Do religions represent God?

[vorlon13]

"Christians" are so far off anything Christ was fronting for as to deserve some special medal for totally fucking up. Galling in the extreme to see "bible Jesus" as someone totally unfamiliar to "Joe average Christian" and Joe's faith having been retconned onto someone even less plausible.

And maybe there is a larger issue for atheism here?

Being atheist in regards to all gods and god claims is one thing, but conventionally defined atheism relative to deliberately willful ignorant apostates almost seems like something else to me.


Do we need a new word/definition ?


I've lamented not having 'True Christians' ever coming here, and now thanks to Ehrman, (and the Tanners for illuminating the way) I realize there never will be as there is no such thing, and at this point, can never be.

LOL, to achieve this level of failure, I'd almost assert historical Jesus did have some form of a supernatural unpower, he has transcended any conceivable level of expertise at munging up things as to be unique in all of history.

[Angrboda]

Spirituality and religion are two sides of the same sheet.

[ignoramus]

Jor, why?
I wouldn't have said that religion has a monopoly on all things woo unless we want it to?

[Little Rik]

Spirituality and religion are two sides of the same sheet.

You try to be funny yog but you fail badly.  

In order to find something that may go hand in hand between two things there got to be a parallelism
which in your story is not the case.

The only thing that both spirituality and religions have in common is the belief that God exist.
Most of the rest is just the opposite.

Try again yog but this time use your brain capacity if you can.  

[Tonus]

At that stage a mysterious force brought me to the teacher.

Apparently, god is indigestion.

[Little Rik]

"Christians" are so far off anything Christ was fronting for as to deserve some special medal for totally fucking up.  Galling in the extreme to see "bible Jesus" as someone totally unfamiliar to "Joe average Christian" and Joe's faith having been retconned onto someone even less plausible.

And maybe there is a larger issue for atheism here?

Being atheist in regards to all gods and god claims is one thing, but conventionally defined atheism relative to deliberately willful ignorant apostates almost seems like something else to me.
Do we need a new word/definition ?

I've lamented not having 'True Christians' ever coming here, and now thanks to Ehrman, (and the Tanners for illuminating the way) I realize there never will be as there is no such thing, and at this point, can never be.

LOL, to achieve this level of failure, I'd almost assert historical Jesus did have some form of a supernatural unpower, he has transcended any conceivable level of expertise at munging up things as to be unique in all of history.

I agree with your first sentence that I mark in color.  

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At that stage a mysterious force brought me to the teacher.

Apparently, god is indigestion.

Indigestion may well be but not the way you think.

Once you understand how the system works and who is in charge then all your previous ideas become an indigestion and they feel so unpalatable that you need to get rid of them ASAP.  

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Except for a brief time after the death of my son, I've lived from one day to the next never thinking there was or wasn't a god. As Alan Watts wrote in his book The Way of Zen: "Zen does not confuse spirituality with thinking about god while one is peeling potatoes. In Zen, spirituality is simply to peel the potatoes."

After my journey in the front door and out the back door of religion, I've continued to live as if "god" exists only here on earth because of how people's religious beliefs affect their attitudes and actions. In that sense, "god" does exist. But call he/she/it "Legend" for they are many.

So my answer to the OP's question is a very general "Yes." And it's general because words are only handles to carry the idea of something to another person, not the thing itself, until we apply them to our attitudes and actions. And my experience with scriptural words has been that most religious people don't apply them to their own lives.

But I do benefit from reading words that convey how others have defined religious and spiritual. Below are just a few of the words I've collected over the years that juxtapose the words religious and spiritual.

