Why do you believe in YOUR religion

sherry said:
What moves you so deeply inside about your chosen relgion? If possible I would like to hear YOUR words not "because < > says so...."
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Er well, I'm not feeling deeply moved inside, I'm not sure I've chosen anything and I wouldn't say I was a religionist. But I wouldn't say I was an atheist as the materialist-only perspective is limiting.

Does that help? :D

s.
 
I don't know what a puddin head is, but it must be good because religion is delicious! :D
 
I'm happy for anybody's good thing. If you like your religion that's great...for you. I find religion completely unnecessary. I find organized religion to be a repository of patently ridiculous nonsense. Utterly stupid, anachronistic crappiola that by all rights should have been disgarded centuries ago. But that's just me.

Chris
 
China Cat Sunflower said:
Utterly stupid, anachronistic crappiola
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The same could be said of music, poetry, pilosophy, and most old-fashioned flavors of ice cream.

Albert Einstein once said: "The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious - the fundamental emotion which stands at the cradle of true art and true science." Religion is a never-ending source of inspiration for those who may never solve the mysteries of life but are nevertheless content to try.

A fellow by the name of George Raponos suggested that the Creator G-d is impersonal and that it is we who "make God's love personal by our acceptance of His unlimited love." I disagree.

Part of why my religion will be a never-ending source of inspiration for me is that it includes trying to get over the mind-blowing fact that the Creator G-d of it all is at least as personal as His Creation. Indeed, it would seem He is somehow more personal than any one aspect of His Creation. If His involvement with each and every one of His children isn't the most glorious love, then I don't know what is.


​
 
Well, I wasn't talking about God, I was talking about organized religion. The problem with religion is that it can never seem to make a clean break with the past. Religion can't ever say "well, we were wrong about a few things." It's got to invent some cockamamie excuse for how, technically, if you kinda close one eye and squint with the other, all these ridiculous pronouncements of the past when people believed in silly sh it are still valid...somehow. "Well, the sun didn't really stand still it was, uh...an eclipse...or...something."

Chris
 
China Cat Sunflower said:
Well, I wasn't talking about God, I was talking about organized religion. The problem with religion is that it can never seem to make a clean break with the past. Religion can't ever say "well, we were wrong about a few things." It's got to invent some cockamamie excuse for how, technically, if you kinda close one eye and squint with the other, all these ridiculous pronouncements of the past when people believed in silly sh it are still valid...somehow. "Well, the sun didn't really stand still it was, uh...an eclipse...or...something."

Chris
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Are you saying that organized religions behave in an egotistic manner as if they have their own personhood? I thought that it was people who did that...
 
If quantum physics and religion are both trying to describe the same thing, why do we still have to have all the smoke and mirrors, funky turbans and spiffy robes, and authority hard ons that religion wallows in? There's so much baggage with religion that it's hardly worth trying to accommodate it. Sure it's a repository of timeless wisdom, but it's so gunked up with junk it's unusable.

We need a whole new clean language to talk about this stuff. "God" is just way to amorphous and hopelessly self-referential a term to be at all useful.

Chris
 
seattlegal said:
Are you saying that organized religions behave in an egotistic manner as if they have their own personhood? I thought that it was people who did that...
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We were posting at the same time. Religion, people, organized spiritual group think- whatever you want to call it.

Chris
 
China Cat Sunflower said:
If quantum physics and religion are both trying to describe the same thing, why do we still have to have all the smoke and mirrors, funky turbans and spiffy robes, and authority hard ons that religion wallows in? There's so much baggage with religion that it's hardly worth trying to accommodate it. Sure it's a repository of timeless wisdom, but it's so gunked up with junk it's unusable.

We need a whole new clean language to talk about this stuff. "God" is just way to amorphous and hopelessly self-referential a term to be at all useful.

Chris
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Do you think all the excess baggage is from a confusion of language?

China Cat Sunflower said:
We were posting at the same time. Religion, people, organized spiritual group think- whatever you want to call it.

Chris
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Organized spiritual group think, confusion of language--it sounds like the Tower of Babel effect is still with us...
 
Most of what organized religion does has nothing to do with getting at a cutting edge conception of how the Universe works. The language of religion is arcane and doesn't work well with modern scientific concepts. So there are these two impediments: All the rigmarole, props, costumes, social and political control mechanisms and such that go into the cult of identity that is organized religion, and the impossibly arcane and amorphous nature of the language used to try to describe a thing that can't be described. The language may be confused as a result of all the excess baggage, if you want to look at it that way. Maybe the reverse is true, but I wasn't thinking of it that way.

