Please don't confuse religion, spirituality and faith.

Faith is merely a belief in something that hasn't been proven.

Spirituality is what I think you are referring to when you talk about a part of humanity that's been there since the paleolithic. A belief in a hidden, deeper spirit world that we cannot see on a day to day basis.

Religion is the system of putting faith and spirituality into an organized bureaucracy and using your influence to gain money/power and convert the masses.

Spirituality and faith are not inherently bad things, but religion uses its influence to corrupt the world. I'm not sure if this is intentional, but religion draws fences between people (Christians and Muslims, Muslims and Jew, etc.)
In my opinion this type of organized religion, is one of the things wrong with humanity today.

I don't think Sally was confusing anything at all.

I know what the difference between Religion, Spirituality and Faith is, I have dedicated years of my life (and a lot of money!) to studying world beliefs. So please do not assume I do not know what I mean.



No, I am referring to religion. Sure, spirituality grew in the Paleolithic era, but it grew alongside an early form of organised religion.



Some of them do, not all of them. You cannot define all religions based on the acts of a few. There are many other aspects of religion to take into account before coming close to a definition of religion.

and thanks ragabr! You hit the nail on the head



Much love,
Sally xx

I'm curious if someone could comment on a thought that Sally's and Ragabr's posts put into my head: why does it seems like it takes fundamentalism to get the beautiful aspects of religion (the Norte Dame being a perfect example). I certainly won't claim it's the only time it happens, but even with less aggressive forms of religion such as Buddhism, it seems like we only take the time to create texts, organizations, monuments, when we've decided that everything else is probably wrong. I guess it comes and goes with the rate of enthusiasm? It's hard to say "well, this may or may not be right, but let's spend all this time and energy personifying it anyway." It's a shame we can't indulge in both sides. I want my cake and to eat it too!

Religion is a man made ideaology designed to fleece money from the masses and to scare them into following their humanly book of nonsense. It's a very clever idea.

Luckily i'm not a moron who falls for such deceit

And the church doesn't pay taxes to the government!! Yay said the pastor.

The beauty of religion can exist in its simplicity too! We have to be careful discussing the term fundamentalism in religion though. I agree with you that it must take a level of extremity to build marvelously elaborate cathedrals (and I am coming from a non-religious perspective). But fundamentalism tends to involve that which people in belief think is extreme. For example, suicide bombing or setting oneself on fire in the name of your belief.



True, but that is religion flexing its muscles! Saying to other religions a sort of 'look what I can do. My God is likely to be more real than yours' etc. To be honest, I compare it to cosmetic surgery or a fast car but on a larger scale. Ultimately, humans just like to have the upper hand on others around them.

Much love,
Sally xx

Sorry Sally, I didn't meant to insult you or put down your understanding of these topics. It's just that I was raised religious and I see that the most popular religions in the world (Christianity and Islam) tend to use the above tactics I was referring to. I don't think its a matter of fundamentalism as I was raised Muslim, but not fundamentalist, and I still saw so much hypocrisy and greed in the religions. Not to mention selfishness and a false sense of superiority. It seems to me that these religious divides just create more harm than good in the world.

Peace to you, and may you have a nice day.

I am not at all insulted dmtk2852! I understand where you are coming from completely as I moved away from a Roman Catholic upbringing for much the same reasons. As I said before, in a sort of roundabout way, religion is too tied in with human nature. It isn't religion that needs to change, but humans themselves. And therefore, religion is not an ocean we must cross, it is ourselves we have to confront really.

Much peace to you too dmtk2852. Take care
Much love,
Sally xx

-I wholeheartedly agree. Religion is simply a form of control which tries to convince people that there is a certain god and that they are dis-connected from "this god", and need the religion in order to re-connect (when they never were dis-connected in the first place).

-Religion actually takes people away from the truth which is the NOW, where their happiness resides, and effectively teaches people conditional happiness, ie, you can start to be happy once you understand this religion and know what god is, untill then you are a low life and have no direction.

