Keeping in mind that religions are orginizations based on faith, do you think the beuracracy involved limits you to what faith can do for you?

nope... it limits my credibility with seekers

If religion is based on faith and if what you truly believe in is real... then how could anyone lower than your deity stop you from being blessed?

good stuff!

I could see where the bureaucracy could stand a chance to weaken your faith. It's happened to me.

If the religion has gotten to the point where the church becomes God then it most certainly can become a limitation. I know that in the case of Catholicism in particular, people often view the church’s opinion on things to be the same as God’s opinion.

I don’t believe in organized religions myself, and I would never view a church as speaking for God. So for me personally, the question is moot.

I believe in a personal connection with god, one-on-one. No need for any third party. For me that personal connection with god is innate. God is the essence of your spirit. You need go through no man to get to god.

amen, abra....

Abracadabra, I salute you

so hypothetically that would entail that religion would hinder a persons faith than expand upon it. then at what point is church relevant, and at what point do we obtain clarity versus deviation.

Any time a human places restrictions on thought, they are creating limitations.
Limitation is an imposed restriction.

Many people are not comfortable, emotionally with accepting the idea of unrestricted boundaries.

Unrestricted and unlimited means there is the unknown. There are questions that arise from the unknown. These questions are so deep and vast and on-going that it seems we are small creatures, frail, and vulnerable to all that we can not understand. From those questions comes an emotional response of fear, instability, disconnectedness and unfamiliarity. Add all that into the equation that humans have an ego that can not comprehend the possibility that their awareness, their perceptions, their ‘value’ could possibly ever have an end.

For many, structure is a requirement for stability. A belief system designed around a social structure answers those questions, connects individuals by creating familiarity with others . They form a doctrine and through a common belief in this doctrine they have answered all the questions, given an immortal value to the ego, and made a social connection. So in the limitations provided by that doctrine, there is a sense of structure and security, and emotional wellbeing is established.

So important is that wellbeing that the doctrine become dogmatic, an obsession, because to loose it means that there is nothing left, but to answer the questions, to face mortality, and the questions are simply too hard to even try to comprehend. And mortality, simply can not be an option. Not to mention that MOST poeple are not self-motivated. Take away a reason for thier existance, and they have no reason to exist.

While religion gives many a sense of security, they pay for that by creating the limits that will forever stop them from having an open mind, to test the envelope, to wonder exactly “what is the limitation of man?” “What are all the possibilities?” And in that wondering, to find a source of self-motivation, TO CONTINUE, until our individual limit,of life, has expired.

the bureaucracy of organized religion destroys the faith it proclaims

but hey what do i know

Very nice post Dianna.

Part of it reminded me of a recent conversation I had with my cousin.

You wrote:
“Not to mention that MOST people are not self-motivated. Take away a reason for their existence, and they have no reason to exist.”

Unfortunately this is far too true. My cousin, a Christian, was trying to convince me that going to an eternal heaven is better than the idea of reincarnation. However, somehow he ended up arguing just the opposite.

We were discussing the meaning of life, and the reasons for living. I told him that my reason for living is to experience life. Ta da!

That’s it period.

He wasn’t impressed. He told me that what give life meaning to him is the fact that he will be going to an eternal heaven after he dies.

I thought about that for a moment and then said, “So the only thing that gives meaning to this life is the fact that something comes after it”.

He said, “Yes, that’s correct”.

Then I pointed out that if he feels that way, then an eternal series of reincarnations would be self-meaningful because, by his own premise, each incarnation would give meaning to the previous one. Whereas, if the next life after this one is an eternal heaven, then that heaven would have no meaning because nothing could come after it.

Being that he is also a mathematician he realized the error in his logic and quickly requested a time-out to rethink the problem.

Sometime it’s funny what extremes people will go to, to try to give meaning to their lives.

Also, I might point out that the man has three really great kids, a great wife, a really nice large home, and he’s teaching philosophy at a local college. He’s basically ALREADY in heaven! Yet he needs to come up with some reason to make life meaningful?

Sheesh!

What is WRONG with people?

Why can’t life be meaningful just for what it is? Why do people always need something better. Do they honestly think that would end in heaven? Once they got their they would want something even better yet!

People are never satisfied. You give them all of creation to play in, and all they do is complain that they want heaven!

To me, life is cool just the way it is. Dust bunnies and all.

Abra, nice analagy. You also wrote:

""Why can’t life be meaningful just for what it is? Why do people always need something better. Do they honestly think that would end in heaven? Once they got their they would want something even better yet!""

I can't remember the exact quote, but basically if you narrow an equation down to lowest common denominator, you have the simplest answer.

People search for "reasons" like why am I here, who am I , what value do I have, what is my purpose. A difinitive answer to all these questions would likely lead to a motivation to continue to live.

But living, alone, has no value when viewed from a social order. And we are social creatures. So the answer has to include 'morals' as well. For not only do we need to be motivated to continue to live, we need to live peacefully and constructively, at the very least, in the confines of our own sociatal group.

