Religion

joe the coat

time to put forward my own beliefs, such as they are. i vary between being a "respectful aethist" (i dont deny gods existence, but dont feel i should be required to worship him) and going to wards vauge "blakeism" (all humans are divine). as for satanism, if i were to go that way id use William Blake and Milton as my basis (milton was on satans side!). as far as orginised religion goes the only one which appeals to me is a fictional one called Bokonism from the book "cats cradle" by kurt vonnegut. i hope i (slightly) annoyed some people as they always provide more interseting replies. :eek: (though of course the coat is the master of the universe. that goes without saying)

Declan L.

sorry if somebody mentioned this earlier, it's just that my internet time is severely restricted.

Were all the wars from 5000bc-500ad caused by religion?
As far as i know, most were wars of conquest, purely for land and riches, apart from the crusades obviously.

And Hitler's hate wasn't directed at the jewish religion, rather at the jewish, celtic, slavic etc. races. basically any race other than Teutonic/Saxon/nordic races. Despite this hatred the war was more about not about this racism, the germans main goal wasn't to wipe out other races as much as just to obtain land and power.

Plasticman

it's cool, in my library i found a book of satanic verses 3 books away from the bible. i'm thinking of getting it out, but my parents would probably get me committed if they found out. or else just keep me locked in my room, so i can't inflict it on others

qwidgybo

something i forgot earlier:i don't think you can blame religion for wars and such like;if it weren't religion people were fighting over,it would be something else.people are petty.they fight over differences,not necessarily religious ones.people are the cause of terrible things,not religion

dera

mm i've always thought (well, not always, but for a while) that its the silences in discussions on religion that are the important.

and that
its the people who don't talk about it that have it sussed.
words can smother things sometimes,you know? (thats maybe a thread all to itself)

xd

Spidergal

On the Hitler topic in 'Mein Kampf' he set out his goals as:

1. To create a strong German (Aryan) race, ruled by one leader (himself).
2.To destroy the Treaty of Versaillles.
3.To destory their enemies, which he claimed were mainly the Jews.
4. To establish the German Aryans as the master race in Europe and to conquer land for them in Eastern Europe (this came under the policy of 'lebenstraum' or 'living space'.)


Dalamar how do you personally class a satanist and why did you opt for satanism?(Just interested not attacking you on the issue!).

article6

Satanism... I know at least two types of that in my school alone. What's the point? It sounds like a weird, weird offshoot of Christianity. Is evil worshipped? Is it designed to make the world a worse place? Then it is not a religion, in the traditional sense of the word, I think.

s0l

i just can't see this large mystical presence in the universe

The Force is in everything, its surrounds us, binds us. Its in the rock, the car, your boner on the subway, that nice hoochies ass in those tight leather pants, the kind you just wanna smack and go "Piowh! Bitch!"

Dalamar

Satanism usually envolves self-enpowerment, and a *distinct* lack of satan in it surprisingly. Worshipping Satan is that; Devil worship, which is almost as bad as christianity (from a satanist's point of view that is)

Crash

Someone earlier mentioned the 10 commandments and how the fact that it preached about "loving thy neighbour" as a good show on christianity.

I disagree with this, as every religion has something similiar. However, the only religion to state in its holy texts about tolerance of other religions is Islam (which was partly why i considered it at one stage.)

Christianity is an example, IMO, of a religion where the writers of the texts were incredibly smart people, however it was interpreted by dumbasses, hypocrits and cretins.

Religion was an excuse, not a reason for war. it was
used to explain attrocities etc. The crusades were less to do with the loss of a holy city than to do with the loss of a powerful city.

Re: Adolf Hitler: Hitler was not just anti-semetic, as many catholics and other religions were wiped out.
He was less against one race than for only an aryan state.

PS: anyone else of the view that Christian Or Catholic-run Schools tend to place seeds of doubt in faith? i went to an Opus Dei school, and used to ask many questions about religion, cus i was seriously interested. however, their explanations were pathetic, and when one teacher attempted to force a buddhist, who even had got letters from his parents to excuse him from religion classes, to participate in religion classes, i began to get very cynical about this teacher of a religion where he had spent a class preaching bout respecting other peoples religions.

Also, we had a religion book which rationalised God by saying "look at all the beauty in nature, now, some people believe this happened by chance. Thats just not possible!" at which my first thought was "isn't that the exact same argument you could use against God...?"

Also,a weird thing was that our book had perforated pages, so if the school disagreed with anything, they could remove that page before selling it to us.

Does anyone else dislike the fact that the new Religion JC subject is mostly about Catholicism? that really pisses me off.


Neil.

claire h

Originally posted by foobar
Someone earlier mentioned the 10 commandments and how the fact that it preached about "loving thy neighbour" as a good show on christianity.

