Religion: What it means to you

I think I need to point out that there are people out there, guys with degrees on the topic and stuff, who are of the opinion that the hebrew god has all the trappings of a tribal earth god who walked among and fought for his people in a time before time etc and so forth. So saying that it was always heretical for people claim God was tied to anything physical is kind of dumb.

Also, why can't you let him enjoy his epiphany for awhile before you go stomping and shitting all over it with your own half-conceived abortions of an historical interpretation of religion.

Oh yeah, as for me I'm basically with wvlf. You know, once you appreciate the emptiness of everything, you're free to enjoy it all, leading down a path to universal harmony and love. <3
Seriously, everything is empty plus a temporally dependent universally perfect world, these two ideas have really improved my outlook. In that sense I guess I'm a devout believer in something, without actually practicing anything <.<;

Jam it back in, in the dark.

It occurs to me recently. I believe that I believe that religion, in general, exists in order that man should transcend himself. The emotional archetypes we see represented in our gods and goddesses, we grow to embody them with worship. In this sense, we can tap into resources that would otherwise be beyond our reach. There is power there. It is a wondrous thing.

Perhaps I might even venture that the christian god makes things difficult in this fashion, attempting to embody too many conflicting archetypes.

There's nowhere I can't reach.

JackyBoy,

Why the emphasis on religion as purely a moral rule? If you consider the increased quality of life that so many people enjoy do to a strong religious foundation, it hardly seems as superfluous as you make it out to be. Similarly, a parent does not solely exist to teach children what they are and are not allowed. There is the entire development of self to consider.

Granted, one might argue that people could become just as actualized through a secular approach, but why shut out one approach in favor of another when both suffer from the same short-comings?

You worry about irrational fundamentalism and I agree completely with that. However, I don't think the proper way to address it is to reject the superset of religion itself.

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

Originally Posted by agreatguy6

I don't try to find depth in them unless they're typed on a page and the author is absent.

I thought this was funny, because it sounded like you were trying to say that interpretation is a foolish exercise...except in a specific set of circumstances into which the bible falls.

RR, in order to search for free will, don't we need to define it first? I don't know that that's been done. Also not sure how you'd test it. I mean, if you come up with a mapping saying that people with this combination of chemistry and this class of background will do A. Then you test that against a sufficiently large sample and find out that a statistically significant sample actually does B, all that shows is that your mapping may be incorrect.

It seems at its essence that absolute free will would mean choices outside of any criteria, or beyond reason.

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?