Dennis Wolf wrote: ↑Fri Apr 05, 2024 9:21 pm it's more based on "agree with us and you're free to do, think, believe whatever you want.. Oh and everyone else is wrong. " nowadays... At least, that's what I see, all these people eagerly choosing "teams" for the sole purpose of feeling themselves superior and perhaps to gain excuses for picking fights with people.

Robert Tulip wrote: ↑Mon Apr 08, 2024 4:50 pm

Dennis Wolf wrote: ↑Fri Apr 05, 2024 9:21 pm it's more based on "agree with us and you're free to do, think, believe whatever you want.. Oh and everyone else is wrong. " nowadays... At least, that's what I see, all these people eagerly choosing "teams" for the sole purpose of feeling themselves superior and perhaps to gain excuses for picking fights with people.

Hi Dennis, welcome to Booktalk.

This comment you made illustrates that in general most people give priority to belonging to a loyal tribe over having coherent and consistent logical opinions. People are willing to overlook perceived incoherence when accepting the implications of the inconsistency would create social difficulties. Our brains are hardwired to place tribal loyalty as our first ethical value, based on millions of years of social evolution, as indicated in primate behaviour.

If you betray your tribe by challenging their accepted wisdom you become an outcast. Some people are willing to accept that status. Interestingly, that is a major theme in the ethics of the Gospels, especially with the calls from Jesus to love your enemies, and with the whole story of Easter showing the cross as punishment for rejecting tribal tradition and authority. On that basis, the resurrection symbolises that salvation, understood in material terms as the future flourishing of humanity, requires rejection of traditional instinctive psychology, replacing it with a higher rationality.

Of course, Christianity has been corrupted into a tribal expression of social identity, like all other mass movements. But it is interesting to look beneath the corruption of the church to assess how the original texts could offer a coherent ethical stance of high value. My view is that the original authors invented Jesus as a symbol of ideal humanity, to portray how humanity has to evolve to prevent the looming apocalyptic catastrophes of cultural collapse. But that message is too hard to convey in the simplified emotional terms required for popular religion, so it will have to wait for the second coming before anyone can articulate it clearly enough to cut through the fog of psychological instinct.

Dennis Wolf wrote: ↑Tue Apr 09, 2024 4:36 am Hi, thank you for the welcome and an interesting reply.

Dennis Wolf wrote: ↑Tue Apr 09, 2024 4:36 am Yes, it would be interesting to dissect the original texts, but that will never happen, because like all politics, religion, too, has its people in positions of power with their own 'interests' who will twist and bend any truth to suit them, rather than giving us the 'facts' as they are.

Dennis Wolf wrote: ↑Tue Apr 09, 2024 4:36 am Religion is another crutch of our species, another tool that has/had uses but also limits our "freedoms" by creating division among people. Division, the very thing we should strive to eliminate, if we were to follow 'scripture'. Of course that still leaves the pointless question: which religion is correct?

Dennis Wolf wrote: ↑Tue Apr 09, 2024 4:36 am In very short summary: It's because people like to overcomplicate very simple things, that we find ourselves facing questions without any real answers. Pointless questions, because if you can't answer it and also prove your answer as correct, then what's the use of debating it? Which religion is correct, are any of them correct, is there a god that exists as an entity like we do not just as a concept, etcetera. None of these can be proven, there are only people and their claims.

Dennis Wolf wrote: ↑Tue Apr 09, 2024 4:36 am Back to the supposed 'freedom of religion' Ultimately this construct serves only as another tool to allow masses to live together with as little friction as possible, but simultaneously creating opportunities for further division among these masses (oh look, he's a Muslim, oh look he's a jew.. Eww there's a Christian..) etcetera.

Dennis Wolf wrote: ↑Tue Apr 09, 2024 4:36 am What I'm getting at is this: the fact that such constructs are necessary means that none of the "freedoms" including the freedom of your own spiritual practices are real. Simply because unless it's part of what the 'majority' wants/agrees with etc... Then it's not allowed, even though according to the rights (you supposedly have) it is. Even if there are no legal actions taken by 'authorities' against your particular religion, you won't truly have the freedom of practicing it, if the other 'tribe members' think you a threat to their own perspective and decide to eradicate your perspective, or label you an outcast for not mindlessly agreeing with them.