Religion creates a new equation, that becomes extrememly complex. Each time there's a threat, some logic, that would prove the equation invalid, they simply create further theory and add it to the doctrine that supports the 'reasons' for their comfort.

The one 'reason' that can never be answered pertains to the question that children often ask. If God created us, who created God. But that's the simplest denominator, work from that UP to the complex problem it stems from and we are faced with a more complex question. If God is a 'being' wouldn't God have the same questions that we have. Why am I here, who am I , what value do I have, what is my purpose, and how did I get here.

Even further is the question, if God is seen as an eternal single being,then there is no social structure, not even an awareness of a social struture, so what would be the motivation of such a creature to contine to exist?

What possible 'emotions',as we understand emotions, could such a creature have developed? The emotions we have, are a direct reflection of our lives as a material, physical, and social being.

As anyone can see, having a 'religion' must be inclusive of restictive thought. For even the answers to quesions one 'might' pose or attemp to answer for another, is 'restricted' to answeres that 'must' conform to their doctrine. This is the 'obsession' that is created through religion.

There can be no question that the quilifier of religion, is NOT FAITH, but rather LIMITATION.

Abra ends with this:
""People are never satisfied. You give them all of creation to play in, and all they do is complain that they want heaven!""

People,in your contxt, being those who subscribe to a religion, are never happy because their ego is greedy. Their ego is based in the physical, and while logic would tell them they have every comfort, that can be expected from this physical life, the ego overrides that logic and drives them to want more. This is greed and it's sinful, but it's qualified if what they want is 'heaven'. Does that make sense?

BACK TO MY THEORY, the lowest common denominator; you said it Abra, " I told him that my reason for living is to experience life. Ta da!".

Simplicity itself. A reason for being, a motivation to continue and drive to learn and experience and grow. And it's ok that the ego is greedy, because what the ego really wants is to be fed. And all we need to feed it, is to experience life.

No limitiations, the only restrictions involve social order, which as social creature we would likey 'naturally' adhere to, given an environement free of obsticles that are presented from religious moral values.

(OFF TOPIC HERE) So let me ask you a question. I've just decided to change my major to phsychology with a minor in phylosophy. From what you know of me, do you think that might be a wise path for me to follow?

Di wrote:
“So let me ask you a question. I've just decided to change my major to phsychology with a minor in phylosophy. From what you know of me, do you think that might be a wise path for me to follow?”

Without knowing you better in person I have no clue. I think it’s important when choosing what we will study or what we enter into as a career that our main motivation is interest and desire. If you enjoy studying something, chances are you’ll also enjoy doing it. And when you enjoy what you are doing you tend to become more involved with it and do it better than you might otherwise do had you chosen it merely for its potential to make money, fame, or whatever.

However, having said that, there are also other pitfalls that one must watch for. For example, in my teens and early 20’s, I thought I wanted to be an auto mechanic. Simply because I enjoyed working on cars and found them interesting. However, as designs changed I became less interested. Then I went into electronic which is really nothing more than another form of mechanics. Again it was interesting for a while, but I found it to be too dependent on design changes by greedy manufactures who were always out to changes thing JUST to make them incompatible with earlier designs and knowledge. The manufactures concerns were to make the customers dependent on them, not to necessarily make the overall design better. I finally realize that my real interest was with the mechanics of the universe. How does the universe work? Now there was something I could study without having to worry about design changes that are aim at keeping the customer dependent!

What’s my point with this? Well the point is that what I had first though I would enjoy (i.e. Auto mechanics, and then electronics) were really just signs of a much deeper interest in mathematics and physics in general. I wish I had realized that in my teens, and just shot for becoming a physicists right off the bat. Fortunately mechanics and electronics are physics, so my time wasn’t totally wasted, but still my efforts were misdirected.

So now we come to psychology. WHY are you interested in psychology? If it’s because you find it interesting to ponder about why people do the things they do, you MIGHT find the study of psychology to be a total miserable disappointment.

Why do I say this? Well, I actually took a few courses in psychology myself and found myself vehemently disagreeing with much of what they were concluding. First off, they use the masses to define the ‘norm’. And they even call this a ‘science’ but it’s not really science at all BECAUSE of the things they are studying (i.e. humans). Humans are NOT preprogrammed robots. They are unique and individual and many of them simply defy ‘normality’.

When you study physiology in academia what you are going to find is that what you are really studying is nothing more than academia’s VIEW of how humans SHOULD behave, and their conclusions about why certain people don’t fit into this VIEW.

I personally feel that if you take that path, what you are going to discover that 90% of your efforts are going to end up becoming involved with trying to explain to academia why their conclusions are WRONG.

I’m serious. And it’s not because you are a rebel, but rather it’s because you are more ‘unique’ than academia allows for. Academia allows for ‘uniqueness’ within the confines of ‘normality’ which they characterize as the behavior of the majority of the masses. So by their approach, if you are SO unique that you lie outside of ‘normality’ then you are beyond ‘unique’ and they will toss you into a bin labeled ‘just plain weird’.

