Social Can we admit that the loss of religion in America has been a disaster for both private and public life?

[rearnakedchoke]

lol at religion. I grew up in an extremely religious family and the concept is just wild to me still. If you get peace from it, it probably means you haven’t tried getting peace through other means. Just be a good person and don’t rely on some old way of thinking to guide you, a way of thinking by the way, that has been modified many times to suit modern needs

Edit. I’m going to hell.

 

[terrapin]

Problem is that most religion practiced in the West is garbage and does nothing to produce actual growth, happiness, or goodness in people. Just look at the latest abortion thread, some of most vile, heartless scumbags are religious nutjobs. Christianity is at the top of the garbage pile here in the US, but in reality all the abrahamic religions are a cancer upon humanity.

I've posted it here before, but there's a documentary, The Dhamma Brothers, that demonstrates quite clearly the difference between real spiritual practices and trash like Christianity. A couple meditation teachers hold a Vipassana meditation retreat in a violent, maximum security prison. The retreat produces radical changes in almost all the men who participate, many of whom were already religious, and most want to continue doing the new practices after the retreat because of their benefits. The prison chaplain can't stand that a better path has been shown to these guys, one that actually works, and so he has their meditation group shut down, like a child throwing a tantrum. That's Christianity.

Oh, then there's the fact that thousands of priests raped children, the entire Catholic Church protected and enabled them, and millions of Christians thought nothing of it and continue going to church week after week. The same people that are regularly having meltdowns over a trans person reading to children. Ya, I'm going to say no, we don't need more of that.

You have known me for quite some time and we have had many meaningful exchanges on the topic of Christianity versus eastern religions and that means you know darn well that the kind of Christianity you are denigrating right now does not represent all of Christianity or even most of Christianity.

The contemplative path of Christianity is alive and well and has never been lost since the time of Jesus. To pretend that a profoundly deep path, a profoundly deep meditative and spiritual path within Christianity does not exist is willful ignorance at this point.

In fact, Christianity offers a unique kind of spiritual transcendence that Hinduism has no language for whatsoever and no categories for on any level. The reason a person from the east fails to understand Christianity is because they try to fit salvation. Jesus, god and human beings and the world of creation into a Hindu paradigm which is impossible to do because the paradigms are so at odds with one another that they only create confusion when viewing the latter from the former.

But rather than taking the cheap shot that you just took and claiming that christianity it's better, I will just say that it is unlike any other religion on the planet and it offers a way into profound intimacy with God that any person on the planet could succeed at and it offers a kind of enlightenment that is completely anti-podal to the Hindu schema.


If I were going to sink to the level of the post you just made, I would just say that Hindus still practice animal sacrifice and human sacrifice too and treat whole classes of people as not much more than slaves and religiously justified at that while christianity produces teressa of avila and padre pio!! , as if that somehow encompassed the nearly infinite richness and beauty of the Hindu tradition or was any kind of honest comparison!!!!


As a fellow meditator and fellow traveler on this path, you really can't afford to be this poisonous and hope to get to a very high degree of love or consciousness man.... What you're doing is a form of gossip and slander and in Buddhism that's one of the things you can do that guarantees that you must reincarnate and come back....

it is true that some forms of christianity are vapid, fundamentalist and do not serve spirituality very well. can i find the equivalent in hinduism? yes i can.....

 

[USA!USA!]

Religion is fine for some people, and it should exist. Let them have it. It helps them in their daily routine and to cope with the struggles we all have in life. As long as they aren't pushing it on or hurting anyone else, that is 100% fine.

It is NOT for everybody, though.. and that is also 100% OK.

 

[Sinister]

lol at religion. I grew up in an extremely religious family and the concept is just wild to me still. If you get peace from it, it probably means you haven’t tried getting peace through other means. Just be a good person and don’t rely on some old way of thinking to guide you, a way of thinking by the way, that has been modified many times to suit modern needs

Edit. I’m going to hell.

I've always found the idea that people NEED an invisible hand constantly either threatening them with chastisement, or offering reward in order for them to be "good" to be one of the most infantilizing concepts I've ever heard of. And frankly it reminds me of accounts of how slave owners referred to slaves:

"Well, those uneducated ignorant heathen savages would all be running around committing atrocities if it wasnt for the generosity of my enlightened ability to punish them."

Seems wholly diminishing of any qualities to think that someone only adheres to being a decent person because their fear being terrorized after death if they don't. Or that they will get what they want out of it after death if they do. And this is a concept I've heard in every kind of Church I attended as a kid, while attempting to ignore the blatant hypocrisies present as well.

