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Religion evolves and endures

Lark

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I reckon that in much of the world religion has proven itself to be the most enduring and evolving, in the sense of adaptativeness, of institutions, its outlived communism and arguably is in the process of out living capitalism and its ideological appendages, the societies which are based upon objective or accidential atheism seem to be suffering from a myriad of problems, personal and social, therefore is it not worth while to give religion analytical attention if not praise?

Plus, given Eric Fromm's frame of reference or definition that ideas which provide an ethical orientation and devotional object qualify as "religious", which I think is sound, there are a lot of accidential religions out there, they're mainly bad religions, like the idolatrous or atavistic religions or superstitions of the ancient world.

NB Bitches.
 
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Coriolis

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I reckon that in much of the world religion has proven itself to be the most enduring and evolving, in the sense of adaptativeness, of institutions, its outlived communism and arguably is in the process of out living capitalism and its ideological appendages, the societies which are based upon objective or accidential atheism seem to be suffering from a myriad of problems, personal and social, therefore is it not worth while to give religion analytical attention if not praise?
Religion certainly merits analytical attention, much more than it usually gets. Your comparison is a bit skewed, however. You are comparing "religion" overall with specific political or economic systems like communism and capitalism. It would make a more direct comparison to ask whether religion has outlived politics, or government, or the economy; or whether a specific religion like Judaism has outlived a specific economic system like capitalism.

As for which institutions are most enduring and evolving/adaptive, one might consider the family, the military, or even the brothel. All societies raise young, fight from time to time, and provide some outlet for human passions.
 

Beargryllz

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Belief is stronger than any single religion. Belief is fundamental, essential, and empowering. You say religion evolves and endures, but you really speak of belief. Religion is just a morsel of the whole phenomenon.
 

Mole

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Until very recently religion was defined by geography. A map of the world is a map of religion. But with the advent of the global village various religions have come face to face for the first time. And they discovered that each one claimed to be the one true religion from God.

Now from a simple logical point of view they can't all be right. So this produced a problem for religion. At first we tried to solve the problem by going to war and so we had the war of religions. But after quite a lot of bloodshed the religions settled on a compromise of live and let live called secularism, where each had freedom of religion but each was separated from the power of the State.

Unfortunately one political religion does not accept the Universal Declaration of Human Rights or secularism or the separation of religion and the State and have declared jihad in line with the tradition of their holy book.

But the cat is out of the bag. And all religions are no longer separated by geography but are face to face in the global village.

What will happen next, we are not quite sure.
 

InsatiableCuriosity

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Victor isn't this a bit to generalistic?? I know many moderate adherents to this religion who would be very offended at this generalisation.

It is the extremists and terrorists who do this in the name of their religion, and it is by no means embraced by all!

When we make such generalisations, if we are responsible for influencing others, albeit unknowingly, we are potentially setting the stage for prejudice.

I would be horrified if non-judeo-christian people were to make judgement that because those living in Jonestown purported to be Christian, therefore it can be safely assumed that all Christians are fanatics!!
 

Mole

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Human Rights

Victor isn't this a bit to generalistic?? I know many moderate adherents to this religion who would be very offended at this generalisation.

Fifty-seven Islamic States have publicly and openly repudiated the Universal Declaration of Human Rights including the Right to Free Speech.

In fact these fifty-seven Islamic States say that free speech is offensive to them. However the Universal Declaration of Human Rights says that free speech means nothing without the right to offend.
 

InsatiableCuriosity

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Fifty-seven Islamic States have publicly and openly repudiated the Universal Declaration of Human Rights including the Right to Free Speech.

In fact these fifty-seven Islamic States say that free speech is offensive to them. However the Universal Declaration of Human Rights says that free speech means nothing without the right to offend.

Perhaps this is why these people have moved here? ...and it looks like Afghanistan and Iraq will also again revert to these ideologies once we withdraw???
 

Coriolis

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Until very recently religion was defined by geography. A map of the world is a map of religion. But with the advent of the global village various religions have come face to face for the first time. And they discovered that each one claimed to be the one true religion from God.

Now from a simple logical point of view they can't all be right.
So this produced a problem for religion.
Of course all religions can't be right in claiming to be the "one true religion from God". There is no such thing. Each does contain truth, however, and many common threads and themes can be found in the most apparently dissimilar of faiths. Joseph Campbell explored this in many of his writings. It is much like the story of the blind men and the elephant; each man's impression of the elephant is accurate, but only to a point. The real falsehood is to insist that the elephant is only what each individual man perceives.
 

Lark

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Religion is about more than God and I know many evangelists who would claim not to be religious or to believe in a religion, they've gone beyond the liberal attack on so called organised religion and even protestantism to a totally radical position.
 

FDG

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Like a virus, someday we will manage to eradicate religion entirely, even if it can evolve and endure.
 

