What Religion Do You Practice/Not Practice and Why?

[Mole]

Worship and Becoming

I dont think its a perfect analogy but I see what you're saying Alan Moore wrote a great short graphic novel about TV becoming a deity because more people owned and venerated TV and TV shows than practice any religion anymore.

It intrigued me because no one worries about TV anymore but I remember worrying about TV viewing was definitely a thing when I was growing up, there was lots of panic about people not reading so much anymore (Ironically I did read once about reading itself being the cause of moral panics and considered "the solitary vice").

People worry about screen time now but not like there once was a worry about TV.

If we have an impulse to worship, we only have to ask, what are we worshipping now?

The marriage ceremony has the words I thee worship. But perhaps we could ask, where do I choose to spend my time? And the answer may well be what we worship.

But we should issue the warning, Caveat Emptor, for whatever we worship, we become.

So we might say worship is a functioning part of our psyche, part of a creature that is constantly becoming.

 

[Lark]

If we have an impulse to worship, we only have to ask, what are we worshipping now?

The marriage ceremony has the words I thee worship. But perhaps we could ask, where do I choose to spend my time? And the answer may well be what we worship.

But we should issue the warning, Caveat Emptor, for whatever we worship, we become.

So we might say worship is a functioning part of our psyche, part of a creature that is constantly becoming.

I dont think we do become what we worship, its why I think the worship of a non-corporeal God is important and preferable to any worldly cause, ideology or person.

 

[Mole]

I dont think we do become what we worship, its why I think the worship of a non-corporeal God is important and preferable to any worldly cause, ideology or person.

Yes, you are right, discernment is of the highest importance as we become more aware of what we worship.

And as we become more aware of what we worship, we are in the position to consciously choose what we worship.

And I share your view that the worship of a non-corporeal God is preferable to any worldly cause, ideology or person.

However it is also to our advantage if we become aware of our worship of any worldly cause, ideology or person, or indeed, as you suggest, the television.

It is important that our worship becomes conscious and deliberate, so that we marry faith and reason.

We will, though, have to agree to disagree about whether we become what we worship.

For me, becoming what we worship, is a psychological transformation. On a physical level we are discovering more and more about the plasticity of the physical brain, and it seems to me that our psyche is also plastic in the sense we are capable of and do learn.

 

[Yama]

I am None because I don't care. Not agnostic, not an atheist. Just None. Religion bores me.

 

[Coriolis]

I dont think we do become what we worship, its why I think the worship of a non-corporeal God is important and preferable to any worldly cause, ideology or person.

If we did become what we worship, women in western societies would have become men long ago.

 

[Lark]

If we did become what we worship, women in western societies would have become men long ago.

Women worship men?

 

[Coriolis]

Women worship men?

Christianity has portrayed God as male for all intents and purposes. So, both male and female believers have been worshipping something essentially male.

 

[Mole]

If we did become what we worship, women in western societies would have become men long ago.

If we worship by paying attention, then, in that sense, women do worship men. And interestingly, women become men in their psyche as the animus. And of course men do the exact opposite by paying attention to women and worshipping them, they become the anima in their own psyche. We can only communicate with each other because we hold the other gender in our own psyche, as animus and anima. So the opposite gender is as close to us as whiteness is to snow.

And so it is no accident that the marriage vows take the form of, I thee worship, because it is psychologically true.

 

[Mole]

I am None because I don't care. Not agnostic, not an atheist. Just None. Religion bores me.

Boredom, they say, is a sign of repressed anger. And, as you say, you are not agnostic, not atheist, just no religion, and you reveal your feelings by saying, I don't care.

Not caring would suggest a high level of repressed anger at religion, and a high level of repressed anger at God. But being repressed you are not consciously aware of your anger.

The psychological problem is not love or hated but indifference, for indifference is the killer. And as you say, you don't care, you are indifferent. So what or who do you want to kill?

 

[Yama]

Boredom, they say, is a sign of repressed anger. And, as you say, you are not agnostic, not atheist, just no religion, and you reveal your feelings by saying, I don't care.

Not caring would suggest a high level of repressed anger at religion, and a high level of repressed anger at God. But being repressed you are not consciously aware of your anger.

The psychological problem is not love or hated but indifference, for indifference is the killer. And as you say, you don't care, you are indifferent. So what or who do you want to kill?

