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Sun 22 Apr, 2007 07:51 am
Does Christianity need rituals in culture to survive?
Christianity made if fine through Roman persecution, it made it fine through the dark ages where people could not even read and write...
What makes people doubt in Christianity's ability to weather the modern age?
Maybe rituals fall out of fashion because they no longer represent true Christianity?
The only great Christian ritual really is prayer. One need not make a public show of the fact that they are praying to God.
Miracles and healing do often require some sort of interaction with others.
Even prayer is often self serving...
Christianity needs to be taught and believed by example.
Re: Rituals and Culture
RexRed wrote:Does Christianity need rituals in culture to survive?
Yes, and Christianity needs to adapt to each culture to survive, which it does.
How ironic that Darwinian logic should so accuractly describe the evolution of religion.
Religion and ritual are inextricable. Ritual reifies both "the word magic" of religion and the "permanance" of "the divine" relative to the secular flux.
Yes, religion does seem to require ritual but does truth require ritual or does truth simply require faith?
"Truth" requires consensus which is aided and abetted by ritual.
fresco wrote:"Truth" requires consensus which is aided and abetted by ritual.
Truth only needs consensus from a human perspective but from an all knowing God's perspective truth needs only to be believed.
Quote:Truth only needs consensus from a human perspective but from an all knowing God's perspective truth needs only to be believed.
Sorry that's word salad....the "human perspective" is the ONLY perspective
you know !
1. Truth does not require consensus, or even belief. Truth has no need for any acceptance what so ever, but stands alone by itself. Unanimity of belief and consensus that the world is flat and the center of the universe just doesn't make it so.
Whether the Abrahamic religion's insistence of a universe created and dominated by a single omnipotent/omniscient/onnipresent god is True or not, it is irrelevant to whether any or all of humanity accept, believe or concur in it.
2. Religion doesn't require ritual, but humans do. Sports heroes are a nice example when they insist on wearing a lucky item of clothing, or have to spit, scratch and thumb their noses at the pitcher before taking their turn at bat. The business executive has a ritual for beginning each day's work, and that first cup of coffee is an important ritual for millions. Tossing an offering of salt over the shoulder probably "wastes" tons of salt every month, and normal activity would grind to a halt deprived of ritual preparation.
However, it is true that most religions recognize and cater to the human need for rituals symbolizing core beliefs. Rituals enhance our need to memorialize the passage of important phases in human life; marriage, birth, membership in the culture's religious establishment, retirement and death. Manipulation of church/temple stagecraft with incense, religious attire, solemn chanting, bowing, recitation of dogma, and lighting all are calculated to foster in the worshiper a feeling of awe and a special relationship to the Ineffable. Individuals want desperately for there to be something larger, grander and of greater significance than the prosaic world they live in every hour of their lives. Ritual and religion both do a fine job of supplying that demand.
Asherman,
A couple of rhetorical questions.
Consider your attitude to "the earth" on a daily basis of getting from A to B. Does "the curvature of the earth" come into it ? Similarly, does the heliocentric solar system enter your thoughts when watching the sun "rise" or "set" ? And what about Einsteins "truth" that the reason a projectile follows a particular path is not "gravity" but that "space is curved".
My point is that "truth" does NOT stand alone. Its perception depends on the human function it serves in giving confidence to our relationships with the world. What I am saying is that the "shape" of the earth is relative to humans as perceivers for particular purposes. Chemists may talk about the "probabalistic shape" of molecules (which they will never see) because such a "truth" is embedded in theoretical network in which "shape" has significance. In short "truth" is contingent, never absolute.
The way in which X-million assorted teenagers are settled into suburban and quasi-subrurban living patterns is highly ritualised. As are the suburban and quasi-suburban living patterns.
fresco is quite correct. Ritual, religion and living patterns are so inextricably connected that they are almost synonyms.
Anyone who wishes to change any of them wishes to change them all. Forgetting that is like forgetting you're on a steep and twisting mountain road when you want to see how fast this baby will go.
fresco wrote:Quote:Truth only needs consensus from a human perspective but from an all knowing God's perspective truth needs only to be believed.
Sorry that's word salad....the "human perspective" is the ONLY perspective
you know !
The whole premise of the holy spirit is another perspective and nature aside from our five senses.
RexRed,
I am not unfamiliar with ineffable experiences via meditation. Such states for me (and many others) are the antithesis of the existence of any "divine entity". Your "premise" therefore lacks the consensus required to move it beyond the realms of conjecture.
fresco wrote:RexRed,
I am not unfamiliar with ineffable experiences via meditation. Such states for me (and many others) are the antithesis of the existence of any "divine entity". Your "premise" therefore lacks the consensus required to move it beyond the realms of conjecture.
The whole point is moving beyond the reality of the physical. By nature your observation is limited because it is based solely on the five senses.
Fresco,
When one uses a physical apparatus to acquire truth (i.e. the mind and the five senses) one will receive natural results. When one use a spiritual apparatus to obtain truth they will receive spiritual results. In other words the end result will be conflicting and opposed. One truth will try to vie for the authority of the other. Yet it is the spiritual truth that is eternal and the physical truth that is temporal.
Asherman wrote:1. Truth does not require consensus, or even belief. Truth has no need for any acceptance what so ever, but stands alone by itself. Unanimity of belief and consensus that the world is flat and the center of the universe just doesn't make it so.
Whether the Abrahamic religion's insistence of a universe created and dominated by a single omnipotent/omniscient/onnipresent god is True or not, it is irrelevant to whether any or all of humanity accept, believe or concur in it.
2. Religion doesn't require ritual, but humans do. Sports heroes are a nice example when they insist on wearing a lucky item of clothing, or have to spit, scratch and thumb their noses at the pitcher before taking their turn at bat. The business executive has a ritual for beginning each day's work, and that first cup of coffee is an important ritual for millions. Tossing an offering of salt over the shoulder probably "wastes" tons of salt every month, and normal activity would grind to a halt deprived of ritual preparation.
However, it is true that most religions recognize and cater to the human need for rituals symbolizing core beliefs. Rituals enhance our need to memorialize the passage of important phases in human life; marriage, birth, membership in the culture's religious establishment, retirement and death. Manipulation of church/temple stagecraft with incense, religious attire, solemn chanting, bowing, recitation of dogma, and lighting all are calculated to foster in the worshiper a feeling of awe and a special relationship to the Ineffable. Individuals want desperately for there to be something larger, grander and of greater significance than the prosaic world they live in every hour of their lives. Ritual and religion both do a fine job of supplying that demand.
Very nicely written Asherman, I may add truth does not require consensus or belief but God desires it...
(that is, God desires that we know and believe the truth).
What human ritual gives God the greatest glory?
Are we allowed to answer that?
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