Dennis Wolf wrote: ↑Tue Apr 09, 2024 4:36 am So, let's rephrase the question... Do you actually have any freedoms? Do the others around you understand what the word "freedom" means? Because to me, freedom of thought would mean that individuals are not limited by what the tribe wants to hear, but also not having to fear the existence of radically different perspectives, knowing that they are not a threat to one's right to his own perspective and also understanding that the others understand as much.

Dennis Wolf wrote: ↑Tue Apr 09, 2024 4:36 am Unfortunately, that is just wishful thinking, as long as there are humans, this will never be anything more than that, just good ideas.

Robert Tulip wrote: ↑Wed Apr 10, 2024 5:31 am

Dennis Wolf wrote: ↑Tue Apr 09, 2024 4:36 am Hi, thank you for the welcome and an interesting reply.

Dennis and Lyric, I do appreciate this conversation. If you look through the booktalk archives you will find there have been many good discussions of religion here. I find the format and the people at booktalk provide an excellent basis for considered discussion, so I hope the conversation can continue.

Dennis Wolf wrote: ↑Tue Apr 09, 2024 4:36 am Yes, it would be interesting to dissect the original texts, but that will never happen, because like all politics, religion, too, has its people in positions of power with their own 'interests' who will twist and bend any truth to suit them, rather than giving us the 'facts' as they are.

That does not follow. We have the Bible and we can read it for ourselves, without any priests to intervene. Of course it is true that most people do not have the time or interest to study the texts for themselves, and so are readily deceived by people with political and other motives. It is also true that the “original texts” cannot fully be known, since there was extensive opportunity for the early church to amend the documents before they were settled as the canon.

Despite those problems, it remains possible to conduct a rigorous study of the available evidence. My opinion, which generally gets ignored, is that the Gospels were written by secret initiated communities of mystery wisdom astronomer-priests, deeply connected to lost ancient oral traditions. A central part of these traditions was the sense of stable eternal order provided by the visible cosmos, but this allegorical vision of heaven was dismantled by the Christian church for political reasons. Still, this older tradition left concealed traces within the Gospels that can be recovered to recognise a coherent and valuable moral intent within these documents.

Dennis Wolf wrote: ↑Tue Apr 09, 2024 4:36 am Religion is another crutch of our species, another tool that has/had uses but also limits our "freedoms" by creating division among people. Division, the very thing we should strive to eliminate, if we were to follow 'scripture'. Of course that still leaves the pointless question: which religion is correct?

That is true about how religion is practiced, but it undercuts the potential of religion to provide a coherent narrative based on accurate understanding. It is far from pointless to ask which religion is correct, as the sense of connection to ultimate reality that is central to religion can provide an essential shared vision of meaning and purpose and direction.

It is essential to recognise that religion can only be correct when it is compatible with the objective knowledge obtained by modern science. That means a comprehensive rejection of traditional supernatural literal mythologies, while observing how these myths often conceal deep wisdom.

Dennis Wolf wrote: ↑Tue Apr 09, 2024 4:36 am In very short summary: It's because people like to overcomplicate very simple things, that we find ourselves facing questions without any real answers. Pointless questions, because if you can't answer it and also prove your answer as correct, then what's the use of debating it? Which religion is correct, are any of them correct, is there a god that exists as an entity like we do not just as a concept, etcetera. None of these can be proven, there are only people and their claims.

This theme of proof raises some interesting questions in epistemology, the theory of knowledge. Proof of God as an entity is a category error, rather like suggesting the law of gravity is an entity. My view is that God is the interconnectedness of everything, therefore existing by definition. Interconnectedness provides the basis of the logos Word doctrine of the identity of Christ as word made flesh in the Gospel of John. This means our understanding of God is a human construction based on interpretation of how things are connected, and that the ideas that God is personal, intentional and conscious are misunderstandings.

