Define "Religion"...

[ticktockclok]

Religion is a way to get things that we want. Its covered up in many different ways, Hinduism, Christianity, Islam; its all the same. I watched "The Secret" and that completely changed my view of religion. Religion is a way to utilize intention-manifestation (praying) and not feel selfish because you are praising God.

[Joshiepoo3000]

Originally Posted by ticktockclok

Religion is a way to get things that we want. Its covered up in many different ways, Hinduism, Christianity, Islam; its all the same. I watched "The Secret" and that completely changed my view of religion. Religion is a way to utilize intention-manifestation (praying) and not feel selfish because you are praising God.

I see every religion worshiping the same God, but interpreting Him differently. For the God that I know though, when people don't see Him for who He really is and interprete Him as someone other than Himself, then the god they worship is not Him anymore.

My belief can never be changed in Jesus deciding for me where I go when I die. I chose Him, He chose me. This cannot be proven until I die. Thus it is my belief. I could watch "The Secret", but I would probably just associate it to all other religions and disregard it's relationship to my own. Or at least put it on the Catholic church, which I don't follow. They have dug their own grave as far as I am concerned. I will probably be either repulsed by the film or find it humorous and nonsense. Either way I will not take it seriously against Jesus. I will view it as ignorance.

[dorothy hanna]

My definition of worship is, "APPRECIATION". To be sure, the tree was appreciated by anyone who saw, and experienced it, as with God. Sure enough, when we come to know God, we appreciate God.
I guess, when our appreciation became corrupted by fear, (the wrath of God) which comes through a lack of knowledge of God, through ignorance, we developed the tendancy to attempt to appease God, in order to gain his favor.

My, my. This is interesting!
And yes, the media is a part of this fear factory that we have created, as we are a religeous culture.
Atheism, and science is also a part of this religeous culture, as we cannot seem to speak, or think of one, without referring to the others.

And no, most people do not fear death. They do fear how they will die, and that implies pain, and sufferring, and a lot of religions play on pain and sufferring, and the fear of it, with the promotion that even in death, you cannot escape pain and sufferring. You will find no relief, as you will be tortured in hell fire through all eternity.

[Mitalp]

I'm a religious man, but I do not follow any "religion." Religion to be is a way of living, but it has to be different for each person. Each and everyone of us is unique in our own way, so whatever we do in life, we have to do it in a way that works for us.

Being a religious person means living a life full of love, living to serve the universe with whatsoever it needs. Do your part, don't harm anyone, including yourself. And be the best person you can possibly be. That's all religion is, there's nothing more to it.

Religious scriptures are nothing more than the experience of the writer and what worked for them. Religions are not ment to be strictly followed, society has just glorified them and made it to something so serious. Just another form of social control.

All these scriptures were written so we can take form them what works in being the best person we can possibly be. That's all there is to it.

[marky]

i think religion is a 100% man-made concept. unfortnately, it is ego-based. at one time each "religion" had elders that came up with a bunch of standard beliefs, and made rules and regulations for the masses to follow (as sheeple) in order to be saved. you needed "the church" and the edlers to teach you all the rituals, dogma, etc, because the assumption was we are not worthy of figuring it out on our own...and in exchange we gave them money, built temples, etc, and the cycle continued through the ages.

now god, that is different. there have been many people who were capable of freeing themselves of ego to see that god is wthin...and those people were also trying to show us how to save ourselves, not create relgions. we all have that divine spark. and if we can only "be still and know" we can experience that, and become one with the father (or universe knowledge). this is what the huna (polynesia) refer to as the 3 selves (high-middle-lower self), catholic church calls the trinity (father, son, and holy spirit). western tradition calls the subconscious, conscious, and our soul.

and i think thats was JC was trying to tell us when he said "...the kingdom of god is already here, it is within..." scriptures say that JC also said the way to get to the father is through the "son"...and the symbology of the sign-of-the-cross places the "son" at your heart. so if you think about it, the way to get to universal knowledge, is through your heart.

anyways...my 2 cents on religion. i am a catholic, but since i began to study these things over the last few years in greater detail ive learned to listen to my heart more which augments the catholic dogma and puts a whole new light on things for me (no pun intended).

[Michael Chui]

Originally Posted by marky

i think religion is a 100% man-made concept.

I only want to point out that mathematics is also 100% man-made.

