Is Religion an All-or-Nothing Proposition?

Discussion in 'Religion' started by Bowser, Jul 3, 2016.

  1. spidergoat pubic diorama Valued Senior Member

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    Immoral guidance perhaps.
     
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  3. timojin Valued Senior Member

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    What are your bases ?
    Are the 10 commandments moral or immoral in your view ?
     
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  5. spidergoat pubic diorama Valued Senior Member

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    Nothing in there about rape or slavery.
     
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  7. wegs Matter and Pixie Dust Valued Senior Member

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    Religion doesn't define a person's entire belief system, though. Religion has always seemed to me, to be someone else's words and ideas of who a god is and isn't, and if you follow along with their views, then you must be a ''true believer.'' No one ''needs'' a religion in order to believe in God.
     
  8. gmilam Valued Senior Member

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    Where do you get your concepts of god from if not religion?
     
  9. Seattle Valued Senior Member

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    Not to answer for Wegs but many people get their "relationship" with God or their spiritual connection directly, gut feel, hardwiring of the brain, etc just as we don't need something similar to religion for us to experience love.

    Religion is just the collection plate and the control mechanism.
     
    Last edited: Aug 26, 2016
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  10. DaveC426913 Valued Senior Member

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    An odd question. Do you see religion as the only source of knowledge about God?

    Notably, from one's own experience of the world.

    I know quite a few people who believe in God but not in religion.
    The idea is that, if god is out there, he can hear them whether or not they are in a church, and he surely doesn't need an intermediary.
     
  11. wegs Matter and Pixie Dust Valued Senior Member

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    What Seattle said. (That is really beautiful, Seattle)

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    My upbringing was very religious, but when you become an adult, you realize that religion tends to place God in a box. If you step outside of the box, then you step away from God, is the idea behind most religions. I had a foundation but in two words, I'd say God could be defined as infinite hope.
     
  12. Seattle Valued Senior Member

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    See! I'm not so bad!

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  13. Yazata Valued Senior Member

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    I agree that many people would experience a feeling of transcendence, of their being 'something more than this' and of the presence of hidden powers perhaps, without any exposure to other people's religious ideas. But I doubt if it would immediately take the form of a monotheistic 'God'. It might be more likely to take the form of 'animism', the idea that various objects of experience, including inanimate objects, might be endowed with something like spiritual 'energy', life force and volition. We seem to be hard-wired to attribute a 'theory of mind' to other people. We use it to relate to dogs and other animals. I suspect that it's hard to turn it off when contemplating the rest of the environment, especially if it's aesthetically striking and 'sublime' in some way.

    The way I would describe a person doing this is by saying the lone individual was independently forming religious ideas of his/her own.

    In other words I agree with what I took Gmilam to be saying, that belief in God or that one has a relationship with God IS a religious belief, simply by its nature.

    Atheists often say that and I disagree. Religion isn't some evil conspiracy concocted by manipulative priests to control the masses and to enrich themselves. Religions are traditions of belief and of the interpretation of experience that have grown up in particular societies around the feelings of unseen powers referred to above.

    Science is another tradition of belief and of the interpretation of experience that many people (including me) think possesses better empirical and logical justification than the older sort of religion and is of more practical this-worldly use in manipulating the physical environment (though perhaps not of more use in the realms of art and emotion).

    Interestingly the fundamentalist Christians also promote these kind of criticisms of religion, despite their being among the most religious of people themselves. (I expect to find similar criticisms among their Islamic counterparts too.) To them, "religion" is a human construct, it's something that emerges from and was invented by mankind. They contrast 'religion' with their own faith, which they are convinced comes direct from God. So 'religion' is what other people have.
     
    Last edited: Aug 27, 2016
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  14. gmilam Valued Senior Member

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    I don't consider it an odd question at all.

    I experience great wonder and awe when contemplating and/or learning about the universe. (Don't think atheists are immune to that. We feel it too.) But it's a long road from feelings of transcendence and wonder to concepts of sin and salvation.
     
  15. Yazata Valued Senior Member

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    I think that "knowledge about God" is a prototypically religious idea. Anyone who believes in God is behaving in a religious manner.

    They may indeed believe in God while not being an adherent of any established church or denomination. Millions of people do that. But they were obviously influenced by their cultural environment, which in the Western world is historically Christian.

    Where else did the idea of 'God' come from? Why the capital 'G' which suggests a monotheist god?

    Lots of people feel that way. I interpret it as meaning that more and more people are opting for more individualistic forms of religiosity.
     
    Last edited: Aug 27, 2016
  16. DaveC426913 Valued Senior Member

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    I would have thought religion is inextricably tied specifically to the organized tenets of worship, but it seems that is not correct.
    My friends are under a misapprehension.
     

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