That is a good point since most at a point believed it was flat. Changes in knowledge changes beliefs. Since Gods at this point cannot be proven or disproven. Belief and disbelief are swinging until concrete evidence for either side is found.
Add that religion is different than belief in superior entities/beings. Is it belief in beings that may be a mental illness or mental issue or belief in a religion?
I suspect that it is merely the belief in hatred.
True but hate gets its start in fear. So ???
One need not consciously accept the impulse to fear. But one must consciously accept the impulse to hate.
When I was ten, the Holy Spirit descended like lightening on our small country church. The air was electric. All the children began shouting praises to God. This was a physical experience that altered the course of my life. Mass hysteria? No way. It was a real, personal experience, the kind Paul had on the road to Damascus. Scoff if you must, but that experience was again felt while listening to good music. I used to look on every human I met as if that person was divine.
Sadly, I’ve lost much respect for humans in general, simply because so many will not allow as truth what they have not experienced. There seems to be a closing in of personal egos in our time, not an outreach to things unknown. That’s madness.
The white light of inclusion is holy.
Pearls before swine is a quote from the Bible. Look it up. KJV-- Matthew 7:6. Please read in context.
No, not always. Hate is most often taught to the child , then the next child then those children’s children. It is a part of them birthed from fear. Hate also does not always feel like hate. It can feel bland, acceptance.
Over the course of human evolution, as each group of people became gradually aware of the enormity of its isolation in the cosmos and of the precariousness of its hold on survival, it developed myths and beliefs to transform the random, crushing forces of the universe into manageable, or at least understandable, patterns. One of the major functions of every culture has been to shield its members from chaos, to reassure them of their importance and ultimate success. The Eskimo, the hunter of the Amazon basin, the Chinese, the Navajo, the Australian Aborigine, the New Yorker—all have taken for granted that they live at the center of the universe, and that they have a special dispensation that puts them on the fast track to the future. Without such trust in exclusive privileges, it would be difficult to face the odds of existence.
“flow” The Psychology of Optimal Experience
MIHALY CSIKSZENTMIHALYI
True but, the Eskimo, the Chinese, the Navajo and the New Yorker are now educated beyond or should be. These people now mix and mingle with multiple cultures, attend universities and access the Internet.
Nah… that would be “prejudice”. Hate is an act that is often based upon a prejudice (presumptions and generalizations often passed down the line). People who hate based on prejudice are actually hating all of the time like most others, but their particular object of hatred is pointed out so as to make political correctness. As long as a person hates in the politically correct direction, it is called neither hatred nor prejudice (for example hating white males is never pointed out as anything but appropriate and justified behavior).
The fear merely demands action. It doesn’t really care what you do as long as you do something. Anger is one of those things to do. Prefer defined and affirmed directions of anger help to get it done more readily. And that is how hatred is born.
But despite the insignificant contribution of the conscious mind toward initially choosing to hate, like breathing, it is up to the conscious mind to intervene when it is unwise and take alternative measures to ensure the sanity of behavior rather than just go along with preprogramming.
So, like I said, hating is up to the conscious mind to permit, even though it was not created by the conscious mind. I can choose to shoot at you or not regardless of my impulse programming. I can choose to divert the shot aimed at you or not regardless of my impulse programming. That is the conscious choice between hate or love, independent of preprogramming.
I don’t get why hating white males are getting all the hate. We should spread it around, hating humans in general.
Drop this white male thing and let’s make it hip to hate the whole human race.
When I was a kid, there was a periscope turret on the top of the fort. I used to pretend to shoot it at all the passing cars…I didn’t suddenly stop if the driver wasn’t a white male…in fact, I most of the time, I couldn’t even see the drivers. Same with fake shooting people with my fingers.
Because it is a race war between those who own the media (the programming of the youth) and those who didn’t contrive to own it.
The point is that religion isn’t just a case of superstition and ignorance, but has served people to obtain goals in social cohesion and helped them overcome primitive conditions. The pseudo-scientific approach to religion on the forum is often as ignorant as the assumed ignorance of religious people. Of course there are other examples, but that is always the case.
My quote was just supporting my earlier post.
Bob, I said true. I added the rest because we are for the most part beyond that need.
If you look at past posts of mine about religion you would see that I understand about need of religion. I do not insult it generally. Only when extreme abuse is evident. I also have stated that there is a possibility of more evolved beings existing and could possibly influence/d our evolution through religion or other.
… Billions of people also said the Earth was flat. Truth doesn’t weigh off of perspective. Biggest flaw in humanity. It WILL be the downfall too.
People look at the bad more, because more bad has been done.