I dunno, pitch me your idea. I was just thinking that if the reality on the "other side" is what we're trying to describe both in terms of quantum physics and in terms of what God, in essence, might be, then what really gums things up for me is all the baggage that comes with the language about God. It doesn't seem that there's any way to just isolate a pristine God concept because attached to it is several thousand years of convention, most of which is just dead weight.

Chris
 
China Cat Sunflower said:
Most of what organized religion does has nothing to do with getting at a cutting edge conception of how the Universe works. The language of religion is arcane and doesn't work well with modern scientific concepts. So there are these two impediments: All the rigmarole, props, costumes, social and political control mechanisms and such that go into the cult of identity that is organized religion, and the impossibly arcane and amorphous nature of the language used to try to describe a thing that can't be described. The language may be confused as a result of all the excess baggage, if you want to look at it that way. Maybe the reverse is true, but I wasn't thinking of it that way.

I dunno, pitch me your idea. I was just thinking that if the reality on the "other side" is what we're trying to describe both in terms of quantum physics and in terms of what God, in essence, might be, then what really gums things up for me is all the baggage that comes with the language about God. It doesn't seem that there's any way to just isolate a pristine God concept because attached to it is several thousand years of convention, most of which is just dead weight.

Chris
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Could the dead weight be the human desires attached to what we want God to be?
 
I am a "Jew by choice".

I grew up something else, & left that religion for too many reasons to list here. I spent years looking for a different faith. The first time I went to services at a synagogue I felt as if I had gone home.

I believe I didn't actually choose Judaism; rather that it chose me.
 
China Cat Sunflower said:
I'm happy for anybody's good thing. If you like your religion that's great...for you. I find religion completely unnecessary. I find organized religion to be a repository of patently ridiculous nonsense. Utterly stupid, anachronistic crappiola that by all rights should have been disgarded centuries ago. But that's just me.

Chris
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I'm happy for anybody's good thing. If you like your religion that's great...for you. I find religion completely unnecessary. I find organized religion to be a repository of patently ridiculous nonsense. Utterly stupid, anachronistic crappiola that by all rights should have been disgarded centuries ago. But that's just me and you and....



tao
 
China Cat Sunflower said:
Well, I wasn't talking about God, I was talking about organized religion. The problem with religion is that it can never seem to make a clean break with the past.
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you could say the same thing about science. in my experience, there is absolutely no need for the two to be at loggerheads, yet some people don't seem to be able to get past the idea that science can somehow answer the question "what is the purpose of life?" it simply isn't set up to do so. by the same logic, religion simply isn't set up to answer the question "how does DNA work and what does it do?" you're presumably familiar with stephen jay gould's concept of "non-overlapping magisteria"? well, i think that magisteria partially overlap, but not completely (i think that's called a POMA). for example, both religion and science have a view about how the universe got started. it's not necessarily even a contradictory view - i am aware, for example, that kabbalists and quantum physicists often come up with astoundingly similar ways to talk about it.

Religion can't ever say "well, we were wrong about a few things.
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i'm not sure that that's entirely fair. didn't the catholic church apologise for its historic antisemitism? judaism changes its rulings on things all the time. obviously, we have to have a good reason to do so, but it's not a matter of being "wrong" - first one has to show that something actually is wrong. have you got a particular example on your mind?

"It's got to invent some cockamamie excuse for how, technically, if you kinda close one eye and squint with the other, all these ridiculous pronouncements of the past when people believed in silly sh it are still valid...somehow. "Well, the sun didn't really stand still it was, uh...an eclipse...or...something."
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we have a principle that "the Torah speaks in the language of humans" - this means that things are explained in terms of things we can understand. an example might be speaking about "G!D's Hand", when in fact G!D doesn't actually have a Hand as we would understand it - but we speak in these terms in order to convey the effective meaning of what happened, ie G!D Acted in some form, which, if it hadn't been G!D, would have required a "hand". does that make sense? so, in terms of something like the "sun standing still", this would merely be how it seemed in terms that the people involved could understand; put another way, it could be the earliest known application of the theory of relativity, in that the sun *seemed* to all concerned to be standing still during these moments of vital effort. you are of course free to scoff all you like, but it's only really necessary to have an "excuse" if you think the literal meaning of the text ("pshat") has been violated. and we have another principle which says that "interpretation of the Torah cannot be alienated from its literal meaning", which means that the literal meaning must have that level of flexibility. so you can't just say, oh, it was an eclipse, it wouldn't be so straightforward in the first place.

