Religion
So I have been attempting in the last few times I have seen him to give my friend Will a notion of what religion is. This journal will be in an excercise in me tryign to do that as I have found that often my skills as a writer surpass those I posess as an orator.
Religion is a reality. Not a reality in the manner that one describes something as true or false, present or not present, but rather a reality in that it is a framework whereby a person fundamentally understands the world. In the same way that a blind person realizes existence differnetly than person with siht so a person of a particular religion realizes existence different than someone from another religion. This paradigm is further complicated due to the profoundly personal nature of religion and consequently religous expression, for while a person who shares the same religion as another person may be more closely in line with the second individuals reality than say a person of another faith the differences are so profound as to be almost equally challenging. Th quantitative difference between getting to the moon or say jupiter makes little difference if you haven't got a space ship.
I would posit that we as individuals have no means of bridging the gap between our experience of reality and another individuals. Rather we observe through our reality theirs and fundamentally make it our own; in this process however it ceases to be theirs.
It is through the process of possesing and internalizing that we learn and religion is a way of doing these things.
What then of the differences in digma and the paradoxes represented logically amongst the faiths? My contention with this query is tha tit makes a fundamental assumption about religion that is in fact not in any way fundamental to personal belief; namely that religions must be correct to do what it is they do. A religion does not have to be rational to serve as a way of viewing reality. And religion principally serves that function ; it orders existence and serves as the means to see patterns amidst the tumult of the cosmos.
The secondary function of religion is the defense of certain claims. There is one God, we are all stuck in samsara, the end is near. I tend to lump all of this under two categories. The first is that things will get better. The second is that we go on. Now as to the first all religions and all philosophies somewhere state that thing will get better. Whether or not this is the case is debatable but the power of the statemnt is undeniable and the majority of religous teaching revolves around not so much the inevitability of things getting better but rather how to expediate the process of that betterment. It is through extremely skewed trains of thought that things like holy wars and witch burnings are justified. So how can we make things better well congratulations people have been asking that forever and a day and some of them were nice enough to write down their thoughts on the matter. The second and more pertinent of the two ideas is that we go on. Now aside fromthe ramblings of coma patients and other highly questionable sources scattered throughout the ages we have no "evidence" for anything happening after death save decomposition in most instances. Personally I find that to be a rather annoying way to exit existence. On a real level it seems a trivial way of exiting; like ending a concert without bowing or not resolving a chord. So people have speculated as to what happens to us after death.
These two factors are the principal reasons for religion we each have a way of seeing how to make thigns better and what happens later on and we go about organizing ourselves according to who agrees with whom. my on sentance defintion of religion is as follows. A personal method of experiencing reality that allows fundamental questions regarding the human condition to be asked.
Religion is a reality. Not a reality in the manner that one describes something as true or false, present or not present, but rather a reality in that it is a framework whereby a person fundamentally understands the world. In the same way that a blind person realizes existence differnetly than person with siht so a person of a particular religion realizes existence different than someone from another religion. This paradigm is further complicated due to the profoundly personal nature of religion and consequently religous expression, for while a person who shares the same religion as another person may be more closely in line with the second individuals reality than say a person of another faith the differences are so profound as to be almost equally challenging. Th quantitative difference between getting to the moon or say jupiter makes little difference if you haven't got a space ship.
I would posit that we as individuals have no means of bridging the gap between our experience of reality and another individuals. Rather we observe through our reality theirs and fundamentally make it our own; in this process however it ceases to be theirs.
It is through the process of possesing and internalizing that we learn and religion is a way of doing these things.
What then of the differences in digma and the paradoxes represented logically amongst the faiths? My contention with this query is tha tit makes a fundamental assumption about religion that is in fact not in any way fundamental to personal belief; namely that religions must be correct to do what it is they do. A religion does not have to be rational to serve as a way of viewing reality. And religion principally serves that function ; it orders existence and serves as the means to see patterns amidst the tumult of the cosmos.
The secondary function of religion is the defense of certain claims. There is one God, we are all stuck in samsara, the end is near. I tend to lump all of this under two categories. The first is that things will get better. The second is that we go on. Now as to the first all religions and all philosophies somewhere state that thing will get better. Whether or not this is the case is debatable but the power of the statemnt is undeniable and the majority of religous teaching revolves around not so much the inevitability of things getting better but rather how to expediate the process of that betterment. It is through extremely skewed trains of thought that things like holy wars and witch burnings are justified. So how can we make things better well congratulations people have been asking that forever and a day and some of them were nice enough to write down their thoughts on the matter. The second and more pertinent of the two ideas is that we go on. Now aside fromthe ramblings of coma patients and other highly questionable sources scattered throughout the ages we have no "evidence" for anything happening after death save decomposition in most instances. Personally I find that to be a rather annoying way to exit existence. On a real level it seems a trivial way of exiting; like ending a concert without bowing or not resolving a chord. So people have speculated as to what happens to us after death.
These two factors are the principal reasons for religion we each have a way of seeing how to make thigns better and what happens later on and we go about organizing ourselves according to who agrees with whom. my on sentance defintion of religion is as follows. A personal method of experiencing reality that allows fundamental questions regarding the human condition to be asked.