Not to start anything up nor am I pointing at specifically Abra. But how it gets insulting is when people start calling another's beliefs fables, fairy tales, folklore, and things of that nature.

How is that insulting unless you give weight to another person's opinion?

If you believe something to be true, then nothing anyone else says about it is going to "insult" you. You just need to consider the source.

For example: If I saw and touched a flying saucer and KNEW that it actually did exist, I would not be "insulted" if someone told me that it was crazy, or all in my mind. I would just figure that person is in a place where he just can't believe it.

Christians have been calling things like Wicca, fables, fairy tales and folklore for ages. Why is it that they don't think these people should be offended by the Christians?

In fact, it's the heart of the Christian stance that all religions and spiritual philosophies other than Christianity are false.

In fact, you claim to people all the time that Jesus is the "only way" to God, and that the Bible is the "Only Law" of God. So that's automatically demanding that all other religions and spiritual views can be nothing more than fables, fairy tales and folklore.

So why is it that Christians have the right to be so arrogant toward all other religions and spirituality yet as soon as the very same thing is being suggested of the Christians doctrine it's considered to be highly 'offensive'?

~~~~~~~~

Secondly, I disagree with your conclusion that this should be offensive in the first place.

If, as a human being, after having examined the Christian cannon of stories it's my conclusion that the Old Testament appears to me to have no more merit than the Greek mythology of Zeus. I'm even willing to give examples of why I feel this way, not the least of which is the similarity between the Gods. They are both viewed as male fatherly image who is supposed to be the God of Gods and is appeased by blood sacrifices. From my perspective that's just to similar for one to be a mere fable and for the other to be considered to be the true description of an actual God.

Also, once I have dismissed the Old Testament as having no more merit than Greek Mythology along with the idea that God is appeased by blood sacrifices, then I need to come up with a better explanation for who Jesus was and what he might have stood for. I'm certainly not going to continue to hold up the idea that he was a sacrificial lamb of God.

So I offer my explanation that Jesus was most likely a Mahayana Buddhist Bodhisattva. That's a perfectly respectable and honorable view.

And of course, once I've done that, then I need to explain why the New Testament should not be accepted as the verbatim word of God. I do this by simply recognizing that it is indeed a hearsay account. It doesn't claim to have been written by Jesus. It was written by other people who are making claims about Jesus. I simply question their claims and suggest that they were either mistaken, or possibly trying to use the rumors of Jesus to prop up the very religious doctrine that I believe Jesus himself renounced (i.e. the Old Testament)

This is a very plausible explanation for how the whole religion came to be, IMHO.

No one should be offended by any of this. It's just a theory on my part. And I'm not claiming that it's anything more than that. However, I will offer evidence to support the theory. I do belief that it has much credence.

But still, there's no reason for anyone to be offended by this view.

It's just a view of someone who does not accept the orthodox Christian view is all. There's no reason to be offended by it.

I was almost duped in by this.

Then I regained my sensible mind.

If you think these religions or "religions" use metaphors to teach moral lessons, then I venture to make a guess: Dogs and wolves and the moon and fairies live through tales from which man must, can, or ought to derive moral lessons.

This is the same as the Bible, very sorry.

If viccanism or Fairy Loving (V or FL) is a religion, then their stories make up a tale, a dogma. They are not perfect. The main religions insist that their gods and religion is perfect. Do the scriptures of the V or FL say they are infallible in their teachings? I would be curious to know.

Do V or FL have a commonly and robustly accepted source, that is beleived by Vs and FLs to be unchangeable, and is this source, or scripture if you like, the same for each group of Vs and FLs which are geographically scattered otherwise? Yes, no?

If V or FL are not each a religion, but a matter of faith, fine, then my statements don't apply to them, as I said "religious dogma".

If the V or FL are religions, but don't insist that their scriptures are absolutely true and infallible, then it's not a dogma, my restrictive statements don't apply to their scriptures.

If the scriptures of V or FL are not consistently worded the same, then their scriptures are not dogma.

