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If Jesus died for our sins...

It's redemption from the point of being Fallen. That humanity killed Him and he forgave them is redemption. Among many, many, other narratives.
 
The New Testament makes Chritianity a different religion then Judaism, but then again, a nod is as good as a wink to a dead horse.
 
One persons (mis)interpretation of
some story book and the
imaginary friends that go along with it are the source of at least 50-75% of the world's problems.just imagine a world without religion.
 
I tend to think the source of 100% of the world's problems is people, with or without religion.
 
draculic acid69 said:
One persons (mis)interpretation of
some story book and the
imaginary friends that go along with it are the source of at least 50-75% of the world's problems.just imagine a world without religion.
Click to expand...

Have you ever seen the South Park 2-episode series where Cartman freezes himself and goes 500 years into the future and Ms Garrison had converted the whole world to atheism? And he got revived in the middle of a huge war over who had the most correct answer to the "great question"... they said "praise science" instead of "praise god". It was one of the most genius South Park episodes from the height of the show. And so insightful. People invent reasons to hate and fear and kill each other, religion just happens to be a really easy way for leaders to convince people to do so. But there are others. Others are racism, nationalism, basically any -ism. It's easy to blame religion, but the problem isn't religion, really, the problem is that some people are sociopathic power mongers who end up leading nations, who want either the resources of another nation, or they want to control everyone and everything, and they will find reasons to mobilize the people against some other people. Most people are decent folk who don't want to hurt other people, so you have to convince them that those people need to be hurt. To fight a war you pretend it's a just war, and the people will get behind you. Religion is the go-to reason for this, but it can (and would be) other things.

I'm not trying to excuse the horrors committed in the name of Christianity, I'm just trying to say that, for the people who directed these horrors at the highest levels, there were other reasons for them, and Christianity was just the excuse.
 
swilow said:
I don't know if it means anything in particular. I wonder how often Hindu deities appear to people with no exposure to the religion?

DMT has a genuine mystical element to it. Most people who smoke it will have something best described as a mystical or spiritual experience and the most interesting part is that you do not need any religious doctrine, dogma, ancient literature or unfounded assumptions about the nature of reality to experience the magic of this. It's there for anyone who is willing to smoke it, sinners, believers, unfaithful and even atheists. ❤

I've seen alien insect entities peering into me while operating gearwheel-driven, clockwork spaceships and telling me to spread the message and remove my pants. I have no idea what this means, but if Krishna appearing to DMT users says something about the reality of Krishna, do we need to start guessing the morality of these insectile starfarers and condemn pant wearers?

Fwiw, the visions of DMT seem less vital than the the shift of conscious experience that occurs simultaneously. This change in the positioning of the Self in relation to our experience suggests a lot about the true nature of existence and consciousness if we could only overlook the more intense visual display.
Click to expand...

*groans* DMT causes psychedelic experiences. People who do it for spiritual reasons. Therefor religion is on your mind. Hence why you get the "visions". It's just drug-induced. 100%.
 
draculic acid69 said:
One persons (mis)interpretation of
some story book and the
imaginary friends that go along with it are the source of at least 50-75% of the world's problems.just imagine a world without religion.
Click to expand...

The world would be an unimaginably better place with no Religion. 99.9% of hatred would vanish.
No sexism, no homophobia...and that's for the VERY beginning.
Speaking of homophobia, the original verse in the Bible was actually "man should not lie with boy". It was supposed to be condemning pedophilia.

If all religious texts were destroyed and nobody ever spoke of it again, it would vanish in like 100 years (it's all bullshit so it's not like "God" would make an appearance), we'd be pretty close to Utopia.
 
^ i tend to disagree.

religion tends to imply organisation and belief in a god or gods.

it's subtle but i think it's possible to be spiritual without being religious.

alasdair
 
Kaden_Nite said:
If humanity can be so easily manipulated by a book, the book isn't the problem.
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Its the contents and so-called provenance of the book that's the problem. Christians, Jews and Muslims believe their books were penned by the creator of the universe. That puts immense weight on the claims in those books. It's why they are dangerous.

Women would not be stoned to death by their own family after being raped if it weren't for the Koran. It is literally because a book apparently written and endorsed by God tells people that this is the correct action that they do it. If they don't, they could go to hell or at least won't go to paradise. That's their eternal lives that they are told are at stake- what wouldn't you do on earth if you believe it's all a prelude to something more important? And all of it comes from religion and the source for it are these books.

