Religion still affects your life whether you believe or not

You will note that the most important beautiful and moving events on our society (and others) are all based around religion.

I have witnessed the power and beauty that religion can add to a culture on several occasions.

Recently I attended the funeral services of the husband of a good friend my wife. As part of the time of mourning there were seven days of religious services. These services consisted of religious songs and prayers that had deep cultural significance.

These services were deeply rooted in community. The house was full every evening of people who joined in the prayers and supported the family. The prayers directly asked for God's Salvation. This was deeply comforting to the family and showed the very real support of a community with deep roots and beliefs.

I was very moved and impressed by the outpouring of love and compassion which is directly motivated and articulated by religious doctrine.

I attended a Quaker Meeting (service) for a while. The meetings are centered around silent prayer and meditation. The people are eeply moved by their common beliefs to social action. They are motivated by their faith to be at the forefront of the antiwar movement, civil rights and the fight against poverty.

There is no question that their shared faith and the strength of their community motivates them to act on what they believe.

I am an agnostic. I still had many religious symbols and words in my wedding. The words of the apostle Paul who said "Love is Patient, Love is kind" are not only incredibly beautiful and powerful, they are a part of my culture. There were many other religious symbols to mark this event which to me transcended everyday live. I can't imagine being married without rings symbolizing eternity and candles symbolizing the light, truth and love.

Finally there is no doubt at the role that religion had for the majority of Americans followin 9/11. There were calls for compassion, forgiveness and perseverence that were very positive and expressed in religious language and deeply rooted in the shared religious understanding.

When the families of the victims were told "Our Prayers are with you", this represented an outpouring of goodwill and sympathy that would be hard to communicate any other way. These words are a part of our shared cultural heritage.

This is the power and beauty of the best of religion.

ebrown_p

Well said!

Religion seems to have many positive attributes at the micro-level but what may be benign at this level may be pernicious at the macro-level.

Also casual observers or guests at some ceremonies tend to observe with rose coloured spectacles. The Jewish seven days of mourning for example is often curtailed by a multitude of sub-clauses (often to the relief of the mourners), and if your name happens to be Cohen you are technically excluded from the graveside, whatever your relationship with the deceased.

No doubt "Our Prayers are with You" gave support to some of the mourners at 9/11 but the same phrase is used when we see our troops off to battle to fight for our culturally defined "just cause"...and that surely is the problem.

Religion helped the Jews to retain their identity and not to get assimilated during bimillennial exile. But it should not be confused with ethnicity.

Steissd, Please elaborate...

The Jewish religion was developed by an specific ethnic group as part of their distinct culture. The religion is primarily passed on by family. This family link is a very important part of the Jewish doctrine.

Generally, religion is without question a integral part of culture. I suppose you can separate ethnicity from culture, but what is your point? Most people accept a good deal of the culture (and religion) of their family.

I don't think for any practical purposes religion can be seen as detached from ethnicity. They are not the same thing, but they are very closely related.

ethnicity-Semite=A member of a group of Semitic-speaking peoples of the Near East and northern Africa, including the Arabs, Arameans, Babylonians, Carthaginians, Ethiopians, Hebrews, and Phoenicians.

Re: Religion still affects your life whether you believe or


What is "religion?" Is it "truth?" Is it, as Fresco seems to indicate by his statements, a social construct, or is it possible that there is something apart from any social construct, innate and individual to each of us?

Jungians would most likely call this a feature of the collective unconscious, but that may be because to have any semblance of communicating it, viz., Truth, one would have to necessarily use the filtering effect and social construct of language, or at least when metaphors are employed, common experience. This would cause a dunning down and homogenization to a collective truth and would become insignificant to any other person not having first hand experience of it.

It would be wise to consider the revelations of those great teachers through history who tried to teach us to find the truth in ourselves, and not "out there." This is apparent in the teachings of the Buddha, Jesus, and more recently Krishnamurti. And the problem with religions is that the Truth they describe and preach is not applicable to individuals who have not experienced the revelation.

It is an interesting question, of which discussion is made more fruitful if one attempts to examine both "religion" and "spirituality."

The former term might be likened to a building structure in which the latter term can occur. The former term sets the framework for what is perceived by our senses and relates our sensations to our sentience. This framework is set by the observations of the sensate world and the symbolism and metaphors employed to make life, sentience itself bearable and informative to the "self."

The latter term describes the process of this relationship of sentience to the wonder of the universe.

The words of Joseph Campbell speak of myth, but they apply as well to the term we call "religion."

