There is another thought that I had while re-reading the posts that I wanted to put down here as well.

When it came time for me to start developing my spirituality, one of my first ideas came from science. I don't know how many people have read the Dark Tower series by Stephen King, but at the end of the first book, the main character receives a vision and as it gradually grows in his minds eye of first the planet, then the galaxy, and finally the universe it all shrinks to a blade of grass. When I finally sat back and really meditated on that for myself, I suddenly became aware that in all likelihood, our universe just borders on something much more grand and life is connected to all of these. To take the metaphor for life even a step further, despite all of our progress in the last century in science, we are still no closer to understanding what "life" truly encompasses or how it started. With all of our technology, we still cannot recreate life in all of it's order and time. Throughout all of history, there have been many babies that have been created and they almost always come out perfect, blessed with the spark of life without anything other than procreation with what we do. Therefore, it has an order and spark of something that is indeed a miracle.

Also, one thing that truly inspires me, was that one of our most reknowned scientists, Albert Einstein, at the very end credited God with things he could never begin to understand. I feel that is a testament which asks all of us to remember that even in our lifetimes, something is indeed very powerful to keep the cycle of life continuously going in spite of our natural tendencies.

Maybe, as people grow to understand the underlying concept of life and science, they will start to credit it to a Creative Intelligence underlying all of creation. In addition to that, I don't feel that science and creation are mutually exclusive, they both stem from a desire to know how it all began and seeking our rightful place in the grand scheme of things.

Blessed Be,
Phoenix Rising

But so what? What does that mean? There was a time, not very long ago, when man had no idea how many things happen. Before he understood the natural events that caused the winds to blow, he called upon gods to blow them. Before he understood how the seas moved, or the lightening bolts flew, he called upon gods to move the seas and fling the lightening bolts.

The point is, there is no reason, just because we may not understand something, to suppose that it will never be understood. And it is only that -- the idea that there is no more science available to assist our understanding, tomorrow, or next year, or in 10 thousand years, that should allow one to suppose that what one doesn't understand is the doing of god.
I pointed out in another thread how, in fact, they don't "almost always come out perfect." In fact, most conceptions self-terminate before getting too far along. There are many more congenital defects than are generally understood by most people, so while the majority of babies that are born are fine, that is by no means "almost all" of them. With any belief in outside mediation in human life, that needs explaining. If one accepts those things as natural, then the job is to find out what causes as many of them as possible, and prevent it in future, or to decide what other actions might be permissible.
Don't ascribe too much "God" belief to Einstein. You'll find that, although he was quite spiritual, he was most assuredly not a religious man, and had no belief in a personal god, or a god in any way involved in the universe the way that most religious people suppose.
In fact, it is quite the reverse. Although most people believe in god or gods, and many believe in some sort of creative act by said gods, the majority of the world's deepest scientists, the ones who are making the greatest effort to understand life, find that they have no need of a creative intelligence to explain it.

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evangelicalhumanist: Greek "eu"=good and "angelos"=messenger. Spreading the good news of Humanism.

so long as there are thing which we can not understand, then we will need religion or at least a believe in a being higher than ourselves.

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And why should that be? Are we ashamed to admit that "we don't understand....yet?"

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evangelicalhumanist: Greek "eu"=good and "angelos"=messenger. Spreading the good news of Humanism.

peace all,

In Islam [the religion which I adhere to] we have prophecies indicating how long certain religions will remain on earth...; here is basically what it says about the Islamic, Christian and Jewish religions:

Jesus [pbuh] will return to earth near the end of time; during that period [and a short time prior to it] there will be major wars between Islam and the Christian and Jewish faith.

Jesus [pbuh] will put an end to all faiths except the Islamic one.

Islam will flourish under the leadership of Jesus [pbuh] and several other righteous leaders after him, and then people will gradually start to go astray again, and the world will once more be filled with Muslims and non-Muslims [not sure if those non-Muslims will have any religion of their own, or wether religions like Christianity, Judaism etc, will be reborn], then one day Allah will cause all the Muslims to die and there will only be non-Muslims left in the world, and shortly thereafter, the world will come to an end.