"We only know what we interpret. We can't peek over the edge of our interpretations to see things in the raw." ~Thomas Sheehan

"Start knowing what you really know, and stop believing what you really don’t know.  False knowing is the enemy of true knowledge. All beliefs are false knowledge."  ~Tantric Teaching

"Spiritual attitudes and practices do not require belief in a supernatural reality or divine being. They can be about love, tolerance, forgiveness, harmony with others, how our lives fit into the greater scheme of things, where the universe comes from, why we are here and what happens when we die." ~Robert C. Fuller

"Spirituality says 'May the heavens open up and angels bless everyone with their own light.'  but religion says 'Only Jesus got the light, you're full of shit, and in the dark. We're the only ones that got it, so you've gotta go through us to get it.'  Man, in this life, the only thing that is holy is your relationship with your heart, your family and the air you breath."  ~Carlos Santana

"We can see a garden is beautiful without believing there are fairies at the bottom of it." ~Douglas Adams

You are doing well Qwe.

Once people stop believing religious dogmas the world will gain immensely.  

[Angrboda]

Spirituality and religion are two sides of the same sheet.

You try to be funny yog but you fail badly.  

In order to find something that may go hand in hand between two things there got to be a parallelism
which in your story is not the case.

Spirituality and religion concern the regulation and care of the spirit. The only difference is one is a solitary pursuit while the other is a group pursuit. You may think otherwise, but you're a quack.

The only thing that both spirituality and religions have in common is the belief that God exist.
Most of the rest is just the opposite.

African bushmen believe in witchcraft but no gods. That is their religion. The boundaries between spirituality and religion overlap in ways that you simply aren't willing to admit, primarily for doctrinal reasons. You're a dogmatic member of a religion that preaches that it has no dogma and is not a religion. It's just meaningless double-speak. Your definitions are biased bullshit. Meaningless Ananda Marga bullshit.

Try again yog but this time use your brain capacity if you can.  

Always with the insults. You can't live without them. They make you look like a stupid, peurile cunt.

[Little Rik]

I noticed that most people in the forum when talk about God both in the positive and negative take from what religions say.
It never came in their mind that what religions say may be totally different from what God (if exist at all)
may think or say.
I brought the attention to this failing time and time again but people keep on falling in the same trap so I
open a poll to see what they think regard all this.

For all the woo that you've talked about in the forum, in the past years.... this is actually something that makes sense.

A distinction between the religion - the organized worship of a deity or deities.
And a god, the deity being believed in.

It is conceivable that people would believe in the deity without an organized system imposing such a belief.

Even if there was a god that was willfully hiding itself from humans, religion would have been a totally man-made institution, based on snippets of apparent interactions of that god with humans.

(color mine)
Something lack in your post Poc.  
Religion impose this and that but in spirituality is a totally different story.
From within you understand how the system works.
The teacher only tell how to find the gold within after that is up to you to find it so no imposition are in spirituality.

[chimp3]

Do religious people create god ? Then, do religious people continually recreate their god?

[Little Rik]

You try to be funny yog but you fail badly.  

In order to find something that may go hand in hand between two things there got to be a parallelism
which in your story is not the case.

Spirituality and religion concern the regulation and care of the spirit.  The only difference is one is a solitary pursuit while the other is a group pursuit.  You may think otherwise, but you're a quack.

Wrong again yog.  
In religion the care of the spirit is all but a theory (an abstract feeling) while in spirituality is all about practice that eventually lead to union with God.
It is like thinking to plan to find the gold and actually do something to get it out the soil (subconscious mind).  

The only thing that both spirituality and religions have in common is the belief that God exist.
Most of the rest is just the opposite.

African bushmen believe in witchcraft but no gods.  That is their religion.  The boundaries between spirituality and religion overlap in ways that you simply aren't willing to admit, primarily for doctrinal reasons.  You're a dogmatic member of a religion that preaches that it has no dogma and is not a religion.  It's just meaningless double-speak.  Your definitions are biased bullshit.  Meaningless Ananda Marga bullshit.

Didn't I asked you to show me of one single dogma that my spirituality teach?
Where is it yog?

Try again yog but this time use your brain capacity if you can.  

Always with the insults.  You can't live without them.  They make you look like a stupid, peurile cunt.

I am so sorry yog if I did insulted you.
Please go ahead with your insults.
I just forgot that I should have turn to you the other cheek.
Will you ever excuse LR?  

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Do religious people create god ? Then, do religious people continually recreate their god?

Not even God can create an other God.
How than can religions create so many Gods?