-As others have said, religion is actually a barrier to human spiritual evolution. Hey, the Catholic Church tried their best to stop the indians from using their mushroom and peyote rituals. Why was this i wonder??, could it be that their dogma and silly preachings looked rather ridiculous compared to the majestical peak experience of a natural hallucinogen??

-I'll go as far as saying that Religion has played a very big part in creating an organised society based on fear, enforced by the police. Many people today are so "institutionalized" by their religion, especially thanks to lack of free time to question their own thoughts ( thanks to our relentless working lives ), that they don't have the fresh perspective to realise brainwashing for what it is, and this is SCARY!..I often wondered why Church mass was on Sunday, a day off. Perhaps it's because it's a free day for most of us, and this is a day of fear for the Church. Fear that you may realise it's brainwashing. So what happens??..They tell you to goto Church, to maintain the brainwashing and not allow you any perspective whatsoever...EVIL!!

disagree with the poster above me.
Religion evolved into this "advantage-taking, mind-bending" thing that it is today. It wasn't created for this reason, it was simply optimized in this way.
If you look at where religion was first most primitively concieved [King Teti's Tomb say's most archaeologists]...
Religion was nothing more than a collection of 'magical spells' (of what is really a bunch of paranoias) in attempt to grant a pharaoh access to the afterlife.

Also, to quote "Repo Men": "What holds this world together? It's not magic. It's rules."

Mankind goes apeshit for rules. Especially when you throw eternal bliss into the mix.

Lastly, as Mckenna said: The real hard choice that you're being pushed toward and you might consider making before the yawning grave rings down the curtain on this cosmic drama is actually... intellectual responsibility, freedom and a devotion to what scientists call elegance; a thought.

If you have not heard this speech, I strongly encourage you.
The point he makes is to nevermind about what is true... and what is good... because these things are slippery slopes to follow.
Tread towards what is easy to discern.

As other's have said. It's all about faith man.

And in my personal opinion? I'd have to go with Mckenna... To have faith in aesthetics. To point your compass towards the beautiful.

That's the one and only rule you can rely on and is worthy of devotion.

If you find your particular religion beautiful... if you love it for the people in it, for they are beautiful...
If you feel beautiful inside when you are praying...
then as I see it... you're not being held back by anything.
Your basically part of something beautiful really, and that's all it is.

And so all religions are right and equally wrong.
They are right if they are uninterruptive of the beauty that is.
They are wrong if they steer you away from the possibilities of beauty that may lay under any rock.

[for example: If the muslim religion tells you: "You can't marry a christian man/woman because he/she is not of your religion"
This is obviously interrupting the possibility of finding beauty in someone that is unabiding of your religion.
Very wrong.

HOWEVER. [please don't think im hating on that particular religion based on the example. It's a purely hypothetical example]
IF... you're muslim, but no one is forcing you to marry someone of the same religion... no one is telling you "you can't be with him or her because she does not practice our faith"
THEN, in my opinion, this religion is just as righteous as any other. As long as it does not stray someone away from beauty.
The beautiful is everywhere and we all have the right to explore it without any constraints.

On another note, this is why prosecuting for the possesion of psychedelics is a complete and utter abashment of our right to explore beauty as well.
This is also why prohibiting same-sex marriages is wrong, for it too, disturbs our right to explore the possibility of beauty that may lie under any rock.
[so on and so forth].

I would say that if there is an 'ocean' that religion keeps one from crossing... then it'll be plain and clear in the context of the rules, though obviously no religion has 'rules' but rather, a moral code to follow or a direction of a preacher or the congregation etc.
These are where all the mistakes in religion are made.

Hmmmm...

I think religion, when talked about in the way we tend to, symbolizes a vast social hierarchy that has little to do with actual spiritual beliefs... and nearly nothing to do with transcendental, mystical experiences (which tend to have been the genesis of the things).

Blind faith, judgementalism, arcane bureaucracies, medieval anachronisms, rituals devoid of any juice... not to mention the more egregious sins of institutionalized religion have almost poisoned the well.

