Religious Balance

by way of reply too Religion shouldn't exist

I hope you can watch Youtubes because sometimes songs and dances and dramatics get points across.

The Sith are religious too. Darth Vader had an ancient religion.


Back in the old days, like before A.D. 1500, religion wasn't even a word with the meaning we give it these days. What we call religion they called "the way we live and do things", like tradition.


Sometimes in order to keep a loving relationship with our family and friends (part of religion) we must go against tradition(also religion).


Sometimes we don't give up tradition(religion) enough, and then we are sad that our family relation (religion) gets broken. Like when Chava eloped with a Christian.


I posted a lot of clips from that movie. Back when it was new in the theaters I had a girl friend. Our first date was watching that movie. My step mother drove us.

She visited my church and I visited hers.

Before visiting her church I gathered up all the money I could to put in the offering. Years before, I had vandalized that church and never told anybody. So I was trying to pay for my crime still without telling anybody what the money was for.

There are balances in religion. Some parts outweigh others.

a reply to: pthena

Well, I don't think we need to buy our absolution from the church.

"Neither shall they say, Lo here! or, lo there! for, behold, the kingdom of God is within you." Luke 17:21

The best absolution is to get forgiveness from the people we have sinned against.

I'm tired of hearing people claim religion is the why we have wars. The idea religion is the source of human suffering cannot be more wrong. If religion did not exist at all in the world there would be just as many wars, killings, and senseless acts of violence. Religion is not the source of all that is evil in the World. Poverty and imperfections in human character are the cause. If religion did not exist at all there would be just as many people killing each other over adultery. Just as many people living in poverty who snap because they become desperate. Just as many wars for profit. Just as many leaders jockeying to have power over other leaders at any expense.

If you think religion is the causes wars then in my opinion you are just not paying attention to human nature. Religion did not invent pride, greed, lust, envy, gluttony, wrath and sloth. The idea religion is the cause of human nature is just wrong.

a reply to: dfnj2015

If you think religion is the causes wars then in my opinion you are just not paying attention to human nature. Religion did not invent pride, greed, lust, envy, gluttony, wrath and sloth. The idea religion is the cause of human nature is just wrong.

👏🏻 So true ^^*

I've always felt religion was invented as a way to control people and that the followers need something more than the concept of when you're dead it's all over.

I have no such need to praise some moon god or some such just to make believe my conscienceness will live on.

No other species on the planet destroys itself the way humans do.

a reply to: dfnj2015
My first response to that other thread was to say that there is no separation of religion from society. Modern people who live a life of leisure are the ones who separated religion from regular life as a separate sphere of study or life; spiritual separate from mundane. It wasn't always that way.

Organized religion and creation of an elite priestly class revolved around food and food storage.

Prof. Danny Rosenberg holding the 7,200-year-old model silo from Tel Tsaf. University of Haifa
Oldest Evidence of Food Storage Ritual: 7,200-year-old Model of Silo Found in Israel

A 7,200-year-old pottery model of what appears to be a silo is the oldest example of a ritual propitiating the gods to preserve the crops or harvest, surmise archaeologists.
…
“The wish and ability to store food certainly constitutes an important step in the transition of humans to societies characterized by more complex social organization. It also seems that Tel Tsaf’s location near a major water source such as the Jordan River is no coincidence, considering the site’s potential to accumulate such a large amount of crops,” the archaeologists wrote.
…
People seem to have begun cultivating grain in this region as early as 23,000 years ago, based on the discovery of flint sickles for harvesting by the Sea of Galilee, which isn’t far from the Tel Tsaf site. That may (or may not) have been the dawn of agriculture, but the transition from hunting-gathering would take millennia.

Certainly by the time this community lived on the banks of the Jordan some 7,200 years ago, they were settled and farming. However, most studies of complex societies – and the development of “elites” that possessed and stored more food than they needed – focuses on later periods, says Rosenberg.

Now they have evidence that such things were happening a lot earlier.

“In this context, the findings at Tel Tsaf provide firsthand evidence of the early connection between food storage on a large scale and the observance of a ritual associated with the successful storage and preservation of agricultural yields,” said Rosenberg.

Religion and food go way back. Many ancient temples were all about storage of food. Even hunter gatherers had their own ceremonies about hunting.

So people who claim that religion is the root of all wars might as well be saying that the need for food and land to grow food is the root of all wars.

For those who wish to live completely separate from religion check out Breatharianism. Can humans survive on air alone?

I tried it one time for six days and almost died. Most of the followers cheat by drinking water. I probably should have cheated too.

Religion may not be the cause of all wars but it sure as hell has led a lot of idiots to to terrible things. Religions are all garbage to me because they don't actually know anything special. God did not talk to them. They do not know the way. It's all made up.

I admit that I do not know the history of the world or the Bible. You don't consider intelligent design in the time of dinosaur's? They just got that big over time and survival of the fittest? Evolution ? Maybe religion can let people let go and have faith something larger than themselves is responsible?

a reply to: pthena
At one point religions and traditions were indistinguishable from each other. But ya, it was basically a tribe and group mentality. For any tribe and group to function at all, they must all be on the same mind frame, after all if two people are not on the same page can they even get along? Much less hundreads or thousands, and in those days, in more primitive times, group behaivor was a matter of life or death.

Even today its the same, were basically tribe animals with cellphones, and everything around you that you see is a religion. The priests are many fold. But anyways, forget today's religions, look back in the older religions, you know Christianity, Judaism, or Islam, or even Buddhism, Confucianism, Hindu, you name it.

Most of it was coded group think, but how much of it pertains to life as we know it today? Some like covet your nighbor whife, or no murder in christianity? Well those are likley going to be eternal maxims, but what all of the others rules and regulation from those days. How about your suposed to eat with you right hand only? Its still big in some religions and areas?