So that will be the future of the three Abrahimic religions.

Peace.

Imagine a world without religion.

WOW.

An end to medieval thinking,
an end to people blindly following second hand notions and outright fiction,
an end to the endless and futile arguments which only result in blood,
an end to the idiocracy.

When you and you and you (every one of you) start validating for yourself the veracity of the religious claims rather than believing it just because so and so told you.
Make them prove it, or better yet, prove it for and to yourself.
You are worth such effort.
Make that effort NOW.
By whatever means.
Do not put it off, as tomorrow never comes.

It's called Marxist-Leninist-Stalinist communism. Been there. Done that.

The one thing that upsets me about some of this discussion is that some people tends to put religion in a box and see them all a certain way. Not all religion is judgemental and manipulative and harmful as some people interpret certain religions to be. The new thought religions are not life threatening to anyone. As people learn these things and come to a clearer understanding of what the basic teachings of their religion are they will see a oneness in spiritual thought and less diference among the religions. It is a result of logic and a higher thinking. As the religion on this earth evolves people will learn the true essence of what is important and how to act in a conscious and harmonius manner. Religion will never expire.

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RevKathyV

http://www.myspace.com/divinelightinterfaith



www.divinelightinterfaithministry.com

No. The state became the religion.
It has never been done on a mass level in our recorded history.

All religion is pejorative.
That being said I too have religious leanings, I subscribe to the Bnai Noach position. But maybe someday I will grow out of it.
Religions are like training wheels, or crutches which help you out until you can make your own way.
I see that they serve a function, but people tend to overuse them and become dependant on them psychologically.
You can believe in God and not believe in religions. It is no contradiction.

Religious / political differences have caused more bloodshed and human suffering than any other thing in the history of the world. All the good they have done is not going to make up for that. Ever.
How long will the simple despise wisdom????

It does little good to insult those who think differently than you, and you can make no more claim to wisdom if you are going to describe the majority of the world as "simple."
I have no idea what you are talking about in the above, but the claims "the state became the religion," and "all religion is pejorative" seem too large. It's always dangerous to draw simplistic generalities from anything as complex as human belief systems.
For some people, that may well be true. For many others, who have spent a great deal of time and thought on their beliefs, I doubt that they will be convinced.
People can become dependent on practically anything which fills a need (or even a desire). That would include becoming dependent on the putdown, as a substitute for careful understanding of the other side, and careful argument of one's own.
Quite so, one would think, and yet precisely backwards. I "believe in religions" because I see them there before me every day. There they are, the church of this and the mosque of that and the temple to whosis -- all with congregations numbering in the hundreds or thousands. Oh, yes, I believe in religions, because the evidence is in front of my eyes. I do not, however, believe in god, for whom (which?) there is no evidence that I am able to perceive. Or perhaps I should say none that I am willing to accept as evidence for god rather than for something else.
Well, religion and politics are the two ways we humans interact on the largest scales. We form love bonds, friendships and acquaintances in much more limited numbers, but our political and religious organizations can be huge. We hurt our lovers and friends from time to time, but is it any wonder that there is less suffering caused by our more limited and local relationships than by the more general and far-reaching ones?

But I think what you've missed is that religion is just one more of man's incessant search for answers to the perplexing questions of life. Unfortunately, in my view, it is a search in the wrong place -- outside of ourselves. We are human, and the answers to human issues must, perforce, be human in origin.

And the real tragedy of religion is that the answers that religion provides, while human, are never human at the level that it counts most -- the individual. (I say religion's answers are "human" because that is the only source that I believe for them. While many claim "revelation," I reject that because it is not possible that a deity would choose such an error-prone means of dispensing the most important information in the universe.)

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evangelicalhumanist: Greek "eu"=good and "angelos"=messenger. Spreading the good news of Humanism.