The least original religion on earth is...

[exchemist]

I'm not disagreeing with your OP. I'm saying that since science is similarly derivative, it isn't necessarily a bad thing to be derivative.


On the contrary, there have been schisms, reformations, counter-reformations, ecumenical movements, etc. Christianity is in constant flux.

Quite so. I've been trying to get the same point across.

 

[Captain Kremmen]

This is one positive aspect of Catholicism, that the Pope can change the religion on his own, by decree. However, that's probably why they always choose a very conservative person. They have finally acknowledged evolution, but they are about 50 years behind the times.

Coincidentally, the Porche 911 is also 50 years old.
So, figuratively, the church's views look like this:

Added later.
Mmmh..... picture seems to have disappeared.
It was an expensive shiny old gas guzzler, a bit like the RC church.
(Insert scurrilous joke here)

 

[spidergoat]

Coincidentally, the Porche 911 is also 50 years old.
So, figuratively, the church's views look like this:

Right, appealing to the immature, but deadly and impractical.

 

[Captain Kremmen]

But I like them, and I'm not immature.
Just imagine driving one . It'd be great.
Vroom ! Vroom!

 

[GeoffP]

I'm still struggling to understand why Tiassa hasn't been by to denounce this thread.

I mean, I'm given to understand he's all about not criticizing religions.

I wish I could follow how this omission juxtaposes with his usual slant.

Ah well.

 

[Write4U]

While "fear and awe of the 'unknown" is probably as old as the first hominid capable od abstract thought. But as an organized and written religion I believe that Hinduism may reliably called the oldest formal religion.

Hinduism: Since Sanskrit is the oldest written language, as far as religion being written down, and as far as organized religion is concerned, it would be Hinduism. It is said that when Rama appeared, according to our calendar, was a million or so years ago (not sure of the exact date, but it's a long time!) And Krishna, God himself according to the Vedic scriptures, appeared here 5,000 years ago. Buddha, about 500 B.C., Jesus, about 2,000 years ago. If you go through the different religious book and study this question deeply, you will find out that Hinduism is the oldest religion of the world. There are no dates and facts, but its history is about more than 50000 thousands years ago.

http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_is_the_oldest_known_religion_in_the_world

 

[Yazata]

..Christianity.

I don't agree that's true. Nor am I convinced that it's important.

All of it's rituals were copied from earlier pagan and jewish predecessors. Baptism. The Mass. Christmas. Easter. The Old Testament. Even the holiness of Sun Day. All of these came from other religions. Even the apocalyptic message of Jesus as well as his teachings of peace and self-denial were an emulation of the cult of the Essenes which existed before he was even born.

The same thing would be true of every religion on earth, right? And every scientific theory, for that matter. They all take ideas, concepts, methods and practices that were already floating around, and combine them in new and original ways.

How can anyone believe in a religion that is such an obvious generic ripoff of other traditions?

Is that a bad thing? Is any idea ever 100% original?

Your own beliefs are all derivative too. Your speculations about the universe being a Matrix-style "simulation" are just the ancient speculations about 'higher-planes-of-being', repackaged in modernistic drag. Your decidedly non-physicalist and philosophically idealist ideas about the mind look like a similar repackaging of the transcendent nature of mankind's supposed 'immortal soul'.

That seems to be the same kind of phenomenon that you criticise Christianity for being. An example of people taking ideas that already exist in their culture, ideas that have some kind of emotional appeal, and then recombining and repackaging them in new forms that seem to be more in keeping with their desires, needs and with the times, whenever those times might be.

Christianity repackaged Judaism, and then added a big dose of late-Greek speculation to create philosophical theology. Judaism repackaged earlier Semitic religiosity to highlight their own tribal god and their own unique self-appointed role as that god's nation of priests. The religions of the first urbanized empires repackaged many of the older themes of neolithic farming village fertility religions with a new and more legalistic orders-from-a-divine-king model. Islam repackaged Judaism and Christianity, in the name of returning to an earlier-style Semitic prophetism, which they identified as the original God-revealed religion of Adam and Eve. Modernists among the Christians and Jews have been busily repackaging their own traditions in more rationalistic modernized forms for several hundred years now, in large part as a reaction to the successes and cultural prestige of science.