So be aware that psychology in academia may not be what it first appears to be. It’s not the study of human behavior. It’s the study of academia’s VIEW of human behavior. They have tried to make it into a ‘science’ by classifying behaviors, and putting them into boxes. I think what you are going to find if you go that route is that you are going to disagree with both their boxes, and with who they are stuffing into them.

Just my thoughts. And I’m not sure if they are even applicable.

However, I would like to add that if you majored in philosophy, that might allow you to be in a position where you could put academia in a philosophical box and label them as nuts. (pistachio nuts would be a nice label).

Then again, if you are thinking in term of a career, majoring in psychology might be of more value for that, but you’d really need to be able to bite-the-bullet, as they say, to make it through the program. Because to pass you are going to have to show that you agree with them, and aren’t constantly arguing that they are wrong.

I’m only telling you this because I recognize that you are beyond ‘unique’. At least, in terms of academia’s boxes.

Sorry for the lengthy post, I rambled.

Di,

I just wanted to add, that my story about mechanics and physics was an analogy to the difference between being interested in studying psychology versus being interested in studying the behavior of people. Even though psychology is ‘supposed’ to be the study of the behavior of people, what it might really be is a study of how some people study the behavior of people.

And that might not be your true desire.

Just my thoughts. I’m not making any conclusions, those are yours to make.

Rod wrote:
“so hypothetically that would entail that religion would hinder a persons faith than expand upon it. then at what point is church relevant, and at what point do we obtain clarity versus deviation.”

The answers to these types of questions are not carved in stone. They are person-dependent. Everyone is not the same. Everyone doesn’t have the same needs.

As Di had mentioned, some people feel a need for organizational structure. They also feel a need to have someone else believe what they believe (or to put that they other way around) – they have a need to believe what someone else claims is true.

So when they find an organization (a large group of people) who are claiming something is true, then this is inviting to them. It gives an illusion of credence to what is being believed. We know that this isn’t necessarily the case though, because there are many historical examples where large groups of people believed things that were later discovered not to be true (i.e. that Earth and humanity are the central focus of the universe). Many people believed this for a very long time. In fact, many people still believe it today even though it’s obviously not physically true, they still believe that it’s spiritually true. In other words, we may not be in any special physical place in the universe, but we are still the main point of it (i.e. the reason it was created).

In any case, some people feel more comfortable following (or belonging to) a larger group.

However, there are many people who don’t feel a need to have everyone in agreement. They are capable of forming their own thoughts and conclusions about their true nature. Obviously I am one of these types of people because I have no need to belong to any organized belief system. However, at the same time I must confess that there is some solace in knowing that other people have independently come to the same conclusions that I have. Especially when those people are quite famous for their intellect and wisdom.

I actually find it more comforting to know that other people have independently arrived at the same conclusions that I have independently arrived at, than I would feel has I just joined a huge mass of people who were all believing in the same thing for no apparent reason than everyone else is saying that it’s true.

I’ve never found the concept of ‘blind faith’ to be appealing. The lemming principle just doesn’t appeal to me. I prefer reason.

So the question you are asking is really a question that only you can answer for yourself.

it's simple
i belong to a church that professes a faith.
What i don;t understand is that even if it's true that there is bureucracy in religion, it's my own responsability to grow in my faith regardless of such bureucracy.
What i mean is that all the people who attacks religions base their arguments only in the problems with the bureucracy, and they lack the vision to see the basis which is the honest faith of those who believe in God.

Bureaucracy itself I think is a form of organized religion. It has its own forms of contradictions sometimes in triplicate. It wouldn't limit my faith at all because I believe in something greater.

Religion is a man made institution an full of bureucracy....because again they are only human.....But on the other hand.....because of my undying Faith I attend church with others who feel as I do.

I look at church this way......I go all week in the rat race we call life....full of all the wordly things that life has. I go to church and here a sermon and it's like my filling station to get me through the next week and do the work I'm intended to partake in which is spreading the gospel....

Church for me is also fellowship with people who truly love me, who love the Lord God....and who worship, study, and most of all learn with humble hearts his intensions for us.

Di;

I tend to agree with Abra on the nature of pursuing a major in Psychology or Philosophy, and the difference between having an interest in these topics - and wanting to be "qualified" in them, which is the goal of academia. My sense of knowing you through your posts, and what is important to you leads me to believe that you will be dissatisfied with what a structured cariculuum will force you to "accept" in order to be considered worthy of a degree. In academia - you are at the mercy of what your instructors deem as acceptable. Merely taking courses to learn about Pych, and philo are one thing - you can choose to accept or rebel - depending on the particular viewpoint of the instructor, but majoring in either discipline warrants pursuing a planned course of action, and it is this aspect which you should examine closely. Meet with the head of the department and discuss what the particular overview of the major entails, and what is generally expected from someone who is a degree candidate. Then let your sense of what is important to you filter what is being described to you, and from that you should know whether your efforts should be in majoring in it, or "dabbling" in it - as it were.