Quote:Not really sure how that's going all the way with anything..as if it followed from any of those beliefs that your co-religionists hold..but it's not surprising to see another non sequitur used as a dismissal.
I don’t really see them as my co-religionist. I will accept traditionalism, dogmatism, even un-scientific approaches (as long as I believe there is some sort of sincerity behind it). But if I am convinced that something is entirely superficial and that it lacks any type of depth in terms of adherence to whatever ideology we are talking about (like the example of the PRC that has nothing of a “peoples republic” but is simply pretending to be a peoples republic) I have the right to call them people who are not my co-religionists.
In fact I think this is a case of Sodom and Gomora (meaning todays Afghanistan). Just like the biblical story. They hate women and if the prophet Lot was sent to them, I think history would repeat itself all over again. See today’s Saudi Arabia for instance, can be simply seen as a society that it at the same social evolution level as the society of Victorian England with women still fighting for their right to play soccer or be allowed to ride a motorcycle. It’s a society that is slowly evolving so I am ready to accept their difference as “cultural realities”. On the other hand, more or less everything they have been doing in Afghanistan is just Barbary pure and simple.
So there are those limits in religious thought also. The Pope Benedict XVI was also a man who was greatly criticized for his protection of pedophile priests and medieval-style ideas on homosexuality. What I am saying is that (believer or non-believer) we have the right to be more vocal about this. And I am not a catholic. But if I was I would probably directly say that he was someone who doesn’t seem to understand the spiritual message of the gospels. (That’s my point of view).
Quote:All intelligent scholars is just another excuse and admission rolled into one….and another irrelevant one, at that. You ask us how someone knows god said something without an ounce of self awareness, it seems. You’re -all- doing the same thing with your competing claims as to what god has or hasn’t said. You think theirs are ugly, but so what, maybe gods are ugly? Maybe gods are ugly because ugly people made them? As you say….there are many examples.
What I mean is that I agree with people simply not believing there are spiritual realities etc. I have no real undeniable observable and repeatable evidence to support any type of spiritual belief.
What I am talking about is a problem that occurs within every belief systems. We have a problem with the ignorance of the individuals and the masses. There are simply too many people who are unable to understand what the original message is and are distorting these messages and are than becoming completely fanatical about their distorted belief systems. Jaggadish Vasudev is clearly talking about how the general masses prohibited him from accomplishing serious spiritual services (like the establishment of a dedicated temple) in his previous lifetime and that he had to reincarnate to finish this job in our time. There are also great sages (very important Yogis) who were even stoned by the people because of their new interpretations of existing scriptures. These tensions existed in the Christian world during the renaissance. So faith itself is an area of constant struggle between some established but false approaches and more rational and more easily acceptable approaches. And yet change is happening for the betterment of faith itself. Do you know anyone who use the ancient self-punishment techniques that were still used in the beginning of the 21st century? You probably don’t. This doesn’t mean that all the work is done. There are still some old-school approaches that must still be dealed with.
But still, there are also / and has to be limits to these approaches as well. Today we are not afraid to be more vocal about these things. Like one of those things I would talk about immediately is the forced assimilation in boarding schools of the Canadian Amerindians by the Catholic Church. The new pope did admit it was a big mistake. Still, this is something I would immediately denounce as something that is not related to the sincere religious attitude of many persons around the world. This is a case of genocide. So again, what is it doing in my personal relation with what I see as the Higher Reality?
Quote:Magic books say terrible things because those terrible beliefs were common to their authors. They were not, then, seen to be terrible the way you see them now. They are not deviations from the original message, they are the original message. In this, the people and the forms of religion you have no time for are more faithful to the original message than your own. As I've mentioned before, I do appreciate that beliefs like yours and hers are an improvement over some others - but that's obviously from a secular point of view, and whatever improvement may be had it isn't well served by any of the arguments you've made.
That’s the widespread interpretation of the Muslim Holy Book actually. People used to say “it simply contained too much violence” for instance. And the truth is that a superficial reading will not give you anything more than that. It’s an old book (1400 and so years old). Written by someone who died long time ago for a culture that no longer exists in our time. Leaving the Quran aside, I don’t even fully understand Persian poets like Rumi. The language is highly mystical and I find myself reading and reading without understanding anything. I do understand the philosophers of antiquity or the poetry of Omar Khayyam (because they are very worldly, and down-to earth). But Holy books and mystical writings have a language of their own and as I said before, you need some preparations before reading them.
