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ORIGINS OF RELIGION
Good post, and very clear.
Nothing to argue about here, except that religion, even rudimentary
organized religion, has roots earlier than a desire to control, namely the
divine ascension experiences and the desire to communicate and invoke
those experiences in others.
Those who have seen what we are doing here, where we are, where we came
from, and where (the hell) we are going, are eager to communicate their
discoveries to others and right they should be.
Discoveries of the spirit are no different than discoveries of mammon.
However once handed the spirit ball, there are many who would run with
it for purposes of profit, control and enslavement just as organized
science and even government has done, as you have so carefully detailed.
And there are those, who hiding in the darkness from their crimes along
these lines, take every effort possible to belittle and throw contempt on
the exitence of spirit, divinity and their related ascension experiences.
Also there is no faster way to crash an eternal being than to convince
him he is made of mortal meat and will die when the body dies.
Thus such beliefs that deny, suppress or even punish true religious
expeiences are used to keep beings in darkness and imprisoned on a mental
and emotional death row their entire lives.
To wit, tell the wrong person you have exterioized from your body, and
they will try to 'help' you with prozac and electric shock.
Tell someone you talk with demons and angels in dreams at night waring
over your soul, or clusters of other misfortunates, and they will
tell you 'a doctor can help you with that.'
Homer
- ------------------------------------------------------------------------
Homer Wilson Smith The Paths of Lovers Art Matrix - Lightlink
(607) 277-0959 KC2ITF Cross Internet Access, Ithaca NY
homer@lightlink.com In the Line of Duty http://www.lightlink.com
On Mon, 25 Apr 2011, Kat wrote:
> On Apr 25, 10:24 pm, Jane Elizabeth Staller <j...@lightlink.com>
> wrote:
>> Kat said:
>>
>>
>>
>>> "It is my firm belief that religion is a tool that human kind has
>>> evolved past needing, but clings to out of fear of change and the
>>> unknown. "
>>
>> It looks like you just said that people who are into religion
>> are unevolved.
>>
>> Please define what you mean by religion.
>>
>> Jane
>
> I thought you were done talking with me? I actually discussed what I
> meant by this comment in another post, perhaps you missed it. I will
> take this opportunity to expand upon my point. I don't think you will
> read it, but enjoy the anthropological tl;dr anyways.
>
>
> **************************************************
>
> When one studies history, they see that organized religion was
> developed as a means of socio-political control. As we slipped from
> matriarchal hunter gatherer societies into patriarchal societies with
> language, currency and property, codes of conduct and laws became
> necessary. Concepts of personal property necessitated rules regarding
> theft and inheritance in the event of marriage or death. Systems of
> punishment for those who broke rules had to be implemented and early
> on, this was usually done by the religious caste/organization.
>
> These codes of behavior/laws make sense if you study the historic
> context. For example, the concept of unclean animals. Early tribes of
> Israel bordered other cultures that had regular feasts, and usually
> pork. Pork, when poorly cooked (such as at a festival where people are
> too drunk to cook it correctly) will make you sick. The early priests
> said "Hey! Everyone! This animal is unclean, don't eat it!" and thus
> was absorbed into the faith.
>
> These codes of behavior changed over the years depending on who was
> reading the text. "Virgin", at the time the prophesy of Jesus was
> written, meant any young woman who was old enough to be married. At
> the time of the historical figure's birth, it meant one who had not
> indulged in sex yet. The "modern" (to them) definition was used so as
> to make Jesus divine and not just a hippie Jewish rabbi who's
> teachings were not in sync with the church.
>
> These codes of behavior have also been altered for political means.
> "Suffer not a witch to live" was originally "suffer not a poisoner to
> live". It was changed over the years to demonize midwives, pagans,
> gypsies and anyone else who didn't fit in and pay a tithe to the
> church. Popular pagan holidays were similarly absorbed, such as
> christmas (saturnalia, i think) and easter (the festival of Eostar).
>
> The church did something else for its followers. When we were hunter
> gatherers, it was easy to know who was in your tribe. Strangers
> represented a potential threat.. they might steal your resources
> (food, supplies, people) or kill you on sight. A shared religion, as
> we changed to sedentary life, gave people a common bond so that they
> could identify others who might be very different from themselves
> (which is very scary to many people!) as an enemy or ally, based on
> how they were dressed, their holy symbol etc. The caste system used by
> the hindu peoples is another way of demonstrating social associations
> determined by faith.
>
>
>
> *************************************************
>
>
>
> All of this pales in the face of what religion and spirituality are
> mainly about: making sense of the world around us based on what we
> already know as "truth". What happens to us when we die? Why do bad
> things happen to good people? Where did the universe as we know it
> come from?
>
> Science has answered many things the church previously hoped to
> explain. While fallible, gravity, genetics, physics etc do a better
> job of explaining the mundane aspects of life than any organized
> religion has previously. To those who think the world is only 7
> thousand years old because the bible says so, I shall throw a carbon
> dated fossil at your head!
>
> As for the code of laws we need to govern ourselves, most societies in
> the "modern" world have laws that are applicable to their culture.
> There are set laws and there are set consequences for those laws. In
> the us and other countries, those laws are made so that they are
> applicable regardless of faith and rightfully so. Those laws are
> enforced not by the church, but the military or police. Sadly this is
> not the case everywhere, I hope that one day it is.
>
> Social belonging.... the net and other modern technologies have
> forever changed how we interact as people. Facebook brings more people
> together than church picnics or sunday service. We do not need
> religious arranged marriages or religious rules for inheritance of
> property. Humans are so diverse and so populous in so many places that
> cultural identity cannot be defined with a specific organized church.
>
>
> ***********************************************************
>
> Because of our diversity, I hope that organized religion becomes a
> thing of the past. It is preposterous that, as a US citizen, I be
> forced to submit to sharia or evangelical beliefs or even shinto. I am
> me, I have the freedom to be me and decide what is right for ME
> spiritually, emotionally and philosophically. Bringing organized
> religion into laws, something that certain factions in the us are
> trying to do, violates our freedom of religion. Someone so wholly
> unconnected to me in any way should not have a say in how I live my
> life.
>
> I have met people who would force me to go to church on sunday. I have
> met people who would force me to wear a veil and never drive or vote
> just because I have a uterus. I have met people who would elevate my
> status in society and my "spiritual" status because of my education
> and bloodline. I was once declared a child of evil and sin simply
> because I am a red head. Those things are utterly preposterous and
> quite frankly, dangerous. They are leftovers of a time when humans
> needed a tribe to bind them together from things that go bump in the
> night... we have evolved past that point culturally.
>
> So, why do we still cling to them? Fear and an unwillingness to
> question what we are taught. It is my hope that this will be abandoned
> and that spirituality and religion will shift focus from guidelines
> from living to more positive things: healing one another, healing the
> earth we seem so intent on destroying, making ourselves self -
> actualized. We will not achieve those things however, until we as a
> whole learn to release our fears, prejudices and collective conceit.
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