 

[fedoriswar37]

Religion, not necessarily. We could actually do with less worship of false prophets (piss be upon him).

Spirituality and faith of some sort yes. Materialism is clearly not something to live for.

 

[Voodoo_Child906]

Religious people do donate more than secular people though... Finding a secular way to motivate people in the same way religion does is one of the challenges being faced and thought about deeply today.

How does religion motivate people in this case?

 

[terrapin]

Religion, not necessarily. We could actually do with less worship of false prophets (piss be upon him).

Spirituality and faith of some sort yes. Materialism is clearly not something to live for.

the problem with throwing out religion and replacing it with spirituality is that it could take 1000 years to reinvent that wheel.... religion can reliably produce people with extremely high states of consciousness.... it has taken a VERY long time to climb to those states, identify them and then learn to reproduce them reliably. that process is STILL being refined by serious people of every religious stripe.

the various major world religions also each offer a distinctly different flavor and even kind of spirituality that at the summation are NOT the same. any serious seeker of spirituality would/will want to be exposed to all of this, all of the different twists and turns of the meditative life and understand the rich plethora of astounding beautiful and high spirituality on offer.

throwing all of that out is not an option so a different conversation, way less simplistic than religion vs spirituality must take place and is taking place by serious people. throwing all of that out would set humanity back thousands of years developmentally. we need better conversations than all or nothing and they need to be had by people who actually know what the various traditions have to offer.

 

[ferrisjso]

How about developing community without any strings attached?

The idea that people should believe in problematic moral tenants(and christianitys moral tenants are problematic namely about putting up with shit from authority) in order to have access to community is just really fucking manipulative and coercive.

I'd argue the creation of cars and highways has done much more to destory communities. Also loitering is a big part of building community and in late capitalism loitering is taboo. Everyone either is going to point B or they are home.

 

[terrapin]

How does religion motivate people in this case?

lots of ways i suppose. mostly by teaching/showing that to help another is to help oneself too as we are all in this together and in some way that is discernible if you are paying attention the suffering of the world is also our own suffering. but also because it is gods will but also because as we grow in love we WANT to give to others. serving others (often in the form of giving money) actually intensifies ones own spirituality and is in ones own best interest. religions have a way of placing our lives into context and reinforcing an overall understanding about life that just simply leads to more charitable giving.

 

[terrapin]

I've always found the idea that people NEED an invisible hand constantly either threatening them with chastisement, or offering reward in order for them to be "good" to be one of the most infantilizing concepts I've ever heard of. And frankly it reminds me of accounts of how slave owners referred to slaves:

"Well, those uneducated ignorant heathen savages would all be running around committing atrocities if it wasnt for the generosity of my enlightened ability to punish them."

Seems wholly diminishing of any qualities to think that someone only adheres to being a decent person because their fear being terrorized after death if they don't. Or that they will get what they want out of it after death if they do. And this is a concept I've heard in every kind of Church I attended as a kid, while attempting to ignore the blatant hypocrisies present as well.

i would not believe in the religion you speak of here either.... fortunately its more of a straw man than actually defining christianity at all.... its like saying all atheists are arrogant assholes... some are (like any group)... but its not an honest statement obviously.

 

[Voodoo_Child906]

lots of ways i suppose. mostly by teaching/showing that to help another is to help oneself too as we are all in this together and in some way that is discernible if you are paying attention the suffering of the world is also our own suffering. but also because it is gods will but also because as we grow in love we WANT to give to others. serving others (often in the form of giving money) actually intensifies ones own spirituality and is in ones own best interest. religions have a way of placing our lives into context and reinforcing an overall understanding about life that just simply leads to more charitable giving.

Okay, our experience of helping another is helping oneself is derived from our understandings of survival in our evolutionary past. Deus vult, is a simple way of appeasing the all powerful alpha pack leader, also, how do we know that this is god's will? And I agree, religion and their simple doctrine of reward and punishment are far more effective in motivating people. How else would you get people to fly an airplane into a building, or die in a crusade a thousand miles away.

 

[terrapin]

Okay, our experience of helping another is helping oneself is derived from our understandings of survival in our evolutionary past. Deus vult, is a simple way of appeasing the all powerful alpha pack leader, also, how do we know that this is god's will? And I agree, religion and their simple doctrine of reward and punishment are far more effective in motivating people. How else would you get people to fly an airplane into a building, or die in a crusade a thousand miles away.

you asked by religion motivates people to give well and i did my best to answer that. i dont think what you just wrote is very motivating to give more money frankly and i dont think most people would ether.

