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Re: My darlin angel gal Mandi
by Anonymous-Coward on Mar 15, 2005 - 02:55 PM
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Your theories make sense as far as they go - but you have made some sweeping statements that really aren't true.
Plenty of incredibly intelligent people trust truly in religions. My childhood church was full of them. Champion debaters, professors of dead languages, engineers, inventors, mathematicians, artists, musicians, authors, lawyers, doctors, architects; for such a small church, we had a really amazing average intelligence. In fact, I was rather shocked to find that the rest of the world was, in general, quite distressingly less intelligent than I was used to. So it seems that intelligence and religion can walk hand-in-hand.
Intelligent people do not just remain in religions for the social benefits. There are a myriad of reasons why an intelligent person would sincerely believe in something like Christianity. I can cite one reason - the reason I stayed as long as I did. Love. I loved God. You can crack all the sexual jokes about it that you want - the fact remains, I was in love with a deity. He was supposed to be the embodiment, no, the source of all that was good, and true, and beautiful, and I loved Him and wanted to be with Him forever. I tried with all my strength to do the things I had been told would make Him happy - the things He liked. I only stopped because I found that many of the people who had been teaching me about Him were far from trustworthy. I found that, as far as I knew, He didn't even care about the things I had been told He cared about, and maybe, He didn't even exist at all. I faced up to the fact that, with the information at my disposal, I could not know for sure one way or the other. So I embarked on a quest - a quest to find what I felt was right and true, with an occasional word to my lost Love, hoping that if I was making a huge mistake, that He would see my intentions and judge me by them. After all, if the Deity were to cast me aside for doing the best I knew, then He was no love of mine. So that is where I am. I am facing the unanswerable questions, and dealing with the fact that I don't have a clear answer.
There are many people I know - my own family, even, who also face the same unanswerable questions. They are intelligent enough to realize that they have no solid proof to back up their beliefs, but they choose to take their risks, just as I choose mine. They have chosen to walk by faith, just as I have chosen to walk the path of exploration. It is their choice, though at times it pains me to see them tie themselves (to my mind) needlessly in knots over some (to my mind) pointless regulation, I still respect the strength of their devotion, and hope that their desires are realized in some way, even if it isn't in the form they visualize.
I am not denying the fact that many followers of religions are exactly as you describe them. Even in this church I describe, there are plenty of those who love to chain themselves and others down, and who close their eyes to the fact that they are dealing with unknowns. These people are the reason why I am where I am today. These are the ones who make the most noise, too. The lovers are a private type, and are more concerned with the interplay between them and their Deity. If you hear one speak of their faith, you're not likely to end up being put on a guilt trip, or feeling pressured. But some won't rest until you feel as guilty and stressed as they do.
But I guess that's the thing. To the lovers, Christianity is not a religion, but (as cliche'ed as it has become) a relationship. I haven't experienced much of other religions, but I suspect the demarcation is similar in them all.
In a way, when I think about it, I miss my old love. It was comforting having such a great Being to look out for me, and exciting to have such a goal to fight for. If it only hadn't been made to be such a burden to carry to live up to the standards He supposedly imposed, I might have stayed, despite the uncertainty. True, there would be a chance that
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Re: My darlin angel gal Mandi
by Arthegarn on Apr 27, 2005 - 09:11 AM
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Quite nice, Lestat. So what am I, a dummy or a hypocrite?
Being a Catholic in Spain does NOT pay. Specially a young one. Everybody looks down at you and looks for the hole the clergy (“los curas”) left when they sucked your brains out. When you prove not to be that dumb, when in fact you argue and rout their prejudices with logical argumentation then you are a fanatic who can’t see the obvious (the fact that you just proved that “the obvious” is simply a prejudice, misconception, primitive reasoning not taken to its natural conclusion or straightforward lie doesn’t seem to count)
Go a little deeper into religion, man. At least into Roman Catholicism. I mean a little deeper than when you get to the “booo ur a devil or you'll burn in hell crap with no substance inside”. There is a LOT under that part (which is, of course , the hypersimplification of misconception)
You say that all religions make the same mistake, that “none of them had the balls to accept that there are things which we don't know”. I can see you have deeply studied this subject. I am being ironic. Speaking for mine, we have clearly stated we don’t have the answers to all questions since the 3rd Century. Actually, thinking that you know it all is a capital sin (pride). Journalists are there to sell newspapers. Don’t believe what a journalist tells you a church says. Go to the church and hear them speak for themselves. Read the encyclics. Read the cathecisms
Albert Einstein was a believer last time I checked. Remember the Universal Constant fiasco, when he had an atheist period and how he regretted it later?
“The intellect is incapable of approaching the heartbeat”. Yeah. Sure. I recommend “Studies about Love”, by Ortega y Gasset. Love IS a mind phenomenon (actually a brain phenomenon). What you are describing is not love – it is a rush of hormones. Love is an intellectual, willful act. Passion is something else, passion does come from a hormone rush and passion and love are NOT synonymous. Study passion and it will likely disappear. Study love and you’ll see it does not, more likely it’ll thrive as you realize its deepest aspects, aspect which are not accessible at a mere first glance. Love is like music: it can be heard, listened to or even studied. And a music student does not enjoy music less than anybody else. If anything the student enjoys it more.
You say religions have hurt this world. True. It is also true that religions have been for millennia the only support for moral behavior. Without a religion there was no moral, no good, no evil, no responsibility. Just thirst and drinking. Mankind has only recently begun to consider good and evil as not associated with religion (and if you want my opinion even Kant didn’t do it all that well). I don’t think mankind is yet ready to function without religion (actually I think it’ll never be). Can you look at the history of the world and imagine it without religion? True, there would have been less crusades… most likely because half mankind would have been to busy killing the other half over their women, land, property or whatever and they wouldn’t have had time to build civilization. If religion hadn’t started from the beginning it would have had to be invented.
Just to be human is enough. Sure. And what is that, “to be human”? I think one can only become really himself, one can only achieve his or her fullest potential by exploring his or her spiritual nature. When you take the first step into spiritual reality you take your first step into religion. Perhaps not a “organized” one, perhaps a religion of one, but a religion nonetheless. And shunning human spiritual nature doesn’t strike me as being particularly “human”, much less trying to be “as much human” as you can.
You know, there is who I am, there is who I was and there is who I want to be. Following your “Respect who you are and allow your nature to take its own course” advice doesn’t strike me as a particularly clever way of travelin
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