Religion - From my point of view.
Religion from my point of view.
OK, very few people on the Sift seem to like religion. I get that; Great, all the power to you. To all the faith believers out there; great, all the power to you as well.
These are my thoughts and mine only. Feel free to pick a side, stand firm where you are, refuse to cross a line, stand firmly on the line or enjoy jumping back and forth across the line!
I’m a “live and let live” type of person and I like to see things from all angles and believe in a world where everyone has the opportunity to be right, even when they are wrong!
I see myself not as an atheist or religious, some would call me agnostic. I would call me “none of the above”. I like to think of myself as an observer.
Religion talk on the sift is Taboo, so I want to delve in.
Please don’t just chime in and bash religion, anyone can say “religion sucks”, you can have that opinion but how about contributing something to the discussion…
I see Religion and Spirituality as two separate things.
1). Religion is an organized, group effort to push forward an agenda, which reinforces one’s belief system. (sometimes political)
2). Spirituality is an individual’s personal belief system, which binds them and gives meaning to their life giving themselves a grounding and defining their place within our universe.
Of Religion.
I have personal issues with anyone person or any one organization which tells others what to do or think. I see religion as a tool, originally used to control a population. Religion is stronger than any sword. To dominate a populous through religion is an ideal way to institute agenda. You can give a group of people a combined purpose and subvert them in order to establish control and dominance. Something some people seem to be hardwired towards, while other are destined to be sheep.
In a world formed out of anarchy, religion was a great idea. It was a government. A set of rules presented in all its glory to advance a people. It gave them a common goal, set up morals, set up law and freed the rulers of scrutiny. “A God can not be questioned”
Over the years of civilization, religion has become so ingrained in our society that it has become a constant. People are more lost and emotionally disrupted than ever before and seek to find their place in our changing world. To be embraced by a group and given a book of answers to live by is enough for many to feel content and gives them meaning in their lives. This is the same for religious and non-religious groups. We all have an intrinsic need to belong, humanity is based on community and we tend to group to the like-minded.
Once in our groups, we don’t want one group telling the other group that they are wrong. Opposing groups threaten the entire foundation, which has embraced you and given you peace of mind. Strength in numbers, join a group and not only will they be there when you need them, they will help to defend your chosen set of beliefs.
Of Spirituality.
Believing everyone has the freedom to think for themselves, this is the realm of belief and disbelief. The human mind has an intrinsic creative nature, an ability to create something from nothing. But we are lazy. It is much easier to base one idea off another and continue to evolve that idea until all the gaps have been filled. This is true in religion and in science. The difference is science strives to prove these creative ideas (called theories). Eventually, if the idea can’t be proven, it is set aside and a new creative idea takes it’s place.
In the creative arena of the mind, in reference to spirituality, you don’t need to prove anything. You can run rampant with your ideas. You can cling to a dogma of your choice, or you can expand or eliminate the parts you want. Custom tailored to your own personal needs. No one has the right (although they try) to tell you how or what to believe.
Spirituality is an internal belief system where you can take what you want and tailor it to include your own rules and morals. Sometimes they mirror a specific dogma or an established religion, but the more creative types see what they want.
People hold on the spirituality in different ways, some toy with the deity entirely. You can worship a God, Mother Earth, Zeus, Aliens or a brick of cheese, (I once knew a guy who believed that sandwiches were an alien life form that strives to be eaten so it can control us from the inside – wacky, but if he wants to believe it, then let him.) No one can argue with you, because it’s your “personal” belief. You can believe in Karma or Destiny or you can take life by the horns and make things go your way.
Spirituality is taking that one step further into the imagination and think “What if”!
It’s taking that “what if” and evolving it into something and building a pantheon around it. It’s fun! It’s Creative! It can evolve with every new thought and piece of information you take in over the course of a lifetime. You ball every piece of information and store it as knowledge. You organize it into subsections and use it to give meaning to the lifetime of years you’ve enjoyed. You further evolve this ball to include what happens when your term in this life is complete and finished. Doesn’t it make sense to rationalize that all this stored knowledge was gathered to be used for a purpose beyond the nothing we have all been destined for?
If you hold to a specific religion, you can take its given book of rules and use it to make sense out of your world. Its lessons can help you to explain all of the given situation you find yourself. You can twist the meanings, you can live the meanings word for word and you can see them in parables that can be used to explain and make sense of things you otherwise can’t label and file in your brain. This can also be done by listening to music and picking out phrase after phrase and giving it meaning within the context of your life. Rune stones also work in this way. You pick up a stone, study it’s meaning and explore how that meaning can have a place in your life and what that means to you.
to start and
I for one have no idea what awaits us in the end, and I don’t care, I’m just an observer…
OK, very few people on the Sift seem to like religion. I get that; Great, all the power to you. To all the faith believers out there; great, all the power to you as well.
