Pure Brutality

[Leonardo17]

There is no such thing and has never been any such thing as the original teaching of all religions.  This is pure revisionism and a particularly ridiculous example of cultural appropriation.   Likewise, you do not have better stuff, you have the new stuff, which trades on the supposed credibility of the old stuff.  Try a little thought experiment for me, a meditation..if you will.  Imagine a world where your current viewpoint on the content of x is absolutely correct...and not in any way concordant or actually connected with old ideas about x.  Would it seem less true to you?  Would it be diminished in any way?   Can these ideas stand on their own, on their own merits, in your own mind?  Does the belief you currently hold require the mountain sized ego and absurd premises necessary to come to the conclusion that everyone, all along, has been trying to say whatever you're saying?  Should we take big mo and magic book to be authorities on real islam™...or is that you?

Antitheism and antireligiousity are not synonyms.  That's your own god beliefs getting in your way.  You don't intuitively register religion absent a theistic god.  An antitheist will tell you that religion and ideology isn't the problem.  These things are useful and inescapable.  Theistic religion isn't dogshit because it's religious or ideological, but because it's theistic.  As such, theistic religion could stumble into or cynically employ any insights or truth statements it likes and this will not, and cannot, improve the quality of theistic religion - as the end goal is fundamentally valueless.  Those truths or insights are discardable, and will be discarded by theists themselves, existing as mere props for other batshit assertions which form the organizing principle of all theistic belief.  There is no rational or self respecting way to get to where you are, and throwing other theists under the bus in the company of atheists while proclaiming ownership of their religious articles is unlikely to get you the outcome you desire.

Let them be wrong, and, bringing it all back together, understand that you're going to have to do the work for your own religion yourself, without their borrowed ladders.  I understand that this is a hard habit to break coming from abrahamic theism...but it's not like you think those silly fucks got things right, amiright?  Wiccans were in a similar position by the 90's.  They had imagined a revisionist history for themselves and couched the neopagan movement as a return to tradition while being in deep disagreement with the historical reality of pagan religions.  What contemporary pagans organized around, due to the unsuitability of the belief systems they aped, was exactly what you've decided on today.  The contents of the self help and new age aisles.  Magical thinking and nonsense about "energy" - but not..you know, energy energy...ghost energy.  Neopaganism was the fastest growing religion in the us for a time and ended up having a profound effect on mainstream theistic religion....but you'd be hard pressed to find them today...because once they'd removed disingenuos appeals to ancient wisdom and the market pressure of deepak chopraisms there wasn't much to it beyond humanism and environmentalism.  No gods or ghosts required.  Nothing to organize around that didn't have better purchase in society and less baggage as it's own cause.  In the real world, this is probably best exemplified by witchvox shuttering and no replacement or attempts at a replacement ever popping up.  Don't get me wrong, there are still pagans.  Deeply committed pagans who do want to use their beliefs as a way to pierce the veil on truths of the type I assume you also want to comment on.  Then there are people who "used to be into crystals and healing energy and stuff".  Which path do you think you're on?  Which path do you want to be on?

1) I’ve just had that very same discussion with Aldous Huexley. The book is called “The Devils of Loudin”. In the first 3 chapters of his book he is doing all that discussions about Middle Ages Christian religious doctrines, the similarities with other religions like Hinduism, the true nature of God, the true nature of the human soul, the methods to follow to reach Higher realities. And all of this is simply boring. I don’t like theology. I like modern and practical guidelines to explore inner realities. The only reason why I believe in “Original messages” is that I am observing parallel thoughts in seemingly different spiritual doctrines and that these “original approaches” usually work when you are able to understand and use them correctly.
 
2) We have been debating this since ages now. I will give you an example from my own life. When I was a kid there was this book called “Le Bled”. It was a tick white grammar and orthography book that was the main primary education material in the 1970’s. In my time it was used as a book of torture, to punish lazy primary students. The book had no picture in it and was written in small characters.
 
