Thread: I warn you...i'm fleshing this out as i'm thinking

I was thinking about the concept of religion/culture. I asked myself, what are the basics of a religion/culture?

I came up with something like this. A religion is a type of way that people live. It has certain attribute, it has things that people do because that is the way that thing are done, and not for any particular reason. A religion has things that it centered around, like a god or a holy site, and it tries to make a certain way that people live. I know this was really vague...but essentially, a religion is a type of mass movement centered around a deity, that tries to promote a style of living for its people.

Then I asked....are we not all technically part of a religion? I mean, not in the traditional sense, that we are either judaic/muslim/buddist etc.

Let me see if i can flesh this out....

No one is reallya trend setter, except those people that phsically blaze the new trails. For that, i'm talking about like the founders; they were the people who threw off the english rule, to establish a rule by the people. Everyone after them sort of fell into the path that was set by them; they tried to create self rule by the people,or the expand the nation,etc.

That was only one example.

People might say that they are atheist,or do nothave a religion. Essentially, they pay no observance to a god, no observe to a set way of doing things, or something along those lines.

Do they not have another god? What is the core principle of god - an all powerful deity that will strike you down if you do bad, and reward you if you do good. Please correct me if you think I am wrong. But the god of judaism tries to say one thing, the god of christianity say another thing, allah another thing, budda another thing. They try to make people live a certain way.

Now those 'atheists'. What tells them how to live? Since there is no divine inspiration, obviously the source of inspiration is the physical world, and how it relates to the self. Instead ofa divine god relating to the individual, it is the physical world relating to an individual. The 'godless' people, so to to speak, figure out the best way to act by what the world around them tells them is the best way to act (thats why scientists are so influential!).

This leads me to my next point. Is god really then a powerful being? The jewish prayer starts with:

baruch ata adonai, eloheinu melech haolam:
blessed are you god, our god king of the world. Thats the translation.

What do I see in that translation? KING.

I don't know too much about christian prayers, but isn't sumthin like this:

Forgive me father in heaven, for I have sinned:
Right? I don't know if that is true. Or at least, if that is something in christianity. But look what we see....FATHER.

The father is highly regarded in the christian tradition...isn't the pope like the spiritual father of catholics? The king of jerusalem (king david) is a person HIGHLY regarded in the jewish relgion. Sort of...our words are a rememberance to when we were a powerful people. I don'tknow.

So my point is this. God is not a being. God is a life. God is a style of life, or the thing that inspires that life. The jewish people have endured many millenia of hardship, but we are still inspired by a king that lived so long ago! Some people might say that its just a choice of words...but why didn't we choose a word that is not related to the word 'king', that reminds us of king david.

Even the people who claim to not have a religion, those damn communists, have the same damn elements of religion in their doctrine as every other religion! So Orthodox Marxist....i don't believe you when you say not much of the world is non-religious. Maybe in the traditional sense, yes. But not in how the symbol of god relates to people.

I probably rambled too much.

I believe I understand what you're getting at in your post. I say, like Feslin does, that I'm an Agnostic. Now that could imply that I don't believe God exists or that "he" could exist, but I don't know. Agnosticism could be consider a type of religion.

There's also the non-religious religion where people say that they do something religiously, meaning a habit done usually daily or weakly. For example, someone could say, "On Sundays I watch football religiously," meaning to me that they are just focused on that one subject and nothing can distract them from that "zone" they're in.

This is a deep one.

Heres my take on organised religion. I believe that people are designed to question things, this is what seperates us from any other animal, the ability to reason. People will utilize this ability to reason regardless of absence of fact or an individuals mental capacity.

The desire people have, need is probably a better word, to explain the world around them and understand why and how things work can help to grasp the reason for belief in a creator in the absence of sceince. Life, more so 2000 years ago, is filled with hardship and the desire one has to believe in an afterlife filled with love and perfection can be overwhelming for some.
Now we have something to look forward to and we know why it rains, we are geniuses and life is bliss...or at least it will be at the next stop.

Along comes the first brilliant man, or woman, ever to exist. This brilliant person has aspirations to dominate their fellow man, probably in order to gain wealth power and all the nice things that come along with influencing the will of simple folk. Being brilliant, this person knows that different things motivate different people, some respond to generosity, some resopond to fear, some respond to reward, some respond to love, and most like nothing more than a very uncomplicated, reasonable explination for why sometimes the wind blows and sometimes it just dont. The brilliant person also understood that a god for everything is way too confusing, not only that, more than one god promotes anarchy which has no place in designes to contol people.

A system of control in the form of one god is born, a tidy little explination to anything you don't understand wraped up in a book shorter than Harry Potter.
Anything this handy-dandy go anywhere book cant explain to you and it's,"God works in mysterious ways". Worship of anything but our system of control dooms you to an eternity of fire, the worst pain a person could possibly imagine.

The genious behind this is mind boggling, a system of supression based on love and hope. As a bonus, people are willing to pay for this control.......god is great.

Even the people who claim to not have a religion, those damn communists, have the same damn elements of religion in their doctrine as every other religion! So Orthodox Marxist....i don't believe you when you say not much of the world is non-religious. Maybe in the traditional sense, yes. But not in how the symbol of god relates to people.

If you are referring to my signature line it includes a variety of other groups not just athiests.

Secular/Nonreligious/Agnostic/Atheist

Edit:

Now that I have had a chance to read your post in it's entirety I thought I would address what you said here:

The 'godless' people, so to to speak, figure out the best way to act by what the world around them tells them is the best way to act

I act according to my views if I dont agree with something that is said I am free to reject it as such no one "tells me what is best" I decide that for myself.

I act according to my views if I dont agree with something that is said I am free to reject it as such no one "tells me what is best" I decide that for myself.

My point was not that you didn't act according to your own views. Everyone does. It is my view that cheeze-its suck - it doesn't matter if someone else told me how to act.

MY point was that christians take the word of the bible and say that this is the proper way to act. JEws take the word of the torah and say that this is the proper way to act. Men take the word of law and say that this is the proper way to act, assuming of course, that they equally respect the thing that tells them.

You, take some sense of morality and figure out the best way it is. Or you look at the world, and say that a certain way is the 'moral' way to act.

OVerall, my point is this:

No one determines by themselves what is a moral way to act. IF I say something is a moral way to act, then I enter my idea into the marketplace of ideas so to speak. And I say salt is good to promote healing, or something like that. Whether people believe me is irrelevant - I am creating a trans-person sense of morality, some GREATER sense of morality, that I try to adhere to.
Ultimately, my point is that we are all subservient to some greater power in the end, whether it is physical, spiritual, or factual (???). We relate to that thing by saying that we are that thing, that we are a proud membre of that group, whether it is atheism, judaism, or hip-hop. Whatever comes with that comes with that. That's why you see people saying that 'my religion is better than your religion'.....because they live in two separate places in the mind. Even our 'tolerant' society can't tolerate vast groups of people, most notably, facists/racists/terrorists. We can't understand them, just as they can't understand us.

With that, comes most of my first post, on saying how the systems are maintained and performed.

Your environment shapes your views.

Butterfly effect.