These are my thoughts and mine only. Feel free to pick a side, stand firm where you are, refuse to cross a line, stand firmly on the line or enjoy jumping back and forth across the line!
I’m a “live and let live” type of person and I like to see things from all angles and believe in a world where everyone has the opportunity to be right, even when they are wrong!
I see myself not as an atheist or religious, some would call me agnostic. I would call me “none of the above”. I like to think of myself as an observer.
Religion talk on the sift is Taboo, so I want to delve in.
Please don’t just chime in and bash religion, anyone can say “religion sucks”, you can have that opinion but how about contributing something to the discussion…
I see Religion and Spirituality as two separate things.
1). Religion is an organized, group effort to push forward an agenda, which reinforces one’s belief system. (sometimes political)
2). Spirituality is an individual’s personal belief system, which binds them and gives meaning to their life giving themselves a grounding and defining their place within our universe.
Of Religion.
I have personal issues with anyone person or any one organization which tells others what to do or think. I see religion as a tool, originally used to control a population. Religion is stronger than any sword. To dominate a populous through religion is an ideal way to institute agenda. You can give a group of people a combined purpose and subvert them in order to establish control and dominance. Something some people seem to be hardwired towards, while other are destined to be sheep.
In a world formed out of anarchy, religion was a great idea. It was a government. A set of rules presented in all its glory to advance a people. It gave them a common goal, set up morals, set up law and freed the rulers of scrutiny. “A God can not be questioned”
Over the years of civilization, religion has become so ingrained in our society that it has become a constant. People are more lost and emotionally disrupted than ever before and seek to find their place in our changing world. To be embraced by a group and given a book of answers to live by is enough for many to feel content and gives them meaning in their lives. This is the same for religious and non-religious groups. We all have an intrinsic need to belong, humanity is based on community and we tend to group to the like-minded.
Once in our groups, we don’t want one group telling the other group that they are wrong. Opposing groups threaten the entire foundation, which has embraced you and given you peace of mind. Strength in numbers, join a group and not only will they be there when you need them, they will help to defend your chosen set of beliefs.
Of Spirituality.
Believing everyone has the freedom to think for themselves, this is the realm of belief and disbelief. The human mind has an intrinsic creative nature, an ability to create something from nothing. But we are lazy. It is much easier to base one idea off another and continue to evolve that idea until all the gaps have been filled. This is true in religion and in science. The difference is science strives to prove these creative ideas (called theories). Eventually, if the idea can’t be proven, it is set aside and a new creative idea takes it’s place.
In the creative arena of the mind, in reference to spirituality, you don’t need to prove anything. You can run rampant with your ideas. You can cling to a dogma of your choice, or you can expand or eliminate the parts you want. Custom tailored to your own personal needs. No one has the right (although they try) to tell you how or what to believe.
Spirituality is an internal belief system where you can take what you want and tailor it to include your own rules and morals. Sometimes they mirror a specific dogma or an established religion, but the more creative types see what they want.
People hold on the spirituality in different ways, some toy with the deity entirely. You can worship a God, Mother Earth, Zeus, Aliens or a brick of cheese, (I once knew a guy who believed that sandwiches were an alien life form that strives to be eaten so it can control us from the inside – wacky, but if he wants to believe it, then let him.) No one can argue with you, because it’s your “personal” belief. You can believe in Karma or Destiny or you can take life by the horns and make things go your way.
Spirituality is taking that one step further into the imagination and think “What if”!
It’s taking that “what if” and evolving it into something and building a pantheon around it. It’s fun! It’s Creative! It can evolve with every new thought and piece of information you take in over the course of a lifetime. You ball every piece of information and store it as knowledge. You organize it into subsections and use it to give meaning to the lifetime of years you’ve enjoyed. You further evolve this ball to include what happens when your term in this life is complete and finished. Doesn’t it make sense to rationalize that all this stored knowledge was gathered to be used for a purpose beyond the nothing we have all been destined for?
If you hold to a specific religion, you can take its given book of rules and use it to make sense out of your world. Its lessons can help you to explain all of the given situation you find yourself. You can twist the meanings, you can live the meanings word for word and you can see them in parables that can be used to explain and make sense of things you otherwise can’t label and file in your brain. This can also be done by listening to music and picking out phrase after phrase and giving it meaning within the context of your life. Rune stones also work in this way. You pick up a stone, study it’s meaning and explore how that meaning can have a place in your life and what that means to you.
to start and
I for one have no idea what awaits us in the end, and I don’t care, I’m just an observer…
14 Comments
SDGundamXThanks for posting this.