"The first function of a mythology is to reconcile waking consciousness to the mysterium tremendum et fascinans of this universe as it is: the second being to render an interpretive total image of the same, as known to contemporary consciousness. Shakespeare's definition of the function of his art, " to hold, as ?'twere, the mirror up to nature," is thus equally a definition of mythology. It is the revelation to waking consciousness of the powers of its own sustaining source. A third function is the enforcement of a moral order: the shaping of the individual to the requirements of his/her geographically and historically conditioned social group. The fourth, and most vital function is to foster the centering and unfolding of the individual in integrity, in accord with d) him/herself (the microcosm), c) his/her culture (the mesocosm), b) the universe (the macrocosm), and a) that awesome ultimate mystery which is both beyond and within ourselves and all things."

The term religion, from - "religio," to "link back" has many meanings, one for Christians has as its core a profound sense of community under the Church while professing the Christ, for others, such as myself, we recognize it is a culturally induced subjective view of the universe which allows one the tools for an inward attempt to touch the divine, one not external, nor in need of the objective reality i.e., "facts of history" or dogma so pronounced by fundamentalists of most ilks.

Just as religious followers are like the proverbial blind men touching an elephant in different places, so too is an analysis of religion that places its interpersonal features (macro) before its personal purposes (micro) and value in the life of a religious follower.

Too many are looking at religion as if it were stormy weather, while forgetting it is made from clouds.

kuvasz

Good points as always, but don't you think "personal spirituality" is a long way from the excesses of "organized religion" ? Your own spirituality for example (and possibly my own athistic version) tends to gravitate towards transcendence of "the self" in "cosmic time" thereby making ephemeral group membership something of a curiosity? ( =The likely outcome of Conrad's No.4) Now it may be the case that if we have the economic means to assume the vantage point of observers, or the willpower to adopt a monastic existence, then we can remain relatively unaffected by social strife, but perhaps we have a responsibility to use our intellects to intervene.

Yeah, I do, especially as to your "..... don't you think "personal spirituality" is a long way from the excesses of "organized religion"

But they are two sides of the same coin, and we can't have one without the other nor life without death either. It's that duality ?'thang' of living in this universe of space and time, doncha' see?

We have both minds and bodies. When I look at "religion" I see the body, the church, and the physical aspects of the inflection of a community of spirit. Whether this is or is not a twisted inflection of the spirit is beyond me at times.

When a religion is working in its truest sense on an individual, this person is using the instruments of cultural symbolism, metaphorical significance, and mental location to affect in them a spiritual state that satisfies their deepest needs as sentient beings. And I recognize clearly the historical fact that at all times in human history there appears a manifestation of one's spirituality which has dictated them to attempt to influence their surroundings, and we can immediately arrive at examples of holy wars and death in life's name.

(as I write this I am watching the film Bloody Sunday.)

All I can say is that integrity is a key.…….and our buddy edgarblythe would like this, since it synopsizes of one of our mutually favorite writers, Phillip Wylie.


"The one, great positive message Jesus repeatedly tried to express was the thought that no individual could know himself unless his inner honesty was complete. The peace he talked about was of an inner peace.

"The way to it was through truth and through the abandonment of preoccupation with temporal matters, with worldly goods, with trade and gain. While he did not overlook the necessity of objective living, he admonished against considering a life oriented wholly outward to matter as a satisfying life.

"The light he to which he so often made reference was the light of truth, inner truth.

Thomas II: 20. Saying (3) "Jesus said, ?' If those who lead you say to you, "See, the kingdom is in the sky, then the birds of the sky will precede you. If they say to you, ?'It is in the sea, then the fish will precede you.' Rather, the Kingdom is inside of you and it is outside of you. When you come to know yourselves, then you will become known and you will realize that it is you who are the sons of the living father."

"No man, according to him, could know himself unless he knew all the inferior and negative aspects of himself. A man who did not know himself could not in anyway trust what he thought about other men or the world.

"This is the first obviously essential step of self-knowledge (Gnosis) leads to further developments of wisdom and understanding which could be followed to the outermost capacity of each individual and which in the case of most deeply reasoning, honest and imaginative individuals would lead to a transcendental experience.

"His premise was that an individual is able through self-honesty, integrity alone to follow the elements of his subjective nature to their outermost boundaries. There any one would find the boundary infinite and immortal.

"Jesus took the very solid position that unless you know who you are you don't know what you are thinking about and you can only find out who you are by a difficult job of detachment and self appraisal."
Integrity.

And who really knows THE answer?

Perhaps, as Olaf Stapledon suggested in Star Maker, we do live in a Cosmos of immeasurable Universes, and our Universe does have a God.

