You don't need the bible to learn morality or ethics. Having said that, my mom remains a very religious person, and she is one of the kindest, most community-oriented persons I have ever known. I still wouldn't want to get into a religious argument with her -- she believes what she believes -- but she is not a religious hypocrite. She lives her Protestant religion -- and reaches out to practically everyone to make them feel welcome and to make them feel better. The ultimate community person. The closest person I have met to Mother Teresa.
My dad has the same religious spirit as my mother but he needs more personal, individual space than my mom. He was -- and still is a visionary, idealistic person, expressed politically, economically, and business-wise through his political, economic, and business ideals as well as romantically through his much more recent 21st Century Romantic Poetry.
Me, I need my boundaries, need my freedom, need my individual space...I can be sociable enough with people I like and feel comfortable with but, at the same time, can be practically non-existant towards people who I basically don't want to talk with. I have my dad's visionary idealism expressed in my own way through my philosophy-psychology, I have some of my mother's caring, loyalty, and community spirit, but I am much more introverted, self-oriented, and narcissistic than my mother. I play the 'alienated, underground, stranger' role much easier than the 'community or political activist' role.
Religion has its good side. Caring about other people. Helping other people in a world where there is not really enough of this around anymore as people basically isolate themselves behind closed doors, or worse, in desolate mountain caves, planning who they can blow up next. (Or is that because of religion gone bad because of the nature of the perceiver and interpreter?)
To be sure, you don't need religion to care about people...but still...will there ever be another Mother Teresa? One without a driving internal religion to motivate him or her to do the type of work that Mother Teresa did, even if not to that extreme? There are not many people who can live this type of lifestyle -- with seemingly almost unlimited 'giving'. Still, I have the highest regard and respect for those who can. They are our unsung heroes. I work alone on my computer doing my thing. I hope that my work is good for people, has meaning for people. But there is nothing to beat the type of work these community workers do in the 'trenches of humanity'.
But the bad side of religion can be horrific. Righteous intolerance, refusing to see another point of view...Torturing, killing, and/or alienating non-believers or alternative believers...authoritarianism, restrictive lifestyles that are just way too restrictive...
-- dgb, April 2nd, 2009.
4 comments:
There's an essential difference between religion and spirituality that is beyond the scope of this comment. Religion may "have its good side" but it is nevertheless built on a lie, a series of lies. Pantheism, on the other hand, does not require anything of the adherent other than to see what is already there. You definitely don't need the bible to learn morality or ethics. In fact, if you based your morality on the bible, you would be wrathful, envious, unreasonable, bloodthirsty, etc. Like Jesus who withering the fig tree when it fails to fruit out of season.
I write a lot about pantheism in my blog, Cosmic Rapture, so please do stop by some day.
Religion and pantheism are both built on a combination of spiritual metaphysics and mythology. This is both a good and a bad thing -- or at least can be, depending on the nature/character of the perceiver. Religion tends to believe that there is an Ultimate Creator 'still looking over and judging what HE/SHE created'. Pantheism expresses the spiritual, metaphysical belief that 'God is in Everything'. Extrapolating on this, if I hurt or kill someone, then I've hurt or killed a 'part of God'.
My experience is that pantheism, in general, causes less toxic problems than religion.
Still, toxicity is in the mind of the perceiver. Toxicity spreads from the thoughts and actions of toxic people -- regardless of whether they are 'religous' or 'pantheist' or 'atheist' -- or claim themselves to be.
The opposite of 'toxicity' is 'tonicity' -- bringing people together in a spirit of unity and cohesion as opposed to tearing them apart through any or all of the most negative characteristics of being 'human'. Religious, pantheist, and atheist thinkers can all have 'tonic' thoughts as well as 'toxic' thoughts -- so again, the 'abstract' type of religious and/or spiritual metaphysics involved in man's thinking is not as important pragmatically as the 'concrete' perception, interpretation, evaluation and behavioral action that follows the 'abstract, metaphysical oversystem'.
Are the applications of this religious/spiritual metaphysical oversystem a 'healthy tonic philosophy' to people? Or an unhealthy toxic philosophy?
Regarding The Bible -- in my opinion, the Bible is a book of mythological stories no different essentially than Homer's 'The Iliad' or whoever wrote 'The Odyssey'. The ethics expressed in The Bible is as inconsistent and contradictory as anywhere else in the thoughts and actions of men and women. The Bible is 'humanly' written; not written from the mouth of God. It is written symbolically and metaphorically; not literally. These thought are obviously not going to be shared by everyone, and many might even find them offensive. My mom might even find them offensive. But such is the nature of individual thinking -- and spiritual/religious metaphysics. I don't think any story written in The Bible is more 'unethical' than the story of Abraham and Isaac on The Mountain...But what can we do about this? What other interpretations can be offered than the standard religious one -- where God basically 'let Abraham off the hook (and Isaac even more so...) and told Abraham to slaughter a sheep, not his son. So since then, men have been slaughtering sheep and goats...and one has to wonder how easy this habit is 'retranslatable' back to people...
The Bible should not be taken literally because it is full of 'toxic, pathological ethics' -- or 'ethics' that is easily translatable in this fashion. Better to take a 'humanistic-existential' viewpoint and look for healthier spiritual-religious perspectives. Or make sure that they don't contradict each other. The Bible or The Corran -- or whatever -- should be no excuse for toxic, pathological thinking, feelings, impulses, and actions...
Or stick to 'The Golden Rule', The Kantian Rule of 'Reciprocal Ethics', or anything else that aims to help people live healthier, more meaningful lives --not the reverse.
For me -- 'The God is in Everything' slogan fits the bill -- and/or Anaxamander's view of 'cosmic justice' -- 'What goes around comes around'...
My bottom line is thinking 'tonicity'; not 'toxicity'.
-- dgb, May 23rd, 2009.
My spelling apology...*Qur'an...
I can relate to hat as well, my mother is a pastor-wannabe, highly religious woman and I wouldn't dare bring up another religion around her; but here I am a pagan. Great post
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