Religion without revelation - any examples from the past?

by EdenOne 23 Replies latest watchtower beliefs

  • Ruby456
    Ruby456

    thanks for clarifying edenOne

    Emperor worship, worship of the king and such like could be classed as religion without revelation?

    Botr - i like what epiphany conveys - thats the word i was searching for

  • prologos
    prologos

    I am just now reading J.A Kugel :'In the valley of the shadow' on the foundation of religious belief, and

    Evolution, predation, survival, hard wired certain ways of thinking in us, equating certain natural processes, thunder, rain with actions of animals, fellow humans, and imagination took it from there. When writing, recording came along, it became, spread in organized form.

    Revelation? well explained in previous posts. does not exist in reality.

  • Ruby456
    Ruby456

    edenOne - you need to clarify what you mean by

    "observation / contemplation"

    are talking about empiricism?

  • EdenOne
    EdenOne

    Ruby,

    you need to clarify what you mean by "observation / contemplation"

    mmmm, I think what I really mean is "non-revelation dependant", "non-dependant on a mystical connection with the supernaural", "non-dependant on enlightenment from a supernatural entity". Strictly speaking, this doesn't necessarily narrows it down to empiricism, although would be a substantial part of it. There are other ways to knowledge beyond sensory experience, such as imagination, mathematical logic, methaphysics ... In a sense, Descartes would say that our senses may trick and deceive us, so they're not entirely reliable. Let's say that "revelation" is prone to deception - voluntary or involuntary.

    So, a religion which, at its core, doesn't need to resort to the supernatural in order to satisfy the human drive for "spirituality" or explain the world around us. To be sure, those movements do exist, but, to my knowledge, they are all post-rationalism. I'm interested in realizing if there are any such BEFORE rationalism era.

    Eden

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