What resources have you found to make sense of the variety of religious/spiritual/sacred traditions in the world?

[Nathan]

What resources have you found to make sense of the variety of religious/spiritual/sacred traditions in the world?

Was raised as a Protestant(Lutheran-NALC), baptized and confirmed by my grandfather, who was the minister at this church.
In later years had experiences with other Christian denominations, and while in the Army had visited a Buddhist temple as a guest with friends.
I took a course in religious philosophy in college, the professor was an ordained minister of some Christian denomination, but he wasn't trying to "sell" Christianity, and I appreciated that. The major religions of the world were examined in this class, and it became apparent that there was a common thread: to adhere to a set of standards of mutual love and respect among fellow humans.

So for me, the bottom line is simply to allow love and respect to push fear and hate out of one's heart, whether you follow a particular man-made religion or not.

Jesus never commanded me to love my religion.”

Thank you.

 

[MarkD]

You and another member on a different thread mentioned McGilchrist several times in one week. I have looked him up and want to know more. Thanks for the introduction.

It is hard to find people willing to take the time to think through his ideas. I hope you find it rewarding.

 

[Alligatorob]

“The only clear line I draw these days is this: when my religion tries to come between me and my neighbor, I will choose my neighbor every time. Jesus never commanded me to love my religion.”

If all religions and religious folks followed those simple words the world would be a much better place.

I have given this thread some thought, but can't think of much brilliant to say. I am not religious, an agnostic. However, I recognize that many people are religious and religion plays and has long played a very important part in the development of our civilizations. On balance I think it has been more positive than not. But, to me anyway, that doesn't make it true.

 

[MarkD]

I have given this thread some thought, but can't think of much brilliant to say. I am not religious, an agnostic. However, I recognize that many people are religious and religion plays and has long played a very important part in the development of our civilizations. On balance I think it has been more positive than not. But, to me anyway, that doesn't make it true.

I am also agnostic in the sense that I don't know which propositions regarding what is sacred are true, or even if what is true for one is true for all. That is all above my pay grade so there is much I don't and can't know. But we all believe something about the world and about what we are and how to behave. It is inescapable. It isn't even just what we decide we believe about all that, we can infer what we must actually believe by examining what we do and say. For me, although I stopped believing any of the Christian beliefs long ago and stopped doing anything like praying just as long ago, I find I still defer rushing to conclusions. I'll think about a situation and without brainstorming all the possible responses, I find various possibilities just emerge. I think this is what is known as reflection. So I infer from this that I still hold a belief that insight and inspiration can be received just by making room for it. Where does it come from? I don't know, I don't say it is from God, a Holy Spirit or anything else of the kind. All that has fallen away but I go about thinking as if I believed in something higher that sees things and into me more fully than I do myself. It doesn't bother me that I have no causal explanation; it is just how it works for me. I likewise can't explain how my intention to raise my arm makes that happen but that too is how it works for me.

I was looking up quotes from William James' book The Variety of Religious Experience the other day and came across a quote from a different book of his that was new to me that I rather liked which addresses this seeming paradox about agnosticism regarding belief which I may already have shared here but don't recall for sure:

“It is as if a man should hesitate indefinitely to ask a certain woman to marry him because he was not perfectly sure that she would prove an angel after he brought her home. Would he not cut himself off from that particular angel-possibility as decisively as if he went and married some one else? Scepticism, then, is not avoidance of option; it is option of a certain particular kind of risk. Better risk loss of truth than chance of error,-that is your faith-vetoer’s exact position. He is actively playing his stake as much as the believer is; he is backing the field against the religious hypothesis, just as the believer is backing the religious hypothesis against the field.”
― William James, The Will to Believe

 

[oldlongwalker]

I sum up my general view of how one should strive to be in the following sentence:

The meaning of life is to be interesting at parties.

I purposefully don't use words like "fun" or "amusing" or "entertaining" because they connote ephemerality. Whereas, to be truly interesting takes effort, skill, tact, curiosity, learning, grace, manners, empathy, life experience...you get the point. Developing these characteristics is enough to make for a full life for me.