But, the fact remains, that some of the highest points humanity has achieved have been religious in nature. We are now at a time when we can pick and choose from the vast human tapestry of religion and keep the things that we like while discarding that which we don't. We can save things for aesthetic reasons (amazing cathedrals & mosques, artwork, music, incense), for practical reasons (basic morality, interest in history), and for spiritual efficacy (yoga, kung fu, ayahuasca etc.). Let us not forget that many of our best tools in consciousness expansion came to us from people who viewed them religiously.

Yoga, Tai Chi, and most forms of meditation were not invented by health clubs or taught by secular guys at corner studios with wall length mirrors. It was the mystics of monastic orders and shamanic visionaries, by and large, who did all the heavy lifting for us in every major field of consciousness expansion & human cultivation. While I don't think one needs to become an animist and collect feathers to use peyote properly, nor do I think you need to worship Shiva in order to do a sun salutation or a downward dog. But, I do think that we lose something when we completely secularize these things. Kung Fu schools that teach you nothing of Buddhism or Taoism are generally rather tepid.

For me, it is not interesting to speak of religion in the way the OP did. I prefer to look at individual practices and judge them by my own criteria. I, personally, find the atmosphere and feeling of real gospel singing, foot stomping, eyes rolling in the back of the head southern-style black church to be incredible, infectious, and potentially transformative. I find the actual teachings and beliefs to be much less interesting than the music and the electricity in the air.

I dig most religious folk who really go for it, and reach a mystical state. Whirling Dervishes, Qabbalists, Druids, Mescaleros, Shaolin Masters etc. I also tend to love the spaces that people create for religious purposes. From stupas to sweatlodges, The Blue Mosque to The Great Mormon Temple. Zen rock gardens, Angkor Wat, Palenque, Stonehenge, The Valley Of The Kings... these are some of the most amazing places I have ever been. If humans can build something that rivals the heights of nature for invoking awe... I am a fan. I don't think anything quite tops a Sequoia old growth forest, the Amazon, Hawaii, or some alpine paradises I have known, but I don't think we should stop trying.

Religion doesn't even have to be classical for me to see it this way. I view Capitalism and Science as modern religions with their own impressive temples. Skyscrapers, CERN, SETI sites etc. They may be more practical currently, and less archaic certainly... but the invisible hand of the market is a faith-based belief, no less than the big bang. Most of the big questions remain unanswered regardless. Why there should be a strong and weak nuclear force, how all property isn't stolen when the first person to purchase land bought it from someone who killed to take it, what is consciousness etc.

I don't practice a religon... but I feel religious somehow, nonetheless. My life has elements from many religious traditions, eclectically juxtaposed like the various styles in my music collection.

Anyway, didn't mean for this to go so long....
HF

I might have to withdraw my first post after HF's response. For his is quite a beautiful answer.
Really though, I like what you said about the luxury of having a tapestry in front of us to choose from and [from what it seems you're implying] using that tapestry to choose responsibly for ourselves - what to keep and what to discard.
Quite objective, if I may add.
Very nicely said man.

I also think...
part of this "mindless following" may sometimes be attributed to the insecurity one might feel when it comes to remaining ambiguous with these sort of decisions.
Meaning, to say if... "I'm not entirely sure what's right and wrong, and I don't know where I'm going when I die, and I don't know if wan't be part of this group or that group, yet..."
To remain in this state of prolonged decisiveness, can make some people uneasy and ansy to fall in line.

Another detail to consider is age.
Children who are raised by heavily religous families, will be severely skewed of objectivity.
Therefore, they must really struggle to escape the... uh.. I guess you could say "Plato's Cavesque point of view" they will suffer. lol.
[To see the entire debate from an unbiased, bird's eye view will be harder for them]

This I must express my disagreement with. Science is not a religion as it generally fails to match religious criteria. There is a clear difference between science and religion, and you can mean a lot about science being good/bad/imperfect/unsatisfactory or whatever your fancy, but that it is a religion is not quite correct imo. I would like to share some of the reasons why I don't think it is justified to call science a religion.