 

[Sinister]

i would not believe in the religion you speak of here either.... fortunately its more of a straw man than actually defining christianity at all.... its like saying all atheists are arrogant assholes... some are (like any group)... but its not an honest statement obviously.

Are you contending that religious people dont adhere to their beliefs due to the threat of punishment or promise of reward if they do? Because I find that a bit of an absurd contention.

 

[OneOfOne]

You have known me for quite some time and we have had many meaningful exchanges on the topic of Christianity versus eastern religions and that means you know darn well that the kind of Christianity you are denigrating right now does not represent all of Christianity or even most of Christianity.

The contemplative path of Christianity is alive and well and has never been lost since the time of Jesus. To pretend that a profoundly deep path, a profoundly deep meditative and spiritual path within Christianity does not exist is willful ignorance at this point.

In fact, Christianity offers a unique kind of spiritual transcendence that Hinduism has no language for whatsoever and no categories for on any level. The reason a person from the east fails to understand Christianity is because they try to fit salvation. Jesus, god and human beings and the world of creation into a Hindu paradigm which is impossible to do because the paradigms are so at odds with one another that they only create confusion when viewing the latter from the former.

But rather than taking the cheap shot that you just took and claiming that christianity it's better, I will just say that it is unlike any other religion on the planet and it offers a way into profound intimacy with God that any person on the planet could succeed at and it offers a kind of enlightenment that is completely anti-podal to the Hindu schema.


If I were going to sink to the level of the post you just made, I would just say that Hindus still practice animal sacrifice and human sacrifice too and treat whole classes of people as not much more than slaves and religiously justified at that while christianity produces teressa of avila and padre pio!! , as if that somehow encompassed the nearly infinite richness and beauty of the Hindu tradition or was any kind of honest comparison!!!!


As a fellow meditator and fellow traveler on this path, you really can't afford to be this poisonous and hope to get to a very high degree of love or consciousness man.... What you're doing is a form of gossip and slander and in Buddhism that's one of the things you can do that guarantees that you must reincarnate and come back....

it is true that some forms of christianity are vapid, fundamentalist and do not serve spirituality very well. can i find the equivalent in hinduism? yes i can.....

Bunch of gobbledygook

 

[terrapin]

Are you contending that religious people dont adhere to their beliefs due to the threat of punishment or promise of reward if they do? Because I find that a bit of an absurd contention.

im contending that stating that as THE motivation or even a primary one is theologically unjustified and reductionist. its a kind of lie when the person stating it has any real understanding but its just an untruth when stated by someone ignorant of christian theology. like i said... i would not believe in your understanding of Christianity either because its not a good one.

 

[Voodoo_Child906]

you asked by religion motivates people to give well and i did my best to answer that. i dont think what you just wrote is very motivating to give more money frankly and i dont think most people would ether.

Of course not, when you break down the motivation to give money to its basic foundations, the reasons are quite selfish. Atheists don't hide this fact. Religion on the other hand has managed to take those selfish reasons and add extra selfish rewards of appeasing the Alpha in the pack (god) and heaven, and of course the punishment of hell if you don't. I agree, it's a far more effective way to motivate people.

 

[terrapin]

Of course not, when you break down the motivation to give money to its basic foundations, the reasons are quite selfish. Atheists don't hide this fact. Religion on the other hand has managed to take those selfish reasons and add extra selfish rewards of appeasing the Alpha in the pack (god) and heaven, and of course the punishment of hell if you don't. I agree, it's a far more effective way to motivate people.

you asked why religion tends to motivate people to give more and i explained why it is a better set of motivations for producing giving more. you can hate those reasons all you want... im not even trying to defend them. im just answering the question you asked about the why of it.

a really good conversation that is being had by lots of interesting and intelligent people is how to we create similar levels of motivation/spirituality without recourse to faith? ive listened to a ton of really powerful content on this level and am following the movement loosely out of genuine goodwill towards them.

here is john vervaki whom i consider to be among the leaders of this new movement comprised almost entirely of people who do not believe in god sort of framing the entire discussion in one hour. this is a more than 60 hour series of lectures though. this hour long segment is well worth a listen man if you want to understand this topic deeply.

 

[Scerpi]

I am curious as to why religion hasn't moved away from being run by massive organizations. Every religion with a central authority is a turd.