Things are always changing, in both religion and in all of life, and they never change in a cultural vacuum.

 

[Magical Realist]

Your own beliefs are all derivative too. Your speculations about the universe being a Matrix-style "simulation" are just the ancient speculations about 'higher-planes-of-being', repackaged in modernistic drag. Your decidedly non-physicalist and philosophically idealist ideas about the mind look like a similar repackaging of the transcendent nature of mankind's supposed 'immortal soul'

Ahh but then I'm not the one claiming my truths came straight from God himself. Christianity does and has always claimed that. If your going to claim a revelatory source for your doctrines and rituals, then it speaks against that claim if those doctrines and rituals came from other religions.

 

[Write4U]

now, in large part as a reaction to the successes and cultural prestige of science.

Things are always changing, in both religion and in all of life, and they never change in a cultural vacuum.

True, but assigning an "intelligent motive" to that which know nothing off is worse that saying, this is what we have observed and from our scientific observation we "know" there is structure to the universe, but there is not the slightest evidence for a "motivated intelligence".

Why this seemingly unsolvable mystery should therefore be considered true, is in itself a mystery. There seems to be no necessity for an sentient intelligence and according to Ockham's razor, that which is not necessary need not be considered.

 

[Balerion]

I don't agree that's true.

Nor do I. For all Christianity copies, Islam is basically plagiarized Christianity, just angrier.

And I'm sure there are more modern religions that are knowing ripoffs of multiple ancient faiths. Scientology comes to mind.

Nor am I convinced that it's important.

Agreed.

Is that a bad thing?

That doesn't address his question, does it? He's asking how it's possible to believe in something so blatantly false, not condemning the concept of building upon previous ideas. It's the difference between a work being inspired by another, and simply ripping another off.

To your question, however, I would say yes. In this context, believing in something that is so obviously untrue is a bad thing. What does it say about someone who believes in something despite all evidence to the contrary?

 

[leopold]

In this context, believing in something that is so obviously untrue is a bad thing. What does it say about someone who believes in something despite all evidence to the contrary?

yes, it's so obviously untrue that people all over the globe has believed it for centuries.
apparently it isn't as obvious as you wish to believe.

 

[Write4U]

leopold

Balerion,

In this context, believing in something that is so obviously untrue is a bad thing. What does it say about someone who believes in something despite all evidence to the contrary?

yes, it's so obviously untrue that people all over the globe has believed it for centuries.
apparently it isn't as obvious as you wish to believe.

Yes, but no one believes the same thing so how can that be any kind of confirmation. In fact religions have gone to war for the very reason that another religion is "blasphemy" or "witchcraft". The original Inquisition was formed not to seek truth, but to forcibly convert people on pain of death.

Fundamentally, IMO, awareness of "an unseen force" has been known since animals acquired the ability to observe natural phenomena and wonder why.
All gods started as symbolic representation of natural phenomena, Thor, Zeus, Athena, Zephyrus, Diana, the list goes on. Monotheism came much later. But then we just could not let go of all those beneficial and harmful deities (with all the foibles of humans), we just renamed them angels and demons.

 

[Aqueous Id]

No i care not for Judaism.

So?

I think the Judaism, is based on the dark side and Christianity is based on the road to light.

Which part is is about the light? The heinous torture and mutilation of the scapegoat, or the countless victims that were slaughtered over the millenia on his behalf?

There is a duality in human spirituality.

There is duality in the composition of the human brain, and compartmentalization of functions. So?

People assume that religion means whats good about that, no it does not.

What is you native language? This is not a coherent sentence in any idiom of English.

You can follow the road to darkness or the road to the light.

You mean you can make good choices all the time? On what planet?

I care not about jews,

You keep repeating that. What it is supposed to mean? That you harbor some kind of anti-Semitic slant? What's your point?

i am just stating that i think thats how they wrote the bible, and the message inside it.

