Is religion worth our time? If so, which one and why?
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Permalink Reply by Amaterasu Solar on -
[smile] What I learn is how to apply My awareness to My function. And to be honest... That experience has opened Me up to an astonishing array of input which before I could not see.
I do not say I have Your answer, but I know I have Mine.
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Permalink Reply by Karla Sachi on
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Absolutely--how can we know ALL? INFINITE? We don't know what' it's like to be a creature who lives in a world on a plent of methane--nor even a whale, on our own planet. Until we take time out of our busy human lives to care--we won't even know what it's like to be something other than human. We now have the opportunity to see through the eyes of other intelligent creatures, that we would jump at trying to communicate with, if we found them on a water planet...........the cetaceans. I would really really like to know how they feel about living in an atmosphere of water--not air--and what it's like to have our weird garbage dumped into their atmosphere.........???
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All religions are offshoots of someone who first had a spiritual experience--who others like...they liked this 'guy's' intrepretation, her miracles, his energy, whatever--and it grew, like a seed filled with infinite potential. The problem with people, is we create boundaries around our 'religions', and believe we are the best--and insist everyone fit into that boundary, then they begin fear mongering..."if you don't....______________________ will happen". It's a sales job, because people want more to join their flock--like birds, weeds, bugs, that turn away those who 'aren't like them'. Like I said, it's NATURE'S WAY OF PERPETUATING LIFE. If we realized this behavior is animalistic, perhaps we could reevaluate or recalculate our
behaviors and intentions...and instead of trying to sell our belief, just offer them, and let it go. The FORCE, DOMINATION, THREATS, RIGHT-WRONG DEBATE, is just part of the way we humans act more like animals than conscious beings. That's what I think...Jeez Louise, I mean, we could have non-physical life forms living right along side us, and we'd never know! We are SO YOUNG AS A SPECIES, and have such species-conceit, we are toddlers physically, and yet our consciousness is one with all------------my message is, if those of us who are certain they are 'already' superior to the rest, one with the cosmos....Well, being one with ALL , HELLLLOOO, does NOT exclude other life forms on this Earth!! Nor does it mean we have some special dispensation to the heavenly cosmos and the infinite... than other "un-intelligent, ancient" life on this earth does not have. Actually it makes us stupider for believing that. Nor does it mean millions of other ancient life on the planet, millions of years old, aren't perhaps more conscious , more able to communicate--if we weren't so insistent on keeping our ears shut, and believing that we are so much more superior, and smarter because of our high tech, sloth making, bomb making, overpopulating, resource sucking, falling on our face in confusion-and blunderings/species, called human. We shouldn't pin badges on ourselves until, as a group, we end our delusions.
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Permalink Reply by Amaterasu Solar on
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Most religions are based on the truth that Humans were (and are) visited (and likely genetically engineered) by Beings from "heaven" - from space, that is.
Plenty of evidence of this if One is willing to look.
Behavior is only animalistic if it is not chosen with the mind, if it is reactionary and not considered.
And of course there are Others in this universe - or multiverse - and many ARE non-corporeal. And most cannot see Them. Some can. In truth, You hold a very negative view of Humanity. We are quite a beautiful species, but struggle under a yoke of money kept in place for purposes of control and sapping energy from Us by a very evil few.
Were We to be released from the bondage, pulled out of the soil (money) in which the root of all evil grows (the LOVE of money), We would shine. Most of Us would help Others if We Ourselves didn't heed help.
And to be sure, the controlling Entities are not Human.
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Permalink Reply by David Joseph on
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Hi,
"Religion" is a form of cultural identity. It is, like the Law, Architecture, Table manners, Arts, Literature, Fashion and Scientific Method a formalization of the way a culture expresses itself. Religion is one facet of that expression.
The difficulty in a rapidly diminishing world of ever increasing populations which are mixing is that the types of cultural identifyers that sustained us in the past may be no-longer applicable. Where there are steadfastly beligerent groups seeking to maintain that cultural identity then we will see expressions of 'religion' in one form or another and to varying degrees of purpose.
Clearly, 'religion' is of great assistance to various members of the community and particularly those on the edge of that community.
The confusion about 'religion' as such, is that it seems to some members of the community to be a form of Divine communication. Some Religions might involve this, but Religion of itself is a cultural identifier.
At this time in our cultural development, we need to seek to she the aspects of our selves that are merely superstitious and based merely upon "belief" rather than understanding, just as (many of us) have out-grown Father Christmas.
For many people, "religion" appears to be inextricably bound up with a belief in God and his Words and commands. I think we have out-grown all of that and can seek to rely upon our own integrity and awareness - something, perhaps, approaching a Buddhist way of life, I suppose (although I am not a Buddist...).
The blatant present-day manifestation of "Religion" represents brutality and intollerance on a terrifying scale where horrific and bizzare minds seek to control others due to absurd and ancient prophesy. Like Daniel Dennett, I believe such groups need to be quarantined. This is not to say, though, that the beauty of 16th Century Motets, for example, need not be appreciated even though they were made as a Religious devotion.
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Permalink Reply by Tim O'Keeffe on
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Logic would tell you that an Aboriginal Austrailian living in the desert who has never known Christian thought or dogma, could be just as 'religious' as the pope. Just like perception tells your eyes that the color on the leaf of the bush is green, because you were told this when you were young, religion tends to be believed because that is what you were told.
