Comments on: Death By Association

By: joanne

joanne — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 20:09:04 +0000

in my experience with religion prayer has been more of a selfish exercise in making requests, usually because people feel uncomfortable with what “is”… arguing with reality and wanting it to be other than it is makes them suffer… when they suffer they turn to the God they have fashioned in their imagination with the expectation that He will make it all better for them, and making it all better for them means doing what they want Him to do or think he should do or doing for them what it is they think they deserve because in their mind they’ve done everything “right”…

is there something deeper that drives people sourceward, deeper than their selfish desires and sense of entitlement?… i think there is… if there weren’t “something” deeper people would have given up on religion a long time ago when the majority of their petitions were “answered” in ways they didn’t want or expect… so, what keeps people so committed?… i think it’s deeper than their petty differences and prejudices and fears… i prefer to look past the ways we all get lost and confused in the “matter” of things, some are more lost in it than others and to more of an extreme than others, but what if we were all to look deeper at one another and challenge ourselves to look more deeply into ourselves, beyond our own personal confusion and bias… to fix our eyes on what that common “something” is we’re all reaching toward, and sometimes just don’t know how… what if we all did for one another… what if we all did that for ourselves? …

By: Timothy

Timothy — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 14:29:49 +0000

What do I get out of questioning? From a tangible perspective, I don’t get much of anything, I suppose. I don’t receive money. I don’t receive affiliations that improve my social status. I’m not out to build some “new” religion, as you’ve suggested before.

I do get some sincere responses from others in the form of comments on the blog, which results in the intangible benefit of having engaged in fellowship with other people who consider these kinds of topics on an intellectual and philosophical level, vice just a reactionary or emotional level.

Religion does serve as a venue for community in a similar sense, for people who seek such community. But I am still seeking the source — the unseen, unknown, yet repeatedly evident higher power that drives people to religion and spiritual practices in the first place, all across the world in all kinds of settings.

By: VIncent

VIncent — Sat, 17 Oct 2009 14:00:26 +0000

Religion is there because it meets its followers’ needs. It makes me wonder why you are questioning it in this way. What do you get out of it - the questioning?

Religion provides the sense of a group. It provides rationalisations for the instinct to pray. It provides lifelong parenthood in the form of a father-God, or mother-God if that’s what one prefers. It provides a rationale for disapproving of whatever it is one disapproves of. And so on.

But it only works because it provides a common framework and language for what people feel already. If it doesn’t fit for you, leave it!

Do you have a problem with your beliefs? Beliefs don’t have much to do with religion. Religion has to do with what people get out of religion. the beliefs are just something to hold it together. You pay lip-service to them and then you can join the club.