Biggest Single Dislike Of Religion?

Yeah. Basically.


I'd say it's just as simple as it being nature itself. Nature always acts with greatest economy of energy. Amongst humans, we have aristocracy, but we don't get to debate or appeal to nature.

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My biggest dislike of religion is when some shove it down your throat.

Job is a book about how far debating and appealing to nature will get you.

It's a good thing you don't know my siblings. They even have religious magazines sent to our home, and my wife is buddhist.

If I had to choose a religion it would be buddhism.

Me too! Buddhism doesn't worry about others; it tries to improve the self. It's the best human religion on this planet, but I'm an atheist - at heart and mind.

I did follow my wife on the buddhist pilgrimage to Japan some years ago, and really enjoyed myself, because that's where the Japanese culture really shows itself. Most of the temples were built in the 7th and 8th centuries, and no two looks alike.

Sounds wonderful. I would love to go to Japan. I loved the book Memoirs of a Geisha.

I'm an agnostic.

That's amazing that no two temples are alike.

Caroline, Here's my travelogue on our trip to Japan - if you are interested.

http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/c.i.222/1/1266327873/tpod.html?view=preview<br />

cicerone imposter = traveller extraordinaire!

Wow, thank you, the temples are so beautiful, I still cant believe no two are alike. And you visited when the cherry blossom was in season, how beautiful. Cherry blossom was one of the things I remembered from the book, it is one of the things that attracted me to Japan.
Thank you.

I fond the Shinto shrines to be very interesting. Quite educational as well. I'll share a piece of perspective I gained on religion as a whole from visiting them.

I went to the Shrine of the God of lamp oil.

lamp oil. Not oil in general. Not lamps. Lamp oil. At first I thought about how silly it was to have a specific god for this. It seemed like the god of lamp oil is probably not nearly as powerful or impressive as a god of rain or (insert harvest here). Then I read up some more. The shrine was set in a village set on top of some caverns which produced natural gas. The land around was not well fit for harvest. So lamp oil (their harvest) was more than just what made lamps light up, it was what allowed them to buy and trade for food and supplies with other villages.

It was their life blood.

Without a real scientific understanding of where the gas came from, but a firm understanding of what would happen if it went away is the exact mentality of a person who might feel the same about rain if they were growing crops.

You worship what you value, and in shamanistic religions like Shinto, deitizing natural resources is perfectly understandable.

I think about this a lot. It was one of the more significant developments as I investigated religion. At the time, I was a Christian. I began wondering how this applied to other religions including my own.

It's not a coincidence that in the rich merchant cultures of Greece and Rome, their god's pantheon had a certain corporate boardroom theme going on.

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The architectural style in Japan resembles those of China, but they have simple differences that many can't see. The curves of the corners are different, and most Chinese buildings have animals displayed on their roofs. Although the temples may look similar - especially the roof lines, they have differences that may be difficult to see, but is there none-the-less.

Thank you, that's interesting. How come they have animals on the top?

This is copied from About.com:

Thanks. I love the old architecture, I like the style and the lanterns, there used to be quite a few fires.

I read a book about Chinese gardens. There's symbols everywhere. How many trees in a clump, symbolic mountains, on and on. Each symbol connects the garden to the world around it.

It's like that in traditional Chinese painting. Every subject has a well-known meaning. You could read it like poetry, but since it's not words, it's a different kind of poetry.

Our brains are like computers in that what is stored there colors our every thought and, thus, action. If we allow our brain to be filled up with the ideas of some person or group, some one church, even our parents & teachers, then there will be no space available for forming ideas of our own. I don't think life allows people to remain static. Life will bang on our hood until we take even small steps into examinng what is stored there, and from thereon begin sloughing off any and all obsolete materials, making room for the new, or just our own, ideas.

I think some religions hold people back when they teach religious dogma, as if they would lose their 'following' if the people attending would even think of looking elsewhere for spiritual education that may include study of one's own self.

That so many of its followers are enslaved to it rather than freed by it.

And they stand apart in exactly what way, Finn d'philosopher?