Dogma is per definition false. Dogma is understood to be created in the perception of an era, it is deemed and infallible description, and it is created to describe the perception of the universe. In this sense there is Christian dogma, there is Marxist-Leninist dogma, there is Kanine dogma. However, no era of humans have devised a uniform dogma, and no era of humans have devised a dogma which has not have points that have been refuted. In other words, the dogma says it is true in its entirety, whereas in later ages man shows that there are errors of perception, facts, and spelling mistakes in the original version.


That said, I still have to say one more thing that's in me: Seeds sprout. Buds blossom. (Smile.) Erm... uh, Jesus judges. Buddha belly-laughs. I hope you're smiling.

Truly.

Besides Cowboy doesn't consider Buddhism to even be worthy of looking into. I'm not insulted by that.

He also doesn't consider Wicca to be worthy of consideration. I'm not insulted by that either.

I'm flattered. Especially hearing this from someone like you.



For me spirituality has never been about moral values. Perhaps this is because I realized very early in life that I'm an innately moral person and would continue to be a highly moral person even if I were totally convinced that atheism were the truth of reality.

So for me, spirituality has absolutely nothing to do with morality.

Although, I will agree with you that most "religions" are concerned with the teaching of moral lessons. So much so that people often consider religion and morality to be synonymous concepts.



For me personally? I certainly can't speak for anyone else.

I personally do not view either Wicca or Faery lore as "religions". For me they are abstract psychic archetypes that have spiritual value. Depending who's books you read concerning these spiritual traditions will determine how "dogmatic" they become for you.

I have been "blessed" (or lucky) to have been pointed to some truly intelligent books on these subjects that are written by authors that refuse to support any specific dogma. Obviously they are writing "doctrines" themselves which you might think would automatically make their view "dogmatic", but I don't feel that way because ultimately what they try to share are general abstract ideas and they actually teach you to follow what calls to you.

I can handle that kind of "dogma", if you want to call that "dogma".

The Buddha also taught that we should follow what calls to us and not just accept what someone else teaches including himself.

So I don't view Buddhism as a high "dogmatic" spiritual philosophy either. Although, I confess that just like everything else it can be made to become that in the wrong hands.

There are probably as many different forms of Buddhism as their are different denominations of Christianity. Some I like, some I do not.

This is one reason why I always specific that Jesus was most likely a Mahayana Buddhist (From his time period too!). This form of Buddhism not only supports many of the views of Jesus, but it was also a quite "spiritual form" of Buddhism. I think some of the more modern forms of Buddhism (like say Zen Buddhism) have become nothing more than a glorified form of atheism (or certainly animism) as opposed to being highly "spiritual" like the older forms were.

But for whatever it's worth, I would not want to be party to 'duping' you.

If you prefer to believe in an atheistic existence, and that calls to you. Then that's what you should believe. This is especially true if your comfortable with atheism and don't see it as any reason to do horrifically unethical things, especially if those things might cause someone else harm.

I have absolutely no bones to pick with any non-dangerous atheists.

In fact, I'd prefer not to pick bones with dangerous atheists either. That would probably not be a wise thing to do on my part.

Vicca... I mean, Abra...


"I actually hold a totally different view on that point.

All religions are not as hopeless as the Abrahamic religions and Greek mythology. "

V and FL are not religions... so they don't count as examples to support that "not all religions are hopeless as far as making sense of their dogma is concerned".

Okay... Buddhism is a religion? It is dogmatic. "Needs and wants are burdens on your way to happiness, you must lose all your earthly desires to attain fulfilment"... this is dogma, sorry. Furthermore, it's false dogma, dogma that is certainly not saying a truth, yet its advocate, the religion of Buddhism in this insance, insists it's truth. And it is universal and unchanging. The essential teaching of Buddhism has all the elements of dogma. If it is a religion, then you have not shown me any religion which is not as hopeless as abrahamic ones. If it is not a religion, then you have not shown me any religion which is not as hopeless as abrahamic ones.