Perhaps Berkeley was right and the material world is God's dream.

Who amongst us really knows?

Of course, I mean, besides you and me.

Come, he was obviously wrong, his philosophy makes no sense, besides he was a priest & priests are not persons who can actually be trusted(most of them).


Btw, religion does influences everyone who has been raised in society, at least in the beggining of his/her life in at least one way, though I don't know if it is a good thing or a bad thing.

One of the main "grips" on societies that religiosity possesses is its "emotional base", which renders it seductive to the arts, which "are" culture.
Spirituallity caters to emotional disconnection from the intellectual confines of logic, allowing practitioners to engage in emotional flights of fantasy with the active support of the other members of a specific belief system, leading frequently to important cultural achievements, be they particular works of art, or entire schools of cultural endeavour.
Some of the greatest works of art forming various cultural traditions have been both commisisoned, and/or socially encouraged by various organized religious groups.
These works, and this phenomenon however were an offshoot of the nature of the societies within which they were imbedded; that is the social fabric of the time was firmly interwoven with the tenets, and the actual hierarchy of the current religious establishment which served largely to govern the daily lives of its adherents (usually constituted by everyone living within the jurisdiction or "reach" of the "church").
This, you will notice, is no longer the case within the secular societies of today. Whereas popular culture frequently uses religious inuendo within its unsophisticated message, subliminal or otherwise, serious artistic endeavour has dissociated from dependence upon religious subject matter, patronage, and even approval, and engages much more frequently close to the boundaries of intellect and reality in choice of muse, or association.

prove it.

IMHO Berkely is wrong by "importance", and his cohorts have been providing documentable evidence for millenia!

Good grief. In your's and dux's attempts to reduce mind to matter, you seem to demand necessarily that the fundamental stuff of existence is matter, not mind. Berkeley moved in the opposite direction, as did Kant and Hegel.

Suppose one could provide detailed explanations of the behavior and constitution of matter, explanations grounded in theoretical assumptions about the constitution of the mind (ours or perhaps God's).

Then Idealism and phenomenology would begin to appear plausible.

No explanations of this type have been given, and explanations in the other direction, of a variety of mental phenomena in terms of physical phenomena are far more substantial. One sees this across the fields of evolutionary theory, AI, and neuroscience.

However, with Kant in his Critique of Pure Reason, its clear he was thinking of human experience of the material world in large measure as constructed by the activity of the mind, where material objects in our constructed experience may be empirically real (real for all human experience) but need not be transcendentally real (from a possible God's vantage).

Yet he also allowed that the world of inner self, the world of sensations and thoughts and emotions was also a constructed world. So, the mind's access to itself is equally mediated by its own structural and conceptual contributions, i.e., it has access to itself only through its own self representations, and although empirically real, the mind need not be transcendentally real any more than matter need be.

Even with the aforementioned advances of scientific realism I have to side with Kant that things as they are in themselves, being independent of human perception and conceptualization, are unknowable by humans.

Based upon human capabilities, there is no possible conceptualization for a limitless God, such a conception is without conceivability and lacking one, I don't think humans can dismiss the possibility for a God simply by measuring atoms, because we will never know.

Can evolutionary theory, AI, and neuroscience explain mechanically how consciousness arised from non-consciousness, can they show how one leaps from non-sentience to sentience?.......(lieutenant commander data aside), and even if this is conceivable, can this theoretical model, of the leap from matter to sentience be used to predict further, even higher planes of sentience? could it be that on higher planes of sentience, answers can be found that are to us unknowable, that those things Kant refers to as things as they are in themselves become knowable? That God becomes knowable?

And I prefer Stapledon's ideas before Berkeley's too. And would much rather discuss what Stapledon has to say.

EdgarB:



I've never felt that Rabbis have meddled with my life. I appreciate their instructions and I always will.

Steady now guys.

Discussions of consciousness are interesting but not particularly relevent to the issue I raised which I take to be a pragmatic question of how we deal with the tribal aspects of organized religion. Simplistically for example each of us now faces delays at airports and a taxation burden to support military action because of someone elses interpretation of their religion. This type of situation is common throughout history - and bubbles under the surface in many locations today -Northern Ireland, India, Palestine, Parts of Africa, Iraq. Kosovo...etc, etc. ...and what do we about it ?...we call for each side to respect the other ! ...and each side lays claim to "the truth"!

So this talk of Berkeley et al is like the scene from the British comedy film "Carry On up the Khyber" where the British Governer is hosting a genteel dinner party with plaster falling from the ceiling due to rioting natives outside!

