by AK - Jeff 38 Replies latest jw friends
I am an anti-labelist, I do not want a label applied to me.
Seek spirituality instead of religion. They are very different and no person can enlighten you on your spiritual path, only you can do that. Now I have a 10 point step by step process for how you .... just kidding.
I'm with you Jeff. :)
Finding balance in religion
I believe that all of them are 'False'.
In what sense is a religion true or false?
In the narrow, absolutist, exclusionary JW sense? Perhaps.
As for true religion, all religions are true as long as they give spiritual life to the people who profess them, as long as they console them for having been born only to die. Miguel De Unamuno.
BTS
In the narrow, absolutist, exclusionary JW sense?
No. In the straight forward, modern knowledge, true/false sense. Did Mary really conceive immaculately? Are you really bound for an eternal fiery hell? Are you absolved of all manner of sin by merely confessing? Was it really necessary for god to have a sacrifice when he holds all the cards? What purpose does it serve for humankind to suffer for Adam's sin?
Probing questions beks. Can you answer any of them in the true/false sense?
I've got a copy of Carl Jung's Man and his Symbols that I am currently working through. Very interesting reading:
Because we cannot discover God's throne in the sky with a radiotelescope or establish (for certain) that a beloved father or mother is still about in a more or less corporeal form, people assume that such ideas are "not true." I would rather say that they are not "true" enough, for these are conceptions of a kind that have accompanied human life from prehistoric times, and that still break through into consciousness at any provocation.
Modern man may assert that he can dispense with them, and he may bolster his opinion by insisting that there is no scientific evidence of their truth. But since we are dealing with invisible and unknowable things (for God is beyond human understanding, and there is no mean of proving immortality), why should we bother with evidence?
BTS
Burn Jung and the rest are but men. Including those who structure and control religion. What makes you more trusting of this power, than you profess to be of the government? What makes one man's thoughts, opinions, conclusions, observations, etc. etc. more legitimate or meaningful, or worthy of following, than another's?
As for true/false answers, I can not accept the Mary story. It is not logical or reasonable. I would think possibly Jesus turned out to be a swell guy, and people made a god of him, and thus his shady birth had to be not only legitimized, but miraculous. Adam's sin has nothing to do with me or you. Why would all humankind need to suffer for it? If god is as all powerful, all knowing, without ego as he's supposed to be, how does this make a lick of sense? Jesus or anyone else needing to be sacrificed to appease the god who sent him so he could save those he made imperfect............................just sounds like ancient peoples who don't understand why god didn't make it rain, and thier crops were ruined.
Now I'm done, because I've told myself since I left the Dubs, that I had no more right to try to talk someone out of their faith than the Dubs have to try to talk someone in to it. Sorry, I'm only human.
That's your choice Beks.
BTS
Religion is something that gives people instruction about how to live their life, lots of people want instructions and so religion if it gives the right instructions it will survive and grow if it gives the wrong instructions it will perish.
By right instructions I don't mean instructions from God or a supreme being I mean instructions that keep "it"(the religion) surviving and growing. For instance if the bible taught you don't have to pay your taxes to Caesar it wouldn't have made it past the Roman empire the Romans wouldn't have let it spread they would have wiped it out. Let a religion give a too many or a bunch of wrong instruction and it will fade away and die.
Take the WT religion as an example to survive they have to give right instructions like you have to go to meetings if they gave wrong instructions like you don't have to go to meeting because it is not important eventually they would cease to exist.
Religion is something that gives people right instructions not from God or a supreme Being but instructions that will keep people coming back for more and perpetuate it the better the instructions the longer it survives if they gives wrong instructions they will in time no longer be a religion that people go to or have anything to do with. It is not instructions from God or a supreme Being that make it right instructions it is instructions that keep people coming back for more it plays on their fears and hopes and offers them the warm fuzzies or feel good and/or guilt, terror of an angry Deity because that keep them coming back for more that is what i mean by right instructions.
And that folks is what I think of Religion merely something that became somewhat popular and that gave a bunch of right(luckily) instructions which lead to its perpetuation and survival. Religion in order to keep surviving has to change with the times and be a good hitter when it comes to survival a bunch of bad calls can cause to fall and eventually disapear.
