religion, the original opiod crisis

I think that's right. People differ tremendously in temperament and what attracts them to religion. One of my best friends converted from Methodism to Roman Catholicism because he was attracted by ritual, authority, and tradition. I went the other way, because I was repelled by exactly those things. The Sunday school I go to at the Methodist Church is progressive, open, socially concerned, and accepting of any idea. One floor down, in the same church, a Sunday school meets at the same time that is conservative, conventional and sticks to scripture. They might as well be different religions. To each his/her own.

 

Self-interest as a spiritual motivation : I wonder if it's been an indoctrination .

 

Wall Street has a ceremony.

 

As we stand today - unless the yanks do have extra-terrestial corpses that they are not willing to publically display [ and that's another discussion in itself; we look out on what we 'think' is our vast universe and can find no one else to great and share with [so back to star treck??]

all religions have attempted to explain who we are ; where we came from and where we are going - some say there have been 'new prophets' [try Donald Neil Walsch and others]. I always chuckle when I hear the latest announcement from science - particularly astronomy - "sorry we thought we had the right theory last time - but we didn't and know we have a new one!!"

and then the cheats perhaps - try " religious sect Branch Davidians, " cheating people out of life or did they all cheat themselves and their kids? were they really wacko?

I have followed the constant announcements of astronomers for some time - where are they leading us - right or wrong directions - are they wiser than us are just as puzzled?

there are those of us who write tomes from 'inspiration' and others from learning and toil - who's right both or one or the other?

what all the major religions taught was ' moral control and responsibility' - today as we see people [particularly the young] turn away from their religions we see an increase in drug consumption; public violence ; family violence and a disregard for social controls ; and increase in sexual behaviors beyond the realms of family control!

 

Yes. Unless our primal ancestors were a lot different than we are, it's unlikley that most of them were looking for self-actualization. In Maslow's hierachy of needs Our Hierarchy of Needs maslow hierarchy of needs - Yahoo Video Search Results people don't get to the highest level of needs, self-actualization, until their immediate physiological and social needs are met. I imagine paleolithic hunter-gatherers were particularly absorbed with physiological and safety needs. Skeletons of Neanderthals indicate the same kinds of injuries found on rodeo bull riders. After a hard day at work chasing bison and warding off cave bears and sabre toothed tigers, the average guy probably just wanted to get back to his cave, chill out, and let the shaman and the elders worry about metaphysical questions. It seems religion back then had a practical orientation: healing, bringing animals for the hunt, and otherwise controlling forces of nature. In fact, that was pretty much the way it was in Neolithic times and the Bronze Age--exchange transactions with the gods, to get their help with life's daily problems--with priestly specialists playing more and more of a role in performing the necessary rituals and sacrifices. It wasn't really until the Axial Age (8th to 3rd centruy BCE) that questions about the after life, justice, and the meaning of life became prominent. There always seem to have been specialists who took care of the main tasks of religious encounters. The shaman specialized in ecstatic experiences brought on by epilepsy, psychosis, or psychdelic plants and mushrooms--skills passed on from parent to child. For the average Joe, in religion as in politics and economics, "rational ignorance" is the rule: a term referring to situations "when a decision-maker chooses not to gain more information because the costs of doing so would likely outweigh the benefits." Rational ignorance - RationalWiki. Which helps to explain why a majority of humans in these areas support positions which sometimes seem absurd or insane. They buy the package from the priest, politician or financial advisor to avoid doing the thinking themselves.

 

The latest evidence is that the human mind and brain express particle-wave duality, and Maslow's famous Hierarchy must be expressed as a spectrum of desires. As odd as that might sound, conscious thought has been established as emerging from our emotions, while Roger Penrose's theory of quantum induced microwave vibrations in the brain has received two experimental confirmations. What is spiritual is related to our neurology, and of particular interest in studying the stochastic processes in the brain, which resembles a distributed gain amplifier that obeys a modified version of Bayesian probabilities vanishing into indeterminacy.

In other words, all that rational crap you spout is horribly outdated and does not reflect reality as we know it. Which is unsurprising considering Wikipedia is infamous for being run by militant atheists. Richard Dawkins invented his own nonsense word, meme, convincing militant atheists everywhere to spout complete gibberish in the name of survival of the fittest. They're all wannabe lawyers attempting to decide what the word stupid means.