Show me one religion that is dogmatic yet not as hopeless as the Abrahamic ones. You promised!! So please deliver.

If you can't deliver, that's okay too. This is true, by definition. "Ye shall ask and ye shall be given". This is dogma, big time, since it's part of the bible. And we already know dogma is false. So I can't possibly expect delivery of something you promised, if I had asked for it. And I asked for it. And I am sure you are saying the same thing right now, having read this here mine post.

"Delivered under forty minutes, or it's free." Pizza companies are more reliable and believable than the bible, I'm telling you.

I concede. You win.

Especially if you're going to make statements like the following:



If that's the totality of your understanding of Buddhism in general, then I agree, from your point of view every religion on earth is most likely nothing more than absurd dogma.

I can't argue with you from your perspective of things.

Nor would I want to. I personally don't feel that it's important to believe in any sort of spirituality, especially if you personally have no need or desire for any such belief.

If your happy with an atheistic view of life, then I see no reason to burden you with spiritual views that you have no interest in.

Of course if you find atheism to be depressing or even disappointing in any way, then I could suggest various plausible ideas of spirituality that may brighten your outlook on reality.

If you aren't depressed or disappointed by an atheistic reality, then the whole topic of spirituality is moot.

I personally don't believe that a 'belief' in spirituality is important, even if there is a spiritual essence to reality.

Why should it be important? If there was some sort of "judgments" to be made, those judgments could be made with total disregard to what you might believe.

Moreover, if some supreme being or consciousness felt that it was important that we actually believe in spirituality then why play hide and seek about it? Why not just make sure that everyone knows of the spiritual nature of reality in the first place?

I see no value in a spiritual God who plays hide and seek only to condemn those who weren't able to find him. That would be the epitome of stupidity, IMHO.

So if there exists any supreme being who wants you to believe that he/she/it/them exist, I would imagine they would be smart enough to reveal themselves to you and tell you of this personally.

Turning it into a guessing game could serve no righteous purpose. Especially if the purpose is to JUDGE your moral conduct. They should appear before you and explain precisely what they expect from you before they could hold you responsible for not believing. Attempting to communicate with your through highly questionable and absurd third-party hearsay rumors would not be sufficient, IMHO.

So if you wish to view all spiritual ideals and philosophies as dogmatic extremism, I don't think anyone should blame you for that.

I sure don't!

I don't see things that way myself. But I don't blame you for holding that perspective one iota.

So no pizza for me I guess.

How would an athiest even get a word in edgewise here...

Much ado ABOUT religion...

very little about non-religion.

I'm interested in non-religious philosophies.

The only problem is that atheism, if true, is quite uninteresting as a philosophy. We're born, we live, we die.

It's a pretty simple story. Not much to elaborate on.

As soon as we get into the question of "What caused the Big Bang?" or "From what did it Bang?" we're outside the realm of knowledge and into speculation and, heaven forbid, "Mysticism".

The most well-accepted "creation theory" among scientists today is without a doubt "The Inflationary Hot Big Bang Theory" along with its extremely profound and impossible to refute observational evidence written down and preserved for us by nature in the cosmic microwave background radiation.

So we can be confident that "The Inflationary Hot Big Bang Theory" is correct. The question now becomes, "What caused it?" or "From what did it Bang?"

The current most popular answer to those question is that it arose from a random quantum fluctuation. There only problem with that theory is that it presumes the pre-existence of a "Quantum Field" that can fluctuate and has pre-defined properties itself in terms of precisely who it can fluctuate.

Even though this "Quantum Field" itself is not thought of as having any 'physically detectable or measurable physical properties' we can still assign to it certain intellectual properties. In other words, based on what we see popping into and out of existence we can say that this non-physical "Quantum Field" contains some sort of structured information.

This is quite amazing to me.

