Gol Darned Western Religions Today

[MarkMe]

I watch, as folks like Bill Maher and the atheist Richard Dawkins, and so many others, wage war upon all religion. It's no wonder. We've regressed as a society over the past decade. I remember in the 2004 elections, when the pundits would say, "wedge issue" when referring to things like abortion, stem cell research, Terry Schiavo and gay marriage. Like it was something to jam in between the two parties, and get religious with politics, but not to address the really important matters we should have been screaming about, like wars and the destruction of the financial system, or the loss the civil rights and the considerable consolidation of power the US government has gained. They're much bigger now. I also have not heard the term "wedge issue" in the past five years. It seems that we've gone backwards, and we've been swimming in religious politics, and we've lost all sense of our contrast with it.

Speaking of slow, steady transitions... For an 18-year-old today, technically the PATRIOT Act is now their parent's legislation. In another 10 years on the same path, the freedoms that we presently have may have slipped as much more again. It's like sticking a frog in a pot of cold water and bringing it to a boil. (FYI, The frog doesn't notice the gradual change and just sits there and boils to death) The FBI has started conducting arrests in 4 Midwestern states - they are arresting anti-war activists, which is a federal violation, and which they say constitutes terrorism. One theory is that they're just dipping their toes in the water to see how this one rolls out over time.

Meanwhile, religious war abounds. It's the crazy Muslims. It's a Christian holy war upon the crazy Muslims. It's the fate of the Jewish people. That and 50 cents will buy you a cup of coffee. How about traditional government tactics? How about crowd control?

"Whenever the people are well-informed, they can be trusted with their own government;... whenever things get so far wrong as to attract their notice, they may be relied on to set them to rights." - Thomas Jefferson

"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be." - Also Thomas Jefferson

There is one other religious war we are now experiencing, and that is the rising atheist movement shaking it's fist at religion. Check it - science is agnostic and atheism is a belief. Frankly, I don't blame them for how they must feel, but from what I've seen, even actual agnostics are shifting to atheist - sounds to me like war. We've regressed as a society at the hands of our leaders. It's all polarized, it's all warring parties now.


Question... Is religion the cause of the problem?
Answer... Try this for an illustration. The New Testament is directly contradicted, and I would have to guess in the loudest possible way, with waging war. It appears that Christ wouldn't stand for it. How is it possible that Christians are calling for these wars? I have an explanation. I think it's ignorance. We have a large enough ignorant population today to perhaps combine with, say, the core of one of our political parties, to gain political power. I would say that first and foremost it is ignorant masses that go for this sort of thing.

Now, if you take the religion away, will people be smarter? Will they know more about how their world works? I suppose it may be possible, but I think more likely that what we're really talking about is ignorant people, and the government taking them for a ride. Or the government taking any (blacked out) uninformed population and rousing them and telling them lies and nonsense, which ignorant people can be led to believe. I think it is ignorance, not unlike our media blackout, that makes all of this possible. My answer, then, is that this is not religion. Besides, millions of peaceful Christians never make the news. They didn't do anything.

Without polarization and radicalization, people of all faiths coexist peacefully. In the Ottoman Empire (Middle East), Muslims and Jews coexisted side-by-side in peace for centuries, up until 1916. And people don't tend to want to kill this and that without radicalized mobs at play. As for the root cause of the violence, I'll go with consolidation of power, crowd control and a total information blackout. Like history.

Namaste,
Mark

[kallol]

God made Human and Human made religions and divided themselves.


Come back to spirituality - the mother of all religions.


Love and best wishes

[sm78]

Question... Is religion the cause of the problem?

You are partially right, its not exactly just the religions. Combined ignorance of people and the ability of a few others to use portions of the so called revealed scripture (or some in-fashion present day ideology) to their advantage in propagating their agenda.

However lack of religions would certainly make things better, since it removes a means to an end. Just believing in an old book and a gone era's superstitions literally or with interpretations can never serve any good for the present era.

In other words God and religion are certainly not the cause of misery, which is a combination of ignorance and the "evil" in human nature, but they are certainly a excellent means to spread the misery.

[MarkMe]

I had an interesting exchange on this last night. In it, this Pew survey came up. I didn't see it coming.

U.S. Religious Knowledge Survey
http://www.pewforum.org/U-S-Religiou...-Religion.aspx

In it, it was found that atheists and agnostics scored the highest on religious knowledge (for their questions). 3rd and 4th go to Jews and Mormoms.

Putting the four groups together, it occurs to me that, after looking at a religious breakdown of the US, that these are very small groups.
http://religions.pewforum.org/reports

And putting that together, that perhaps the most generally shared beliefe are the least questioned.

In my (limited) experience with (karma) Hindus, such as the ones I have worked with, proud of India but very few were at all versed in Indian philosophy. In the case of Americans, proud of the forefathers and the constitution, but have never read it. This survey shows 28%.
http://www2.dailyprogress.com/news/2...ion-ar-510096/

[BryonMorrigan]

Read the book "God Against the Gods: A History of the War Between Monotheism and Polytheism," by Jonathan Kirsch.

The REAL problem is Exclusivism. Look at history before Christianity and Islam. Back then, the Jews were the only people waging "Holy War," and they eventually grew up. But the other religions of the world? Sure, there were conflicts between nations/tribes/peoples...but they weren't based on religion.