 

well my my that was hardly worth turning up for!!

 

The truth hurts for a reason, while the ground is always there to ensure some of us don't sink any lower.

 

did you realize the spirit never enters the body but always surrounds it?? DNW book III

 

There is no spoon...

 

Of course science is tentative, which in my opinion is its advantage over religion and other absolutist systems for explaining reality. Tolerance of ambiguity and the ability to live with uncertainty are signs of maturity and creativity. The theory of evolution is so far supported by a great deal of evidence from a variety of disciplines, but is only one pre-Cambrian rabbit away from being completely discredited. So far, no rabbits. The alternative explanations, Creation Science and Intelligent Design, aren't really scientific theories. Creationists and the I.D. folks at the Discovery Institute don't develop and test empirically falsifiable hypotheses, but instead concentrate on giving us critiques of Darwinism and rationalizations of Bronze Age metaphysics.

Science is, in my opinion, the gold standard for reliable human knowledge, but it does have its limitations. I should make clear here that I'm talking about empirical science in the narrower sense of formulating and testing empirically falsifiable hypotheses, rather than science in the broader sense of any orderly, systematic inquiry. While scientific methods are great where a problem is suited for them, I think doing science must be distinguished from doing life. Most of the personal decisions in my life--finding a job, a mate, a house, etc.--require less cumbersome, time consuming approaches, under conditions of insufficient information. Experience and intuition are at a premium, and the outcomes are ultimately judgment calls. Apart from the problem of getting the funds to test its theories (the Large Hadron Collider used to discover the Higgs-Bosom particle which verifies the Standard Model of Particle Physics, cost $4.75 billion to construct), the methods and assumptions of empirical science impose constraints on the kind of knowledge it can obtain. Empirical science deals with propositions that are falsifiable. Not all propostions are readily falsifiable, God being an example.God might not be willing to participate in a controlled experiment--like those questionable scientific studies of the power of prayer. Does this mean science has shown God does not exist? No way. It simply means that God is beyond the reach of science.

Not all questions lend themselves to rigorous empirical testing. Ancient history is notorious for spotty records and the need for inferences. Naturalism is an assumption that science makes, which is why it's skeptical of miracles, because extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. But lots of people claim to have experienced miracles that science can't really disprove. Occam's razor , calling for acceptance of the simplest explanation is a reasonable rule of thumb, but reality might be complicated as hell. In its concern for avoiding Type 1 errors (false positives, or accepting something as true that isn't, science may commit Type 2 errors (false negatives) in dismissing propositions that are true. Science favors reductionism, the notion that complex phenomena can be explained by reducing it to the simplest, most basic components, disallows the possibility of emergence of wholes that are qualitatively different from the component parts. Water, for example, has different properties from hydrogen and oxygen; to say it is "nothing but" hydrogen and oxygen would be misleading.

So nothing is certain, not even that. We could be brains in a jar in some alien kid's science experiment. I think faith (i.e., an educated bet) is ultimately necessary in deciding what is real. But my intuition, experiences, and reason persuade me to take a chance on science where it seems to work and to make evidence-based judgement calls where it doesn't. I assume that most of what I believe is wrong, possibly all of it, but in the absence of certainty, it seems reasonable to continue muddling through on the basis of evidence-based judgment and faith in reason and science.

 

Science is rapidly killing the planet, making it the uranium standard.

 

science is a kindergarten technique for understand who we are ; where we are and why we are!

God IS science - who is God? - we are still not sure - to go back to the kindergarten analogy - when you observe your child in a kindergarten neither you or his/her carers try explaining quantum physics at first off!!

 

The Atom Bomb is God, haven't you ever seen Planet of the Apes?

 

I don't think science is a technique for answering those questions at all, although it can provide facts that are useful to people trying to answer them.

not my God

 

thread title=veddy funny

 

I disagree that dogma comes from taking myths too literally.

In fact, I would argue that religion is part of the disenchantment of the world and actually tends to downplay or diminish the value of myth, as well as the value of the spiritual experience. This is a generalized statement so of course there are exceptions, but it does this through the following dynamics:

1.) Religion creates a hiearchy with lines of power which distances the individual from both mythical reality and the spiritual experience of the sacred.