Biologists often argue that the concept of "spirit" is impossible because there is not place for "spirit" to exist other than in the physical universe. In other words, they have been taught to equate physical form to "information". So they are under the belief that you cannot have "information" if you have no physical "form" for that information to be "stored" in.

However, Quantum Theory and the concept of a Quantum Field fly in the face of this idea that physics is required for information to exist. The reason being that in order for Quantum Theory to work at all, we must assume that the Quantum Field contains properties (i.e. information), even its non-physical state.

So is seems to me that even scientific theories reduce to "mysticism" at their deepest most fundamental level.

That's just my own personal view. I've studied science far more than I've studied religion, I can assure you of that much.

And to the best of my knowledge what I've outlined above is the best guess of our current scientific knowledge.

Sure, you can talk about "String Theory", but there are two problems with that. First, String Theory assume Quantum Mechanics in the first place, and thus far it has added nothing new to these fundamental questions. It's biggest "Promise" right now is to provide us with a working mathematical theory of gravity that is consistent with the mathematical theory of QM and thus far it hasn't even been able to do that.


And even if it does achieve this, it will still not have done away with QM, all it will have done is marry QM and Gravity.

Break out the champagne and celebrate the marriage!

(assuming they actually get married!)

However, we'd still have QM right there as the Bride (or the Groom) however you want to look at it. Bottom line is that QM wouldn't have gone anywhere.

String theory just assumes that QM is true and that Gravity wants to marry her.

I'm forever stuck in the middle.

I can't fathom how a pure atheist thinks. A big bang, and then eventually evolution?

When a child is born it learns and becomes conscious because it has consciousness to work with and a capacity to learn, material, DNA, genes etc. It is basically a bunch of fleshy thinking matter.

So to, is a one celled animal swimming in the ocean that eventually evolves into intelligent life.

Consciousness didn't just pop into existence like the big bang. A single celled animal can't learn and grow and evolve without some form of consciousness. It came from the basic material of the universe at the quantum level. The basic quantum material, the building blocks of the universe have to be conscious to some degree in order to grow. It has to be alive.

But your hardcore scientists claim that this basic 'stuff' at one point was not alive and then suddenly like magic... life is born.

I don't think so. To them, it may appear that way because of how they define "life." But if it is at one point "not life" and at the next point "alive" then life itself is like another "big bang."

It appeared out of nowhere.

That would once again be like something from nothing.

I don't think something can arise from nothing. It only appears that it does. Nothing does not actually exist. Something always existed.

Thats not what an atheist thinks. Thats what a modern day science-oriented materialists thinks, who might also be atheist, or not. I know many scientists, who are also christian, who believe in the big bang and then evolution - and a few atheists who don't believe in evolution.

To simply not believe or disbelieve in a creator still leaves the door wide open for what else you believe or disbelieve. Some atheists don't believe anything on those topics, they just say that they simply don't know.

Most atheist I know are ex religious folks who went through the process of being taught religion, logically learning the religion, seeing the illogical"ness" of the religion, searching a new religion to fix the problems with the first religion, repeat, repeat, repeat, until they essentially run out of one that meets their logical mind, then they reexamine their "need" for the religion, disillusionment and unlearning follows, they usually become agnostic for a bit and then they accept the logical conclusion that they really knew from the beginning.

Now if you run into these atheist in their confusion or disillusionment stages they may be a bit bitter and sharp with ya but who can blame them.

Otherwise atheists are really not bothered about the religious until the religious start telling them how god loves them whether they want it or not. How god is there whether they want to see him or not. How god is going to judge them so they better get it straight and other threatening talk.

Most atheist don't even participate in these type of threads. Because they have no need for it.

Since I have been told that I am not atheist by my beliefs, I classify myself as spiritual. But I am very quick to rise up on Christianity and it's attempted superiority. Its brainwashed masses who are arrogant and hypocritical but want to save me. I don't want to be like them.

I don't see how it's any different from: "No bang and God always existed". That's no less absurd in my mind.

Whatever the truth of reality is it's totally without logical explanation. At least in terms of how we perceive logic to be in the PHYSICAL WORLD.

