LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY tsukino_rei)

My last post may well have left the impression that I am anti-religion. I could certainly see how it might give that impression. But I'm really not.

Rather, I am anti-fear, anti-intollerance, and anti-ignorance. These three things, I beleive should ideally be separated and excluded from religion.



Looking at world history and present global circumstances one might think that impossible. I know there are many who are quite convinced that if religion were removed from the world there would be a great deal more peace.

I disagree. I think that the problem with the human race is at once far more complicated and far more simple. Wars are fought for so many reasons and few of them the least bit noble, though the reasons given to the general populace are often made to look more holy or palatable. They are fought for land, for oil, for political reformation, for expansionism, to resist expansionism, certainly religion, and the list goes on. But it's all really for one thing; Self preservation.

Self preservation begins with, naturally, self. Each of us has certain needs to fulfill. We need to guarantee that we have the food we need, a place to sleep, etc. The natural extention of preserving ourselves is preserving our family, then community, then country. Each of these social structures have developed as systems of self-preservation through mutual-preservation. Arguably, the leaders of our respective nations must feel most keenly the need to ensure the continuing prosperity of their nations at all costs. From there point of view I'm sure they beleive it's what they were exclusively 'hired' for.

The value of oil and land and such, I'm sure, is obvious. The self-preservational reasons for imposing political structures and ideals would require a bit more explanation, but my topic is religion so I'm not going there. If another country behaved aggressively towards you, threatened your lands, bombed your buildings, killed your neighbours, then of course you would see the need for self defence.

But what is it that makes people lash out at eachother for something seemingly so harmless and so trivial as being Protestant or being Catholic? Why have Christians killed and maimed Muslims and Muslims killed and maimed Christians? Why did so many countries think that the opression of the Jews was ok? Because history shows that we did, until we were shocked to our senses by how far it had gone.

The answer is complicated by other motives, religion often becoming an easy way to rally the people, the truer reasons motivating the leaders and decision makers involving politics and matters of long-term national interest. Religion has often been guided and remolded to serve political interest.

But again, why is it that religion so easilly rallies the people to want to slaughter eachother and feel completely justified?

My answer is self-preservation.

Concider that our identities are comprised of ideas we developed from a very young age and comprise largely of ideas we come to have about ourselves, who we are, what our relationship is to ourselves, to our families, to other people, our position in relation to the whole animal kingdom and the universe at large. Even our languages say so much about who we are because each word is a little packaged idea with connotation. (at this point I suppose I should mention that I have an interst in Cultural Anthropology)

Concider that for one who is raised to beleive in any particular religion all of these ideas about the world and themselves are very much wrapped up in God. An idea can do every bit as much damage as a gun, to the human psyche.

Why are you here? Why is there pain? Are you unique? Are you of value? Where did the world come from? What makese sense of it all? Am I like an ant? Am I like the cows that I eat? Why do kindness to our neighbours? Why is murder wrong?

So so so many questions asked, far far far more than I've listed, and the answers all wrapped up in the idea of God. And not just any idea of God... but very importantly and very specifically the idea that has been presented to you - possibly from birth or possibly at a period in life when your ideologies were already being reformed...

The dependency is often subconscious. Most people never really think very deeply about where there ideas about these every day things come from. There's no need. Others are more introspective and love to spend time thinking about how these things they know about the world reflect specific assumptions about the nature of God, the meaning of the universe, the value it places on the human race and the individual.

But suddenly rip away that foundation and what's left? Agony. Cognitive death. A blank slate that terrifyingly needs to be rewritten, a seemingly unsurmountable task. All assumptions need to be reformed, new reasons are needed for everything. Make no mistake, when done to quickly the pain is indescribable and it is something to be feared.

If God is your reason for everything then what do you do if yours is the wrong one. Or worse, what if there is none?

Who wouldn't protect themselves from that? Who wouldn''t be terrified to their core?

Isn't it interesting, though, that we seem to find it so much les offensive to embrace one anothers languages? Humans seem to find it so much easier to view language as a practical means of communication.

That's really what religion is too - a practical means of communicating ideas about our common sense of spirituality and reality beyond the seen. Yet somehow in our cultural evolution, perhaps at the point where Kings and Rulers began claiming their authority from that unseen, religion stopped being seen as an interesting way to discuss a common experience and we somehow got it into our heads that any disagreement and any different way of viewing and communicating these things was evil and threatening. Perhaps through the ages philosophies needed to be adjusted to grant authority to Rulers and inspire troops, an evolution part natural and part intentional.

Until what we have today is the very thing that, oddly enough, most religions seem to agree should not be inspired by religion. Fear.

Even so, religion is no more evil than language. Both are tools for building common understanding and fascilitating communication about things that would have no form or substance within the human mind otherwise.

In summary, that's why I beleive it's important to reach a point internally where it's ok if God isn't real. It's important to be at a point where the question of whether God is male, or female, a multi-armed elephant, or a man on a cross, doesn't threaten to send our internal worlds into a destructive spin.

Only when we remove the fear, the interolerance, and the selfimposed ignorance, can religion become the tool for positive self-transformation and spiritual growth, a means of KNOWING God in us and the universe, that the worlds religions common esoteric implies is the true purpose.

Atheism is fine too! Even good!

And yes... I am aware that I have rambled again.



Special thanks to the_paulr for showing me how to do the cut text thing so I don't maul you.