Agree with this....

The bigger the church, the more cult-like it gets and the bigger douche is that runs it.

Religion should be a private thing and not a giant money making operation. And no one is going to tell me how to live my life.

 

[dirtypablo]

You have known me for quite some time and we have had many meaningful exchanges on the topic of Christianity versus eastern religions and that means you know darn well that the kind of Christianity you are denigrating right now does not represent all of Christianity or even most of Christianity.

The contemplative path of Christianity is alive and well and has never been lost since the time of Jesus. To pretend that a profoundly deep path, a profoundly deep meditative and spiritual path within Christianity does not exist is willful ignorance at this point.

In fact, Christianity offers a unique kind of spiritual transcendence that Hinduism has no language for whatsoever and no categories for on any level. The reason a person from the east fails to understand Christianity is because they try to fit salvation. Jesus, god and human beings and the world of creation into a Hindu paradigm which is impossible to do because the paradigms are so at odds with one another that they only create confusion when viewing the latter from the former.

But rather than taking the cheap shot that you just took and claiming that christianity it's better, I will just say that it is unlike any other religion on the planet and it offers a way into profound intimacy with God that any person on the planet could succeed at and it offers a kind of enlightenment that is completely anti-podal to the Hindu schema.


If I were going to sink to the level of the post you just made, I would just say that Hindus still practice animal sacrifice and human sacrifice too and treat whole classes of people as not much more than slaves and religiously justified at that while christianity produces teressa of avila and padre pio!! , as if that somehow encompassed the nearly infinite richness and beauty of the Hindu tradition or was any kind of honest comparison!!!!


As a fellow meditator and fellow traveler on this path, you really can't afford to be this poisonous and hope to get to a very high degree of love or consciousness man.... What you're doing is a form of gossip and slander and in Buddhism that's one of the things you can do that guarantees that you must reincarnate and come back....

it is true that some forms of christianity are vapid, fundamentalist and do not serve spirituality very well. can i find the equivalent in hinduism? yes i can.....

I live in the US, not India. If I lived in India or some other part of the world where half the government was run by nutjob fundamentalist Hindus who support the caste system or other toxic systems, I would speak out against them, but I don't. I live the US, where fundamentalist Christianity and its incredibly toxic effects are rampant throughout society, so I speak out against it. Anyways, I'm not sure why you went off on Hinduism, I didn't say anything about Hinduism, and from the little I know about it its full of all the same toxic problems as the Abrahamic religions.

A deep spiritual path may exist in Christianity, but its far from the norm. You've got a highly biased viewpoint, and use your own experience to discount the real world evidence we have of Christianity's toxic effects on society and individuals. The reaction of Catholics to the sex abuse scandal tells you everything you need to know about the norm in Christianity. I'm loosely affiliated with a religions organization - I have no illusions that all the teachers in this organization are all perfect saints, but if something similar happened where they were raping children and the highest levels of the organization enabled and covered it up, I not only never support them again, I would view it as partially my responsibility to do everything in my power to take the entire organization down. That's not what happened to the Catholic church - most Catholics went on as if nothing happened - if you're a Christian you have to ask yourself some serious questions about why that's the case.

 

[Zazen]

No offense man but it's like I'm talking to someone who has no idea what's been happening in this country over the last 20 years. Atheist organizations have basically all fallen apart over the last 10 or 15 years and there are specific reasons why.

Trying to claim that a movement is the same as a religion is a strange kind of tactic that maybe be coming from defensiveness?

The atheist movement attracted millions and millions of people.. they had conventions and seminars and Sam Harris was doing some of them and obviously Dawkins was involved and that is all pretty much falling apart and falling out of favor.

I'm not sure if it's intentional so in good faith, I'll just say you have misunderstood my my word movement for religion and those two things don't mean the same thing.

I mean what happened and why the atheist movements failed is a pretty hot topic right now and it's being discussed lots and lots of places, so I think you're confusion here is you're trying to say atheism isn't a religion, but that would be a response to someone else's post and not mine.

I still don’t know what this atheist movement is, all I know is that the atheist population has mostly stayed the same for decades because studies show that education and lack of religious beliefs correlate to the number of children had. Atheists have far far fewer children. Also this movement wasn’t some missionary type work. It basically existed to show Americans that atheists are not evil and have a moral compass too. I just don’t think it’s as needed anymore as being atheist becomes less and less controversial over time. Those people served their purpose