I don't think religion talk is taboo on the Sift. Recently there have been a spate of videos showing the ugly side of religion and what has followed has almost always been a string of "religion sucks" and "all religious people are idiots" or "all religious people are insane--they believe in fairy tales" sort of comments. I, for my part, have done my best to turn the tide of these comments when I come across them and get people to think beyond stereotypes and over-generalizations. As you have pointed out in this post, religion is such a multi-dimensional cultural and sociological phenomenon dismissing all religion on such grounds as mentioned above seems fairly ignorant to me.
In terms of what you wrote above, I think spiritual beliefs are not as based on "creativity" as you seem to believe. Many spiritual people compare their beliefs with their experiences and refine them in a way that is similar to the scientific process. The difference is that they work with subjective and unobservable data (i.e. their feelings) as opposed to objective observable data. If this process didn't occur, the world's major religions would have remained static over the course of their existence. Of course, there most certainly are people out there who close their eyes to anything that doesn't fit into their spiritual framework, but I don't think that describes most spiritual people--just fundamentalists and ideologues.
blankfistI'd like to throw a wrench in if I could. It's one of my pet peeves when people say "I'm neither atheist or 'religious'... I'm agnostic."
First, the opposite of "atheist" is not "religious", it's theist.
Secondly, whether you're agnostic or not has nothing to do with whether you're atheist or theist. Being agnostic means you're without knowing or without knowledge. To be gnostic, however, means you're with knowledge. Agnostic is the opposite of gnostic.
So, how can you have knowledge of the existence of a supernatural being? You cannot. The same way you cannot have knowledge of the lack of the existence of a supernatural being.
Therefore we all cannot prove or disprove a supernatural god's existence and must remain AGNOSTiC.
dystopianfuturetoday^Completely agree. I get the feeling that agnostics are actually atheists who fear offending the religious or are trying to live up to some standard of objectivity. If you can't put yourself in the 'I believe in God' category, then you don't believe in God. Even if you are 50/50 on the fence, if you can't say you believe, then you are not a believer. It doesn't mean that you believe there is no God or that you are closed off to the possibility, just that you don't currently believe. If we swapped out 'agnostic' for 'religio-curious' the term would die out in a matter of weeks.
"I'm a very spiritual person." is another term that bugs me. It doesn't bug me to call one's self spiritual, but rather to imply that others are not. Everyone experiences deep emotional connections with loved ones, music, art, nature, the cosmos, psychedelics, religion and/or existence in general. Spirituality is part of the human experience regardless of religious beliefs.
Nice piece, sagemind, and nice discussion.
dystopianfuturetodayI think early religion was primitive science, but without the ability to test hypothesis. Rain comes from the sky, water is blue, the sky is blue, therefore there must be water in the sky. It's easy to laugh at that now, but many thousands of years ago none of us would have known any better. The problem is that people held on to those stories long after they'd outlived their usefulness. People to this day avoid certain types of food because at some point in the past, these food were condemned in holy scripture. Of course, that nasty case of diarrhea wasn't a message from God, it was just because the concept of germs and sanitary food preparation had yet to be invented. Oh well, more ribs and lobster for me I suppose.
gwiz665I'll give this a cogent response when I'm home from work. Always interesting to discuss.
videosiftbannedmeFor what it's worth, I've been a naturalistic Pantheist ever since I took my first philosophy course and was able to study the majority of belief systems for myself, rather than what I was indoctrinated with (was raised Methodist).
Oh, and you're all wrong. And so am I...
SagemindBlankfist, thanks for the definitions, I guess I have never come to terms with all the lingo; atheist, theist, religious, gnostic, agnostic etc.
I don't work well with labels. Maybe that's why I don't use them to define myself and they tend to pigeon hole me into one camp or the other.
I have an inner dislike for hierarchies of any kind, religious, political or social. To me they are all artificial archetypes and superficial. I have never been able to see past the equality of one person over another. Because of this, I can't bring myself to believe in the word "worship" which instantly relinquishes your independence and puts you under the dominance of another.
For me, I enjoy all the points of view. The possibility of creation but not by omnipotence. The possibility that we are a lost, abandoned or marooned colony. The possibility that we are spontaneous life.
SDGundamX, I still think creativity plays a role in spirituality. At the same time, I agree with you. All our life experiences are compared and refined to create our own personal dichotomy. I think we take the facts and creatively weave them together with abstract ideas and concepts in order to define them for ourselves.
In a church of 600 people, not everyone can believe that exact same thing. Some people will close off to some things, some with redefine certain meanings. Some will have certain beliefs that they keep to themselves. some parts will be believed whole-heartedly while some things will be dismissed outright.
