Most all of the religions are attempts to access or comprehend the divine or the absolute. To take any of them literal in a fundamentalist way is to miss the boat on what religion in the human race is about. That's just playing "my religion against yours and mine is the right one," and, as such, is not to be taken seriously. Far more thought out is the recognition of the "perennial philosophy" -- the demonstrated tendency in humankind to pursue so-called spiritual realities of this realm and/or others.

From Taoism to Hinduism to Judaism to The Great Spirit to shamanism to Christianity to tarot to Buddhism to gnosticism to mysticism and way beyond ... they are all springing from a similar cultural, and therefore psychological, impulse to explain and deal with the mystery. To say they all can't be true, or only one can be true and that means the others are false, kind of misses the boat on what religion even is. I mean only to the extent that we are playing dueling fundamentalism is that kind of thinking going on. Of course that is virtually all the people who never studied religion but just believe one or another, taking their belief then as just ipso facto reality.

That of course is unwarranted and spurious, which is to say ... bogus. On its face. When we engage with a wider perspective, so foreign to the indoctrinated, we are oriented in a way that actualities (and not simple belief systems) are the goal of the investigation.

What "actualities" do you believe you've found?


PairTheBoard

I mostly live in and respect the mystery of it all. Science and a natural spirituality plug in some understanding, certainly, but the point is not just bluffing pat answers based on myths, legends, ancient belief systems, magic stories, etc. from very superstitious times.

"We've got this new religion and if you don't believe it you are going to be tortured forever in hell. It's all about love."

My religion is hacking your head off with a chainsaw while praising the God Molch for giving me the strength to do so.

Are you sure that isn't the god of the Old Testament? Sounds of a very similar ilk. And you know, he never changes so he's still exactly like that.

Whoops. To the true believer: Let your religion be the myth that it is, and not to invade or supersede your metaphysics.

Drivel and legends passed down by ignorant tribes of humans is easily dismissed. But the credulous still hang themselves on delusional thinking and believe themselves wise.

Still desperately clinging to the fantasy that wisdom and high status are correlated with IQ eh Zeno?

Still praying to a fantasy sky god and posting imbecilic drivel on an internet site to satisfy your delusions that you are somehow important.

Values come from within. Value comes from within. Meaning comes from within. To understand any of this in terms of, "I need some supernatural being to autocratically force it on me" is a primitive, dependent, superstitious sense of life, and hardly a virtue. It's exactly as virtuous as utter dependence anywhere else, and so if there was an omniscient god, the last thing it would want is yes men to worship it.

"I'm a bigot. And I blame it on God Almighty. This is the way my true belief works ... however absurd or unreal or immoral any claim in my preferred holy book is, I refuse to assess it. I just believe it. And if that means I end up being for genocide, slavery, bigotry ... so be it. I'm obedient to the religion and that makes me a good boy who forgot that independence is the actual virtue, not obedience."

If there is some god or force 'out there," it certainly could inform individuals along their path regardless of what god they are attributing it to. Fundamentalism always loses: it's ignorant, prejudiced, dogmatic, closeminded and fear-based.

What religion is all about is some lucky one getting the trip of a lifetime, then convincing a ton of gullible insecure human beings that what he saw was real. But god, if we’re talking about some unifying principle of all universe, not necessarily intelligent by his own? Why not?

Fundamentalist adherence to the idea that "my religion is the one true one" is stupid, myopic, stubborn, close minded, pedestrian, provincial, and just willfully ignorant. It lacks any perspective or imagination and just shouts blindly: "I'm indoctrinated in this one particular religion but I am unaware that it is simply indoctrination, so I mistake it's tenets for reality. And then I just spiel, spiel, spiel it." Amen. Thus we have dueling religions in the head of true believers, instead of a learned appreciation that religion is religion, that is to say religions are myths and "just so" stories of superstitious origin.

Note that the whole faith and "just believe" thing is just the opposite of the scientific method of investigating and verifying. Not that everything needs to be scientific and rational -- not at all -- but when the entire strategy of something is to circumvent any rational assessment, that's a bit of a tell. A tell, that is, that it isn't true and cannot pass muster as being real.

If your worldview is based on magic, it's bullshyt. If it's based on realities and is flexible as those realities are understood better, it has a chance to be accurate. To continue to insist that the magic beliefs of thousands of years ago are true is to embarrass oneself in the realm of metaphysics. Don't start with tales of ancient times and believe them in spite of reality, start with reality and assess stories accordingly. Don't let mythological belief systems do what they can't do, don't let them supersede what you know about reality.

What do you mean by ‘reality’?

reality: the world or the state of things as they actually exist, as opposed to an idealistic or notional idea of them.

Are you trying to smuggle your preferred god into the fabric of reality, thereby challenging standard, non-magical definitions? Such as: "my god is reality, is the creator of it, and therefore I have the ultimate reality trump card?" LOL ... that's just pure presupposition.

Right, you still equate reality to world history. Religion is not teaching world history.

For as long and as much as you have posted here, you have learned nothing.

What do YOU mean by reality? That might be quite revealing. (And now he trembles. The cat is nearly out of the bag.)

I still have never heard a theist argue towards a reasoned conclusion on the god premise, but always towards what they already believe and want to hold on to: "My god is the right one." They don't argue toward truth, they argue toward their belief, and that pretty much says it all. If you hand a Mormon clear cut proof that the religion is bogus, they maintain their belief and argue for it. Ad infinitum.

"In the beginning god created the heavens and earth" is not history? Moses is not history? The exodus is not history? Noah and the ark are not history?

I emphatically agree. LOL at the whole stupid zealotry crap that puts belief before reality and then questions the definition of reality to defend it. And that creates a whole fictitious history in a "holy book" and scoffs at the very idea of history, especially a real one.

You have the same problem with truth. If you don’t understand reality, then you don’t understand truth, and vice versa.

The idea that murder is wrong - is that true?

I asked you your definition of reality and you didn't give it. Then you said I don't understand what reality is but you still failed to explain. Is there some reason you won't give your definition of reality? Because I think I know your definition of reality much better than you do.

I am explaining reality to you. I’m showing you moral reality.