I disagree with this, as every religion has something similiar. However, the only religion to state in its holy texts about tolerance of other religions is Islam (which was partly why i considered it at one stage.)

I mentioned it, but I didn't intend it to be seen as a purely Catholic belief, I just used that an example. I meant that the fact that most religions encourage this belief is why I think religion can be a positive thing.

Said the atheist.

lordsippa

Y'see... this is the thing, Satanism is all about worshipping the self appointed Enemy of Man, whom it is said wants to tempt men to Hell so that he can have his vengeance... Hence anyone to worship satan isn't... quite right... really.

And then there are those who justify it. "That's not satan, he's merely misunderstood! It's not about worshipping demons and demonic forces!" well listen, if it's not about submitting yourself to eternal torment <and if you don't believe in that then buddy you ain't a satanist>, then it ain't satanism. The idea of changing what you're worshipping is stupid. I can't say I worship jesus but i really think he was a wizard who ascended to pure magical energy... well, i am NOT a christian then. cause i don't believe, therefore, that jesus was the christ, but merely some sorcerer.

<sigh>... listen, if you're going to be a satanist just be feckin honest and admit it's simply cause it sounds cool to say and doesn't have anything to do with actual beliefs. ok?

joe the coat

sorry but satan isnt the enemy of man, hes the enemy of god and according to milton only rebeled because jesus was premoted over lucifer. on top of that satan isnt his name, its his title (again according to milton)

Mystic Fibrosis

all too true. And you will call him by his most distinguished title, Senór Diablo.

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the gospel according to Milton...?

joe the coat

why not? milton rocks!! but the gospel according to blake would be so much more interesting blake ROCKS!!! and was probaly stoned (why else would he think that milton lived in his foot?)

Barry Aldwell

What about the bible according to the coat? Or a computer? Or some intricate combination of the two?

Kay

Well now.

I've said what I think, briefly, back there somewhere, a couple of pages ago. Now I'd rather like to talk to everyone else.

Well, there's this Satanism thing you keep mentioning. Joe the Coat's right about "Satan" being just his title. I never knew that. I looked it up, it's from the Hebrew for "adversary". So that's his job title. His name, Lucifer, means "bearer of light". You know, "lux" and, er, "fer", like in Christo-fer, bearer of, er, X.

He is an angel, after all, albeit a gone one. Actually Lucifer was originally the Roman god of the first star - the evening one I suppose. Christianity appropriates yet another pagan entity. But hear me out.

Joe mentioned Milton. Much of Philip Pullman's inspiration was also Milton. I've never read Milton, but I've read Philip Pullman, and I think his writing makes the same mistake as you, if you take any clear stance on spirituality and base it on characters from a book.

Pullman's extremely anti-church. He's quite a confused man: I've heard him in interviews on Radio 4, and I think he has a magnificent probing sort of mind, which simply trips over itself in its attempts to cohere about problems like the nature of consciousness, the existence and nature of universal authority and ... er, well to quote Joe, "underage sex, gay angels and the death of God - not bad eh?"

On the one hand, Pullman is right to challenge what's there, and battling existing stories is one way of going about it - and of course he's right to use a pet subject as a basis on which to build a mindblowing, elegant story. On the other hand, he's taken the core of the Old Testament as background circumstance! Surely trying to establish a reformed philosophy of existence when you first have to kill a usurping, megalomaniacal God (or the Authority) and rearrange a rigid system of hierarchical angels etc., is getting dodgy. He's giving Christian myth too much importance for the good of spiritual progress/health.

[He's also giving Old-Testament-style angels top military offices, passionate affairs and petulant needy natures - see Balthamos - totally in contradiction to his own parallel image of them as beings of pure consciousness.]

Pullman's stuff might be one children's trilogy in a world of nice books (it's wonderful! Read it!)... however, I do think it's an example of how silly things like celestial faction-fights really DO get in the way of what you really want, which is a sensible, attractive, beneficial way to go around in the world.

If you have a quick mind, you will NOT find this by adopting the rickety principles of others before you.
You will NEVER find it by saying "I'm a Satanist".

Satanism is an objection to Christianity, which is an objection to the oppression that went before that, and so on. The revolution always takes the opposite path to what went before, and then begins to RESEMBLE what went before - and then it eats its children. Just stop objecting! It's the best objection you could possibly make.

Love,
K.

Kay

Er... there was one other thing... Sven, I think I vaguely know you to see, from Ses. 2 last year. I'm not sure, though. If you were wearing a poncho and a top hat yesterday, then all is clear.

-K

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Stop objecting? Uh, I've lost you there, for once. What we need is people who are willing to live by all the principles set down by their religion, e.g. Christians who really do try to live to Christ's standards, fairly good ones at that

If all the people of all the religions lived by the tenets of their respective faiths, then it'd be a better world on average, because most of the world main faiths involve kindness, love, peace, and so on.