Dennis Wolf wrote: ↑Tue Apr 09, 2024 4:36 am Back to the supposed 'freedom of religion' Ultimately this construct serves only as another tool to allow masses to live together with as little friction as possible, but simultaneously creating opportunities for further division among these masses (oh look, he's a Muslim, oh look he's a jew.. Eww there's a Christian..) etcetera.

That problem of division is true regarding prevailing mass religion, but not of the concept of religion as an ideal, which could potentially be realised in the future. An enlightened version of religion can be a force for reconciliation, based on principles such as love, truth, equality, justice and peace.

Dennis Wolf wrote: ↑Tue Apr 09, 2024 4:36 am What I'm getting at is this: the fact that such constructs are necessary means that none of the "freedoms" including the freedom of your own spiritual practices are real. Simply because unless it's part of what the 'majority' wants/agrees with etc... Then it's not allowed, even though according to the rights (you supposedly have) it is. Even if there are no legal actions taken by 'authorities' against your particular religion, you won't truly have the freedom of practicing it, if the other 'tribe members' think you a threat to their own perspective and decide to eradicate your perspective, or label you an outcast for not mindlessly agreeing with them.

I think you are too cynical about the possible tolerance of dissenting opinion. Christianity itself has many timebombs to undermine your perfectly valid critique, notably that exactly this corrupt and depraved attitude that you describe was applied in dealing with Christ himself according to the Gospels, so it is totally hypocritical for alleged Christians to say that such repressive policies are mandated by their faith. As Jesus said of the pharisees, the conventionally religious are like whitewashed tombs, seemingly attractive on the outside but concealing a festering corruption.

Dennis Wolf wrote: ↑Tue Apr 09, 2024 4:36 am So, let's rephrase the question... Do you actually have any freedoms? Do the others around you understand what the word "freedom" means? Because to me, freedom of thought would mean that individuals are not limited by what the tribe wants to hear, but also not having to fear the existence of radically different perspectives, knowing that they are not a threat to one's right to his own perspective and also understanding that the others understand as much.

This is a great question, and of course, freedom is always constrained. Nonetheless, using Hegel’s concept of freedom as the recognition of necessity, we all have the freedom of Christ to become martyrs to the truth. The gospels present a masterful analysis of how this sublime divine freedom is incomprehensible to mass opinion, with Jesus regularly denouncing his disciples for their lack of understanding.

My view is that this messianic concept of freedom is always possible, and that as society evolves, people will emerge with the wisdom to present such a vision in ways that can be socially accepted.

A central clash within religious morality is between messianic and imperial versions of faith. The messianic approach is committed to truth whereas the imperial approach is committed to stability. The messianic approach is sacrificial and personally risky, while the imperial approach values conformity and convention and worldly success. The messianic approach offers a hard and narrow path to planetary salvation while the imperial approach is a broad and easy road to destruction. The messianic approach looks for the wheat among the weeds, while the imperial approach is happy to pretend that useless weeds are good food.

Dennis Wolf wrote: ↑Tue Apr 09, 2024 4:36 am Unfortunately, that is just wishful thinking, as long as there are humans, this will never be anything more than that, just good ideas.

That pessimistic view may seem reasonable, but the arc of history bends toward ever greater integration of differing views. I think religion has a central role to play in the emerging global thinking needed to stabilise our planetary existence, and that existing mass religions, including Christianity, Judaism, Taoism, Hinduism and Buddhism, and perhaps even Islam, provide essential foundations for such an evolution of consciousness. However, these religions will need to be purged of their supernatural literalism, to instead see their stories as allegorical myths, before they can become real forces for human liberation.

Lyric wrote: ↑Fri Mar 22, 2024 4:03 pm I know a lot of people on here are atheist, or at least indifferent about God or Religion, but is religion something that you respect of other people? Do you think that everyone should have your/the same viewpoint? Religious people are wrong? What are your thoughts on different kinds of religions? Most people think of Christianity when they think of religion, but what about the religions of different indigenous cultures? Should people be free to choose and practice any religion? Do you think atheism is a religion?