A life without religion.

A life without religion is like a fish without a bicycle.

A life without religion is like breathing in air not tainted by sulfer.

Recently came across this quote from Henry David Thoreau:

"For most of mankind, religion is a tradition, or more precisely, tradition is religion. The first step to moral perfection -- as strange as it may seem -- is to liberate yourself from the religion you grew up with. As far as I know, no one has come to spiritual development along any other path than this."

Moral perfection's still a LONG way off for me but I agree you have to make a conscious decision about what path to take in life and not just follow along the road set out for you by family etc. I no longer adhere to a particular religion but can still be moved by religious art, music and architecture. Maybe those feelings were imprinted in childhood and stayed with me even after I rejected the theology. Since my early experiences with religion weren't negative I think I'll always have an emotional reaction to much religious imagery. Old familiar hymns can almost make me cry.

I didn't mention muslim fundamentalism, going on as I was on my own dialog, arguments, rejection, and now forgetfulness, of my own long ago religion. But yes, fundamentalism of all sorts bothers me. I hesitate, somewhat, to mention muslim, since the offending segments of that religion are so obvious to me as frightening in the energy for sparking youth to hate. I am not so sure we are so behind that in the US, though. Youth unengaged in their own progressing lives can be caught up in hate wars, whatever the context. Well, we all can be.

I don't know that many muslims, but I don't think - heh, fundamentally - that they are different humans from the rest of us. I've read a couple of books, Reading Lolita in Tehran, and some police procedural called Moghul Buffet, I think) that gave me a glimmer of the complexity in Tehran and Pakistan. Mere soupcons, I really know nothing and admit it.

Past fundamentalism in general, whom I might be really afraid of is men and women in power in the sway of power. As it ever shall be, east or west, north or south.

T'ai chi...

Ah.

I cried in anger at Guadalupe in Mexico City in 1967.

I cried in the piazza in front of St. Peter's in Rome in 1988 - I was there, finally, I loved Bernini's ellipse, I had all this history with the Catholic Church (let me not get started on that), and I had my period, which turned out to be abnormal, but ne'er mind. Let's just say I wept suddenly when I walked in that space. Spaces are powerful. And so is architecture. So is music. So is the sky. So are periods.

These may all have preceded religion.

But the combo, powie!!! and zounds!!!

That church I walked into with the high mass was Santa Maria di Sopra Minerva, in Rome, one of those churches built over/near an ancient temple, here for Isis. I'd been there before and liked the jewel-like quality of the church, and was interested in its history... but to quibble, not my favorite church in Rome for jewel-like architecture, by a long shot. That next time that I wandered in (it is around the corner from the Pantheon, which means more to me and I visit whenever I am anywhere nearby) there was a full blown high mass going on. I think I did tear. But from cranked up emotion, not belief.
The wracking of the organ... and so on.

Nice to have ice cream so close by.

Well, it looks like the religious types are losing out here, so I thought I'd post and even things up a little.

My father was very much an agnostic, my mother was a devout Catholic. So I got more than a little taste of both viewpoints.

I was raised Catholic, going to church and Sunday school every Sunday, taking communion, making my confirmation, going to confession, etc.

Then, when I was a teenager, I decided I didn't buy it anymore. So, for the next several years, I did the agnostic thing.

Eventually, I decided, once and for all, that I preferred having my religious belief in my life. So I came back to it, and don't plan on leaving it again. So there! :wink:

The good news is I've discovered, for the most part, both religious and non-religious people pretty much have a "live and let live" attitude about it.

At any rate, (singing) "I've looked at life from both sides now...."

Me too in opposite ways, stray cat.

Re religious prople losing out here, on a2k there are a lot of religous people. This particular question was originally aimed to answer material girl's question about life without religion, and a bunch of us who live that have answered.

S'alright! :wink:

I'm not religious. And I don't believe in a God. However, in times of distress, I pray - I'm not sure to what. Also, I am (somewhat) involved in the cultural aspect of religion - I participate in festivals (at least in the cooking and eating)...just engage in the festivities, that's it.

