I believe the conversation took its latest side road beginning with post 133....
Is There One True Religion, One True Path to God?
- Thread starter Namaste Jesus
- Start date
When the soul became synonymous with the ego, when people were led to assume spiritual progress and material wealth go hand in hand. It's a phenomena particular to the US, although like everything else it's being marketed globally – the idea of equating spirituality with personal empowerment – self-determination/self realisation. Perhaps one of the most successful proponents of this is the mythologist Joseph Campbell, who promoted his own 'follow your bliss' myth that resonates so deeply in the American psyche ...
Geez.... I fully expect the late Rod Serling to emerge from the shadows at any moment uttering, "Submit for your approval..."
H
Hermes
Guest
There is some core commonality in all religions. Truth is truth...but organized religions get corrupted and often these truths are erased and even falsified. This is pretty much true for all religions that decided to control and steer the population in a certain direction. So you have to look very deep and go back in time to find these core values.
Indeed. I find at times, what is not said speaks louder than what is.
Truth in all religions? That is a contention I've had for decades, one that has gotten into many heated discussions with those that think they have a corner on the truth.
Yes the path is not exponentially up, like some economies and technology... but it is in the upwards direction, and it has been going up. Yes we've had some issues with despots and manifest destiny...but again we are on the right direction.
One can see clouds and chaos everywhere, or one can appreciate the advances as we make them.
The way I see it, whatever target you focus on you are more likely to see and hit.... negativity or positivity, it is a choice.
In a little twist are we?
Yes the path is not exponentially up, like some economies and technology... but it is in the upwards direction, and it has been going up. Yes we've had some issues with despots and manifest destiny...but again we are on the right direction.
One can see clouds and chaos everywhere, or one can appreciate the advances as we make them.
The way I see it, whatever target you focus on you are more likely to see and hit.... negativity or positivity, it is a choice.
That's a common opinion against 'organised' anything, which stems from postwar anti-authoritarianism. We live in an age of the Philosophy of Relativism, of the 'subjective narrative'; the cosmos of the West is largely ego-centric, which puts it immediately and profoundly at odds with the great Traditions, so there is a need to find fault and flaw and thus dismiss them.
But the idea that the Traditions are themselves corrupted, erased and falsified is a modern myth.
The ills suffered by religions – and that is inescapable and really it's naive to think otherwise, human nature being what it is – are certainly no hindrance to the serious seeker, nor a valid reason to dismiss a religion.
Well you have to go beyond the superficial, but not back. All the great traditions still promote the core values of their foundation. It's just that those values are out of favour in the contemporary consumer-culture climate.
Living the 'core values' of a religion is quite simple: Love. Compassion. But both require we put the other before ourselves, and that is a deeply unfashionable notion these days ...
Short answer to the question 'is there one true path' is no, each religion is entire and complete and sufficient in itself to attain its end, but the idea that there is some 'über-religion' is an error (confusion of the universal and the particular), as is the notion that one can create an ad-hoc individual religion tuned precisely to one's particular needs from bits and bobs bolted on from here and there ...
Kathie Bondar
Author of "Voices from the parallel universe"
Religion is the dope of the masses. I am all for science.
In an increasingly secular world, science is the new opium.
How so?
H
Hermes
Guest
How so? How many books were "officially" included in the Bible is a myth? No, it is a historical FACT! What about the Biblical Cannon? Before and after the council of Nicaea, it is said that the Cardinals were locked into a room and in the end the books to be included in the bible somehow were assembled on the table, the rest were NOT! Constantine commissioned 50-bibles during the time of the Council. How come that the most interesting books were somehow omitted? Is this a myth to you? God only knows how much they modified or corrected. This was when the debate about the deity of Jesus was debated and the officialdom of Christianity commenced by Constantine the Great (who was a saint, but murdered his own son and wife)
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ah so you are saying they have religious zeal in their beliefs? That they proceed without facts, research and physical data verification?
Oh we've definitely got a divide on this side of the pond, the pro gmo crowd playing like god, the pro G!d crowd taking science out of classrooms...two sides of a very dirty coin.
No, that's a myth.
But that did not set the Biblical canon. The canon was never discussed at Nicea. And who declared any books 'most interesting'?
Again, a myth. We know from the copious citations of the Fathers, more than 100 years prior to Nicea. We can almost construct the entire Bible from Origen alone.
Again, many errors. Christianity was legalised before Constantine, and it was a later emperor who declared Christianity the religion of state, not he.
The reality is Constantine asked the bishops to come to Nicea and settle the dispute with Arius. That failed, as the Arian dispute continued throughout Constantine's reign, and the reign of successive emperors. So if Constantine's objective was to direct the church, or tell it what to do, say or believe ... he failed miserably.
Later emperors were no more successful, whether they were for Arius or against him. Nor were they successful in determining doctrine, nor silencing theological debate, nor preventing schisms, although they tried, and one one occasion kidnapped, tortured and killed a pope ...
I'm afraid you're too dependent on popular myth and propaganda.
Can you start another thread with the complete thought and not the riddles?
Religion and faith are deeply personal things. What works for one may not work for another, but that, in and of itself, does not give one any more or less faith than the other.
I don't see it as anyone trying to make a new religion. What I see are people who are no longer satisfied with merely perpetuating the misconceptions of old. People who seek new and better ways to practice there faith. Ways that make sense to them.
If a Christian wants to adopt a particular Muslim or Jewish custom or a Hindu decides to attend Catholic mass on Palm Sunday, I see nothing wrong in that. The Christian is no less a Christian and the Hindu is no less a Hindu for having done so. Such practices can only promote greater understanding and tolerance and that is something the world is desperately in need of.
I think if more people took a good look at the religious practice of another faith, that is, a serious open minded, non-prejudicial look, they'd see just how similar our beliefs really are.
We're all praying to the same God.