Uninteresting people--bores--are more interested in proclaiming "the truth," usually as they have heard it proclaimed or read somewhere without bothering to examine it. More often than not, their "truths" will not stand up even cursory scrutiny and they usually resort to insults when challenged. They lack most of the above characteristics.

On the specific issue of god, I have spent many years pondering this topic. I have concluded there is insufficient evidence to justify belief in the proposition "there is a god." I take "god" in the broadest possible sense to mean any entity outside of space-time.

 

[oldlongwalker]

I am also agnostic in the sense that I don't know which propositions regarding what is sacred are true, or even if what is true for one is true for all. That is all above my pay grade so there is much I don't and can't know. But we all believe something about the world and about what we are and how to behave. It is inescapable. It isn't even just what we decide we believe about all that, we can infer what we must actually believe by examining what we do and say. For me, although I stopped believing any of the Christian beliefs long ago and stopped doing anything like praying just as long ago, I find I still defer rushing to conclusions. I'll think about a situation and without brainstorming all the possible responses, I find various possibilities just emerge. I think this is what is known as reflection. So I infer from this that I still hold a belief that insight and inspiration can be received just by making room for it. Where does it come from? I don't know, I don't say it is from God, a Holy Spirit or anything else of the kind. All that has fallen away but I go about thinking as if I believed in something higher that sees things and into me more fully than I do myself. It doesn't bother me that I have no causal explanation; it is just how it works for me. I likewise can't explain how my intention to raise my arm makes that happen but that too is how it works for me.

I was looking up quotes from William James' book The Variety of Religious Experience the other day and came across a quote from a different book of his that was new to me that I rather liked which addresses this seeming paradox about agnosticism regarding belief which I may already have shared here but don't recall for sure:

“It is as if a man should hesitate indefinitely to ask a certain woman to marry him because he was not perfectly sure that she would prove an angel after he brought her home. Would he not cut himself off from that particular angel-possibility as decisively as if he went and married some one else? Scepticism, then, is not avoidance of option; it is option of a certain particular kind of risk. Better risk loss of truth than chance of error,-that is your faith-vetoer’s exact position. He is actively playing his stake as much as the believer is; he is backing the field against the religious hypothesis, just as the believer is backing the religious hypothesis against the field.”
― William James, The Will to Believe

Just curious as to why you think the explanation for your insights is external. What is the benefit of believing in something higher?

 

[MarkD]

Just curious as to why you think the explanation for your insights is external

Actually I don't think it is external. I think it is entirely onboard. Consciousness gives rise to much which we had no hand in like a personality an enduring identity and sense of self. Our culture by way of our parents, community and institutions promote those things just as they do language use. If religion promotes a belief in God and a sense of the sacred or, if you are brought up in a wisdom tradition that doesn't include gods, perhaps just the sense of the sacred.

While I've never felt inclined to personify whatever the something more may be, I don't look down on those who do. I can see advantages as well as risks and challenges. The advantage is that perhaps it increases the interactivity between what we take to be our self and what we take to be God. It could be that things we only have fleeting access to such as creativity can be enhanced through such belief. I can only speculate because, like everyone else, I only have the perspective I do and empathy and mirror neurons only take us so far.

 

[Linda11]

I would chose God any time before a person.

 

[Rose65]

I am a Christian but I don't go to church. Organised religion is just not for me.
I like and read the Bible which brings me comfort and guidance. I pray because I need to believe in a loving God and heaven.

 

[Paco Dennis]

Today being the first day of Spring and the Spring Eqinox, I am reminded of all the symbolic references in my "spiritual" journeys for this auspious time. In astrological language it the Sun is at 1 degree Aries. Tonight will be shorter than the day for the next 6 months. It represents an emergence of individual life from the collective consciousness. A tool in Astrology is called the Sabian symbols. A psychic would go meditate in the same pace everyday at the same time in the morning until they received a vivid image of the degrees meaning. This being 1 degree Aries the symbol is :

A Woman Just Risen From The Sea; A Seal Is Embracing Her




This is a metaphysical explanation of it's meaning :

