Religion still affects your life whether you believe or not

I would like to ask a question of the "religiously persuaded" participating on this thread: (and welcome comments from "nonbelievers")

What is more important to you, that a person is willing to look at, and be part of a serious discussion of what needs to be done in this world to make it a better place for everyone;
or,
that this person does not believe the specific series of (to you) important religious criteria that your religion claims are needed for "salvation"?

Should we not be discussing the salvation (small "s") of the planet and all its inhabitants; and be damned to the "Salvation" (theoretical at best) of the individual.

Terry,
Thanks, I'll need it.

Kuvasz
I have PO'd a few scientific types just asking "how" also.
Religion may have more than it's share of true believers but rest assured, it has no monopoly on them.

Gurdjieff's postulation and that of Philip Wylie's interpretation of the teachings of Jesus on inner truth, viz.,

"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."

dovetails with what Thomas Merton said with his remarks that :

"We find God in our own being which is the mirror of God."

"God's presence is present in my own presence. If I am, then God is. And in knowing that I am, if I penetrate to the depths of my own existence and my own present reality, the indefinable am that is myself in its deepest roots, then through this deep center I pass into the infinite I am which is the very Name of the Almighty.

"My knowledge of myself in silence (not by reflection on my self, but by penetration to the mystery of my true self which is beyond words and concepts because it is utterly particular) opens out into the silence and the subjectivity of God's own self."

If one accepts that expanded self-knowlege at its outer limits IS the knower realizing he is the known, self for Self, then we arrive back at the statment I made at our first aquaintence over two years ago, viz.,

"This self-awareness sees within and beyond itself, this act of perception is the actuality of the knowing as part of the known. This translates to the transcendent perceiving in time and space the actuality of a singularity, Itself, or the Ground of Being...or tut tvam asi.

Here one finds the under-pinning of THE symbol in traditional western religious philosophy, The Blessed Trinity.

The Blessed Trinity consists of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The Father is symbolic of or the personification of the Ultimate Divine. For the Father to be known there must be a Knower, God can only be known by God, therefore the second Person of the Blessed Trinity is the Knower, the Son. When there is a knower and known there is a relationship between the two, and this is the Holy Spirit....with my viewpoint that at the boundary of self/Self one recognizes that we are all personifications of the Christ, the presence in time and space of a realized knowlege of the Ground of Being.......the ultimate Self itself.

If one looks to the ancient holy language of Sanskrit, there are similar features there as in the Blessed Trinity, viz., as sat-chit-ananda, where sat means being, chit means consciousness, and ananda is rapture or bliss, and you have the same relationship.

So it is not simply a western idea, but appears to be a universal one.

yeap, i do understand what you are saying, and i have found it too. yet, scientists rely on looking at "the truth" as at best an approximation, while religious dogma dictates no approximation (heterodoxy).

when one asks of a scientist "How?" a scientist reaches for his/her slide rule and tape measure to attempt to show "How." when a religious fanatic is asked the same question, he/she reaches for their religious text for an explanation. the former attempt can be debated upon the results of the calculation and measurement, but one can not go against the revealed Word of God as in the latter case.

religion
I've come to this interesting thread too late to comment with relevance. I'll have to read the forgoing before making the attempt. But I would like to comment on issues way back on page 1 and 2. RELIGION is both a societal as well as personal phenomenon, of interest to both sociologists and psychologists. No need for an either-or decision here. Also I believe we can distinguish between religious Jews (who can include African Blacks, Chinese, anything) and ethnic Jews (the latter can be agnostics, atheists or theists: I have known all three types). And ETHNICITY is the result of boundary genesis and maintenance efforts on the part of a "collectivity" of people who want to see themselves and/or be seen by others as a "group", a corporate entity based on common origins, "race", religion, language, etc. (or any combination of them). RACE is a biological term, having no credibility now in the scientific (anthropological) community. But ethnicity, given its realitly as a social phenomenon is all too real. It is the basis of collective pride and intergroup discrimination and persecution.

kuvasz

G's "law of three".. Christian Trinity...the three gunas...Hegelian "thesis antithesis synthesis"...

...but as Ouspensky remarked "There's no intellectual slumming here !"

Religion makes classes, majorities minorities, deaths, wars, civilizations, and all sorts of great things like that in which I blame my neuroticism.

Yes it affects me, that's like asking if air affects my breathing! YabbaDabbaDooooooooo

truth
NNY, please see my response to you on the Art Quotes thread.

Bo, it is my opinion that if we humans were to focus our attention at the (small "s") salvation of the planet and its inhabitants -- rather than on showing love, adoration, awe, and deference to the various gods that currently are popular -- the world would be a very, very much nicer place.

I hope that is what you were asking about.

truth
Frank, I'm quite certain that's what BGW means. If not I'll be SO disappointed. By the way, those who would ignore the salvation of the planet because of their theological distraction are what I would call negative nihilists.