What is religion?

If it werent for critical minds religion would not exist.

Please explain this to me, and assume I'm a Frankenstein's monster who has just been awakened.

I'm not seeing much of a difference between a fundamentalist and an atheist. They all seem to be using the same vocabulary. One says they believe in the divine, and the other says they don't believe in the divine. It's as if the Divine is something out there with an objective reality of its own completely separate from our consciousness and mind. Is beauty the same way? Does it have an separate existence of its own and we believe it or don't. I always thought Beauty was a subjective experience. "Beauty is in the eye of the beholder." And I always thought the Divine was a subjective experience in the mind of the beholder. And I don't understand what belief or disbelief has to do with it at all. Either you experience beauty or you don't. Either you experience the Divine or you don't. If you experience neither beauty nor the divine, well, that seems pretty bleak to me.

actually, the word means without theism. No need to change that simple fact into a mass of gobbledigook.

Or maybe you have just gone mad because you turned into frankenstein?

Why not just let the world be the world with its different classifications and live here as if you are forced to be here until you finally pass on?

I could allow you to be similar to me in my thoughts and we just understand this internet is to just pass the time. 😁

Ok im kidding.

The major difference that i see between fundamentalist and an atheist is the spelling.

If you desire the experience i believe it will come.

I don't know what you're saying. You're all over the place. Can you clarify your statement?

It's tough being a mystic. Fundamentalists, atheists, theists, they're so close that they can argue and argue until they're blue in the face. They cuss each other up and down like they detest each other, but they need each other. The mystic has nowhere to stand, nothing to defend, and both the atheist and theist misunderstand them. Look at Joseph Campbell, probably the greatest mythologist ever, and he's treated like he's crazy. I know there used to be mystics on this site, and they didn't call themselves that, but they were, for lack of a better term. I remember kuvasz and JL nobody. I guess they just got sick of being misunderstood by both athiests and theists.

Actually - no. JLN was my friend for many years. We met once, when I had a short layover at the Phoenix Airport and he drove over for us to meet and have coffee. He used to call me several times a year so we could catch up on how we were. I'm afraid he is no longer around, as he was ill, and likely not his wife (L) either.

Judgmental much? You seem to paper all atheists as a single type, when there are different kinds, usually called strong or weak, or soft atheism or hard. Look it up.

"I see my life in terms of music."
Albert Einstein

"It is a bit embarrassing to have been concerned with the human problem all one's life and find at the end that one has no more to offer by way of advice than 'Try to be a little kinder."

Aldous Huxley, "Moksha: Writings on Psychedelics & the Visionary Experience"

"The clash between science and religion has not shown that religion is false and science is true. It has shown that all systems of definition are relative to various purposes, and that none of them actually “grasp” reality."

Alan W. Watts, "The Wisdom of Insecurity: A Message for an Age of Anxiety"

Watts' assertion is reinforced by -
Rorty on The Compatability between Science and Religion
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fn2F2BWLZ0Q

"Your soul is the whole world."
Hermann Hesse, "Siddhartha"

Now thats a holistic meditational position rather different from the 'religion versus science' point, which is an epistemological and ontological one. The first assumes the imersion and dissolution of 'self', whereas the second assumes the fragmentation of 'self' in different contexts. The first could support 'pantheism' and the second might support 'personal religion' for specific needs.

Whoa, that's above my head.

"I refuse to answer that question on the grounds that I don't know the answer."
Douglas Adams

In simple terms, the word 'religion' takes on different meanings relative to different views about the word 'self'. In monotheism the entity 'God' is considered separate from the entity 'self' , whereas in holistic beliefs (such as the Buddhism referenced by Hesse), 'self' is 'an illusion' which is locked into 'personal suffering' to be alleviated by the realization that self is merely an aspect of 'the whole'. Whether or not that 'whole' is called 'God' (as in pantheism) is irrelevant.

A scholar tries to learn something everyday; a student of Buddhism tries to unlearn something daily.
Alan W. Watts

Thanks for that. You're a real scholar. I remember reading about the great Buddhist scholar, Daisetz Suzuki, giving a seminar on Buddhism, when somebody in the audience pops up and asks him what the four noble truths of Buddhism were. This is the most basic Buddhism. He replied that he didn't remember, but that it could be looked up in any Buddhist text.

"If we cling to belief in God, we cannot likewise have faith, since faith is not clinging but letting go."
Alan W. Watts, "The Wisdom of Insecurity: A Message for an Age of Anxiety"

"I find that the sensation of myself as an ego inside a bag of skin is really a hallucination."
Alan W. Watts