why have a religion at all??

You know what I don't get? Well, I have been looking over different religions in books and on the internet. I use to be a christian but changed my religion to Atheist. After finding out information from all types of religions and being exposed to different religions. I began to wonder.. I don't need a religion really. Why have a religion at all? What would you be trying to prove yourself? Why can't you just say one person believes in say God and the other person doesn't and just leave it at that? Why base it all on one religion? Why can't you just say you believe in something or you don't believe in something? Why call it anything? It's all a matter of opinion. Does it have to have a name at all? Why label it anything? So I guess from now on I decided that I'm no longer labeling myself as an Atheist... I decided from now on that I don't have a religion at all. For all the reasons above. I don't believe in God/heaven/hell/devil and I'm just going to leave it at that. I'll believe in whatever I want and leave it at that and I'm not going to label myself I'm not going to have a religion.

 

how cool would it be if there were no laws, courts, judges, lawyers, jails et al but then, we can't really dismiss any of'em, can we ? or how about that game you play - why does the creator of the game get to set the rules ..why can't we make them rules up as we please

oh and, do we really need moderators on this site ? we don't really need to be told how to express ourselves now do we ?!

no labels, just rules of engagement

 

The only way to release yourself from labels is to transcend them. What you are now doing is only replacing one label with another. First you wore christian, then atheist, now you have a label saying "I have no religion" or "I have no label."

Who are you?

 

I just don't have a religion... I choose not to.. sure maybe I am labeling myself that way.. I don't mean to..

 

Religions are created as a pschological tool to release repressed fears.

The fear of Sex and Death are powerful Primate motivations.

Religions relieve much of the stress of Death-Fear by constructing cosmologies where one can hope to locate either eternal-life or at least a life with eternal significance.

Las Vegas is a location operating on a similar principle.

Religions invented by weak and conquered Peoples, like the Hebrews, reveal a neurotic preoccupation with the fear of Male Sexual-Inadequacy.

Religions created by insecure Peoples usually relieve Male Sexual-Fears by erecting a Patriarchy to control Female-Sexuality.

Religion, like Politics and Business is simply a tool to release, by indirect means, our repressed psychological fears.

 

M6m, your name can now be added to the likes of Sigmund Freud, Carl Jung, Rolo May and countless others. However, Psychology, though it does some hold truth (or else I would not have majored in the subject for the past two years) is home to theories, with results based primarily on trial and error. Quite simply, the fact remains that humanity will never unlock all the secrets of the human mind.

 

Yeah, it's like a teenager going through a rebellious stage or typical stoner babble.. If you have no use for labels, simply pretend as if they don't exist and ignore them rather than make some huge fanfare about how you defy them.

 

I wasn't trying to label myself as having no label... but I guess it came out that way. I just think it's stupid labeling yourself as christian, athesit and all that stuff. what if you have several different beliefs from all different religions.. then what would you be called? I just choose not to have a religion at all... either I believe in something or I don't I don't want to put myself under some catigory.. thats all.

 

*sigh*

 

Please, just for a moment, consider this.

It is widely accepted that a metaphysical or spiritual dimension of reality exists. It is known by many names and concepts, but it is essentially an infinitely sublime, non-physical reality that influences everything and is intimately related to everything in one way or another. Most human beings know this spiritual reality through widely varying different types of experience such as emotion, inspiration, aesthetics, abstract thought, metaphysics, genuine mysticism and religion.

Just as there is an enormous body of knowledge about the accomplishments of humanity (history, the arts, technology, business, law, etc.) and the natural world (the sciences), there is also considerable knowledge about this supernatural world. Just as colleges and universities exist to absorb, develop, maintain and distribute the body of knowledge that concerns the humanities and the sciences within the natural world, so do the religions exist to absorb, develop, maintain and distribute the body of knowledge that concerns the supernatural/metaphysical/spiritual world.

But maybe a better way to look at it is to think of spirituality the same way you think of music. Like spirituality, music is certainly emotional, inspirational, aesthetic, abstract, metaphysical.

If you want to play, then, assuming you have an instrument, and if you are creative enough, you can teach yourself how to do it. There are plusses and minuses to doing it this way. Like most self-taught musicians, you probably won't ever learn how to read music, or understand and create more complex forms of music, or learn about a hundred other more advanced things, or be able to play along with a lot of other musicians, but your music will be uniquely yours for better or worse. It all depends on your ability to recognize and understand and create with the inspiration of what is right there in front of you. This is what mystics do. Some musicians were really good at this, like Jimi Hendrix.

The next step is to get lessons. A good teacher will be able to teach you things you might never think of yourself. A good teacher will help you develop better habits that allow you more freedom of expression down the road, a really good teacher will also teach you things about inspiration, aesthetics, and the other abstract intangibles of music. Most musicians learned music this way, most notably Mozart, whose dad was a music teacher. Of course, there are some really bad teachers out there, just as there are some really bad gurus. And if you don't have the contacts or the resources, or don't live anywhere near a good teacher, then you may never find any help with your music, or your spiritual growth.

Then there is music school. Musically, you could think of Julliard, or Berklee, or Oberlin, or the Royal Academy the same way you think, spiritually, of Catholicism, or Judaism, or Islam, or any organized religion. There is a well-organized, but standardized and somewhat impersonal program of instruction from a lot of different teachers. You will learn how to perform, and how to apply your intellect and your talent to your art. It isn't necessarily creative, and you may not know what to do with all that you learn, but it does present an enormous amount of information that will only help you if you use it to improve your music. Of course, there are many who have far more instruction than creativity, but that isn't necessarily the fault of Julliard, or Berklee, or Oberlin, or the Royal Academy, or Catholicism, or Judaism, or Islam, or . . .

