what do you guys think of religion in your opinion.in my opinion i find religion a way of just feeling better about life and the unknown. i think this because no-were in he bible does it say how God/gods was/were born. everything has a beginning. Also, everything they say God/gods did were scientifically proved, such as earth.i mean to offend no-one by my pinion purposely.tell me what you think if i is religion is real or not.(me being atheist, i dont go to church and al so i know less than you guys.)
is religion real or a way to feel comfortable?what do you think?
- Thread starter Tleit004
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So then how do you feel since you aren't religious, what makes you feel better and not worry about the unknown? How do you keep happy and content? What do you believe in?:shrug:
If you value how you feel over truth then be religious because it is right for you. If you value truth over how you feel then be an atheist because it is right for you.
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i think there is something to the yarn . Something peculiar. It is like dream state. You know the prophets would drop to the ground and not be able to move . I think they were accessing there higher self and coming up with forms of literature. I mean literature grows out of something . Some one else around here triggered that thought in me just recently. I remember ! they said " Poets and , Writers and Authors have written about it for a long time , or to say religious writings have inspired great literature. Personally I think religious writings are great literature them selves and give us great insight on how we got to where we are today . A trail the detective sniffs.
Jimi Hendrix composed his lyrics on the spot . That is the rumor . I think he pulled his artistry out of the same place . Yeah same with the Beatles, Pearl Jam yeah them too.
It amazes Me they write a song about riding high above the waves and the Hopi say time to swim, let go of the shore . Not really connected yet they are . It is the same thought from 2 different sources
So yeah all so to Me it is real as long as people believe it is real . They will act on there beliefs and there by do the things that make it real in there lives and I would say the concept lives . Jesus lives in the minds of Christians. They keep him alive just live a grieving widow does there dead spouse. A dog over there dead owner . Some dogs are bad and eat there owners . After all there dogs
Jimi Hendrix composed his lyrics on the spot . That is the rumor . I think he pulled his artistry out of the same place . Yeah same with the Beatles, Pearl Jam yeah them too.
It amazes Me they write a song about riding high above the waves and the Hopi say time to swim, let go of the shore . Not really connected yet they are . It is the same thought from 2 different sources
So yeah all so to Me it is real as long as people believe it is real . They will act on there beliefs and there by do the things that make it real in there lives and I would say the concept lives . Jesus lives in the minds of Christians. They keep him alive just live a grieving widow does there dead spouse. A dog over there dead owner . Some dogs are bad and eat there owners . After all there dogs
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i've noticed religious people tend to be very well adapted to life, even though they oftend don't make logical sense. this is because one doesn't really have to in order to survive or manipulate their way. manipulation has little respect for truth, it "uses" truth to a means for survival or to feel good. though they are well adapted, they aren't ones to usually make real headway or significant improvements. it's those who learn from or get past that but once that is accomplished, the religious tend to benefit as well and acclimate. basically, religious people tend to be parasites and are good at it.
One man's religion is another man's belly laugh. -Robert Heinlein
All Gods are imaginary, mythological constructs
You are trying to let someone else make you who and what you are. Can you ever live alone and not be fearful of the unknown or are you always in need of others to keep you feeling good?
the common denominator with religion..
which you guys have communicated but i am unsure if you realize you have communicated..
religion is all about how we feel.
they tend to focus on the emotional side of things,
they try to take a chaotic,temporary thing and capitalize on it..
which you guys have communicated but i am unsure if you realize you have communicated..
religion is all about how we feel.
they tend to focus on the emotional side of things,
they try to take a chaotic,temporary thing and capitalize on it..
Actually, when you examine the traditions and theologies of many religions -- particularly Christianity prior to its being diluted with the cream and sugar of Political Correctness in modern times -- religion is about feeling uncomfortable and being disturbed.
Pre-postmodern Religion is the cultivation of a tension between patiently suffering the frustrating imperfections of the ongoing present, and hope for an ultimate fulfillment whereby those imperfections will be surmounted. The mysterious fact that this tension has to be borne at all, however, is what remains uncomfortable, and what disturbs.
In the meantime, the idea is to try to do your best by your fellow man in fidelity to the vision toward which your faith, hope and love are oriented.
Postmodern Western man has opted to botch this tension, and rather bifurcate it into the following two postures:
1) Erect a simplistically comfortable dogma to cling to
2) Conclude that life is absurd and there is no hope or meaning -- which leads either to
a) a rather obsessive cultivation of science as a distraction from one's deepest longings which science and technology cannot satisfy
b) a route -- perhaps more pragmatic than (a) -- of dulling one's senses through the indulgence in a variety of divertissements, including drugs, sex, TV, movies, the Internet, and any number of other addictions.