Now, you wake up. You have experience. You have seen goodness and you have experienced hate. What is at the core of religion? Why has religion persisted since the first cavewomen looked up at the cosmos and perclaimed: I cannot be, without something else that made me. Chicken or the egg?
You struggle. You stomp your feet when your mad. Nothing changes, but everything remains the same. plu sa shazh, plu say la mem shoz. If God is eternal, then you must be eternal too. If God does not exist, then you only exist for a mind's eye. Do you really think that your dog Salbo is alive for 12 years, dies, and turns to dust? Did Salbo think while she was running across the prairie? Do her thoughts matter? What about the crummy little rose bush in your front yard? Did the rose bush wake up, start drinking water droplets from the moist coastal air, plant its roots, flower for 25 years, then perish in a final sunset as the T-cells progenerating its life were finally exhausted?
And please tell me why the blue dodge rambler that your parents drove to the drive-in has any pertinence to your current situation?
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So, it would appear that you believe in a Creator? or am I misreading it? We create our own realities and life is an illusion. I see no reason to project a modern proposition as to what aboriginies or the first cave man might have thought. We don't know. Our own awe at the sight of such vistas as the Cosmos is extremely couloured by the fact that we believe we have 'tamed' nature - we do see it as benign yet there is no reason to suppose that ancient consciousness would have perceived it in any particular way at all.
If, as I suppose, the universe is all of the same 'fabric' (and I use that word guardedly and simply to imply a textured unity not unlike a woven fabric - and, also being aware that the word etymologically imples creation and I do not wish to have that implied here) then our consciousness is related and is, actually, making the universe as we perceive it, for consciousness must be seen as a Dimension along with space and time... That the Universe may be conscious and we all being part of that does not imply a God or a creator. Our energy is all part of one field of vibrations (perhaps that is a better way of describing it that "fabric", but "fabric" I think is easier...
For present day purposes and concepts, "Religion" is a cultural identifyer and has little to do with the mystical. As such, I do not and cannot admit Religion as a meaningful and presently positive addition to a contemplation of the Human Condition. It is a cultural identifyer and in that it is similar to the Architectural forms of a society; the Laws and Music of a society and the Language of a society. Religion emanates from the mutitude of people living together; that it purports to contemplate the holy and the mystical is entirely incidental.
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Nicely stated. I like your musical inneundo about the entire interelationships we share with.....everything we perceive. And yes, going back in time to the first organism that swam in the ancestral oceans and who had the first awareness/perception of the world and cosmo doesn't have any impact on the 'now'. I would state, however, that we do not understand time - as we see it as an arrow always flying forward. Perhaps one day we will overcome this neandethral perception too. Perhaps one day we will equate religion with that of a person's favorite color?
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Absolutely Tim, I think that it is such a mistake to see "time" as one dimentional or as a one-way event, usually propunded in the political sense as 'progress' and that our Time , being the latest (why I don't know...) is therefore, by the present paradigm definition, the most advanced and positive... Perhaps earl;y man and even earlier life forms had a more conbstructive or sympathetic relation with all of the rst of the world.
As to music (I was a musician - composer - once...) I do find interestic parallels between harmony or harmonizations and a general principal I am trying to formulate concerning how enerly itself operates. I see all of the universe as vibrations , and complexes thereof, just as harmonic proceses work, so too, other manifestations - perhaps everything is fractal in nature and all based upon some very simple and elegant fundamental...
I hope we keep in touch.
DJ
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Chaos theory? Very interesting. In that regard, humans are an order within chaos that has manifested into what we are now. Ultimately, I believe we (humans) will outgrow our current pettiness and start really thinking. As the U.S.A. fully develops into a police-surveillance-industrial-military-political-corporate bank/state complex, I believe there will be mutations that will come forth and in a survival of the fittest mode, we will develop telepathy - to overcome the complex and move beyond the complex. A blue butterfly will flap its wings in Australia, and a child will be born in the U.S.A. that can read thoughts. No camera will be able to capture that on film.
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My point about religion, having been raised under the jack boot of Catholicism, is that as a construct of perception we have invented this social medium to beg for forgiveness about our daily atrocitities that we continue to take part in with every other living thing on this planet. And I have always been bothered by the fact that while we are running around shooting at other humans for not believing in Big Oil, there are mice and mosquitos and marmots and moths and milk weed that simply want to exist. Drink clean water processed naturally. Breath clean air processed naturally. Eat food processed naturally. And, according to religion, all of those wonderful life forms simply blink into, and then out, of existence as if they were props in a movie. No heaven (or hell) for them. Nope. They just live, breath, breed, and die.
That's why I think the Buddists are on to something, conceptually. We are all One. Interconnected. Interdependent. Personnally, I think religion is a form of population control. Why do we fight over belief systems? Well, those who collect in a religious sect and find that they control the land under their feet ("the U.S.A. is a Christian founded nation" as some believe), feel the right to guard that dirt and kill those who step on that dirt. Haven't really gotten that far since caveman times, have we? Same water hole: same battle over water. More effective clubs, however, so we have progressed in that regard.
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