I on the other had had booklets called “Passeport” in the holydays. It was a revision book that included easy and fun mathematics and grammar and even history exercises that was so fun that I rejoiced when I was offered one of them by an adult. Also in my later years as a high school student etc. all studying materials had beautiful pictures in it, were written in short and easy to understand language. The general education spirit was one of friendship, debate and learning with joy kind of experience.
 
That’s very different from what people had in the 1950’s or still have for instance in the Turkish education system. The old view states that young people are to learn things through fear of punishment and sometimes even corporal punishment. That’s how the “Jesuite” schools in Europe still operate. The kids are still living in military discipline and they cannot fail. If they fail at something, they are beaten.
 
We as 21st century people we despise this type of approaches toward young human beings. But that was what is “normal” in the 1950’s or so. 
 
That’s how religion worked as well. I recently had this conversation with someone. That person was telling me that for each prayer (Muslim Prayer) that I missed, God would have me do each and every one of these prayers on fire. And that fire is going to be a fire that’s a million times hotter that ordinary plasma. And that’s how these people operate: It’s all stick and carrot. That’s the nature of all old-school religions. The difference is in form. The main idea is always the same: “Do what you are told or else there will be suffering”.
 
- The only thing I am saying is that this worked in the past and is still working on some people today. You do get them to do their meditations and prayers (even if it’s on a superficial level), they will do their fasting, and they will come to the Church on Sundays (or other days) and they will listen and believe in the %50 nonsense you are telling them.
 
Now for centuries, that’s the only thing we had. And it worked.
 
3) All this Hippy / Neo-Pagan stuff you are talking about has a lot to do with what I am explaining here. In the 1960’s there were people who weren’t satisfied with the Western way of doing things. By this I mean mind-based philosophical and largely Atheistic and materialistic way of looking at the world. I am not saying that it’s not OK to be so, I’m only saying that some people wanted something more. So some of them were attracted to some pseudo religions. Again: There is nothing wrong with that either. Others travelled to places like India, Nepal, Peru, and Afghanistan and had what I would call this “spiritual reconnection”. That’s something that’s unlike typical philosophical / materialistic way of thinking. But it’s also different from the scholastic old-school religious way of thinking.
 
   So on a personal level: I don’t see myself as someone who believes in this mass of irrational thoughts. I think that these are a complete waste of time. But I am lucid enough to see the logic behind it. This is just people, religious leaders who think they have figured things out for themselves, so they want to incites you and me to do the right stuff (coming to church, giving away money for the poor, saying your prayers before going to bed etc.). And this is not something that should cause us to be anti-theist / anti-religious or whatever. It’s just the way organized religion works.  
 
    Still today (see the study workbook analogy) we have things that are “better”. We are not that different from these “old-school” people. But in the Chopra system for instance, we understand the “science” behind the usage of mantras and we use them accordingly. It’s not “Do this many mantra and you shall get to heaven (a place of endless riches and material benefits). It’s more like, “Here is a method to reprogram your mind, unlearn false beliefs that you have learned and learn new stuff that will help you in improving your life (today).”
 
   So I don’t hate the old school entirely. What is happening with them is that they are still doing the right thing but they are not really aware of it (and don’t even need to be aware of it if you ask me). They are sort of / kind of being manipulated into doing the right things.
 
    But for this very reason, we need to put some limits to their ways of doing things. That’s because it can get out of hand and start morphing into fanaticism of self-harming sort of blind dogmatism.
 
    So to sum up: I sort of like the era we are living in. Revisionists of the 60’s did a lot for us. Now we have all this good stuff at our disposal. I see all of this as a part of our evolution as a specie. And that’s the only thing that matters right now. It’s not about getting to heaven or anything like that. It’s more about learning to manage ourselves in this world / today in a way that is self-supporting and that will allow future generations to have it at least as good as we had it
 
(I know the topic is old, But I choose to write this reply here instead of copying Grand Nudger’s message and pasting it to a new thread)