An interesting interpretation. I suppose you could say that there are times when the concept of religion does make me angry--not so much because of the ideology itself, but because of the people wielding it as a sword and shield to try and force it down others' throats. I can't recall any situation where someone got up close and personal with me and tried to force me to share their beliefs, however, so most of my belief in this regard stems from observation. As a child, my father was not religious, but my mother and grandmother were. However my mother rarely ever took me and my sister to church regularly (dad would never join) because she is quite lazy. I'm actually grateful for this. I don't mind if people want to be religious as long as they keep their religion away from me, but a part of me can't help but feel that religion is, in essence, brainwashing. I feel like I dodged a bullet by not becoming "indoctrinated" at a young age. I wouldn't say that I have a problem with god or even religion itself so much as some of the people practicing that religion and how most parents go about socializing children to believe what they believe and raise them in a religion rather than let the child discover what they believe for themselves.

Perhaps this is where my fascination with autobiographies about women escaping the FLDS comes from.

 

[Mole]

An interesting interpretation. I suppose you could say that there are times when the concept of religion does make me angry--not so much because of the ideology itself, but because of the people wielding it as a sword and shield to try and force it down others' throats. I can't recall any situation where someone got up close and personal with me and tried to force me to share their beliefs, however, so most of my belief in this regard stems from observation. As a child, my father was not religious, but my mother and grandmother were. However my mother rarely ever took me and my sister to church regularly (dad would never join) because she is quite lazy. I'm actually grateful for this. I don't mind if people want to be religious as long as they keep their religion away from me, but a part of me can't help but feel that religion is, in essence, brainwashing. I feel like I dodged a bullet by not becoming "indoctrinated" at a young age. I wouldn't say that I have a problem with god or even religion itself so much as some of the people practicing that religion and how most parents go about socializing children to believe what they believe and raise them in a religion rather than let the child discover what they believe for themselves.

Perhaps this is where my fascination with autobiographies about women escaping the FLDS comes from.

Religion can be very broad and can refer to anything we worship. And we worship all kinds of things, even established religions.

And looking at the history of humanity, it would appear we have in instinct to worship. This would be a result of Natural Selection, and helped us to survive and reproduce.

And your fascination with women escaping the Mormons perhaps illustrates the psychological power of established religions.

Just as here we are fascinated by the psychological power of astrology and mbti.

And we face the same problem as women and the Mormons, and that is, how to escape. How can we escape Mormonism, and how can we escape the much older astrology, and how can we escape the new guy on the block, mbti?

 

[Cygnus]

I do not need religion. I worship my own gods of Logic and Reason. The words of Carl Sagan and Neil Degrasse Tyson are my holy scriptures. I dream of a world where males will no longer be oppressed by the evil fembots, where Doritos and Mountain Dew are our sole source of sustenance, where the only wars will be fought in World of Warcraft instead of over oil and outdated moral values.


Today I make my stand.
Today I spread my enlightenment.

 

[Lark]

Christianity has portrayed God as male for all intents and purposes. So, both male and female believers have been worshipping something essentially male.

I think that's been a historical error which has been dispensed with.

 

[Coriolis]

I think that's been a historical error which has been dispensed with.

How so? As a substitute church organist, I have the chance to see many denominations of Christianity. I have yet to find one that portrays God as other than male. What am I missing?

 

[Lark]

How so? As a substitute church organist, I have the chance to see many denominations of Christianity. I have yet to find one that portrays God as other than male. What am I missing?

In my own experience the RCC does not "portray" God at all, you are hard pushed to find any of the traditional, father, son and the holy ghost iconography, definitely not in any of the modern churches and not for some time even if you go back historically, I visited Rome and Paris and went to the grandest RCC churches I could find and while there are depictions of Jesus, Mary, much more often saints, martyrs and the authors of the gospels, there isnt anything like God. There was one Church in Rome that I remember talking to my dad about iconography which we both suspected had a masonic appearence, it was the all seeing eye in the pyramid sort of thing, similar to that on the US dollar note and similar to that created by the eye between the sexton and the compass in masonry.

The masculine was used to describe God when I was growing up and they did talk about the father, son and the holy ghost but I can honestly say there not a hint of patriarchy about it, unless you consider Don McLain's American Pie to be patriarchal too, or Johnny Cash, and I know there are people who do consider both to be but its not what I'd consider a mainstream audience of people, and I think the world is better for that to be honest.