Then again, we're human, and flawed. Maybe capitalism is a barrier to that big plan, but as I said in the last discussion activity this year, it's been the best of any economic system, because it allows a lot more freedom than all the others. In any case, capitalism allows altruism to become philanthropism, which lets people show their goodness more purely than by a state-controlled system.

But back to the religions - as I've said, if it is seen that religion is involved in evil, we must decide which side is corrupt - the religion, or the so-called believers?

For example, the so-called Islamic terrorists who spit at Allah by killing innocent people, the "Christian" inquisitors who disregarded St Paul's order "to each his own" (can't find where it is at the moment, sorry). In both these cases, a fundamentalist state was the cause of the evil, not the religions themselves.

I'm going to listen to St Paul's aforesaid command and say that an unreligious man can be as good as a religious man, but also, true faith in religion is an aid to become good. And besides, religion, isn't all about morals... not all of it, anyway.

<EDIT> You know what? I'm going to give up on finding that single quote from St Paul, and just advise people to look through the start of Romans, it's all pretty much the same message. Alright, see you all later

joe the coat

i suppose im as qualified as anyone else (i have an uncontrolable social conciunse) and as you just saw i cant spell. but id probaly annoy to many people even for me to deal withor find amusing.

article6

Weren't the Gospels written by guys who lived about 1,950 years ago and such?

Sorry Joe Coat, but you don't cut it, unless you're an ancient Hebrew immortality project. Hmmmm. Ridiculous... or is it.

joe the coat

the gospels were written by anyone who wanted to! there were probaly loads! but only a few survived... so i could write one. and blake wanted to write the gospel according to lucifer/milton (it varyied. he was nuts)

Talliesin

Originally posted by wiensta
Buddhism is not a religion.

I've heard and/or read Buddhists say that Buddhism isn't a religion, Heathens that Heathenism isn't a religion, Wiccans that Wicca isn't a religion, Druids that Druidry isn't a religion, Muslims that Islam isn't a religion, Christians that Christianity isn't a religion, Hindus that Hinduism isn't a religion.

I think the only faith that I've looked into at all where I haven't heard or read such a claim is Voodoun. Maybe this is because there's more rhetorical value in their saying that it is, given that in the West there are still a lot of people whose concept of Voodoun is based on racist 1950s zombie movies. More likely lots of practitioners have said exactly that, but I just haven't come across them because I haven't looked into Voodoun much.

The problem is that "religion" isn't very well defined. There's practically a boilerplate piece of text at the beginning of any objective study of a religion which points out that the term isn't very well defined, and (optionally passing briefly on the etymology of the word, and how little insight it reveals) states how it is going to use the term, without claiming it is any sort of normative definition.

All statements of the type "XXX isn't a religion" are giving a definition of "religion", generally one that the practitioner doesn't approve of, and then in defining XXX as not being an example of it (or "real" XXX, or their form of XXX) they distance it from whatever negativity they have just attached to the word "religion".

Really this isn't of much use, especially if everyone is going to do the same thing. I think it's only really fruitful to say that all of the above are religions, and to define religion as a word which is the superset of all of the above.

nosmo

But a nice post nonetheless.

Talliesin

Originally posted by nosmo

D'oh. Found that post while searching for something else, didn't check the date.

nosmo

Always nice to have visitors..

shep the malevolent pixie

i simply believe that whatever you think will happen to you after you die WILL happen to you. that way, none of the religions in the world can be deemed as wrong and everything's happy.

i plan to figure out the rest of my beliefs this summer, it has needed to be done for a long time.

sHep :cool:

ww)

lordsippa

Wow... I saw this thread, went "WTF?", looked at date, breathed a sigh of relief and read. Turns out I must've been away from my beloved puter for a while when this thread died cause there's replies I should've made.

On the note of Satanism, Milton's views were coloured by not only his own vision of Hell, but also by church preaching. Considering the churches version of Satan is pretty much the definitive version, then my point is valid. Unless you want to argue that their version is wrong. In which case stop calling it Satanism. DAMMIT! Also, it wasn't because of Jesus that Satan hated man <according to Milton that is>. It was because man, lesser in stature to angels, were given free will, whereas the fallen Satan had been stripped of the name Lucifer and banished to Hell for seeking it.

As for the wearing of the poncho... Aye. 'Twas me.

Oh and Talliesin, nice of you to drop by.

SOL

Faith is the easy way to put your mind at rest when you can't answer its questions, the only alternatives are insanity or ignorance, which is somewhat similar to faith IMO.

I on the other hand, enjoy reading all these texts about angels and various "occult" stuff, my most recent find was www.chaosmagic.com lots of pdf books