FIRST LEVEL: ACTIONAL​

PHASE 1 (ARIES 1°): A WOMAN JUST RISEN FROM THE SEA. A SEAL IS EMBRACING HER.
KEYNOTE: Emergence of new forms and of the potentiality of consciousness.
This is the first of the 360 phases of a universal and multilevel cyclic process which aims at the actualization of a particular set of potentialities. These potentialities, in the Sabian symbols, refer to the development of man's individualized consciousness — the consciousness of being an individual person with a place and function (a "destiny") in the planetary organism of the Earth, and in a particular type of human society and culture.
To be individually conscious means to emerge out of the sea of generic and collective consciousness — which to the emerged mind appears to be unconsciousness. Such an emergence is the primary event. It is the result of some basic action: a leaving behind, an emerging from a womb or matrix, here symbolized by the sea.
Such an action is not to be considered a powerful, positive statement of individual being. In the beginning is the Act; but it is often an imperceptible, insecure act. The small tender germ out of the seed does not loudly proclaim its existence. It has to pierce through the crust of the soil still covered with the remains of the past. It is all potentiality and a minimum of actual presence.
In the symbol, therefore, the emergent entity is a Woman; symbolically speaking, a form of existence still close to the unconscious depths of generic biological nature, filled with the desire to be rather than self-assertion. The woman is seen embraced by a seal because the seal is a mammal which once had experienced a biological, evolutionary but relatively unconscious emergence, yet which retraced its steps and "returned to the womb" of the sea. The seal, therefore, represents a regressive step. It embraces the Woman who has emerged, because every emergent process at first is susceptible to failure. This process is indeed surrounded by the memory, the ghosts of past failures during previous cycles. The impulse upward is held back by regressive fear or insecurity; the issue of the conflict depends on the relative strength of the future-ward and the past-ward forces.
The possibility of success and that of failure is implied throughout the entire process of actualization. Every release of potentiality contains this two-fold possibility. It inevitably opens up two paths: one leads to "perfection" in consciousness, the other to "disintegration" - the return to the undifferentiated state (the state of humus, manure, cosmic dust - i.e. to the symbolic "great Waters of space," to chaos)
This symbol characterizes the first of five stages which are repeated at three levels. This stage represents the initial statement, or theme, of the five-fold series which refers to the first level: IMPULSE TO BE.

 

[boliverchadsworth]

Your comment is very worth reading. To me, all the great religions are religions of fear. They create an atmosphere of fear and condemn people who don't believe in their sayings. My late Roman Catholic aunt once said: "If I were sure, that God doesn't exist, I would left my church". There it is, fear.
Second religions and politics create fanatics, since they are mass movements which always find enough stupid people they can fanatize.
Third politics and churches often work together to suppress the people. There exists an infamous photo of German bishops who raise their right arms for the Nazi salute.
Fourth the most atrocious crimes are committed in the name of God. And this tiil today.
Now you may object that the churches as institutions have nothing in common with God. If you can seperate them, good for you. I can't and I won't. Thus I say NO to any church and no to God.

could it be a control the populations mechanism? that sort of absurd thinking is getting more and more believable given the ufo, conspiracy leaks, etc...and the ancient civilizations!!! separation of church and state seems to have some blurry lines.

 

[MarkD]

We do not seek converts.

To me that’s what will sell: “meh, we don’t need more just honor your own traditions.” Chasing down converts with used car salesman pitches, fire and pie in the sky just makes people want to flee the showroom.

 

[Stoppelmann]

I sum up my general view of how one should strive to be in the following sentence:

The meaning of life is to be interesting at parties.

If so, I would be striving to please rather than just be. I'm beyond that. My experience has taught me some things, but I doubt that they would interest many people. If people ask, I offer my opinion, and I politely point out that I have a different opinion. If a conversation comes about by that, by all means.

But to the OP question: Human beings have developed very diverse cultures that have grown out of diverse experiences. Essentially, they are probing the same questions, but their terminologies suggest that their answers are different. I'd suggest that if you understand more than one tradition, you realise that the differences are cultural rather than essential, and where they differ in essence, this grows from different experiences.

A second step is to realise that many modern people have completely confused traditions, so they don't actually understand the ones they aspire to follow. That is why many Atheists are better informed about the Bible than some Christians - and some of these Christians don't care.