First of all, a trivial observation; science and religion are generally very different when it comes to their goals as well as their methods to achieve them. Science seeks to explain the origin, nature and processes of the physically observable universe, whereas religion (or religions) seeks to explain the meaning of human existence, to define the nature of our soul, to justify the existence of deities and an afterlife whilst maintaining devotion to one or several deities, among other things. Just by this their goals are generally very different.

When it comes to the methods of achieving these respective goals, they differ pretty much too. Science uses physical evidence and careful objective observations with very harsh criteria for acceptance, it develops theories usually relying on mathematics, it predicts outcomes, it creates hypothesis to check them against reality through experiment and it constantly throws away bad hypothesis based on the available evidence and revises theories to make them better. Science is like an ever changing flux of ideas and opinion, constantly threatened by a new approach, by some new genious, by a better observation or set of observations, by reliable evidence and better hypothesis and theories. It is completely provisional, and what is generally accepted today need not be tomorrow, given that we get better observations and evidence etc.

Religion, on the other hand, commonly use divine inspiration, interpretation of ancient texts, personal insights such as spiritual and/or mystical experiences and the way I see it is not provisional in the same way science is. Sure, religions have changed along with the way society changes and demand it too, thank God, but many of the core tenets stays nevertheless the same.

Religion just assumes a lot more than what science does, because it assumes the existence of immaterial realms, has faith in these immaterial realms, it assumes entities residing in these realms, all about which science remains skeptical or silent. You may say that, well science assumes and has faith in an objective/material universe, and while this is certainly a core philosophy of many scientists for which there is ultimately no proof, in principle this doesn't concern their work. We could still have all of our science without even considering this question, because science can in principle be done without any of these assumptions or articles of faith, whereas religion - except for pure empirical mysticism with no metaphysical system, just methods, and thus not really religion in its common sense - can't be without fundamental assumptions and faith.

Furthermore, science is not really about faith (as in belief and/or acceptance without evidence). I don't have faith, in the strict sense of this word, that the theories I am working with every day is correct. I have evidence backing this up from countless of experiments I have done myself, that many have done before and that can be done by anyone to reach the same conclusions. I have modeled phenomena myself, deduced formulas through mathematical manipulation, created mathematical models based on concrete observations that agree with the textbooks and so on. In short, I don't consider this a faith-based belief, but intellectual honesty.

When there is DNA linking someone to a crime scene, for example semen in a raped girls vagina, belonging to a spesific person, you don't have a faith-based belief that this person actually was at the scene and that he raped this girl, but you have evidence good enough to claim with very great certainty that he did. The same goes for science, except for perhaps the utter extremes of theoretical physics such as string theory, that has solid evidence and good reasons to back it up.

Of course in principle there could always be an infinitesimal small chance that your pen suddenly flies up in the sky when you drop it, or that electrical currents don't induce magnetic fields and vice versa, in the strictest sense we can't deny this, but you don't have a faith-based belief that it will hit the floor once you drop it or that electrical currents induce magnetic fields and vice versa. If this is so, then you'll have to define everything as faith-based beliefs because ultimately in principle nothing is certain, and I'll agree. But then this is no argument at all to back up the assertion that science is a religion.

But uhm, perhaps this is very off-topic, and if you consider it to be just let me know, and perhaps we could have this exchange of opinion over PM or something. Remember HF, I have just stated my reasons for disagreement, and all of this is opinion and possibly also a question of semantics, so don't get me wrong on this one. Looking forward to see you what you think, buddy.

Peace.

Well i think science can be a lot like a religion to some people for sure..at least in some sense. I mean many many people literally, without realizing it, will basically believe with full on faith almost anything a scientist or textbook tells them, as if its the gospel of absolute truth. I'm not necessarily attacking science here, because that's not how it is supposed to work.. But it seems clear that these dogmatic types exist both within and outside the scientific community

Hey universecannon! Yes, in this respect I can agree, but then you are basically just highlighting one of many characteristics of religion. Faith is not the only one, and people can have faith in something in a variety of situations that is not connected with religion at all. For example, I have faith in that my girlfriend is not cheating on me, would you call me religious? I take this at face value, I have no evidence that she hasn't, but I take her love in me as a question of faith, and thus conclude that she haven't been cheating on me. This may be a poor example, but the general idea I think should be clear. This can apply to different circumstances as well.