However as mathematicians often point out, what seems illogical from a 3-dimensional perspective would seem perfectly logical from a 4-dimensional perspective.

Well, since we are 3-dimensional beings (excluding time), and it may very well be that our universe "popped" into existence from a "forth" dimension. Then we could never have any hope of comprehending its true nature from our 3-dimensional perspective.


However, if the true nature of our conscious awareness ultimately stems from higher dimensional reality, then when we "die" from this 3-dimensional existence, we'll "wake-up" and realize our true 4-dimensional nature and everything we become perfectly clear to us.

This kind of scenario not only sounds inviting, but it's also clearly possible in terms of pure mathematics and geometry. This is precisely the kinds of things that mathematics already tell us are indeed "possible", at least in THOUGHT.

Isn't that interesting?

Mathematics tells us of things that are possible in THOUGHT.

Hmmmm?

Yet, many people are convinced that such THOUGHTS are impossible in reality.

But aren't THOUGHTS part of reality?

I think a lot of times what creates atheism, is the whole idea that basically from birth we are told God can only be found in a religion. That He's in this book, that book, this church or that church etc.

Then upon becoming disillusioned with the belief system or systems, they conclude that if these religions are all faulty, than God simply doesn't exist. This is the error, though it's made through no fault of their own.

See, we have a society that basically teaches that.....you either believe the religion, accept it, or you don't believe in God. Christianity in particular teaches this. It's a paradigm shift, there's no room for any alternative viewpoint or any sort of middle ground between the two. Given this, it is very easy for one to conclude that if the religions are not true, that there is no God. Reason being, they are not told anything different.

What people SHOULD be told, is that God, the Creator, however you wish to call it, is entirely separate from religion. You do not need to believe any one religious system of beliefs or doctrine, in order to experience or feel God. God makes no such requirement, it is man that has made that up in order to control.

No, the truth is, God can be and in fact, IS present in any belief system. Why? It comes down to one word: FAITH. If you believe God is there and wish to feel His/Her presence, you will feel it. It doesn't matter whether you're Catholic, Christian, Buddhist or Jew, God will appear to you if you have the faith. It has nothing to do with what religion you subscribe to, and everything to do with you.

One thing the Bible gets right is this: "Seek and you shall find, knock and it shall be opened to you"

That's all that's required to find God, nothing else need be done. Doesn't matter who you are, where you are or what you believe, if you do that with an open mind and heart you WILL experience God.

As I've said before, this is why every religion tends to think they are right, because God can be found in them ALL. But it does not mean that the religions are entirely true, because none are. They all have some truth, but not all of it. For if all the truth could be in one place, the unlimited would become limited.

This, is the reality many are not told, and as such they cannot see that there is much more than simply, Religion or nothing. This in effect is what creates atheism.

I had a very strange history in that regard. As an extremely young child, long before I knew anything about "religion" I had extremely profound feelings of what I consider to be "spirituality". A feeling that the universe is a conscious entity (don't take that too literally in a physical sense). What I'd really like to say is not describable by words. The best I can say is that I had extremely "mystical" feelings. And an extremely profound feeling that there was never a time when I did not exist and there will never be a time when I will cease to exist. This was not an 'intellectual' thing, it was a "feeling", and I also felt a "presence" which I still feel to this very day. This presence may very well simply be "me". But there has never been a time in my entire life when I ever felt "alone".

So as I grew up I was taught that the Bible is the story of God and so on and so forth. Well, gee, my very own parents taught me this and most everyone I knew believed it. In the beginning I didn't even question it. I assumed that these people knew what they were saying.

But as I got older I quickly realized that even the most devout pastors had their own questions and doubts, and TRUTH BE TOLD everyone would ultimately confess that nobody has a CLUE.

So I looked into the doctrine myself, realized it's utterly absurd and ultimately rejected it as being a false story at least in terms of the orthodox verbatim Christian sense. I never felt "betrayed" by God, because if I had been "betrayed" and lied to it was by humans, not any God.