Fresco,

Religion is *not* at the core of the current conflicts, including the terrorist attacks, the conflicts you have mentioned or the war on terrorism.

These are *ethnic* conflicts with roots in economics. Religious language is only use to justify or inspire actions within a cultural context.

There has never been a religious conflict. Religion can be used to unify or inspire a society to action. This can be used in service of both good causes and bad ones.

People fight over things that effect their lives and the lives of their families. They fight for land and resources and a sense of justice. Religious differences are exploited in the course of many conflicts. They are never a root cause.

agreed brownie.

people who are fat and happy rarely go on jihad.

the ugliness of actions of religious followers rarely stem from a direct teaching of the founders of these religions. the basic messages of these founders usually are corrupted by corporeal vanities, like a rock (like Paul) in a still lake with the resultant fanatical ripples.

condemn the rocks and ripples all one wishes for the havoc they play on the world, but condemn religion itself for the violence of its interpreters?

we can admonish zealots as those who have gotten out of their religion only its dogma and not its karma, but how can one declare adequately how another's karma is dogma instead?

does one use history, dinosaur bones, quantum mechanics to do this, or are the tools of reason and logic insufficient?

to me they appear to be. i can't think of a religious fanatic who changed his mind because someone used logic on them. the very nature of their fanaticism is based on non-logical assumptions.

i guess, logically, all we can do is kill them before they kill us.

Yeah, that's the ticket. do a christian a favor, kill him as a martyr so he immediately gets into heaven. i am sure once he gets to the pearly gates, he would thank you, logically speaking, of course.

"There has never been a religious conflict." !!

Ever heared of the Crusades ? ...the segregation of Moslems and Hindus into Pakistan and India...Protestants versus Catholics in
Northern Ireland ?....Lebanese Christian Militia siding with Israelis against Moslems ?

These terms we use like "culture" and "ethnicity" go hand in hand with "religion" in defining group boundaries except for one quality already indicated by kuvasz - that of "moral right" (not "morality" per se which I believe to be a matter of social expediency between individuals within groups). The essence of "moral right" is that "God is on our side" and this takes priority over "individual rights" especially "right to life" with the superior offer of "celestial existence" available. As such "religion" may be thought of as a predisposing factor if not a precipitating factor in a conflict.

Now I agree with kuvasz that "the great teachings" were never partisan in essence but the teachers themselves often were !
Jesus, for example, is most likely to have been predominantly a political agitator against the Roman occupation who deliberately chose the Passover with its liberationist fervour as a good time to make his move, and Pontius Pilate, being no fool, was waiting for him.

As for Religion being enlisted as a force for "good" rather than "evil" it is debateable whether the concept of a "charitable act" at the group level is an anthropomorphic fantasy, based on psychological dealings at an individual level. We only have to look at the detractors arguments on the "liberation" of Iraq for an example of such a debate.

Some say that the key teaching in all religion is "love thy neighbour as thyself". Perhaps this is contrary to our basic evolutionary instincts.

Thanks fresco,

The crusades are a perfect example of my point. The crusades utilized religious language, but they were certainly not a religious war.

It is clear from history that this was a conflict between two empires over economics and power.

Many of the sponsors of the crusades had no religious interests. The Crusades allowed those in power in Europe to stay in power. It temporarily addressed the problems of a failing Feudal system.

My point is that the religous language was simply used to persuade and inspire people to fight together in a society. The crusades were about money, power and land, not about religion.
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The "protestants" and "catholics" in Ireland don't even use religious rhetoric in their conflict. These are clearly ethnic distinctions. Religious leaders of both parties, including the Pope himself, are calling for peace. The IRA has always been a political movement.

I must admit I don't know very much about the conflict in India and Pakistan, but I am confident it is the same. An ethnic conflict couched in religious terms. I don't believe that Cashmere holds any religious significance for Hindus or Moslems. It certainly holds great economic importance.

In short, I stand by my thesis.

There never has been a religious conflict.

Every conflict is economic or political. The religious rhetoric is simply in service of political goals.

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As far a religion being enlisted as a force for good I need only to point to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. His use of religious rhetoric very effective mobilized people to change our society.

King explicitly said his goal was to "serve God" and used many Biblical references.

I think this is clearly an example of religion being used powerfully for good a good cause.

Once again, ebrown, I must call your attention to the fact that you are overstating your case -- and I dare say, by a whole bunch.

If you had said "You will note that many important, beautiful, and moving events of our society (and others) are based around religion" -- I would have agreed.

But so what!

If you had been coming from a different perspective and wrote: You will not that many of the most disgusting, vulgar, barbaric events in human history have been based around religion" -- I would have agreed also.