You do understand that it it's a hodgepodge of superstitious legend, myth and fable, blended with a hodgepodge of historical half-truths, and probably not even committed to its recorded form (the O.T.) until the Babylonian captivity. The "message" is one of horrific violence and naive ideations of human origins and natural history, wouldn't you agree?

That the new testament is older than jesus, but its the road to the light.

That's absurd. Historical references to Herod and the Roman destruction of the Temple tell you that the earliest documents were written 6 or 7 decades after his birth, if in fact somebody named Jesus was in fact ever actually lived.

While Judaism is the road to the dark.

Based on what? Some ax to grind with the Semites? Just considering the atrocitities inflicted upon Jewish people over history by the followers of Jesus, it would appear the opposite is true.

I believe Christianity worships the sun.

Also absurd. They clearly elevate a man named Jesus to the status of Son of God. It's as if you have no sense whatsoever of some of the most basic material from a junior high history class.

What Judaism worships is not for me to say.

Also absurd. They believe they were led by the Patriarchs, through divine intervention into a program they called the Covenant. It was designed to replace Elohim with Yahweh as the Creator-God, who cemented his superiority by commanding them to worship him alone. That, too, is junior high material.

We hear all sorts of things, but i just believe that christianity is the worship of the sun.

There's no audible evidence in the historical record. It's pure artifacts. All you have to do is open your eyes and familiarize yourself with even just a few of them. What's so hard about speaking about this with the most basic information at your disposal that you should have received in school? Did you drop out at age 12, or were you locked in a basement?

You take from that what you want.

It doesn't work that way. People take for granted that you mean what you say, to the extent it's halfway coherent. Beyond that all you're doing is posting gibberish. You leave no option for anyone to take what they want. You've constrained us to address you as a nut case.

Its got nothing to do with christians or jews, thats just what i think the old and new testaments are.

Nothing you've said so far has any bearing on the content of either set of documents. Have you considered propounding something that halfway resembles basic knowledge of the subject?

There is a duality in human spirituality, and we all have a choice to go to the dark or the light.

You've said that at least a dozen times. So what? Why not just say "people are imperfect" and be done with it?

I think christians worship the sun.

You keep saying that too, but presumably you know it's specious. You ought to take your own claims to heart and get off that dark road. Turn on a lamp or a computer screen and read an article on the history of the religions you keep mangling.

On christmas day, energy comes into the earth from the sun, and thats why we worship christmas day.

It's the winter solstice, the time of least light in the Northern Hemisphere where the religion took root, so again your statement is absurd.

Christians worship the sun, the road towards the light.

You know that's not true, so why keep it up?

Judaism laughs at us for following what they think of as the weaker side.

Who's this "we"? Speak for yourself, especially since you have no idea what other people are doing in their churches and synagogues, much less what they've been doing over the last several millennia.

Thats nothing to do with anti anything.

So far you are anti-knowledge. You are introducing statements that appear to based on some kind of bizarre ignorance of the history of western religions.

What i wrote up here was alot to do with christianity, and alot of christians probably do not like this either.

Why would a person who believes in Jesus like to be told that they are worshiping the sun?

You cannot call me anti christian.

So far you are against common knowledge. It's as if history never happened, no museums and monuments of ancient events exist, no writings, and all the academic progress in interpreting history has vanished - from archaeology to the seminary schools or universities and academia in general - and basic knowledge is your enemy. I wonder what that's all about. Problems in school at a young age?

Alot of chirstians do not like that idea. But i think and totally believe we celebrate christmas day as eneergy comes into the earth from the sun on that day. Thats what christmas day is. Therefore we worship the sun.