2.) It codifies mythical reality and the sacred into valid or accepted myth (which is always historical myth--meaning that it usually has historical significance and it always ocurred in the past), and unacceptable myth. In this way it restricts the mythical experience and the experience of the sacred to past events which we can only know about through the scriptures of that religion. If someone were to experience something of a mythical nature or the sacred today, that would almost always be defined as evil or of the devil. The only exception is if the experience were somehow in the context of, or directly related to, that religion's codified myth.

3.) It objectifies the sacred into a physical thing or context and defines the sacred experience (where such is allowed or acknowledged e.g. the Buddhist or Hindu experience of enlightenment) into the same terms codified by scripture.

4.) The religious experience itself (ritual, ceremony, interactions with individuals, groups, and the community, etc.) is designed for, and to support, the collective group, and to maintain power and control over this group.

5.) Because of these 4 aforementioned factors, religious ceremony and ritual has become largely sterile.

6.) Religion is a human construct, therefore there is always the risk that religious myth can be fabricated to validate or teach religious doctrine.

There is a You Tube video of Lee Plenty Wolf talking about Standing Rock and his experiences (Lee Plenty Wolf is a Medicine Man who runs the sweat lodge in one of the lodge communities I am a part of. He is speaking to an audience of white people and when he is introduced, the gentleman that introduces him says that the one thing Lee has shown him is that "...the sacred is real." I laughed when he said this, because I doubt anyone there, living in today's modern world, had any idea about what that statement really meant; how true it is. For example, we can talk about how the spirits come into a yuwipi ceremony, and people may believe you, though most probably will not. But you can't really understand it until you experience it----an experience so profound that you will have trouble accepting it. An experience that leaves you feeling stunned, with your mind racing to figure out how they could have done it; trying to make sense of it. Or the experience of a Vision Quest for example, which may be equally profound, or more subtle yet amazingly intuitive or relevant. It is because of these kinds of experiences that Natives who walk the Red Road find it very silly to question the existence of God or the sacred.

If a spirit came into a church as it does into a yuwipi ceremony, you know that it would immediately be labeled evil, and the people would be scared.

Such experiences are not religious, rather they are of a mystical nature----and there is a very wide variety of such experiences, some more profound than others. These exerpiences led to religion, but they are not religious. They are the experiences of myth, and myth is more often than not, an account of such things.

Where these experiences are acknowledged and occur, such things are a bigger part of one's individual life, and individual experiences outside of ceremony, or within indiviudalized ceremony, are common. These people are open to such experiences, and this makes them a common thing. The people who follow such spiritual ways are living in an entirely different world from those that follow religion.

Myth comes to us in the language of the subconscious, so there is a lot of symbolism and metaphor within it. It is also nonlinear in nature. This is because the doorway to the sacred is through our subconscious. This presents a problem on how literal a myth is in terms of our physical reality. In many ways the only way to know is to be the one who actually experienced what ever event or thing is being related to. Finally there is the problem of fabrication when speaking of 'religious myth.' Religion is about power, and people do anything to obtain and maintain it.

So where then does dogma come from? I think it relates to the natural drive we humans have to find meaning and truth and to explain who, what and why we are. When we latch onto an explanation that makes sense to us, we become very reductionist about this explanation---it becomes the Truth and we objectively apply it to everything and everyone. It doesn't matter if we are talking about religion, spirituality, science, or philosophy, this seems to be a natural flaw we all have. I suspect its purpose is to help us in community building and making social connections with others. This is the how and why of a community or a culture coming upon its unifying myth.

 

In other words, dogma comes from taking myths too literally. We're obviously speaking a different language, cuz you seem to affirm and go on seemingly to illustrate what I meant by the statement you think you're disagreeing with. Dogma is "something held as an established opinion especially : a definite authoritative tenet ." Definition of DOGMA It's a body of official doctrines, like the Catholic doctrine of the immaculate conception of Mary, or her assumption into heaven, or the Young Earth Creationist doctrine that the earth and universe are only 6,000 years old. By making it official, it is held as "the truth", beyond rational discussion. Doctrine is an official policy statement, lik the tenets of the Nicene Creed. Official implies collective authority, whether familial or societal--parents, elders, shamans, priests, kings. On the other hand, myths are metaphors: figures of speech "in which a word or phrase literally denoting one kind of object or idea is used in place of another to suggest a likeness or analogy between them." Definition of METAPHOR Symbol and allegory are similar concepts, the former describing something that stands for something else Definition of SYMBOLIC , the latter being "the expression by means of symbolic fictional figures and actions of truths or generalizations about human existence". Definition of ALLEGORY Was the creation story in Genesis about a God who likes to walk in His garden, created a man out of mud and a female from his rib and told them not to eat fruit from a certain tree or was it about something else? When I said "Dogma comes from taking myths and metaphors too literally" I thought I was saying what you said: "religion is part of the disenchantment of the world and actually tends to downplay or diminish the value of myth, as well as the value of the spiritual experience"--by making them into concrete formulae that must be accepted by the faithful.