It wasn’t religion that brought critical thinking, it was philosophy… And religion derived out of philosophy, a cancer that goes against it’s very foundation of seeking knowledge (modern and systematic/dogmatic religion at least). There are fewer religious people who think philosophically than there are who don’t.
So to claim religion has done so much good and peopld should focus on it is kind of a fallacy.
Sure, god could exist, but there are also tons of questions and contradicting confusions that must be dealt with if one settled with it, I myself doubt it after thinking about it all, but again, perspective does not mean truth. It is only a path in a maze of which could be right or a wrong dead end.
Most people do not understand what religion is… simply believing a god exists is not religion, it is spirituality or just simple ideal. Religion tends to be systematic, coercive communion while mixed with faith and dogmatic principle.
Critical thinking and philosophy forms religion as its final resolve. The religion is what the critical thinking was trying to accomplish and by doing so (or believing that they had done so), the solution is then applied to the population and accomplishes in the population what it was designed to do.
But you are right in that accepting that the solution is already available reduces the urge to seek it and thus eventually causes its loss. People become stupid to the truth of the religion because they were raised presuming what everything was resolved and what everything meant. Acceptance of no need to think merely evolves into no ability to think. Man sleeps.
The better religion involves the urge to think while not inspiring disregard for what has been thought. Science aspires to be that religion.
Did I come across as criticising you, sorry if you thought so. I just felt I had to add a comment to be clear.
Are you talking about all religion, some religion, religion in this or that time, or in this or that part of the world? I think we have become so used to making some blanket statement without realising how important it was in the past to stick together, or to have a common understanding upon which the group could base all development. I remember being a young boy in the scouts where the philosophy of the group was taken from the Jungle Book. In any good story you can find good or bad examples for behaviour or survival. If the texts at hand are also intended as moral guides, all the better. But life is on the move, and there is no looking back, so we have to learn from past mistakes but not throw the baby out with the bathwater.
It isn’t so much a question whether God “exists” - as a metaphor for the one unique prime mover at the beginning of existence, God already exists in the relationship one has with him. Some relationships are devotional, some are oppositional. “God” describes a relationship with something unfathomable and yet strangely present, or something construed and dangerous. You have heard of the comparisons to the experience of love, which some people have and others haven’t experienced. For some love is an ideal they hope they will some day experience, for others it is an experience they enjoy. The various scriptures and canons devoted to God, Gods or Tao or Law, are all dated. They all come from a certain stage in history,a certain time in the development of mankind, or a certain culture or cultural understanding. But culture too is on the move, and we are just as in danger to loose all cultivation, as we are to progress.
We are in the position to reap from the huge cultural harvest, to learn from the best, and worst examples of history. As is said, those who forget history are often doomed to repeat it. Religion is a part of our heritage. It has contributed, in whatever way, to what we are now. Every family has a skeleton in the cupboard, so do we, and it could be the misbehaviour of religious zealots, the cruelty of fanatics, or the closed minds of fundamentalism. But I also have a great Aunt, who was a methodist all her life, and she was the loveliest ladies I have ever known. I have known catholics, muslims, protestants and hindus, buddhists and free church christians, and they were all just as bad or as good as I feel about myself. In every case, it was always a question about how I allowed them to effect me.
I never considered any of them “mentally ill”, even if I disagreed or found them somewhat overbearing in their beliefs . There are some who have become depressive over the years, which has me asking whether their faith has been good for them, or whether they had become too idealistic. But there are others who have been a light in hard times, who have shown strength of character when others failed. I think it is a question of being able to differentiate. That seems to be something that religious or non-religious alike are losing, and their views are becoming more and more black or white.
I don’t view buddhism as religion, it isn’t coercive or a system, the Buddha never asked or wanted worship, not like the religions that are poisonous. Take away the churches, the dogma, the heaven (false promise/hope) and hell (coercion) and would it still be considered religion? I personally don’t think so, it would be an actual philosophy/possibility without working off of control or manipulating the gullible.
If I may ask, when was religion first introduced to you? At all, any part of it, childhood? It was for me and it is for near all others, now let me ask another question, as a child who is naturally gullible, less logical, more imaginative and creative… Did you get a choice? Did anyone else get a choice?
The problem is not people getting together to express themselves and their ideas, it is the FORCE that comes with religion that is the problem, the hypocritical contradictory method.
You see, most religious are against abortion because they say “the baby gets no choice” yet turn around and whisper in their own gullible childs ear “praise the lord and go to heaven, worship Jesus if you don’t want to be burned in hell”
Does THAT child get a choice? No, they don’t. That my friend, is poison and I do not stand for it. That is mental disease and sickening, to willingly shape a child who could be a potential genius in whatever they wanted.
Children are not pieces of clay to be shaped by others, they need to be allowed to shape themselves and if religious can’t agree to that then they ARE diseased.