Coriolis

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We will eradicate religion, if at all, only when we have identified objective causes for everything in the world around us, AND persuaded everyone to accept them.
 

nolla

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I reckon that in much of the world religion has proven itself to be the most enduring and evolving, in the sense of adaptativeness, of institutions, its outlived communism and arguably is in the process of out living capitalism and its ideological appendages, the societies which are based upon objective or accidential atheism seem to be suffering from a myriad of problems, personal and social, therefore is it not worth while to give religion analytical attention if not praise?

It does seem that religion is something that will never disappear completely. I guess I would think of it first as belief and then as a religion. People's beliefs seem a lot more adaptable than most religions, and then these religions are redefined to fit the new tone people gave to their beliefs.

At the moment it is an interesting situation in my country. Few months ago a christian politician made an anti-gay statement, and most people thought that she was talking on behalf of the church. Many people left the church immediately. It was such an amount that the church was talking about a crisis. If it is a crisis, it's because the values of the church have not been adapting to the beliefs of the people. And really, it isn't about gays that much. People were just registered as christians out of habit, and since the church wasn't doing anything outrageous, they stayed, but now they got an excuse to leave for this gay discussion.

I'm interested to see where this will lead, because the way I see it, the country is already atheistic. I would really have to try hard to find a real christian. There seems to be some kind of fashion towards the eastern religions, which I don't think is too surprising. People really believe in the scientific world view, and there isn't much talk about how the christian view could be interpreted differently to fit this view. So, it seems that while the church isn't ready to adapt, the eastern religions are already there. Nothing is more easy philosophically than reaching the buddhist void by atheistic and scientific thought.

Basically, the core concepts they teach at school get you on the front door of buddhism, and that's quite far from the popular christianity. If the church did the smart thing, they started teaching about christian mysticism.
 

xisnotx

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I reckon that in much of the world religion has proven itself to be the most enduring and evolving, in the sense of adaptativeness, of institutions, its outlived communism and arguably is in the process of out living capitalism and its ideological appendages,
Perhaps...if this is the case I'm not surprised.
the societies which are based upon objective or accidential atheism seem to be suffering from a myriad of problems, personal and social, therefore is it not worth while to give religion analytical attention if not praise?
No, it is not. At least it isn't based on the (presumed) fact that " the societies which are based upon objective or accidential atheism seem to be suffering from a myriad of problems". Why? I would say this is false. I would say most societies, whether religious or not, are suffering from some sort of "personal and social problems". Religion doesn't seem particularly correlated with societies that aren't experiencing problems. In fact I could make a case for the opposite..religion does seem to be more popular in societies that are experiencing problems.
 

Lark

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We will eradicate religion, if at all, only when we have identified objective causes for everything in the world around us, AND persuaded everyone to accept them.

So you think religion has no utility beyond explaining the unexplained?
 

Lark

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It does seem that religion is something that will never disappear completely. I guess I would think of it first as belief and then as a religion. People's beliefs seem a lot more adaptable than most religions, and then these religions are redefined to fit the new tone people gave to their beliefs.

At the moment it is an interesting situation in my country. Few months ago a christian politician made an anti-gay statement, and most people thought that she was talking on behalf of the church. Many people left the church immediately. It was such an amount that the church was talking about a crisis. If it is a crisis, it's because the values of the church have not been adapting to the beliefs of the people. And really, it isn't about gays that much. People were just registered as christians out of habit, and since the church wasn't doing anything outrageous, they stayed, but now they got an excuse to leave for this gay discussion.

I'm interested to see where this will lead, because the way I see it, the country is already atheistic. I would really have to try hard to find a real christian. There seems to be some kind of fashion towards the eastern religions, which I don't think is too surprising. People really believe in the scientific world view, and there isn't much talk about how the christian view could be interpreted differently to fit this view. So, it seems that while the church isn't ready to adapt, the eastern religions are already there. Nothing is more easy philosophically than reaching the buddhist void by atheistic and scientific thought.

Basically, the core concepts they teach at school get you on the front door of buddhism, and that's quite far from the popular christianity. If the church did the smart thing, they started teaching about christian mysticism.

I'm interested to see where the trend or tendency for state mandated respect of homosexuality will go too, will it become something the approval of which is more and more mandated by government, to the point of advocacy or will a point be reached where by people say that whatever they might think about personally they dont believe that the state or public should be able to behaviour coercively like that.

I dont know, I followed the case of the couple in the UK providing B&B services who courts decided could not decline accomodation to a pair of homosexual men and was disappointed by the outcome, the courts deciding that the land lord and land lady had acted unlawfully, there has been some unhelpful and I believe stigmatising comment by religion in this case too.