 

No, I used different words.


;-)

I'm joking. Actually after I wrote that, and the direction it went, I thought that in many ways I was saying the same thing as you were. But then I discovered this page about girls posting their cutest pictures and after 51 pages of very hot pictures I forgot all about this...

Yes I did say what you said. But let me clarify some of the things I meant to make that might be different from your statement. The point I meant to make is that myth, in as much as it is an account of a spiritual reality, can be taken literally without becoming dogmatic. (But this was my first reaction and I forgot to take into account (until I started writing my response) that religion also involves fabricated myths which in the end are nothing more than metaphoric stories.) The story of the burning bush or Jacob's Ladder are examples of myth that may very well have accounted for something that happened in real life (The Jacob's Ladder vision was experienced as a dream and is therefore an example of a classic shamanic spirit journey, which is experienced within, but is an experience of being within the spiritual realm, which I would have always argued that it was a fabrication of the mind, until it was demonstrated to me that it is not fabricated, but rather an experience of a different reality---or different dimension if you will. I know that sounds like crazy talk, or New Age airie fairie crap---but I have been shown this in several ways through many years of experiences.

One problem is that myth relates a spiritual reality. And this reality may or may not correspond to a literal physical equivalent. For example, the story of the burning bush may have actually been an experience of a physical burning bush with a voice of spirit coming from it (Yes, this sounds crazy, but if you experience a yuwipi ceremony or go on a hanblechiya (vision quest) you may discover that when you are in a sacred space where the spiritual and physical can come together, such things actually do happen). The story of the Garden of Eden may possibly represent a spiritual reality, which is only metaphoric in terms of a physical reality. The story of the Garden of Eden is not, in my opinion, a story of man's creation, but more of a story of man's evolution from a hunter-gatherer to a planter culture, and his creation of mud, a metaphor for is evolution from the original building blocks of life---DNA and so forth as it formed from the materials of the earth. HOWEVER, I feel it is more likely that this is a religious fabrication, probably deriving from several early creation myths, especially since it was written in the misogynistic context of a later planter culture.

I guess the main point of how we differ is in my last paragraph. which is not entirely different from what you said---but in this way dogma is not necessarily originating solely in myth, but also rules and codes and other things as well. The 10 Commandments for example, could have simply been listed without all the story of going up on the mountain and so forth----and it could still become dogmatic.

One thing I forgot to add is that you mention that dogma is not essential to all religion. I agree that in theory this is true. However I cannot think of a single religion that is not dogmatic. Even religions that preach against dogma---for example Hinduism, simply provide dogma in a repackaged form. Hinduism, in its rejection of dogma, replaces it with Dharma---the rules of nature---which are defined by man----in other words, dharma is dogma. The problem is that whenever we come to believe that the meaning of life is such and such, or that our being is defined in such and such terms, or that our reason for being is such and such, or the meaning of life is such and such, then we naturally become reductionist in our belief, and it naturally becomes dogma.

Spirituality is less dogmatic than religion----mainly because it focuses more on the experience and the individual and less on objectively defining reality and the collective mass or the group. You mention the shaman and this is a perfect example---the shaman tends to be outside of the hierarchy of the group. He/she is the one you go to when you need divine help or healing. He/she is surrounded by the mythical---from the reason for his/her being there, to the way he/she provides help. Every time he conducts ceremony he becomes the subject of living myth. But in a typical shamanic culture (which are cultures of Siberia and Central and South Central Asia) he does not present any rules or have any say in the political activity of the group. He does not set a code of ethics or morals, and the instruction he gives is only for the problem at hand.