All religions

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smoking revolver
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All religions offer the experience of the divine to their followers, which mainly is a psychological experience of "epiphanic rapture" that mostly is created through ritual.
The rest is just local interpretation and some particular ethics which are not essential to the experience.

That's why, I think, it could be said that all religious people worship one thing, but that thing is not some god, is not an entity or a personification of something, it's an experience of their own psyche or self which, if experienced fully, is the godly bliss, paradise, lavondyss, avalon.

Because of this realization I've come to enjoy any such experience no matter the religion whether it is with krishnas, christians or some nature religion cult.

So I think that all the problems and clashes among followers of different religions is that they take their religions too seriously. Are in confusion and mistake their god to be the particular interpretation not the experience which is beyond names.

Maybe this realization should be the key worth exploring in order to create a world where people coexist peacefully on this religious level, eliminating the religious clashes that are still widespread today.
I think in time it would create a world culture that doesn't follow any particular religion, but still has the religious experience of wonder, amazement and sublime rapture that has fueled so many wonderful achievements of humankind.
 
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I think in time it would create a world culture that doesn't follow any particular religion, but still has the religious experience of wonder, amazement and sublime rapture that has fueled so many wonderful achievements of humankind.
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There will always be a religion of some kind as long as there are humans here. They need to have something to believe in besides themselves.
 
What about Buddhism? I think it's the most advanced religion/philosophy that also doesn't require people to believe in "something besides themselves", and there are millions of buddhists, so I think the second part of your generalisation is too broad and untrue.
I agree with the first though, but with accent on religious experience not a particular religion.
 
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What about Buddhism? I think it's the most advanced religion/philosophy that also doesn't require people to believe in "something besides themselves", and there are millions of buddhists, so I think the second part of your generalisation is too broad and untrue.
I agree with the first though, but with accent on religious experience not a particular religion.
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There may be millions of Buddhists but not all of them follow an atheistic model of Buddhism.
 
I know, but it shows that human doesn't have to believe in something other than himself, many do, but it's not an absolute psychological requirement.
 
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I know, but it shows that human doesn't have to believe in something other than himself, many do, but it's not an absolute psychological requirement.
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Perhaps, but I haven't engaged in a long convesation with any such people, so I'll suspend any conclusions. However, based on my own experiences with human beings, I'd say everyone has an ideology, sometimes, they just don't recognise it as such.
 
Wait, wait, wait...
Where did I say that humans should not believe in anything?
I was just talking about the possibility of people not taking their religious beliefs too seriously.
 
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Wait, wait, wait...
Where did I say that humans should not believe in anything?
I was just talking about the possibility of people not taking their religious beliefs too seriously.
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Where there are religions there will always be those who will believe that theirs is the only one and that all others should be crushed and swept aside in order for their own religion to take control for their own reasons and goals.
 
cosmictraveler, what do you think is the most common and likely psychological cause of this fanatism?
 
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cosmictraveler, what do you think is the most common and likely psychological cause of this fanatism?
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Greed, they want to control people to make people slaves unto them. Convincing others to do things for you because of some supernatural power is a con job used throughout history. They get waited upon head over heal, that is those who establish the religions...known as Priests in many times during history.
 
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This is of course fantasy, but that means that there should be created an ideology supported by very potent ritual experience or modified and improved an existing one that among other things overrides the greed instinct of the human psyche and replaces it with something more benovelant.
 
Not obligatory. :)
If humanity survives who knows what our society will be like in a million years?
Any way, human instincts, whether that is a good thing or bad, can be overriden by culture, Egyptian art proves it.

Personally I prefer that our minds are free and capable of inovation of ideas and that our minds are not set in a rigid frame. Exactly that has allowed us to progress.
The tradeoff however is that some of these inovative ideas could prove fatal to humanity.

So maybe a middle way should be found...
 
The problem is that innovations have there prices. They cut both ways most of the time. Whatever we create we also destroy something at the same time. It is just a matter as to how much destruction that we cause because one day we will destroy ourselves by our own means if we aren't done away with by an asteroid or other Earth destroying event.
 
I think very few christians in the West are seeking epiphanic rapture or have experienced it. Nor do I think most Jews are.

To say that they really all are the same seems very problematic to me. This means that you, at best a dabbler in most religions know that 'really' they are not experiencing Allah or God, that pagans are not experiencing spirits other real external entities, and so in other religions, despite the fact that people with vastly more experience of those religions who have practiced their ecstatic practices much more than you consider insights into and contact with external beings to be a central part of their experiences. You want to dismiss all this and these experts. It is all really a solipsistic experience. A psychological one. Perhaps even merely a neurological one, a kind of positive internal feedback loop. I think to assume you are in a position to know what they are actually experiencing and how they are all confused and misinterpreting their experiences shows hubris.
 
I think very few christians in the West are seeking epiphanic rapture or have experienced it. Nor do I think most Jews are.
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That's why their religions are losing force and in general have become not much more than a social ethics club. They interpret their symbols for being the real thing and not the metaphor. That limits their access to the experience, because they are stuck with metaphors that worked for people in another time and place. And that they are metaphors you can discover by analyzing other religions and human psyche.
'really' they are not experiencing Allah or God, that pagans are not experiencing spirits other real external entities, and so in other religions, despite the fact that people with vastly more experience of those religions who have practiced their ecstatic practices much more than you consider insights into and contact with external beings to be a central part of their experiences. You want to dismiss all this and these experts.
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That's because I see the big picture and am not limited by the frame of one religion.
An expert in ones delusions is still deluded.
I think to assume you are in a position to know what they are actually experiencing
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I have participated in rituals of various religions and analysed them in the field as well as in scientific literature.
shows hubris.
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Maybe it does, but I have confidence in my abilities.

p.s. The first post of this thread is a very short version intended for fast forum consumption. I can elaborate on particular aspects if you wish.
 
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Quick elaboration:


All religions offer the experience of the divine to their followers - Experience in this life or another, but they have to give a taste of it for their followers or they'd be dismissed as rubbish. The experience of god or the divine is esentially central to any religion.

which mainly is a psychological experience of "epiphanic rapture" that mostly is created through ritual. - Humans experience reality through their senses, that is to say, their psyche. Every experience is a psychological one that can be caused by many means.

During a ritual you have a controlled environment which is created to create that experience in the mind of the addressee. The most common methods are music/rhytm, physical actions, visual stimulants and intoxication, in many cases used simultaneously for the greatest effect. Psychological stimulants are also used.


The rest is just local interpretation and some particular ethics which are not essential to the experience. - By local interpretation I mean exactly how the experience is explained to the audience and that the interpretation is essential in controlling the audience, let's say a young man in an initiation ritual to assume the social duties of a grown up man. The ritual gives him the psychological energy to do it, the mythology provides him with reason, the cosmology with reality/environment, and the social guideance with the sense of purpose and duty.

That's why, I think, it could be said that all religious people worship one thing, but that thing is not some god, is not an entity or a personification of something, it's an experience of their own psyche or self which, if experienced fully, is the godly bliss, paradise, lavondyss, avalon. - With self I ment the total self of the particular mythology, which may also be the scientific total self, but it may be not, it depends on how the particular mythology is in tune with the particular science of the time.
In any case the experience is psychological.
 
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