 

[Grampa Don]

My 2 cents: Religion is the product of intelligence minus knowledge. With intelligence comes curiosity. How did this world come to be? Why do we die? Is something in charge? If there is, how do we deal with it?

So, we come up with explanations; some very fanciful. After many generations of retelling, these stories are accepted as truth. It happened in every culture. Inevitably, there are those who will use this to their advantage.

Now, thanks to technology, we know a lot more and can explain most natural phenomena. But, we still can't answer the fundamental question of why. Why is there anything? Is there an underlying reality behind ours? So, you have theories of parallel universes, etc. etc. to explain what we see. I suspect it is impossible to find the real answer. That may be by design. Who knows?

From a strictly rational viewpoint, we could accept that we will never know and get on with life without worrying about it. But, that's not satisfying for most of us. So, religions will continue and we will continue to disagree about which one is true. Even atheism is a religion in a way. Atheist believe there is no God. But, there is no hard evidence that there isn't.

 

[MarkD]

My 2 cents: Religion is the product of intelligence minus knowledge. With intelligence comes curiosity. How did this world come to be? Why do we die? Is something in charge? If there is, how do we deal with it?

So, we come up with explanations; some very fanciful. After many generations of retelling, these stories are accepted as truth. It happened in every culture. Inevitably, there are those who will use this to their advantage.

Now, thanks to technology, we know a lot more and can explain most natural phenomena. But, we still can't answer the fundamental question of why. Why is there anything? Is there an underlying reality behind ours? So, you have theories of parallel universes, etc. etc. to explain what we see. I suspect it is impossible to find the real answer. That may be by design. Who knows?

From a strictly rational viewpoint, we could accept that we will never know and get on with life without worrying about it. But, that's not satisfying for most of us. So, religions will continue and we will continue to disagree about which one is true. Even atheism is a religion in a way. Atheist believe there is no God. But, there is no hard evidence that there isn't.

I like that way of putting it “intelligence minus knowledge”. There is something in us which knows before we ever had language or the ability to formulate questions. Our experience is mediated by our rational understanding, intuition and feeling. But I don’t think god belief started with our modern capacity for logical inquiry; I think it is a product of our far more ancient which perceives more in our surroundings than our powers of abstraction can conceive of or justify.

Religions arise to codify and sanctify the gifts of our intuitive mind which we can only barely imagine. We have as cultures more and more abandoned the reality intuition has revealed. Now we expect reality to conform to what our modern approach has revealed through science. Depending on one’s disposition you might want to say the reality we believe in should be restricted to only what science can vouchesafe in the modern way. Others prefer to claim both.

My ‘hero’ Iain McGilchrist likes to say the world as our analytic minds conceived it is like a map of reality but what the intuitive mind perceives is greater, more like the terrain itself. We should trust both aspects of our minds. Not that intuition can overturn what science reveals but recognizing there is more to reality than what can see through a microscope.

 

[Stoppelmann]

Now, thanks to technology, we know a lot more and can explain most natural phenomena.

In fact, many natural phenomena were understood even before technology. Considering how much the ancient Egyptians understood, the leaps technology has made have posed even more questions.

There is a lot more in the past that is hidden from us, possibly covered up, like many sites that have been found recently, so I ask myself whether we are giving the ancients enough credit. There are indications that there were cataclysms in the past that may have destroyed civilisations and perhaps made us forget where traditions originated.

Hindu traditions are believed to have originated much earlier. They are supposedly based on oral traditions or were formerly preserved in buildings rather than on parchment. It is quite intriguing how megalithic structures, which were built over but have such a distinct appearance, are found all over the planet—huge blocks precisely laid against each other without mortar, sometimes with multiple joining surfaces. There are suggestions that these were built before sophisticated language.

We tend to clothe our understanding of the past in convenient narratives, but the more we find, the more these narratives are being shown to have no historical value. Recently, I was reading how it is increasingly clear that the Old Testament is a meaningful narrative, but the heroes therein were at the most exaggerated, if not completely fictional. There is no archaeological sign of an "exodus," nor of a conquest of Canaan by the Israelites, but the Israelites were probably Canaanites who perhaps came down from the hills to gradually take over cities and cultures of Canaan. This is perhaps important when we consider current geopolitical claims.

