Why do you believe in YOUR religion

[cyberpi]

I've noticed that being a proud member of a religion (including atheism) gets a person through some doors... just not the one that counts.

[China Cat Sunflower]

Religion is for puddin' heads. You can quote me on that.

Chris

[Dondi]

OK.

Originally Posted by China Cat Sunflower

Religion is for puddin' heads.

[wil]

Originally Posted by China Cat Sunflower

Religion is for puddin' heads. You can quote me on that.

Originally Posted by Dondi

OK.

yeah,

I'm a puddin head and I don't care.

Funny how 13 years ago, I was in that boat. Had been for a couple of decades. Oh I had my beliefs and lived my life, but organized religion, a congregation, a building, dogma, pomp and circumstance, didn't need it.

My then wife was insistent that we find some program for the kids to get an understanding of the bible, don't ask me why, we weren't married in a church and the first twenty years of our marriage stepped into them only for weddings and funerals..oh I tried a few times, never got past a couple services though.

Now since then, I've been religious about attendance, I can't miss a service if I'm in town, and if not in town, love to find a service to attend, not because I'm going to hell or anything, but because of what the message, the religion, the congregation, what it all does for me. I spend 80% of my time now with the kids in the religious education program, and miss the services, but get them on tape, cd or the web, I enjoy them. I read spritual books, I enjoy them to. I go on retreats, attend classes, go to seminars.

If religion is for puddin heads, I'm a puddin head, and proud of it.

[17th Angel]

_____________________________________________

Originally Posted by China Cat Sunflower

Religion is for puddin' heads. You can quote me on that.

Chris

[Snoopy]

Originally Posted by sherry

What moves you so deeply inside about your chosen relgion? If possible I would like to hear YOUR words not "because < > says so...."

Er well, I'm not feeling deeply moved inside, I'm not sure I've chosen anything and I wouldn't say I was a religionist. But I wouldn't say I was an atheist as the materialist-only perspective is limiting.

Does that help?

s.

[Dawud]

I don't know what a puddin head is, but it must be good because religion is delicious!

[China Cat Sunflower]

I'm happy for anybody's good thing. If you like your religion that's great...for you. I find religion completely unnecessary. I find organized religion to be a repository of patently ridiculous nonsense. Utterly stupid, anachronistic crappiola that by all rights should have been disgarded centuries ago. But that's just me.

Chris

[Netti-Netti]

Originally Posted by China Cat Sunflower

Utterly stupid, anachronistic crappiola

The same could be said of music, poetry, pilosophy, and most old-fashioned flavors of ice cream.

Albert Einstein once said: "The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious - the fundamental emotion which stands at the cradle of true art and true science." Religion is a never-ending source of inspiration for those who may never solve the mysteries of life but are nevertheless content to try.

A fellow by the name of George Raponos suggested that the Creator G-d is impersonal and that it is we who "make God's love personal by our acceptance of His unlimited love." I disagree.

Part of why my religion will be a never-ending source of inspiration for me is that it includes trying to get over the mind-blowing fact that the Creator G-d of it all is at least as personal as His Creation. Indeed, it would seem He is somehow more personal than any one aspect of His Creation. If His involvement with each and every one of His children isn't the most glorious love, then I don't know what is.

[China Cat Sunflower]

Well, I wasn't talking about God, I was talking about organized religion. The problem with religion is that it can never seem to make a clean break with the past. Religion can't ever say "well, we were wrong about a few things." It's got to invent some cockamamie excuse for how, technically, if you kinda close one eye and squint with the other, all these ridiculous pronouncements of the past when people believed in silly sh it are still valid...somehow. "Well, the sun didn't really stand still it was, uh...an eclipse...or...something."

Chris

[seattlegal]

Originally Posted by China Cat Sunflower

Well, I wasn't talking about God, I was talking about organized religion. The problem with religion is that it can never seem to make a clean break with the past. Religion can't ever say "well, we were wrong about a few things." It's got to invent some cockamamie excuse for how, technically, if you kinda close one eye and squint with the other, all these ridiculous pronouncements of the past when people believed in silly sh it are still valid...somehow. "Well, the sun didn't really stand still it was, uh...an eclipse...or...something."

Chris

Are you saying that organized religions behave in an egotistic manner as if they have their own personhood? I thought that it was people who did that...

[China Cat Sunflower]

If quantum physics and religion are both trying to describe the same thing, why do we still have to have all the smoke and mirrors, funky turbans and spiffy robes, and authority hard ons that religion wallows in? There's so much baggage with religion that it's hardly worth trying to accommodate it. Sure it's a repository of timeless wisdom, but it's so gunked up with junk it's unusable.

We need a whole new clean language to talk about this stuff. "God" is just way to amorphous and hopelessly self-referential a term to be at all useful.

Chris

[China Cat Sunflower]

Originally Posted by seattlegal

Are you saying that organized religions behave in an egotistic manner as if they have their own personhood? I thought that it was people who did that...

We were posting at the same time. Religion, people, organized spiritual group think- whatever you want to call it.

Chris

[seattlegal]

Originally Posted by China Cat Sunflower

If quantum physics and religion are both trying to describe the same thing, why do we still have to have all the smoke and mirrors, funky turbans and spiffy robes, and authority hard ons that religion wallows in? There's so much baggage with religion that it's hardly worth trying to accommodate it. Sure it's a repository of timeless wisdom, but it's so gunked up with junk it's unusable.

We need a whole new clean language to talk about this stuff. "God" is just way to amorphous and hopelessly self-referential a term to be at all useful.

Chris

Do you think all the excess baggage is from a confusion of language?

Originally Posted by China Cat Sunflower

We were posting at the same time. Religion, people, organized spiritual group think- whatever you want to call it.

Chris

Organized spiritual group think, confusion of language--it sounds like the Tower of Babel effect is still with us...

[China Cat Sunflower]

Originally Posted by seattlegal

Do you think all the excess baggage is from a confusion of language?

No.

Chris