However, this is something which has been changing, I mean seriously changing, in recent years, when I was in Dublin, which was more than ten years ago, possibly fifthteen years ago the Jesuits, who are one of the main orders within the RCC, had already begun to use prayers and liturgy which were revisionist to remove all references to God as male or anything resembling an anthropomorphising projection what so ever. Its not something I'm on message with personally because I think a lot of what results is ugly and unrefined, insights into how limited language can be are great, also insights into how historically this was about the invisibility of women and the feminine are great too but I'm not sure that the legacy of those insights should be the eradication of the historical record and phrasing.

 

[Coriolis]

In my own experience the RCC does not "portray" God at all, you are hard pushed to find any of the traditional, father, son and the holy ghost iconography, definitely not in any of the modern churches and not for some time even if you go back historically, I visited Rome and Paris and went to the grandest RCC churches I could find and while there are depictions of Jesus, Mary, much more often saints, martyrs and the authors of the gospels, there isnt anything like God. There was one Church in Rome that I remember talking to my dad about iconography which we both suspected had a masonic appearence, it was the all seeing eye in the pyramid sort of thing, similar to that on the US dollar note and similar to that created by the eye between the sexton and the compass in masonry.

The masculine was used to describe God when I was growing up and they did talk about the father, son and the holy ghost but I can honestly say there not a hint of patriarchy about it, unless you consider Don McLain's American Pie to be patriarchal too, or Johnny Cash, and I know there are people who do consider both to be but its not what I'd consider a mainstream audience of people, and I think the world is better for that to be honest.

However, this is something which has been changing, I mean seriously changing, in recent years, when I was in Dublin, which was more than ten years ago, possibly fifthteen years ago the Jesuits, who are one of the main orders within the RCC, had already begun to use prayers and liturgy which were revisionist to remove all references to God as male or anything resembling an anthropomorphising projection what so ever. Its not something I'm on message with personally because I think a lot of what results is ugly and unrefined, insights into how limited language can be are great, also insights into how historically this was about the invisibility of women and the feminine are great too but I'm not sure that the legacy of those insights should be the eradication of the historical record and phrasing.

Our experiences then are different. I was raised in the Catholic Church. Yes, our church also had statues and pictures of Mary and the saints, male and female, but it was emphasized that these individuals, however holy, were not God. Only the trinity was God. One part was firmly described as the Father - undeniably masculine, as was the Son in the flesh-and-blood person of Jesus. This left only the Holy Spirit for any possible association with the feminine. On rare occasion this association was made, also with the idea of wisdom (Sophia) from the OT, but mostly the Holy Spirit was referred to as masculine as well.

All the acknowledgments of theologians at the academic level that God transcends gender as well as other human distinctions cannot make up for the day-to-day reality of having God consistently described with male terminology. And the situation is only worse in most Protestant denominations. At least we had Mary, and the lingering, almost instinctive sense, however directly contradicted by the Church, that she really is deific as well.

 

[sorenx7]

Christian.

I once encountered some Hare Krishna followers who gave me a pamphlet to read. Some time later I tried to find the pamphlet. I tried and tried, but it was nowhere to be found. While searching in a closet, I found a Bible I hadn't even realized was there. I decided I might as well try reading that. After reading the Beatitudes especially, I came to the conclusion that although I had been an atheist, I believed God was real. And I believed what Jesus was saying in those Beatitudes was real and true. Then I started putting the belief into action. Not long after that someone close to a college campus was witnessing to people. He said he was a Christian. I looked at him and said I was a Christian, too. I never felt like that before. All of these things happened years ago and I've never wavered in my beliefs, although I've certainly faced many obstacles in life just like many people do, no matter what they believe. Still, God can give a peace that passes all understanding.

At first I think I was a quite selfish Christian. But when I finally realized the importance of the statement "it is more blessed to give than to receive," that's when the big transformations started taking place in my life.

 

[Lark]

Lately I've been wondering if its actually possible for individuals to practice the same religion.

 

[Poki]

Lately I've been wondering if its actually possible for individuals to practice the same religion.

Nah, we are to opinionated to all practice the same religion.

 

[Lark]

Nah, we are to opinionated to all practice the same religion.

I think that whether or not a religion is accomodating of personal idiosyncracies or not there isnt any hive mind and it would be a bad thing is such a thing could exist.