I'm the last person to be defending organized religion...as I don't practice and it does not suit me in the least...but here goes :)
On 12/5/06, Gruss Gott <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > The same reason a bottle of whiskey is scary in a room full of > alcoholics: it's a temptation to bring out the worst in yourself. All things in moderation. The whiskey isn't evil, the person is. The faith isn't evil, the religious zealot is. Spirituality is an exploration of the individual which, by its nature, > doesn't ask anything of others. In this way spirituality cannot be > used to persecute or exclude others. But people do not exist in a vacuum. We all learn from other people. Is there no value in also learning from other people's faith? Exploring your individual spirituality, within a congregation of other people, doesn't necessarily sound that harmful to me....it also sounds a lot like "religion". Religion is not this way. Most, if not all, religions, at their core, > exclude others. That is, they encourage tribalism. Tribalism leads > to discrimination, which leads to exclusion, exclusion leads to > persecution, and persecution to war. Exclusion, persecution, war....the dark side are they, yesss...mmmm. When religions or, to be more specific, religious people, begin to preach exclusion and persecution, they become zealots. Religion is their vessel, but their pathology lies elsewhere. It is, at its core, brainwashing. It exploits the "us and them" > caveman mentality that we all have within us. NO! It is at it's WORST, brainwashing. You are centering on the worst perversions of the various religions. Which is what I do when I rail against it. But you must recognize the large body of good also involved there. So let me put it this way: all of the good that churches accomplish > does not require religion! We can all get together, talk about our > spirituality (as we are now), agree to help others, etc without ever > being religious. You are blurring the lines between spritual and religious for me now. Maybe it's semantics now but, Isn't it by the very presence of the "Church" as a congregation, that you have a "religion"? So how can you have a set of spiritual people (congregation), working in concert, without that being considered a "religion"? So, to be clear, routine becomes religious when you look down on or > exclude others for not engaging in your routine. At the moment that > that occurs, religion and evil start to mix. See I disagree. I think that is when religion (good) becomes zealotry (bad). I think the two can be separated, i'm gathering from your comments that you do not....? ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~| Create robust enterprise, web RIAs. Upgrade & integrate Adobe Coldfusion MX7 with Flex 2 http://ad.doubleclick.net/clk;56760587;14748456;a?http://www.adobe.com/products/coldfusion/flex2/?sdid=LVNU Archive: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/CF-Community/message.cfm/messageid:221683 Subscription: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/CF-Community/subscribe.cfm Unsubscribe: http://www.houseoffusion.com/cf_lists/unsubscribe.cfm?user=89.70.5