Of course, some people are just tone deaf. The difference between music and religion, however, is that most tone deaf people don't hate music.

Peace and Love

 

Yet we have unlocked enough secrets to connect many of the causal-links between Religion and Psyche.

Cool, did you have that worked-out before you took Psych?

I would add:
Claims are a form of deception, and Religion is a deceptive way of dealing with our Primate Motivations.

Because it works, Deception is each Primates main strategy in hiding our neurotic preoccupation with Sex and Death.

Religion is a deception hiding the lack of Faith.

...Faith allows spontaneous existence in the eternal moment.
Without Faith we would lose the spontaneous perfection of each moment.

We would become stiff and clumsy with doubt; second guessing every moment; never being fully alive in any moment.

Faith is a State of Being, not a State of Knowledge.

 

I agree with you on this. I was thinking about this the other day..how many religions we go through..when we are children, (young children) we are essentially agnostic, only because we have no knowledge to prove the existence/non existence of God..growing up most likely we grow up with the religion our parents and surrondings express apon us. Then, as we're older we most likely find our own religion. I have friends who go through, 3, 4 different religions.. always stating, "oh-now I am, such and such." To me it's absoloutely ridiculous, stating a 'set religion'. Research ALL possibilits until you claim one..religion is holy, sacred, pure and definite, it should not be changed and altered every few months..if you can't go with that-I agree-don't have a religion!

 

I posted this weeks ago in another thread



When I was born my mother was Methodist & my dad was Baptist. They never had me baptized into any religion so whenever anyone asked what religion I was I would tell them none as I figured that ya had to be baptized first before ya could actually claim a certain religion. My mother would speak up & tell me I was Methodist...guess she figured I was just automatically born into her religion.

When I was in Kindergarden I decided to go to some special classes taught by catholic nuns. Well my mom didn't understand the Catholic religion and sorta felt intimitated by them. But I kept going for over a year until we moved away. We moved next to a Mormon family around my 7th birthday, and the mother of that family became my mom's best friend (later she became my mother-in-law) so my mom made me and my younger brothers go to the Mormon church. I had a hard time calling all the women folks there "sister so-&-so" seeing they were not wearing a nuns unfit.
Later we moved again & I tried out a few other non-dementional churches during JR high & high school, but still never joined any.

During all this time, my dad wasn't to keen on sitting in a building listening to loooong boring speeches in a room full of hypocrits (people who would only be "good" on Sunday & then do whatever they damn well pleased the rest of the week. He told us "that church was everywhere & your beliefs would still be with you anywhere. If ya needed to speak to God then it didn't matter if your hiking in the woods or sitting on the toilet. If you're praying to God then ya don't need to get all dressed up & gather in 1 specific building."

Well like I said the Mormon mother became my mother-in-law and yes she arranged for me to get married in a little mormon church without having to join the religion. My mother joined that church a year later...my daughter was almost 1 at that time. All the family members were excited & saying that in another 7 yrs I could baptize my daughter in the church. (Mormons wait till you're at least 8 yrs old to baptize). Well my daughter will be 23 in NOV and has never been baptized.

I now have 7 kids and none of them have been baptized...but each have thier own beliefs. I think my almost 20 yr old is the most out-spoken about it, and when he gets stuck sitting in the car with Grandma during some "all-day adventure" and she starts talking about God, or telling him how to be saved, well he lets her have it...going off with his beliefs and tons of question for her to prove why she believes in certain things, it doesn't take long for her to back down & spend the next hour very quiet instead of cramming her religion down his throat...he could be on any debate team as long as the debate is about religion.

1 of my younger brothers married a Catholic & had their 2 kids christianed in the Catholic church...I don't think my brother really cared about which church my sister-in-law belonged to, so seeing as it was important to her she got to bring the kids to her church.

 

I agree with you iscreamchocolate. I, myself, am a believer in "That Which Cannot Be Explained" and ascribe to no particular religion. I fail to see how any truly spiritual person can do so, in good conscience. Religions/Labels keep people divided. What good can come from that? I don't mind that you don't believe in spirituality. You don't mind that I do. No problem.

 

i will, in the next 10-20 years.


humans are just slack, it will all come out eventually. you know that not yet have studies of behavioral psychology, neuroscience, and cognitive psychology been combined?

shocking

 

Good 4 u. That is really cool, but do u still look in2 religion? I never had one and all my friends keep trying 3 convert me so I go off and research all of it. I find it entertaining, like a story or a fairy tale. No offense to those who actually believe but that just the way I am, cause otherwise I lean towards the pagans and stuff but believe what I believe, not all of it. So you can’t really label me.

 

Bare in mind religion isn't just the spirituality, it's the culture as well. I would be very against an anti-religion drive because at the end of the day, religion isn't so bad.

Sure people have used an excuse to do bad things and sure some of the holy books say some pretty dodgy things etc etc etc etc. But to be fair, if there was no religion would history be so different. The crusades for example, are in my view are nearly entirely political, not much to do with religion.

Also for those wishing to start the spiritual journey religion is a great starting point, even if, as what happened to you (and to me), people move away from that in the course of events.

Blessings

Sebbi

 

that wasn't my intention anyways - we all got our thoughts/ways of life and we'd do what we wanna do regardless. i've given a 'point of view' - food for thought, and thats where it ends. i aint preachin, simply debatin

apples can be compared to rocks! when we want to ..