So even though individuals might lack critical thinking in what they read in science textbooks, that doesn't make them religious in my opinion for reasons outlined above, they just have certain traits that make them behave in this way. And your last sentence also sums it up quite nicely, namely that these dogmatic types exists all over the place both inside and outside science, as well as religion, and are personal traits of people with very different backgrounds and walks of life.

Furthermore, though individual scientists might behave very dogmatic and seem kinda religious in this way and this way only, this is not attributable to science as a method, a collective effort towards aquiring knowledge, a collection of knowledge and so on. Dogmatism and faith is not inherent in science per se, but in people, whilst I would claim that dogmatism is in fact inherent to religion, as it is one of its fundamental traits.

My view of this discussion is biased by my own personal semantics, as is so with each of us. For my own ease of thought, I personally consider these concepts as varied aspects of an interconnected line in progression. My system of belief is always designed to make some sense of the grand paradox of existence, and while I do agree with many of the bright ideas expressed in this thread, I need to be able to translate it into my own language. So, I've laid back and quietly watched this thread evolve.

I feel that one has to define what is spiritual and what is religious. When I feel spiritual... it is a religious experience for me. Going into a temple, cathedral or mosque... or even climbing a pyramid, may or may not facilitate the same feeling and sensation. It usually does for me personally, but I don't expect that there is some fixed constant for individuals visiting such structures. Honestly, I feel the most connected to God when I am out in the woods, on top of a mountain or at the sea shore. Smiling at the beauty of the Balance, just watching the glorious sunset, with something kind in-hand.

Obviously, unlike the chicken and the egg... the spiritual experience is the initiator of religious thought and organized theology. Likewise, what occurs in scientific breakthroughs and what becomes the established academia which forms afterwards, follows the same line of progression.

Therefore, I have come to think that when a single individual has a profound spiritual experience, IMO, it is by far more significant than the collective grouping which crystallize about the epiphany. As with Zarathustra, Gautama the Buddha, and Jesus Christ (to name but a few). Now, the organizers and socially oriented collectives, who aspire to have similar epiphanies and spiritual experiences of their own, encrust the revelation with dogmatic rigidity. This is where things get problematic and that's an understatement.

But I admit a fondness for megalithic standing stones, dolums, mosques, churches and temples. Much of art history is encoded in these structures, so perhaps they are a mixed bag, as with most human conventions?

Like universecannon and yourself Citta both acknowledged, the average person who believes in science (& western medicine for that matter)... is not a scientist. Any more than the average Christian is a priest. To the core initiated membership of any religion, the amount of experience that takes the place of faith is rather profound. For mystics and monastics, the experience might be subjective transcendental states or the experience of miracles, or the experience of encountering supernatural beings like angels. For the people who have had such experiences, their religions aren't any more faith-based than a branch of science is for one who is active in it.

This doesn't change the fact that most people don't test out the science they believe. And even those who do, still take much on faith. There is only so much that you can objectively prove for yourself, after all. A biologist might never test a single aspect of physics or chemistry while taking both fields' findings on faith.

Scientists are more like shaman or qabbalists, but they share things with priests in that they wear a specific, recognizable uniform which gives them a certain weight when they speak about things. Many laypeople will take what a doctor or professor of science says at face value. 99% of people who believe in scientific theories will never test them. They accept what the scientific priesthood says, and the holy books are taken as law... even when we have disproven things that they contained. A cloistered and set apart community of people who speak in a fashion that is somewhat unintelligible to those uninitiated into the mysteries. They dwell in archaic buildings away from the paths that normal citizenry might ever take (universities and research facilities)... often the general public is expressly forbidden from entering into these temples and witnessing the rituals being carried out.

