm a firm believer that expressions of positive emotions in our daily lives is among the strongest ways to worship God.
It's not so much the size, or even in certain situations the ornate nature of these places. In certain regards it's the location. I visited poor towns with massive cathedral's wondering why they didn't just downsize this place, and pour some of that money into the town itself. For me it's odd to see these grand structures while kids in the same town bathe in a river.
Yeah. The dichotomy can be very striking. It'd be interesting to get a financial snapshot of some of these communities and see where money really goes. It's worrisome that sometimes people seem to prioritize maintaining what's easier to maintain over what's more important to maintain. Then again, that's kind of human nature sometimes, so, I dunno. :/