(And not infrequently postmodern men and women will find a way, more or less, to combine (a) and (b) -- or else, one could consider an obsession with science & technology to be, itself, merely another addiction in this regard.)
Pre-postmodern Religion is the cultivation of a tension between patiently suffering the frustrating imperfections of the ongoing present, and hope for an ultimate fulfillment whereby those imperfections will be surmounted. The mysterious fact that this tension has to be borne at all, however, is what remains uncomfortable, and what disturbs.
In the meantime, the idea is to try to do your best by your fellow man in fidelity to the vision toward which your faith, hope and love are oriented.
Postmodern Western man has opted to botch this tension, and rather bifurcate it into the following two postures:
1) Erect a simplistically comfortable dogma to cling to
2) Conclude that life is absurd and there is no hope or meaning -- which leads either to
a) a rather obsessive cultivation of science as a distraction from one's deepest longings which science and technology cannot satisfy
b) a route -- perhaps more pragmatic than (a) -- of dulling one's senses through the indulgence in a variety of divertissements, including drugs, sex, TV, movies, the Internet, and any number of other addictions.
(And not infrequently postmodern men and women will find a way, more or less, to combine (a) and (b) -- or else, one could consider an obsession with science & technology to be, itself, merely another addiction in this regard.)
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Very important points!
Indeed, many of us nowadays are prone to see esp. the writings and reports of earlier religionists to be bordering on psychopathy and other unspeakable ills and disorders.
Which, I think, easily forms into another avenue of being psychotically unwell, given the expected denial of what one actually thinks, feels, says and does.
I think it goes the other way around too: indulging in to those addictions leads to the conclusion that life is absurd and there is no hope or meaning.
I'm not sure you got the gist of what I was saying; for I was comparing pre-modern theologians favorably contrasted to modern PC-ified theologians.
It could be. And also, I didn't bother to mention the first time around that addictions are nothing new or modern, though the development of a culture that denigrates any transcendent existential antidote for them (other than the three choices now available to Post-Modern Man: 1) vigorously healthy materialism; 2) attending Wayne Dyer seminars; 3) converting to Islam) on such a massive scale seems historically new. I was just commenting on the general phenomenon itself, of one existential/psychological/philosophical consequence of botching the tension between hope and hopelessness, which tension is a basic part of human nature. The other consequence is to erect and take comfort in a dogmatic assertion of Hope against hopelessness, and live in denial of the darker half of existence. (This latter dogmatic spasm, as I intimated, is the province, in the West, of a small minority of "fundies"; while in the non-West (increasingly infiltrating the West as we speak), of a vast majority of Muslims whose Islam may seem attractive to Westerners seeking to restore that tension that their own West has seen to have botched.)
This tension is difficult to bear, so it's understandable when people seek ways to deny it, or numb it -- or apodictically reinforce one half of it against its other half with dogmatic cement to protect it from the "dangers" of doubt. And why it's even there in the first place such that we have to "bear" it at all, is part of the very same mystery that is the context of the tension itself.
A few introducing remarks:
I'm reading an interesting book, The Uses of Enchantment: The Meaning and Importance of Fairytales, by Bruno Bettelheim.
He argues that historically, classical fairytales (like Little Red Riding Hood etc., the Grimm tales) have played an important part in a child's development to an adult person, in that a child is early on confronted with the basic problems of life (aging, illness, death, separation) and ways to intuitively deal with them. Bettelheim argues that children are interested in those topics anyway, but that adults often try to deny their reality to them. Further he argues that modern stories for children lack that important metaphysical dimension.
I've also been reading through some popular self-culture (back then, it was "self-culture", not "self-help") books from the 1800's and was very much surprised how openly they speak of metaphysical issues that may arise for a reader of (fictional) literature. Issues that would be quite taboo nowadays, in many places.
The other day, I have also seen a bit from a Turkish soap opera, taking place in modern times. The scene was of a woman singing a lullaby to a child, and the song went "The world is a bottomless well" and sounded rather scary to me. I was struck by the metaphysical implication in this lullaby from a culture that is generally foreign to me. I am certainly not used to hearing any texts for children that would have much depth.
It's actually these recent impressions that I had in mind when I was reading and responding to your comment.
In different times, in different cultures they were/are apparently much more open to the tension between hope and hopelessness - and they seem to be comfortable with it, or at least at peace with it, they don't try to do away with it.
I find the example with the lullaby especially striking: a child learning to think of a vast - and dangerous - world, while at the same time experiencing safety with a parent.
This is definitely an experience I do not have, and I am sure I am not the only one. I do wish I would have it.