I acknowledge that science tends to be more progressive and liberal than the older spiritual religions, and its focus on empirical data makes it much easier to verify... but I still stand by my metaphoric comparison. When you see doctors tell people that saturated fats are bad for them and overnight convince millions of people to stop eating butter and eggs... only to find out that we need fats, and some cholesterols are good... it is reminiscent of a church making some pronouncement that winds up hurting people. People believe in a set RDA for specific vitamins that we know are wrong... but because scientists who should know better keep saying that 400 iu of vitamin D is sufficient and that 5000 is already way too much, people believe it and suffer for their misplaced belief. Knowing that an hour of direct sunlight can cause a person to create 40,000 iu of vitamin D, it seems rather unlikely that 5000 iu could be considered too much... especially given what we are learning about the many benefits of D.

Anyway, I am not putting science down. It is certainly the most useful system we have created thusfar for dealing with the material world. When people take offense that I liken it to a religion, I think they miss my point. The things you cited as being inherent in religion are not at all universal. They might be common in the religions you are most familiar with, but I guarantee that many religions are non-theistic, many don't ascribe to any supernatural realms, and quite a few are centered around direct experiences. A Zen Buddhist doesn't believe in any god, but they would certainly consider themselves to be a religion. Many religions didn't refer to supernatural beings when they talked of gods and angels, but specifically described flesh & blood extraterrestrial beings (all angels and most gods are extra-terrestrial in that they do not come from the Earth).

I would posit that what we mean when dub something a religion is merely a formal system of practices and beliefs that are passed down in a reverent manner. There may or may not be cultural baggage, ethnographic history, and/or theistic beliefs tied up in it, but these are not necessary for a group to be termed a religion. Even Discordianism and the Church of the Subgenius are generally considered religions.

In the end, it all comes down to what you mean when you say the word. (or any word for that matter). I respect that many people who are active in science resent the comparison, but it is still a valid one to make. A lot of religions are open to changes in their beliefs and actively test and challenge their tenets. What makes a religion is more a hierarchy between laypeople and practitioners. Articles of faith. A tendency towards dogmatism and fundamentalist attitudes among the less liberal and progressive members, perhaps. Usually a cultural push to accept the beliefs is present where other lay people apply the pressure... certainly the case with popular science.

Remember, science does indeed purport to try and answer the fundamental questions of existence. It actively seeks out answers to where we came from, how the Universe began (creation stories no more based in evidence than most myths), what animates us... what happens to us when we die. Scientists don't know what happens when someone dies, but nearly every one I have ever talked to promoted the idea that when your brain ceases to function your consciousness is extinguished and your body rots. This is a religious belief. Atheism is a religions belief as well IMHO. It is a belief that there are no gods, goddesses or supernatural beings of any sort. There is no evidence for it, and it is a strongly held belief nonetheless due to the intuitive feeling of its proponents. Agnosticism isn't a belief, but atheism surely is.

This will revolve around semantic definitions in the end, but I feel confident enough that science displays enough of the hallmarks of a religion to be loosely termed one.

I'll be back to onethousandk's question when I have a moment, but I would very much like to quickly comment on Citta's response to universecannon.

I respectfully disagree that a common faithful engagement with science is the same as Citta's faith that his girlfriend will not cheat with him. Richard Dawkin's Brights, for example, believe they can empirically reason a universal system of values. A great many people draw their ethical reasoning from specious "evolutionary psychology" studies. I agree with you that none of these aspects have to do with the project of science in itself, only that it's extremely popular to attempt to draw from science the same foundations that religion has traditionally filled.

Belief is belief and faith is faith.

It matters not what said belief/faith is applied to.

When a lay person takes something like the big bang, or black holes, or particle wave duality on faith that is literally no different than taking it on faith the God died on a cross for you. Yes this person can argue that other scientists have verified it, but than is no different that a group of ministers getting together and agreeing that God died for your sins.

Yes I know the scientist's have a means of verifying what they have done, but the lay person very rarely verifies it for himself and thus takes it on faith.



Peace