 

[Paco Dennis]

In fact, many natural phenomena were understood even before technology. Considering how much the ancient Egyptians understood, the leaps technology has made have posed even more questions.

There is a lot more in the past that is hidden from us, possibly covered up, like many sites that have been found recently, so I ask myself whether we are giving the ancients enough credit. There are indications that there were cataclysms in the past that may have destroyed civilisations and perhaps made us forget where traditions originated.

Hindu traditions are believed to have originated much earlier. They are supposedly based on oral traditions or were formerly preserved in buildings rather than on parchment. It is quite intriguing how megalithic structures, which were built over but have such a distinct appearance, are found all over the planet—huge blocks precisely laid against each other without mortar, sometimes with multiple joining surfaces. There are suggestions that these were built before sophisticated language.

We tend to clothe our understanding of the past in convenient narratives, but the more we find, the more these narratives are being shown to have no historical value. Recently, I was reading how it is increasingly clear that the Old Testament is a meaningful narrative, but the heroes therein were at the most exaggerated, if not completely fictional. There is no archaeological sign of an "exodus," nor of a conquest of Canaan by the Israelites, but the Israelites were probably Canaanites who perhaps came down from the hills to gradually take over cities and cultures of Canaan. This is perhaps important when we consider current geopolitical claims.

Our knowledge is still incredibly limited compared to what may have been known by older civilizations. @David777 has really interesting ideas about our ancient past. Maybe he could explain it one more time.? I think it involves non-human intervention.

 

[MarkD]

Our knowledge is still incredibly limited compared to what may have been known by older civilizations. @David777 has really interesting ideas about our ancient past. Maybe he could explain it one more time.? I think it involves non-human intervention.

My own sense of our ancient past is different but I’m just spitballing here. I don’t think early on when we were more ape than man we weren’t just bad at exercising reason; we also had great intuitive minds which performed better than ours do now thanks to long neglect.

While science and the ability to anticipate the results of various hypothetical choices is definitely a notable achievement of our species I’m not sure it justifies letting our intuition, feeling and emotional intelligence atrophy. I’d rather see us remain whole and balanced. A life obsessed with logic like the Star Trek character would be a nightmare.

 

[Grampa Don]

My own sense of our ancient past is different but I’m just spitballing here. I don’t think early on when we were more ape than man we weren’t just bad at exercising reason; we also had great intuitive minds which performed better than ours do now thanks to long neglect.

While science and the ability to anticipate the results of various hypothetical choices is definitely a notable achievement of our species I’m not sure it justifies letting our intuition, feeling and emotional intelligence atrophy. I’d rather see us remain whole and balanced. A life obsessed with logic like the Star Trek character would be a nightmare.

Could you expand on emotional intelligence? I'm not familiar with that term. Do you mean the ability to control emotions? Emotions are pretty basic. Many animals can be happy, angry and show other emotions.

 

[MarkD]

Could you expand on emotional intelligence? I'm not familiar with that term. Do you mean the ability to control emotions? Emotions are pretty basic. Many animals can be happy, angry and show other emotions.

That’s one of those terms I assume I understand but when you ask I realize I only have a sense of it. Looks like you had about half of it. Here is what google says:

Emotional Intelligence (EI) is the ability to manage both your own emotions and understand the emotions of people around you. There are five key elements to EI: self-awareness, self-regulation, motivation, empathy, and social skills.

 

[Mr. Ed]

I don’t know anything more or less than anyone else.

 

[MarkD]

I don’t know anything more or less than anyone else.

Know by reason? Me neither.

But know by the heart with the intuitive mind? That we can. Leastwise we carry on as if we believe in something .. if only science and logic. But there are other options which require no more faith provided we use our whole being.

 

[Paco Dennis]

Our subconscious can help with our believing in something. We might not know how it happens, why it happens, or have any idea how the placebo effect operates, but it does.

 

[Grampa Don]

That’s one of those terms I assume I understand but when you ask I realize I only have a sense of it. Looks like you had about half of it. Here is what google says:

Thanks. Would you say that people today have less of that quality than let's say in medieval times?

 

[davey]

just my knees and a wooden floor?