Don't get me wrong, humans can do awful things without religion. But the problem with judeochristian religions is that the texts are used as sources of morality but literally do not tell people that these things are awful. In fact, the books encourage violence and brutality. You can use the bible to justify selling your daughter into sexual slavery but can't use it to actually condemn the real life horror of slavery. These books are written by God and cannot really be edited. They are static teachings that have no relevance to a civilised society- and yet we are stuck using them as if they do.

The Axe said:
That's absurd, spirituality and religion are the same thing.
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Religion is the institutional manifestation of spirituality after it has been turned into empty ritual and social control mechanism. Spirituality is the experience side of it, religion is the adulteration of this experience.

I'm antireligion and antitheist but am spiritual. The two are strikingly different experiences.
 
swilow said:
Its the contents and so-called provenance of the book that's the problem. Christians, Jews and Muslims believe their books were penned by the creator of the universe. That puts immense weight on the claims in those books. It's why they are dangerous.
Click to expand...

They are just books. It doesn't matter what they say, they can't control anything. That's on people.
 
Its all but impossible to sincerely believe that the billions of people practicing religion today are all engaging in empty ritual as tools for others' social control. If anyone is implying all those religious people aren't having spiritual experiences because they don't line up with their own definition of spirituality, they are misguided. I don't think religious spirituality is any more or less profound than antireligion/antitheist spirituality or vice versa.
 
Kaden_Nite said:
They are just books. It doesn't matter what they say, they can't control anything. That's on people.
Click to expand...

Of course, they are just books- you and I know it, but billions don't. Billions think these books are the thoughts and desires of God. Billions think that the most immoral thing you can do is not be a Muslim because their book says it. Billions believe that these books contain the pinnacle of human ethical thought that cannot be improved upon. You could be tortured to death for even suggesting this.

It's not just on humans. The millions of Muslims that are lead to believe that apostasy can be dealt with by killing the person are not believing this for any other reason except that it's written in a book claimed to be penned by God. The father stoning his daughter to death for the sin of being raped isn't actually being evil. He thinks he's doing the correct thing that God, through His books, have told him to. He thinks stoning a girl to death is the moral thing to do- because the Koran and hadith explicitly encourage this.

Of course, it is humans that wrote these texts so the morality we read in them is purely human. They reflect moral values of the times they were written, but to codify them and exert control through them, they have become eternal unchanging documents written by the eternal unchanging God and in effect they keep dragging the same old weight of fear and bigotry behind them into every era.
 
The Axe said:
Its all but impossible to sincerely believe that the billions of people practicing religion today are all engaging in empty ritual as tools for others' social control.
Click to expand...

I wasn't suggesting that. Some people are surely having spiritual experiences within the religious context just as many do outside that context.

But I wonder how we could ever really know the numbers if you can be punished for even questioning your religion in some countries and killed for leaving it. It's difficult to imagine much legitimate spiritual experience in that context.

Anyway, my biggest concern is the faulty morality these religions engender and how harmful this is. The spiritual aspect is usually secondary to the ethical teachings (if you could call them that)

The Axe said:
. If anyone is implying all those religious people aren't having spiritual experiences because they don't line up with their own definition of spirituality, they are misguided
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Who's saying that? I don't know if there is any argument that can speak to the validity or otherwise of any spiritual experience. They are subjective experiences and all value is self measured.

I'm criticising the morality. It is certainly possible to say that some moral teachings are objectively wrong. When they are promoted as the views of an infallible God, humans are not able to truly weigh the value of them and are blinded by the alleged consequences of disobedience.
 
swilow said:
Of course, they are just books- you and I know it, but billions don't. Billions think these books are the thoughts and desires of God. Billions think that the most immoral thing you can do is not be a Muslim because their book says it. Billions believe that these books contain the pinnacle of human ethical thought that cannot be improved upon. You could be tortured to death for even suggesting this.
Click to expand...

I think I get what you are saying: Religion has become so ingrained in some cultures that it has basically become a seemingly unstoppable and powerfully controlling machine (correct me if I've misinterpreted).

I just can't see past the fact that, that machine is being powered by humans.

I feel like if it wasn't religion that people feel controlled by, and use as a means to control others, it would be something else.

I actually see a lot of parallels between religion and politics. As Xorkoth mentioned, if science was the world's new empirical belief; I think there would still be a heirarchal power structure, there would still be war etc.

It's easy to say religion is accountable, but until we accept that human nature is flawed and at the heart of many of our troubles, we'll just keep outsourcing the responsibility onto external factors, and we'll never change.

Just my opinion anyway, I've thought about religion way too much today, so I'm out.

Be well :)
 
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