If quantum physics and religion are both trying to describe the same thing, why do we still have to have all the smoke and mirrors, funky turbans and spiffy robes, and authority hard ons that religion wallows in?
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why do we have to have all the titles, academic qualifications, university buildings and administration, research publishing, graduations, spiffy robes and funky mortarboards, book contracts and TV appearances that science wallows it? there's so much misunderstanding associated with science, but it's still worth trying to understand it. sure it's gunked up with personal agendas and unscientific bias, but its also a repository of peer-reviewed working hypotheses which help us understand the universe.

We need a whole new clean language to talk about this stuff. "God" is just way to amorphous and hopelessly self-referential a term to be at all useful.
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well, that's kind of what we're doing here, but i feel bound to point out that a manual on brain surgery would also have to be hopelessly self-referential to be any use and would be incomprehensible to someone who hadn't already gone to medical school. you couldn't just invent a "whole new clean language", because there is value in the thinking that has already been done.

The language of religion is arcane and doesn't work well with modern scientific concepts.
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the language of science is arcane and doesn't work well with traditional religious concepts either, because of the POMA problem.

I dunno, pitch me your idea. I was just thinking that if the reality on the "other side" is what we're trying to describe both in terms of quantum physics and in terms of what God, in essence, might be, then what really gums things up for me is all the baggage that comes with the language about God. It doesn't seem that there's any way to just isolate a pristine God concept because attached to it is several thousand years of convention, most of which is just dead weight.
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well, that is your opinion, but it's not always about convention (much of mystical thinking is really quite unconventional, as you should know) and, furthermore, who is to say what is "dead weight"? who is to say what is "pristine"? that's like trying to say, ok, my DNA is 90% the same as a banana (which it is, btw), i just want to isolate the pristine 10% which makes me human. oh, hang on, 9% of that is also shared by monkeys, etc, etc.

China Cat Sunflower and Tao_Equus said:
I find organized religion to be a repository of patently ridiculous nonsense. Utterly stupid, anachronistic crappiola that by all rights should have been discarded centuries ago.
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how about "the widow and orphan you shall not oppress"? how about "leave the gleanings of your field for the poor"? how about "love your neighbour as yourself"? how about "you shall love the stranger, for you were strangers in egypt"? are all these patently ridiculous, stupid or anachronistic?

b'shalom

bananabrain
 
Cannibal!

See, this is why I'm a vegan. I don't eat bananas.
 
BB, great post. Just wanted to give the shout-out.

I second the conclusion that no cultural or social institution/behavior/belief is free from the past. Science is no more free from the past as any other socio-cultural artifact. The value lies in recognizing how these are tied to the past and evaluating which connections are still valid for today.

Secondly, religion most certainly can and does change over time, and acknowledge being inaccurate, wrong, or not useful as time moves on. Some religions/churches may not do this, but others do, and quite forthrightly. Some religions are, by definition, a way of critically analyzing past practices and beliefs and reinventing them for contemporary times, given our newest information and social structures. To say otherwise is to ignore the diversity of the world's religions. I think many times, when I hear atheists denounce "religion," they are responding to a limited number of sects from the Western religions. But religion is not limited to these sects. One must be careful of definitions and the scope of one's arguments.

Basically, I'm in agreement with BB, and would have made more or less the same points. And I add that as BB says some Kabbalists and physicists come to the same conclusions, so too do other religions' mystics and monks. I've seen interviews with shamans and with physicists that describe the same reality. If anything, I see (in recent years) an incredible movement toward the union of science and mysticism. It's getting at the same reality from two different halves of our brain. If you're left-brained and approach reality that way, great for you, but it's hardly tolerant or fair to expect the entire human population to see the world just as you do. Likewise, it is intolerant to expect left-brained folks to approach the world as a right-brained person.

Most of the arguments against religion that I see are brought forth:

With more reference to the disgruntledness with social institutions (which could be ANY "-ism") and how people choose to perpetuate suffering than anything specific to religion.

With little attention to the detail of diversity of religion and its integration with society (which shows little attention to the science of society and human behavior).

With little attention to the reality of diversity of personality, perception, and interaction with the world displayed by human beings, and each person's right to experience reality as they do (rather than as you do).

Basically, with about as much intolerance as I see from the religious who insist everyone follow the (their) "Right Path."

I'm not a religious person, but that's just my observation. There's a strong tendency in people to want to feel that their way of thinking, of perceiving, and the reality they perceive is the correct one. Everyone else is playing catch-up- whether that is to say they are "unsaved" or "unschooled" is a matter of semantics.
 
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