I wonder how the courts could have or would have acted if the land lord and land lady had couched their declining of the service in secular terms that their decision was based upon conscientious objection and reasonable suspiscion that they would be enabling behaviour which they would find unconscienable.

I find it strange since I'm pretty sure that homosexuality has no official recognition or protection in law, in part because it would be difficult to define, is it behavioural? An orientation? A label? The progressives who once defined and defended same sex orientation have since moved beyond that to queer theory and the suggestion that binary sexual orientation is nebulous, bisexuality being the norm or, at the very least, heteronormativity to be denied.

By and large I see this as about pleasing and placating a particular audience, religion is no longer fashionable, basing it is, a sort of voguish libertarianism and libertine value matrix is the order of the day and dissenting from it is increasingly being considered deviant and unlawful. Its unhelpful and I dont know where it will end, I suspect it could actually end badly for the very minority groups which originally the trend aimed to benefit.

Then again what's new about that?
 

Tiltyred

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Lark, you're going to come back in your next life gay as Christmas at Macy's, darlin'.
 

Totenkindly

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I'm interested to see where the trend or tendency for state mandated respect of homosexuality will go too, will it become something the approval of which is more and more mandated by government, to the point of advocacy or will a point be reached where by people say that whatever they might think about personally they dont believe that the state or public should be able to behaviour coercively like that.

I dont know, I followed the case of the couple in the UK providing B&B services who courts decided could not decline accomodation to a pair of homosexual men and was disappointed by the outcome, the courts deciding that the land lord and land lady had acted unlawfully, there has been some unhelpful and I believe stigmatising comment by religion in this case too.

Well, you already know why this is, so I'm not sure why you keep bringing this old horse back out to beat it repeatedly: If the stance is that sexual preference has no innate morality and is not prohibited by law, then to discriminate against someone because of it when housing has been deemed non-discriminatory for race, gender, sex, or whatever else, then it's going to be deemed wrong to discriminate because of sexual preference as well. There's no real way around that, and it has nothing to do in the minds of the court in repressing someone's religious beliefs. It just is what it is.

I wonder how the courts could have or would have acted if the land lord and land lady had couched their declining of the service in secular terms that their decision was based upon conscientious objection and reasonable suspiscion that they would be enabling behaviour which they would find unconscienable.

See above.

Now we're veering into similar territories such as here in the States where pharmacists have been refusing to distribute abortion pills if they object religiously. However, it's veered even further recently into pharmacists who are refusing other life-saving treatments for women who might have had abortions.

http://womensrights.change.org/blog...tion_because_woman_might_have_had_an_abortion

The article is slanted in tone, so just focus on the facts of the case. This is where the conflict is going. Where will lines be drawn? I don't really know, but you seem to be harping on issues that really are more a highlight of the battle between personal conscience and social responsibility.

I find it strange since I'm pretty sure that homosexuality has no official recognition or protection in law, in part because it would be difficult to define, is it behavioural? An orientation? A label? The progressives who once defined and defended same sex orientation have since moved beyond that to queer theory and the suggestion that binary sexual orientation is nebulous, bisexuality being the norm or, at the very least, heteronormativity to be denied.

To be honest, even a lot of gay people think that position is freaky. I'm not sure why you drag out the extremities instead of focusing on the mainstream views that are representative of the bulk of people. Typically the moderate position in the discussion is that someone's sexual preference is their own business, whether straight or not.
 

Mole

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The Mystics - Hypatica, Simone Weil, Thomas Merton and Anonymous

If the church did the smart thing, they started teaching about christian mysticism.

Yes, and start with the medieval text, "The Cloud of Unknowing", by Anonymous.

And we all start with play, for play is the work of children. And the purpose of play is to learn the difference between imagination and reality.

Yes, as children we all learn to suspend our disbelief and so art, poetry, dance and music are born.

And the suspension of disbelief gives birth to religion.

Religion, they say, is created by poets, abused by prophets and done to death by priests, but the prevailing sin today is literalism. That is, the literal interpretation of religious texts.

It was the protestants of the USA who coined the word 'fundamentalism' and who gave us the literal interpretation of the Bible. And of course they are matched today by the Islamic fundamentalists who interpret the Koran and Hadith literally.

Christianity has a tradition of mysticism and Islam has the corresponding tradition of Sufism. But Sufism has been rejected by mainstream Islam as mysticism has been rejected or neglected by christianity.

And indeed Buddhism has a corresponding tradition of mysticism. And the christian mystic, Thomas Merton, tried to build bridges between christian and Buddhist mysticism.

My favourite mystic is Simone Weil (pronounced Vey).

Simone was the first woman graduate of the Sorbonne and to know her through her writing is to love her.

So now I am in love with two beautiful women, Hypatica from the Library of Alexandria in the 4th century; and I am in love with with Simone Weil in the 20th century.

I wonder who I will fall in love with in the 21st century?
 
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