Point being; Spirituality can be both a scientific dissection and cataloging of events in ones personal life and it can be a creative process of combining personal and world views in order to define and encompass one's own "theory of everything" however limiting or defining it may be.
MilkmanDan says..."Agnostic" is one term that I think is unfortunately pulled in many directions in attempts to apply it to different meanings. I agree that at its core it means "unknowing", specifically with regard to theistic / religious queries. But I think that a refinement of the definition that adds some beneficial structure is to suggest that one is not only "unknowing" or "unsure" about theism or religion, but that they would suggest that it is impossible to have such knowledge.
The lighter definition can spring from ignorance; we're all uncertain about many belief systems or religions of the past (or future) because we've never really been exposed to them and don't know what they are about. The stronger definition is when I think a person that would proclaim themselves to be "agnostic" actually begins to have some real meaning. And I tend to agree with the precepts of that stance -- my preference towards scientific and logical thought tells me that many of the proclamations of religion that I am exposed to are untestable, so the only 100% solid statement that I can make is that I am "uncertain" about whether they are true or false.
However, I also think that stance is a fairly unnecessary cop-out. Religion is not the only source of untestable hypotheses in our world. Many people would have us believe in the factual existence of dragons, fairies, the Loch Ness Monster, or Santa Claus. Yet when confronted with questions about any of those, people very rarely feel any compulsion to be "agnostic"; they simply say "no, that doesn't really exist", thereby rolling the dice and being confident in their (self-evaluated) 99.9999999%+ odds.
I wish that more religious concepts were subjected to scrutiny and not just given a free pass for being too taboo to question or criticize. That is why although I cannot scientifically or logically prove that no god or gods exist (and in fact believe that it is impossible to do so), I elect not to use the term "agnostic" to describe myself, but stick with "atheist". Most importantly, I lose no more sleep over the possibility that I am incorrect about the non-existence of any god or gods than I do over the possibility that I am wrong and somewhere out there, if I looked hard enough, I might just find a unicorn.
marinarai can certainly understand why you aren't religious, with all the various religions trying to keep people from doing stuff and putting rules on other people.
its kind of like politics, you have to search for days just for a person who isn't playing the game exclusively for himself.
still i can recommend christian books by ravi zacharias or charles r. swindoll.
really what we all need is the ability to discern.... to use an auto analogy... discern a pothole in the road, from a personal problem. This is the type of spirituality that everyone needs. the challenges in your life... how to deal effectively with them or even not to try.
The bible aint gonna help with this really . Psychology does, but with the low hanging fruits. Really you get sprituality from dealing with spiritual people. Or god, if you can find him.
RyjkyjAccording to this book:
)
http://www.amazon.com/Atheism-Case-Against-Skeptics-Bookshelf/dp/087975124X
(which I found to be an excellent read and you can download at a bunch of places for free)
...theism is: "The belief or unbelief in a deity beyond death". The definition in Webster's dictionary has changed since this book was written but I still subscribe the the old one. According to it, any belief about god at all... OR DISBELIEF... makes you a theist.
The book also goes on to say that whatever you define agnosticism as, the term seems to be used by most people as a way of renaming god, i.e.: "Nature is my god", "The universe is my god".
Just thought I'd throw in my two cents. This is the way I've thought about it for a long time now. To me, most people who describe themselves as agnostic are usually just dipping their toe into the idea of calling themselves atheist while at the same time trying not to offend their religious peers.
So I define myself proudly as an atheist but I do not judge other people for their beliefs, because I do not presume to understand them.
(As crazy and backward as religious nutcases are.
DeanoI think going to church should be more exciting. I attended a memorial mass yesterday for a friend who died last year. I may be an atheist but they really have to jazz things up.
I was sat next to a Sikh who found the whole thing puzzling but as a former Roman Catholic I knew the drill. Next time I'm going to count the number of times one has to stand up and sit down or play some other mind game to keep awake.
SagemindI went to a funeral for a 16 yr. old friend who was murdered a few days ago.
700 attended, The church was so full, the event was simulcast in another room within the church. They had live music, On screen video, PowerPoint presentations and so on. Something else they did that was cool was they displayed a phone number on the screen so all the youth could TEXT in their condolences and then the Text messages were streamed along the bottom of the projection screen LIVE as they came in. Great use of technology. An amazing address from the lead youth pastor and words from many of the youth & friends of the deceased.
So, it doesn't have to be boring...
You want boring, yes, go to a Catholic church - you want non-boring go to a Pentecostal church
>> ^Deano:
I think going to church should be more exciting. I attended a memorial mass yesterday for a friend who died last year. I may be an atheist but they really have to jazz things up.
Deano*quality
siftbotAwarding Sagemind with one star point for this contribution to VideoSift - declared quality by Deano.
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