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a new way of looking at... religion >> comments - 3 |
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response: "i was wondering when you would get around to commenting, keith. ::smile:: i think you misunderstood the point of the rant. my beef (tofu-based, of course) with religion is not in the everyday practitioners, but those who take it to extremes. there is a fine line between being a person with a faith who follows the teachings of some prophet (or god or buddha, whatever) and the people who jump so into it that they simply disavow themselves from the rest of the world. when a group of those people get together, for instance intervarsity christian fellowship, they start to feed off of one another, trying to be the best christian among them. the street preacher has little to do with my rant. it's that chemistry, the failure to use their mind, to engorge themselves on christianity gone commercial and solitary. they refuse to see the true meaning of pro-choice because they can't think outside their own heads. they refuse to understand that a christian/non-christian marriage is perfectly fine with the bible because they continue to read more into the bible and pull things out of context. and these beliefs do not come from self-study and introspection. they come from being fed that line by others, and since these ways or thinking are more restrictive (requiring less thought and thus, using their minds less as you explain eloquently), they adopt them in an effort to be a 'better' christian. in this respect, you and i are not far off, though you are focusing on all practitioners while i limit myself to a specialized gruop. the same with islamic fundamentalists, the current jewish law in israel (based upon the talmud), and the mysterious rites of religions in india. as for what you see as the power trip and its formations, i don't think you give enough credit for a willingness for man to believe in something outside their perceptions. simply put, if we are limited by our own perceptions and the data we receive from them, we cannot in any way rule out things outside that perception. even if it were 'perceivable', then we would still have problems doing it. your argument follows logical positivism and falls just as easily. you can't stop what exists simply by the senses. this is a fundamental truth only recently expressed, but something we've had in the back of our minds since the formation of religion. it's religion that carried this belief, that there are other things outside our perception. because we cannot perceive them does not make them supernatural unless we wish to limit our definition of nature to 'things we perceive', which causes even more problems with definition of what is perceived and not. supernatural is a misnomer, and should never be used to describe a path to enlightenment, religious belief, or god himself. finally, i did find interesting (and i'm surprised i didn't think of it after reading umberto eco's foucault's pendulum) the parasitic nature of christianity from its inception. besides the fact that the very idea of the trinity is nowhere expressed in the bible formally, and it borrowed from the celts, and that besides santeria, we have rastafarianism and others, to purge oneself of things non-christian would be to remove all commercial aspects of christmas (and celebrate it in the summer when it really happened), easter, and anything else that is not put in the bible. it's strange, really, how they purge those things that are biblically based except what their families preach. and there you go." |