On Dec 4, 2009, at 6:48 PM, Dave Land wrote:
On Dec 4, 2009, at 8:52 AM, William T Goodall wrote:
On 3 Dec 2009, at 21:11, Bruce Bostwick wrote:
All religions are fake from the perspective of those seeing them
from outside.
No religion is fake from the perspective of its true believers.
Not a very useful metric, all things considered.
I see all 10,000 or so current religions as fake and a religionist
sees 9,999 of them as fake :-)
Almost in Agreement Maru
This is one of the best statements you've ever made.
You sound very much aligned with Leo Tolstoy, who, in his attempts
to promote nonviolent resistance as the truest expression of the
teachings of Christ (which he saw as a philosophy of life, not as
the words of the Son of God, nor the ravings of a lunatic), had
nothing, nothing at all good to say about churches. In fact, he goes
as far as to say that their very existence as churches is in
opposition to Christ.
You might like to read his "The Kingdom of God is Within You", in
which he presents his arguments, which have reminded me of yours
from time to time, quite brilliantly.
Dave
Tolstoy and I seem to agree rather fundamentally on the nature of
those teachings. The portions of the gospels that seem to have been
original writing (even if they *were* written as much as 200 years
after whatever actually happened) very much seem to be about
philosophy of life and a way of living, very much opposed to even the
*idea* of an organized church. I think Christ would have been
completely appalled at what was made of his teachings after the era
of, say, Constantine and the First Council of Nicaea, and my guess is
that the results would have made chasing the moneylenders out of the
temple look mild by comparison.
But I'm a religion of one, and those teachings are but one of my many
resources ..
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