That's got to be the worst explanation I've ever heard. If you're trying to explain the origins of early Christian ritual, you are way off base. Obviously early Christians believed in the N.T. accounts of the nativity of Jesus. Common sense says there had to be a day that it took place. It's purely logical that they would pick a day to do their ritual commemorating the event. If you dig just a little bit (maybe a task that exceeds your basic skills) you will find several plausible explanations for choosing the winter solstice. The references to the sun are probably vestigial influences of Mithraism. You seem to have Mithra confused with Jesus. One explanation is that the sun disappears for about three days and re-emerges around the 25th - although that would depend on your latitude and elevation. In any case that's about as close as you can get with the analogy. Otherwise, your statement is meaningless nonsense.

I care not what the jews worship, as what ever it is its the road to darkness.

If we define darkness as willful ignorance of elementary subjects in history, there's many a Jew who would consider your own lamp to be long extinguished. Considering their collective access to science and historical evidence, and their many schools and universities, it appears that the average Jewish person would stump you in any contest with both hands tied behind their back.

That has nout to with hatred of anyone, like i said above, i think thats what the old and new testaments where made for.

A lot of bigots and murderers throughout history said the same thing. The Holocaust would not have been possible without a perverse version of the same statement taking root in perhaps a million Christians or more. Denial that it constitutes hatred is also a rationale that's consistent with the pathological thinking that accompanies Anti-Semitism.

I think you've painted yourself into a corner. Why not just try to post something that's at least reasonably accurate factually, rather than this endless rant?

 

[Balerion]

yes, it's so obviously untrue that people all over the globe has believed it for centuries.
apparently it isn't as obvious as you wish to believe.

Belief isn't validation. Anyone who cares to study the history of religion will see for themselves that it's all myth. That's why the question raised in the OP is so significant.

 

[Aqueous Id]

yes, it's so obviously untrue that people all over the globe has believed it for centuries.
apparently it isn't as obvious as you wish to believe.

The same people evidently believed the world was flat. How does the promulgation of myth, and the subsequent myth-busting that refutes it, inform us about the connection you are making here?

 

[Write4U]

A little musing.

The concept of god is the least original religious concept. It stems from the earliest survival responses of 'flight', when confused by a play of shadows. (is that shadow a clump of leaves or is it a tiger?). Flight on the assumption of a more powerful adversary. This response is found in almost all species except the insect.

We like to imagine things; how many sacred likenesses of Jesus or Maria or the Devil or Elvis Presley do we find in potatoes, water stains, clouds in the sky, shadow play, omens?

I also believe the Brahmanic teachings contain some generically logical parables. Of course, scientific "equations" of potential (latent excellence) came much later.

I am willing to consider a "holographic universe" or "holomovement"

Holomovement
The holomovement is a key concept in David Bohm's interpretation of quantum mechanics and for his overall worldview. It brings together the holistic principle of "undivided wholeness" with the idea that everything is in a state of process or becoming (or what he calls the "universal flux"). For Bohm, wholeness is not a static oneness, but a dynamic wholeness-in-motion in which everything moves together in an interconnected process. The concept is presented most fully in 'Wholeness and the Implicate Order', published in 1980.

http://encyclopedia.thefreedictionary.com/holomovement

 

[wellwisher]

The concept of god is the least original religious concept. It stems from the earliest survival responses of 'flight', when confused by a play of shadows. (is that shadow a clump of leaves or is it a tiger?). Flight on the assumption of a more powerful adversary. This response is found in almost all species except the insect.

We like to imagine things; how many sacred likenesses of Jesus or Maria or the Devil or Elvis Presley do we find in potatoes, water stains, clouds in the sky, shadow play, omens?

When modern humans appear about 6000-10,000 years ago, what appears with them is an active and spontaneous imagination. Active imagination broke the connection the pre-humans had with natural instinct. The prehuman appeared over a million years ago and declined with the start of civilization, as modern humans killed, enslaved and bred them out; selective advantage due to imagination.

Relative to the early modern human with a strong imagination, picture if a lion while hunting, started to use too much spontaneous imagination. He sees things that are not there, distance are misjudged, or another angry male lions is imagined as being his long lost brother, etc., The bottom line is the DNA based instincts, that evolved over eons, are disrupted due to this new wild card. Instinct is based on long term cause and effect with the environment. Once you add to much non casual imaginary fuzzy, the script is disrupted.