I admit that right away, I wasn't so open to your distinction between pre-modern and modern theologians, but contextualizing this difference in reference to some other cultural phenomena as above makes that distinction reasonable.
My experience with modern theologians is that there tends to be a simplistic dictate - "If you aren't blissful, you aren't believing in God, and are an evil person". Let's just say I have been on the losing end of this dictate, and it hasn't been nice, so I have some trouble talking about it.
All in all, it does seem that the earlier theologians might have had a more realistic understanding of the human situation.
We now have some additional problems, emerging from religious and cultural pluralism. Problems which make (notions of) transcendence even more difficult to take seriously or act upon meaningfully.
I recall that book; though I never read it. From the way you (and others I have read) describe it, it sounds like Bettelheim treats transcendence in a rather relativistic way -- i.e., as a convenient fiction. I may have misapprehended.
The 19th century was actually quite a dynamic ferment of experimentation and curiosity in various forms of mythology, religion, foreign cultures, spirituality, and the supernatural. There is no idea purveyed by our current "New Age" movement that wasn't already expressed and explored in the 19th century (and probably far better).
Well, remember our popular lullaby:
Rock-a-bye baby, in the treetop
When the wind blows, the cradle will rock
When the bough breaks, the cradle will fall
And down will come baby, cradle and all.
Speaking of the Turks and children, the 19th century French travel writer Pierre Loti (who wrote books about his travels to the "Orient" -- including L'Inde about India and Vers Ispahan about Persia -- both of which I have read -- and Japoneries d'automne about Japan, which I'm still reading; and a book about his time in Istanbul (whose title I can't seem to find) around the turn of the century (1900) which I never finished) reported in his book on Istanbul about a club he visited where pantomime and silhouettes were performed on a stage for the audience charmingly seated on cushions on the floor -- a show Loti said was so filthy and obscene, even the toughest most uncouth sailors from Liverpool would have blushed; and among the audience were families with children!
For the most part, I agree; though on the other hand, as the philosopher Eric Voegelin noted, the tendency to deny or avoid the tension is as much a perennial constant as the tension itself (in fact, it -- the psychological and cultural denial of the tension -- becomes part of the structure of the tension itself!).
On a level of culture and society, one doesn't want to lapse into an absolutely relativistic Dickensianism ("These are the best of times, these are the worst of times"), nor does one want to indulge in utopianistic projects to reform society. As Voegelin (again) noted, Plato seemed to have had a realistic sense of the capabilities -- and limitations -- of society to reflect our universal human hope for the good. I.e., the perfect "Republic" (Politeia) will never be perfectly actualized in this world -- it exists only in "Heaven" -- though that doesn't mean we shouldn't try to approximate it; and we should expect it to be flawed and eventually fail.
And Voegelin spoke of the tension as a "tension towards" -- i.e., it's not merely a perfectly equi-valent equilibrium; but rather does have directionality away from "evil" and toward "good". This directionality has to be kept in perspective, however, and again not translated into a utopianism that, with good intentions, paves the way to hell on Earth (pace the Puritans of the 17th century; the Enlightenment Revolutionaries of the 18th century; the Communists of the 20th century -- and Islam of the last 14 centuries).
So you prefer to be lied to, rather than face up to reality?
Religion tells people partly what they want to hear, that there's an external purpose to their lives, that their loved ones are waiting for them somewhere, that there's something beyond us but it doesn't provide any evidence for such things. They are tools of control. Want to see your family in eternal paradise? Do what we say. Want to avoid eternal torture? Do what we say.
In fact, when it comes to explaining the unknown religion has a terrible track record. Which brings me onto the next thing you said :
Utterly wrong. When a religion has tried to make a statement about how the universe works it is almost invariably proven false later. The Earth is not 6000 years old. The Sun doesn't go around the Earth. Humans didn't just appear from nowhere fully formed. There wasn't a global flood 4000ish years ago. Pi isn't 3. The Earth was formed after the Sun. The various 'cures' for illnesses put forth in the Bible don't work. Similar things apply to the Torah (given its huge overlap with the Bible) and the Quran and other religious texts. The people who wrote them made stuff up and now science has advanced far enough we can see them for the lies they are.
In a recent study it was found atheists, alongside Mormons and Jews, tend to know more about religion in general than the average believer. At least in the US.
It’s a simplistic notion to try to account for our life complexity with a First and Higher One, which is actually a monstrous complexity, which still doesn’t do it justice, nor even to say a zillion times more, but actually infinitely more, for which there is suddenly no more accounting to be done simply because one feels some kind of emotional comfort. The notion fails, not just a little, but infinitely. Now that’s the biggest ‘flunk’ that there could ever be.