Rejection of this particular story however, did not remove my deep spiritual intuitions and feelings. So naturally I turned to exam other religions and spiritual philosophies. NOT in the hopes of finding something new to cling to. But rather, I was simply looking for possible religions or philosophies that actually describe my own personal innate feelings of spirituality.

For me that turned out to be Eastern Mysticism. I still don't view Eastern Mysticism as something I "cling to", but rather it's just the closest philosophy I can find that best describes my own personal innate spiritual feelings.

I was during my study of the history of Buddhism that I made the wonderful discovery that Jesus was most likely a Mahayana Buddhist Bodhisattva. For me that's just a wonderful revelation. Here I was able to accidentally "save" Jesus from the perverted orthodox Christian view.



Me neither. Even back when I was trying to "salvage" Christianity in hopes of setting the preachers straight, I quickly learned that the greatest force I was up against was Christian fundamentalism itself. It's pretty disgusting to be trying to salvage a religion and having the followers of that very religion beating down your very attempts to try to salvage it.

The only way that it could possibly be even remotely "salvaged" would be in a way that the Christian fundamentalists would never accept.

In fact, as far as I'm concerned, I did "savage" the story of Jesus by recognizing that he was indeed a Mahayana Buddhist Bodhisattva. I may not have "salvaged" their idea that Jesus was the "Sacrificial lamb" of God sent to pay for the sins of mankind. But that was never important to me. I have never felt so guilty about anything in my entire life that the idea of having God send a "sacrificial lamb" to pay for my sins has never been an important concept to me.

Evidently for some people that concept is paramount. I can only figure that they are seriously guilty about something horrible and are in dire need of repentance. Otherwise, why be so concerned about that ideal?

I agree. A religion can be totally false and you can still find God "using" that religion. Because religion isn't where God resides in the first place.

And, from my perspective this even applies to Atheists!

If a person is at peace with themselves and is in harmony with their environment, then they are one with God. Whether they recognize spirituality or not, is totally irrelevant.

One more thing on this to clarify exactly what I was meaning. When in a discussion another's beliefs should not be referred to as again "folklore, fairy tells, ect" I'm sorry if you've had previous incidents with a Christian claiming Wicca to be as such. But again, in a discussion on a discussion forum it becomes extremely insulting. There's a difference between a "discussion" and just casually talking with someone. On a public forum it is to remain civil. Claiming another's beliefs to be as mentioned detours it from being civil most the time. It's one thing if YOU think they are fables, but it's another when proclaiming them to be fables as if it were a fact.

examples

1. Yeah Christianity if just a bunch of fables.
2. I believe Christianity to be fables.

Those two sentences mean pretty much the same thing. But one is presented as to not offend another, it is opinionated, not being said as a fact.

If you don't want to hear the opinions of people who hold views that differ from yours then don't converse with people who hold views that are different from yours. It's that simple.

By the way, you never say, "I believe that a person can only get to God through Christ", instead you demand that this the only truth for everyone!

So you'll get no sympathy from me.

I'm glad you see it that way Cowboy. The second example is a person being considerate of another's feelings and expressing that what they are saying is their opinion.

The first example is someone simply stating their opinion as a fact. In this case they are probably prepared to back it up with proof, therefore it is a challenge.

If a Christian does the same, and stated their beliefs as a fact, they are presenting a challenge and they are probably prepared to back it up with what they consider to be proof. (Probably the bible.) But when that fails, they back off and call it "faith."

That is when they lose the argument for God. That is when they have to say "I believe" such and such.

But most true believers will not be so considerate. They state what they believe as fact. They challenge non-believers. Then they wonder why everyone argues with them. They think all they are doing is spreading the "good news" and telling the truth.

But what they they are doing is challenging others.

If you say there is a God, and state it as a fact, then you should be ready to prove it. If you say that Jesus is the son of God, don't state it as a fact unless you can prove it. Don't assume something is true just because you believe it.