When a Roman met a Celt, or a Greek met a Persian, or a Norseman met an Egyptian...they certainly might have some national or ethnic animosity...but as far as religion went, they knew that they were all basically worshiping the same deities, albeit under different names and with different practices. The ancient cities of the Romans and Greeks had temples to Egyptian and Persian deities. Greek philosophers studied Hindu philosophy.

There was no concept of "false religion," nor any need for anyone to "convert" or be proselytized to...

And it is that very concept..."false religion"...which is the real problem. (Google "The Mosaic Distinction" or read the works of Dr. Jan Assmann) Throwing out all religion, when the problem is actually this horrible philosophical concept...is like throwing out Democracy because you disagree with who was elected.

[Sahasranama]

It's not really believing that other religions are false, it's the intollerance for other people to believe in religions that are false from your own point of view. From a vedic point of view even Buddhism and Jainism are false religions, but the vedic people respect others free choice of religion.

[BryonMorrigan]

"These new religions can therefore perhaps be characterized most adequately by the term 'counterreligion.' For these religions, and for these religions alone, the truth to be proclaimed comes with an enemy to be fought. Only they know of heretics and pagans, false doctrine, sects, superstition, idolatry, magic, ignorance, unbelief, heresy, and whatever other terms have been coined to designate what they denounce, persecute and proscribe as manifestations of untruth." -- Jan Assmann, "The Price of Monotheism," Stanford University Press, p. 4

[Adhvagat]

It's not really believing that other religions are false, it's the intollerance for other people to believe in religions that are false from your own point of view. From a vedic point of view even Buddhism and Jainism are false religions, but the vedic people respect others free choice of religion.

And instead of curing intolerance and violence they try to ignore it with Universalism... Not nice.

[Sahasranama]

What is meant with false doctrine? Even Hinduism has the discrimination to consider certain doctrines to be false, either philosophically or morally.

I don't think that the abrahamitic religions are crossing the line by saying that other religions are false. Atheism says that religions are false, by definition of atheism. Religion says that atheism is false, by definition of religion. If I believe that the flying spaghetti monster is a false God, that should not be a problem for a Pastafarian. The Pastafarian believes that the Flying Spaghetti Monster is a real God, but he should respect my belief that the Flying Spaghetti Monster is a false God. So far, I don't see any problem. The problem starts when the Church of Pastafarianism starts to be violent, intollerant and demeaning to members of other faiths and other people who do not believe in the flying spaghetti monster. These charasteristics of violence and intolerance are inherent to the abrahamitic faiths and that's where the line is being crossed.

And instead of curing intolerance and violence they try to ignore it with Universalism... Not nice.

Yes, universalism is not an adequate cure for intolerance and violence. The inherent flaws of Islam, Christianity and Judaism need to be recognised. Universalism actually was not invented in India. It's often thought that Hinduism is syncretic of nature and that this syncretic nature led to the concept of universalism when India came in contact with the western world. This is nonsense of course. The concept of universalism started in the west. The mathematician Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz for example worked on a theory to unify all religions. He lived a century before the universalist reformers of India. Universalism is not something that originated in India, it's a western concept that has been imposed on Hinduism the last 150 years.

Along with marxism and christianity, universalism has led people to believe that Hinduism is a religion of superstition, blind faith and caste corruption. The irony is that the universalist Hindus are repeating the same demeaning words to describe authentic aspects of Hinduism like faith in murti puja, the puranas, the Hindu avataras and varnashrama dharma. All while the same universalists are equating Jesus to the Supreme Being and consider the koran to be a form of shruti. All while their gurus perform magic tricks to increase superstition, while universalist believe their guru is an avatara, increasing blind faith and while these gurus give priviliges to people with high financial status, increasing "caste" corruption.

So by covering up things with a universalist attitude, foreign concepts can easily infiltrate and corrupt Hinduism. Not nice, indeed. The absurd concept of Radical Universalism, I will openly say, is a false doctrine. But I wouldn't cross the line like the Abrahamitics, Hinduism doesn't teach physical violence against people who disagree with your religion or philosophy, but the abrahamitic scriptures do. Long story short, I have no problem with the use of the word false combined with the word God or religion, or even with words like blasphemy or heresey. In my opinion the abrahamitic faiths have thaught false, even dangerous and ignorant doctrines. The use of the word false is not where the line is being crossed from my point of view. The use of the word false is sometimes necessary to define your own faith philosophically.

[MarkMe]

I'm really thankful for all the interesting comments and suggestions, bryon - thx.

In having some discussion elsewhere, I got hit with some information that I find very interesting regarding the atheism and agnosticism. I'll provide a link here from an atheist, David Hart, and so much better than the rest.
http://www.firstthings.com/article/2...ieve-it-or-not

And I went back in dictionaries, and confirmed it (I own a couple of these). I agree with David Hart. Traditional atheism is not about opposing religion, or even of rejecting it, and our usage has changed. I have a 1938 Websters that agrees; it is about making logic and reason the deepest and most profound things for oneself. Conversely, the atheism we seem to have today is more embroiled with religion, and the common usage has changed. Now, it is led off with being a belief that there is no God.

I also double-checked agnosticism, and found it (to my surprise) to be more doctrinal in nature than the old atheism. It appears to formally be defined (consistently) as a belief that God is unknown and unknowable.