But this is not my main issue here. My main issue is when I see something that’s degenerate and completely unrelated even for a more “traditional” way of seeing things I will speak up against it. One simple example is the issue of women’s rights. Religion (of all sort) has been used to scare people, to make them obedient and submissive to authority figures. Yet, think of the movie Malcom-X for instance. In this movie the young Malcom-X is standing up to the prison priest and asking him (according to the new): “How do you know that Jesus was white?”. And most of the time it’s as simple as that. “Female child shall not study” – “Says who?”
Neither you nor anyone else can refute those arguments. In fact, in the area today’s Israel people are generally “brown” and the Gospels clearly describe him as someone who could have been black in terms of skin color. + I even heard that the Eva being created from Adam’s rib in the Old Testament is a translation error.
But anyway. There can be different points of view of course. But there is a limit. In today’s world, if I see someone who id inflicting pain on himself / herself “for God” I would go ahead and talk to this person. This isn’t the time of Charlemagne anymore if you know what I mean. Everything is evolving. We are evolving. Faith is also evolving. We see this in prehistoric societies. First there is one pottery tradition. Than another, than another. People change, societies change. Not only in terms of technology. But attitudes change, ideologies change. And this is a part of what we are. And Atheism is a part of that too. So is the new approaches in terms of spiritual belief.
One thing I may add: these “new” approaches are not completely new either. They existed in the past but were limited to some occult societies or small groups of people like Sufi’s, Rishi’s of India, Zen-Buddhists etc. What is happening now is that information is moving faster. So we are able to discover these new approaches more easily without having to listen to some bearded man with a turban and a prayer bead whose job is to act as if he knows everything starting from creation to the end of times
So I personally am critical of everything that I can clearly demonstrate that it doesn’t have anything to do with religion at all. This Y.N. Ozturk has countless books and TV programs on that. And this is an issue for people who are believers in our time. So when you take the time to do some research, you can find out that there are many, many lies that have just been acquired at some point in history have been transmitted from one generation to the next, that are nothing but uselessness or some sort of extra weight in your backpack that is not going to be useful in doing anything in the spiritual path. So we have to clear our rooms and make it into something we can live in.
Quote:To borrow from you, up above, I think you might want to look into going all the way with this rejection of the original message of your respective faiths. To acknowledge that you're creating your own new gods, your own new religions. I understand that in lieu of having any reason to believe x, people will often invoke tradition, and in this it seems like it might be useful to capture the very notion of tradition's perceived authority from others - but like so much else in this thread, traditional authority is irrelevant with respect to whether or not a religious belief is ugly or irrational - no indication that a belief is accurate, and it is no argument whatsoever for following such a belief in life.
Yes. That’s what I am saying. The individual is the most important piece of this puzzle. It is us who is deciding to believe this or not to believe that etc. But it’s not a complete castle in the clouds either. Because we still have some guideline and some sort of method too. But this is still the reason why I am against religious indoctrination before the age of 18. I think that you must have an adult, critical mind that will allow you to make some choices (just like you have decided to be an atheist) that will serve you in one way or in another way.
Ex: I personally don’t believe the headscarf is truly an object that every Muslim woman has to wear in her lifetime. I saw no evidence for that in the Quran. Yet if a woman (who is an adult of course) has decided that “her” religion is telling her to do that, well than that’s her spiritual path.
This is how it works. Yet if you are an Al-Shabab militant killing and raping “in the name of God” Both of us mentioned here, we have the right to refer to these people as barbarians. Because there is nothing, no dogmatic interpretation, not an element even in the old-school system that even allows such an attitude. Just like the inquisition. It’s man made. Did Jesus say “Inflict unbelievable methods of suffering on all those who refuse to believe in me?” – He didn’t. The pope decided this was a good path to take. And he did that without anything to support this attitude. He (one man) decided it was the most logical thing to do.
/And let’s not have a game of words on that. My choices are personal. I will criticize and debate with people with different opinions. I will oppose everything that is barbary by definition (like female genital mutilation for instance) But I am not issuing a decree to murder some writer in the other end of the globe.
Their choice is to distort religious messages in order to serve their own ego based needs and they are ready to sacrifice many other in the name of their ego based distortions. I never murdered anyone because of my choices. And that’s just one example
