What is religion?

So they are all true, yet all myth, we should accept that they are myth, yet still embrace them. We are not God, but we are.

Somehow that leaves me unsatisfied.

Joseph Campbell discusses elementary ideas or the archetypes of the unconscious.

Here's something I wrote a while back and just dug up:

If you go back to the Neolithic or even the Paleolithic you can start understanding the derivation of these modern religions. At one point the moon was very important in the spiritual life of people. But there were two aspects of the Moon. One was the moon as the whole cycle, always existing, referred to as Zoe. This was the goddess. Her son, the god, was the phases of the Moon, also known as Bios, the incarnation. The incarnate God was born as the waxing crescent, matured as the full moon and died as the new or dark moon and simultaneously born again. So, life is always there, but individual lives come and go, just as the cycle of the moon is always there, but the phases come and go.

Now, all these matriarchal cultures existing in Eastern Europe and Mesopotamia in the neolithic , all these cultures  balanced between male and female were destroyed by the violent patriarchal cultures and the goddess idea was destroyed along with them. So now modern religions have no reference to the goddess-- except indirectly as the Madonna in Catholicism, but in the case of Christianity you still have to think of Jesus as the incarnate, living and dying God.

Now, the whole, Zoe, cannot be thought of by the intellect because the intellect can only think in terms of opposites and not in terms of the whole. It thinks in opposites. Faith is the letting go of all attempts to perceive the whole by seeing that opposites are  interdependent and resolvable, and that resolution is the whole, Zoe.

The whole process of Zen Buddhism is to let people hopelessly pursue the whole intellectually and finally realize that the difference is the identity, that is the opposites are interdependent so the resolution of these opposites is understood.

In the Western World, at least, we have strong taboos against realizing the interdependence and resolution of opposites, and every individual can feel it immediately at work inside their head as a resistance.

In the east they have the tradition of Zen Buddhism. We have a little bit of Zen Buddhism but it's never been important in our culture. Zen Buddhist monasteries in America were formed in the 60s as an offshoot of the drug culture, the hallucinogens. People were breaking through the taboo and society reacted strongly to discount and oppose these breakthroughs.

You cannot conceive the resolution of opposites. You can see it and experience it but you can't think it. That's the purpose of the Zen koans, to break through the intellectual pursuit, to see the resolution and stop pursuing it. This is first-hand experience and completely contrary to dualistic, organized, en masse religion.

What is religion?

"...to be in awe before the mystery life...."
Joseph Campbell

I feel that way all the time, but I'm about as far from being religious as it gets.

I think Mr. Campbell's definition of religion may be more wishful than realistic.

Long ago the patriarchy destroyed the goddess in religion, and ever since religion has been alienated from nature and become supernatural. To me supernatural is the antithesis of religion and a defense against religion.
Religion emanates from the psyche and not from the mind.

Do you think your definition/perception of religion is the common one?

"...to be in awe before the mystery life...."
Joseph Campbell

His best book was the one where he identified the same core story of the hero in most every song, story, movie, book or myth - They are all versions of Jesus Christ.

Judging by a2k standards nowadays, it would seem almost unique, though in the past there were a number of members with similar ideas, JlNobody & Kuvasz, fot instance. In the real world most people are literal believers or atheists, Campbell said as much.

And how about all those songs, stories, books and myths with the same core hero story that came before Jesus' time, were those all about Jesus too? There was a lot of walking on water and resurrection way before Jesus ever got his name in the list.

Campbell's book is a wonderful example of providing "data" which confirms one's thesis while taking no notice of contrary examples. I am reminded of s story which Carl Sagan once told. He was at a faculty mixer, and listening to a conversation about Immanuel Velikovsky. He said that, of course, Velikovsky's astronomy and astrophysics was utter bullshit, but that he had always been impressed by his knowledge of ancient literature. One of the people in the group to which he was listening said that he had always been impressed by Velikovsky's knowledge of astronomy, but that, of course, his comments about ancient literature were all bullshit. That's a pertinent criticism of Campbell.

"...to be in awe before the mystery life...." is hardly a factual statement that one believes or disbelieves. Everyone must feel this sometime in their lives, if not about consciousness and life in general, then at least about love or music, no? I mean, everything isn't rational, is it?

Exactly! That's the point! They were writing detailed stories about him and his story even before he got here.

Nice try. But no, that’s definitely not the point.

You're getting as bad as farmer. Always telling me what my motivations are, what books I've read, what I think, where I get my theories, what to call them; now you even try to tell me what my own point is.

That's not how it works in real life.

"Exactly! That's the point! They were writing detailed stories about him and his story even before he got here".

The only way to ride old Leadfoot is with the blinkers on, giddy-up Urusalim awaits.

Yet Leadfoot refuses to reveal his tale about the times he met god.

That hallucination seems to have broken his mind.

Wait, is that a typo or are you trying to tie me to some exotic thing I haven't heard of?


Wait, What? Why do you say that? I have freely admitted that I am a theist. If I hadn't met him, I'd be a deist, not a theist. So of course I've met God. On many occasions. What kind of idiot theist would believe in a God he hadn't met? It's an oxymoron.

And under the right circumstances I have talked about them, to the extent that they can be talked about. I don't think the actual experience can be described adequately. Not by me at least. Somewhere, on some long lost website, I made the attempt and it was such futile skull pounding that it was embarrassing.
It might be related to the thread OP. Religion could be various attempts to translate the experience of meeting God into a practice. That's a crazy thing to do, and why I don't have a religion.

Wait! Were you ever on the now defunct website WhyIsThereAnything.com (?) And were you maybe the SysOp?

Or was it WhyIsThereSomething.com