[maverickstruth]

I was engaged in an interesting discussion the other day, in which it was proposed to me that there really is no such thing as religion. Rather, we artificially pull out aspects of cultures or groups and classify them as religion or religious. Part of why this is a beneficial approach is this... sure, we can point to institutions as religious (the Catholic Church, for example). But that's only the surface level of what religion is.... religion encompasses smaller, less obvious things, though too. In many cultures, cooking is a religious process. Bathing. Birth. Death. Walking. Sitting. Meditating. Those things can be collected as religious in some contexts, and in others, they're not. I think this thread has established that there is no one-size-fits-all approach to defining religion. So the I guess the question must be asked... is religion actually a "thing" that's out there in and of itself, or is it just something that we've come up with that we've tried pull out, artificially construct, and define.

Thoughts? (Does that even make sense?)

[Michael Chui]

You could say something similar about cultures, though, and languages.

To draw that linguistic analogy out and digress a bit, I happen to be a fan of the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis, which is essentially summed up as "Language expresses identity." Push this a little and you realize that everyone has their own identity, because everyone has an accent. Cultural identity appears because the differences in all of these accents, inside a culture, has a very small differentiation. But take America. Native-born Americans have the American accent: go abroad and pretend you're fluent in another language and you'll be laughed at for your American accent. I definitely have it in spades. And yet, by one's accent, people can tell where you were born. The best of such people can distinguish which side of a lake you were raised, just from that accent.

What is language? It, too, is artifically constructed, poorly defined. Anthropologists have the same problem with culture. Where does it end or begin? Do children have a different culture from their parents? They frequently have different habits, expectations, practices... Heck, it's the children who invent creoles.

Religion, like culture, is an answer to the question, "Why do people do things?" But religion isn't culture; it's just one particular type of culture. Granted, it might be true that you can classify cultures into religious and secular, and that dichotomy might be all-encompassing, but I think it's hard to say that there is no culture without religion.

There is fact. For instance, people are born and people die. They sit, bathe, walk, meditate. They simply do it.

Then there is context. People are executed, succumb to illness. Women were raped, and thus come about children. Etc.

And then there is reasoning. Executions are an application of law. Rape may occur because of misogynist institutions.

And behind reasoning, you have culture: the source of the reasoning. And I would argue that religion is simply one type of culture.

[AndrewJ]

Hi guys, interesting thread.

I recommend the Spiritcode site for some interesting articles on faith and spirituality. This guy has a nice approach to the subject.

Spiritcode - Spiritual growth - Spiritcode Journal




Andrew

[maverickstruth]

Originally Posted by Michael Chui

You could say something similar about cultures, though, and languages.

...

What is language? It, too, is artifically constructed, poorly defined. Anthropologists have the same problem with culture. Where does it end or begin? Do children have a different culture from their parents? They frequently have different habits, expectations, practices... Heck, it's the children who invent creoles.

Yeah, these are actually parallels that come up quite often -- they seem to go in and out of style ... um .... like it's going out of style? Wow, I must be tired or something. :-) It used to be all the rage to talk about the evolution of languages and use that as an example of the evolution of religions. That's fallen out of favor -- the whole evolutionary model has -- but it's a good example.

Originally Posted by Michael Chui

Religion, like culture, is an answer to the question, "Why do people do things?" But religion isn't culture; it's just one particular type of culture. Granted, it might be true that you can classify cultures into religious and secular, and that dichotomy might be all-encompassing, but I think it's hard to say that there is no culture without religion.

I like this. Especially the parts I bolded. I agree, religion isn't culture -- it's more like a subset. There are aspects of culture that are religious, but there are also aspects that aren't. On the other hand, I do believe that you won't find a culture (or maybe 'subculture' is a better word here, what with all the so-called 'cultural mixing pots' that places have become) that doesn't have some aspect of religion to it. There is religion in every culture. How so? Just ask people what happens after death. They may say 'nothing', they may say 'you go back to the Source', they may say 'I don't know', they may say any number of things. Then ask them why they believe that to be the case ('because there is no God', 'because it's impossible to know such things', 'because we are just biological beings and death just means that our bodies have run their course', 'because I'm a part of a greater whole', 'because there is a God', etc.). I've never heard anyone give an answer to that question that is not, in its essence, religious.

Originally Posted by Michael Chui

And behind reasoning, you have culture: the source of the reasoning. And I would argue that religion is simply one type of culture.

I'd agree, but with a slight modification. I'd say that religion is one subtype, one aspect of culture.