But really once the toilet and toilet paper was invented, it kind of became pointless, because ya, believe or not before sanitation people wiped there ass with one hand only because the other was for eating with, and # dont taste good. And the lefties, well they had to go along.

I mean, just how many things from back then really pertain to today? Not many thats for sure. And besides, as you know what you do all the time, becomes habit. For the most part religion is habit, ingrained habit over long periods of time. And well, at one point, Confucius was not kidding when he said, do not try to swat fly on friends head with axe.

And since that time, the cases of people who died from axes to the head from there buddies who tried to swat a fly, has drooped significantly. No doubt even the ones in Christianity, well they may apply, but many do not, and the same goes for all religions. And besides, today we have new religions. Politics being one, many people are into it, and plenty of other habits out there as well. And some habits are hard to break. But for the most part people just give tittle and fancy names to there habits.

a reply to: dfnj2015
Your both right and wrong about that. Religions just brings mass people into an umbrella of a belief, so its only a matter of time before they come to fight over whos ideology and believes are right. And if there were no mass religions, wars and fights and murders would still happen, but those would just be called crimes.

Whenever people get into mass groups, generally the most common denominator of said group comes to the forefront. Its a numbers game really, not hard to understand. Look at it like this, because a fool and idiot is born every minute, but a genius like oh say Tesla is born every decade or so, if a civilization is lucky.

So what do you think has been happening for the past few thousand years? Follow the herd right, if so many people say something is so and so, they can in no way be wrong can they?

So ya, wars and everything else are pretty much inevitable. Religions has tried to combat the stupidity of humankind. But like the gods before them, they contend in vain and are eventually taken over my the most common denominator of the day in people. Whatever it may be. And people so do like to live in groups. So its basically follow the asshole in front of you because he acts and speaks in a way you can understand.

If you think religion is the causes wars then in my opinion you are just not paying attention to human nature. Religion did not invent pride, greed, lust, envy, gluttony, wrath and sloth. The idea religion is the cause of human nature is just wrong.

The cause is the idea that says that you are gonna die in time.....
Time itself is a concept, just an idea.

Is there really a you separate to what is happening?

The word God means 'no separation'.

Everything is simply appearing and disappearing in you... the ever present still space is full of moving light.

a reply to: pthena

i find it disturbing - that a flag officer in the imperial navy would be so ignorant of events that happened 25 > 20 years previously [ when he SHOULD have been a leiutenant ]

I don’t think there should be any religion either, it’s a poison
But then we blame anything but ourselves

Jesus ended religion for christians

"Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen." Albert Einstein

a reply to: galadofwarthethird

And besides, today we have new religions. Politics being one, many people are into it, and plenty of other habits out there as well. And some habits are hard to break. But for the most part people just give tittle and fancy names to there habits.

I'm kind of stuck on the food and food storage theme right now. The religion changes through scale. Modern society is all about reservoirs. Grocery store, trucks, warehouses, more trucks, processing plants, more trucks, farms and ranches. The people who own and control the means of production and storage are the elites. The rest are commoners.

Elites control the economy and pick the politicians. Commoners eat and vote. Political parties are so defined by their economic theory more than anything else it seems.

a reply to: ignorant_ape

I looked through many pictures of imperial navy insignias and didn't see any that matched the 'faithless one', so I can't verify his rank. But yeah, you would think that there would be a career development briefing on who the Emperor's personal envoy was, and the inadvisability of questioning his religion.

The light side Jedi were better off without the dark side Anakin bringing balance.

Well that tends to challenge my thesis!

a reply to: Raggedyman

This thread was supposed to be a positive spin on religion.

I knew some Christians who ran soup kitchens and donated to food banks. This one guy had a catering truck and drove around distributing food. He had a really good reputation in town.

Do you think his religion was fake or useless or something?

a reply to: pthena

I guess that depends on what you mean by the term "religion"
I would think it is any action a person undertakes to make them worthy of God

Certainly don't need religion to give away food

originally posted by: Raggedyman
a reply to: pthena

I guess that depends on what you mean by the term "religion"
I would think it is any action a person undertakes to make them worthy of God

Certainly don't need religion to give away food

No one needs a religion to do good deeds

No one needs a religion to do bad deeds

Yet both happens, i don't think 'religion' has anything to do with how people are, it's just human nature

Religion is a layer on top of it, using the human nature as a tool, for good or bad, but is not what makes a human. Religion picks on the weakness of the human being to lead him into one of two ways, we know which ways so it's not worth going into that argument at all

God is not interfering on any of that, he also did not create religion as you most likely know already, it was created by humans to serve a very specific purpose which i don't think has anything to do with the real God

a reply to: pthena

As you can no doubt see that the more things change. The more they stay the same. For some religion is a believe, for others its merely a convenient thing that is endorsed.

originally posted by: Malisa

originally posted by: Raggedyman
a reply to: pthena

I guess that depends on what you mean by the term "religion"
I would think it is any action a person undertakes to make them worthy of God

Certainly don't need religion to give away food

No one needs a religion to do good deeds

No one needs a religion to do bad deeds

Yet both happens, i don't think 'religion' has anything to do with how people are, it's just human nature

Religion is a layer on top of it, using the human nature as a tool, for good or bad, but is not what makes a human. Religion picks on the weakness of the human being to lead him into one of two ways, we know which ways so it's not worth going into that argument at all

God is not interfering on any of that, he also did not create religion as you most likely know already, it was created by humans to serve a very specific purpose which i don't think has anything to do with the real God

Well when I read what is written to the Jews in the OT I am inclined to think God did create the religion of Judaism
Jesus ended the OT covenant for those who accept Him