One pressing need for the new humans, was need a way to separate the imagination, from the DNA instincts; into two realms. Rituals appears to separate the realms of the spirits and ethereal (imagination) from that of this physical world; instincts.

The next question is what type of image from the imagination would need to be spontaneously generated to override instinctive compulsion? Say you are very hungry and will do almost anything to eat, what type of imaginary image would stop you in your tracks? Or say there is a lion and you want to run, what image behind you will make you charge the lion? It has to be powerful and they gave it a word; God. God may be the least original because it is part of the human psyche; newest area of the human personality firmware.

One advantage of this new spontaneous imagination, is it was not stuck in reality as it is. It can add new things, not in nature, like farming. It would also generate new inventions at an accelerated rate, until the needs of the civilization appear in a short time. The ancients gave this source of human creation its respect due; learned this is how you get the firmware to work for you, instead of against you. It was not them who know how to build the pyramids but the gods within.

The second side of the new firmware is connected to imaginary inductions that are regressive, to below natural instinct. For example, the natural instinct of eating is balanced in animals so they are fit and trim. You don't see a herd of obese deer or gazelle. The human imagination can regress this natural set point with spontaneously induced excessive appetite, until the body is no longer in line with natural trim. The ancients saw this and this became the dark side gods which pushed instincts toward the bestial; needs zoo keepers. From this beginning the concepts evolved but each system addresses this newest personality firmware in light of original natural firmware.

Polytheism changes to monotheism. This reflects a change of perception from observation of the firmware to the CPU from which all firmware will be induced. The Christian concept of the trinity, anticipates the original core becoming a multi processor core. This why humanity has under gone rapid acceleration in terms of using the imagination to improve and extend the natural limits in ways to accelerate humans. Religions are useful since they build upon ancient observations, from a time when natural and imagination were simpler.

 

[Yazata]

Nor do I. For all Christianity copies, Islam is basically plagiarized Christianity, just angrier.

I don't like to use the word "plagiarize" for this kind of thing.

Islam is more of a development of Judaism, I think. To the extent that it recognizes Jesus, it recognizes him as being a Jewish-style prophet. (Ironically, I think that's probably closer to how Jesus thought of himself than subsequent Christian doctrine is.) Of course Mohammed is supposed to be a far greater prophet. (The ultimate and final prophet.)

Islam inserts the Mohammed revelation into the existing context of basic Jewish mythology. The idea seems to be that God made an initial revelation of true religion to Adam and Eve there in Eden. But Adam and Eve screwed it up. God made a similar revelation of true religion to Noah and his family. But human beings once again screwed it up. That kept happening through a succession of prophets. Jesus is supposed to be another attempt by God to send a prophet in order to get people back to the true and original religion of Adam and Eve, but the Christians immediately went off the rails by claiming that Jesus was God himself. So God said 'screw this' and sent his revelation through Mohammed, who along with the subsequent Islamic tradition, finally got things right.

The relevance to this thread is that when it comes to Islam, MR's condemnation of lack of originality doesn't seem to work. Islam doesn't claim to be new and totally original. Instead, it purports to be the return of the original, true and God-taught form of monotheism that's existed ever since creation.

 

[Balerion]

I don't like to use the word "plagiarize" for this kind of thing.

It's not definitionally correct, but it serves.

Islam is more of a development of Judaism, I think.

So is Christianity. That's the point. Islam parrots Christianity in that it is the "last word" of God, the final revelation. Obviously both are developments of Judaism, but Islam specifically gets its mojo from Christian theology.

The relevance to this thread is that when it comes to Islam, MR's condemnation of lack of originality doesn't seem to work. Islam doesn't claim to be new and totally original. Instead, it purports to be the return of the original, true and God-taught form of monotheism that's existed ever since creation.

A religion doesn't have to claim to be original or new in order to qualify as being a ripoff. Islam stands as its own faith, therefore it can be criticized for being unoriginal.