What are referred to here as cultural aspects of religion--art, architecture, music--do not to me automatically equate with religious fervor. The Requiem of Mozart is almost his most powerful piece of tragic music--but i'd give that title, the most powerful tragic music he wrote, to Maurerer trauermusik--Masonic Funeral Music. What i am getting at, is that religion does not necessarily beget the best efforts of an artist (nor the worst, either), and religion can often easily be separated from the artistic endeavor. The cathedrals of Europe are marvelous architectural accomplishments, especially in light of the technology available to the builders. But it was not religion that built them--religious orders, dipping into their ill-gotten gains, paid for them, but masons and ordinary laborers built them--and designed them, in fact. An abbot can say he wants the tallest transept in Europe, and wants the cathedral walls to carry huge stained glass windows--but it is not a divine who will do the designing necessary to accomplish that end. The answer of the perfervid religionist would be that their "god" gives the mason the talent to accomplish the design, and to organize and supervise the work. That contention, however, rests on no better foundation than the contention that such a god exists at all.

I have no trouble separating art from the religion which is merely a trapping of its production.

Setanta- I agree with you. I do believe though that religious fervor may very well be the catalyst which impels authors, artists and composers to produce some of their best works. But that fervor is created within the psychology of the creator of the work...................and not from any supposed deity.

I'm not always even certain, Phoenix, that personal religious fervor is a motivating factor. Especially in architecture, where a high degree of applied pragmatism is necessary. In the case of Mozart or Haydn, Catholicism could be alleged, and i have no reason to suppose they were not at least ordinarily devout--but the religion didn't make them better (or worse) than a Bach, who professed a Protestant religion, and worked for a Protestant master.

You may be right, to a degree. I think that, as you put it, "applied pragmatism" is a driving force in the creative world today, as in the past. Creators create what people buy. They do not create in a vacuum of their own making. But I do think that the people who created these masterpieces, whether in music, art, or architecture had to put quite a bit of themselves into their works.

Yes, and that might well have included religious fervor.

Setanta- I am a classical music afficinado. One of the things that I like to do is figure out who is the composer of some obscure work that I am listening to on the radio. More often than not, I am correct.

I think that there is a reason for my ability to do this. Every author, artist, or composer has a personal "fingerprint" that he puts on each and every one of his works, even though they may be superficially different. This "fingerprint" emanates from the individual's own personal psychology.

If a person is familiar with a composer's style, his manner of phrasing, his use of orchestral color, etc., he begins to see a pattern that flows all through his works. Therefore a person who is quite familiar with a composer's work will be able to recognize a work that he has never heard before.

I think that the same phenomenon is true for artists, architechts and other persons involved in the creative arts.

I know I said this earlier -

"I am separate from the emotions of all that religious feeling the music and architecture is considered about in intent - I am free now to appreciate architecture, art, and music without having my mind bound by that religious intent."

but I understood as I wrote that that the building of structures and the composing and the painting are complex undertakings that can often have little relation to religious fervor for those doing them.

I was angry in the first few years after I left my own religion, angry and resentful of what I felt was oppressive inculcation of dogma and rules on my own mind ("we know you have a vocation, dear"), and angry about what I was growing to understand about the negative effects of that religion on millions. So during that period the last place I would go into, ordinarily, would be a catholic church. As I said before, when I was at Guadalupe in Mexico City - on a vacation with others - I felt rage. I think I did go in, hard to remember now, but just stood in the back and looked around.

All these years later, I'm over that personally associative repulsion.

Life without religion is like word processing without spell check.

That's so bunk though, Neo. My "spellcheck" is overactive but it's never been informed by religion.

A far fetched analogy, I'll confess. But I couldn't help myself.

'K. :-)

(See, my "spellcheck" compels me to be nice to people if they backtrack from saying something really silly... ;-))