Have we lost our way?

Philosophy Forums Religion and Spirituality
1

For me there is no doubt. Scripture followed religious experience as a means to give their spiritual observations expression but equally as an attempt to comprehend those observations. The development of theistic or atheistic explanations was dependent upon the cultural tendency of the time, but they were almost solely metaphysical, in an attempt to present a third viewpoint from above, which arbitrated ones own and the viewpoints of others, being a universal or divine perspective which shows a community the way.

“The Tao, eternally nameless
It is simplicity, although imperceptible
Cannot be treated by the world as subservient
If the sovereign can hold on to it
All will follow by themselves”

In Hinduism, dharma signifies behaviour that are considered to be in accord with rta, the order that makes life and universe possible.
In Buddhism dharma means “cosmic law and order”.
In Jainism dharma refers to the teachings of the Jinas and the body of doctrine pertaining to the purification and moral transformation of human beings.
For Sikhs, the word dharma means the “path of righteousness”.

In Judaism, Christianity and Islam, the third perspective is God, Alaha or Allah who speaks arbitration through his Torah, Gospel and Qu’ran. In the last mentioned scriptures, we have an anthology of expressive and poetical religious writings addressing largely the issues of the day, although a great exertion has been made to make them universal in their application, causing untold suffering and largely losing their inspirational aspect.

This opinion takes me away from the widespread opinion of the Protestant Church that the “Word” is central to faith and essentially the “Word of God”, even when spoken or written by men addressing the issues of the day. This is why the Sermon has taken central position in the protestant churches, rather than the Eucharistic liturgy or ritual, and given rise to a whole flock of men who love the sound of their voices and their rhetorical ability, and like to arouse and inflame their congregation rather than inspire them.

If we look at the nature of the arbitrational third or universal perspective, it is about learning how to live healthily and find peace and welfare for the followers. It does criticise behaviour, which is seen, according to the consensus of followers, to be contra-productive or harmful for the whole. It also addresses, with differing methods, the danger from without, but its primary address is life in the community. This perspective has developed over time and speaks wisdom for the followers. Contradiction goes against their whole experience and trust.

If we lose such a perspective, we lose our oversight of what is happening in our society – as we have – and we fail to understand those who still hold on to such perspectives. Especially when they become vehement in their protection of what is precious to them. This seems to me to be the situation we are in and I don’t see a way out.

2

the way out …you can only control your own behavior…you set a good example…the golden rule…that may not be enough…jesus was followed…he didn’t have to force people…

3

As with anything, there is a myriad of reasons for why we have lost our way, as Bob has posted
this in the religion thread, I shall stay there.

If we look at the history of the world, we see that at the end of the Greco-Roman world (roughly from 1 AD to
about 600 AD give or take a few years) we see the end of not only the Greco-Roman society but their religions.
Faith and religion that guided people for 3000 years came to an end during that time period. You saw the end
of multiple religions during those years, the Egyptian, The Greek, the Romans, all those many religions spread
out over a huge area, all died out. We saw the end of Ra, Zeus, Apollo, the mystery religions of Greece and Rome.
The multiple temples of a many thousands of years over the Mediterranean sea became empty. The major
exception was the Jewish religion and I suspect that survive because of the Roman destruction of the Temple,
not despite it. After three thousands years of faith, belief, worship, guidance all the major religions of the
Greco-Roman world ended. Why? For the exact same reason after two thousand years our major religions are
failing! The isms of the Greco-Roman world no longer spoke to the people. there was a disconnect between
the religions and the people. The value of religions lies in the ism, the ideology giving people not only faith and
comfort but a practical primer on how to live life. The value in ideology is to create a guidebook on how
to live life. A religion survives as long as it is useful and once it stops being useful, it slowly fades away.
This is true with anything, slavery in the south would have ended even without the Civil war because
slavery was economically unfeasible. As circumstances change the ideology must change or it becomes
obsolete and it ends. The hunter gatherer society in which human survive for over a million years became
obsolete and ended once cities were founded and agriculture was created. There was no need for
for the economic system of the hunter gatherer, so it ended after millions of years. The circumstances changed
and a new system evolved. When the economic system of the hunter gatherer ended the religions of the
hunter gatherer ended and the new ideologies came into being, these being the new culture and religion
of the Greco-Roman world. Our circumstances has changed and the culture and religion that has feed us
for 2 thousand years is ending just as the hunter gatherer culture and religion changed into the Greco-Roman
culture, we are changing into some other culture and religion. This is what Nietzsche saw when he
proclaimed “god is dead and we have killed him”. We can see this ending of the ideologies of the last
2 thousand years in the last 100 years. The history of the twentieth century is the history of the last gasp
of what I shall call “the Christian world”. The two world wars are this ending brought to life.
the Nazi’s on some level could feel the end and so they tried to replace the “Christian world” with
their own version of the new ideology to replace the old, just as the Marxism of the Soviet Union was
an attempt to replace the old ideology. Both failed for different reasons, but it is clear that as
we reject the “Christian world” we find ourselves even further adrift because we haven’t replaced the
old with the new. The entire mediveial world and times was simply the adjustment period that
went from replacing the old, the Greco-Roman world with something else and that something else
become the modern world. We are in a new “dark ages” because we are in that period between
the old and the new. The old no longer feed us and the new is not here yet and so we flounder which
translates, into losing our way. I shall lay the proof in my next post.

Kropotkin

4

Until you get it right, it will keep failing … until there is no more you left to get it right.

The “way” has been lost because it was never clearly defined or understood. Unfortunately “the way” is complicated and not that easy to understand in serious detail, especially when people keep trying to keep other people confused because they think that keeping others confused is “the way”.

5

The proof of what I say lies in the loss of faith in the old religions that we
see daily. The religions that have feed western man for 2000 years are losing
members every single day. People are no longer going to church or they are
going from church to church to church trying to find a religion that suits them and
they will not find one because the old religions, the old ways no longer fit these modern
times. You have the sixties beginning the search for a new way, from the exploration of
the eastern religions such as Hinduism and Buddhism, to the drugs, sex and rock and roll
culture that existed since the sixties. That is another attempt to find a replacement for
the old religions. Atheism didn’t come about because of liberal hippies who destroyed
America, no, atheism came about because if the old religions no longer speak to you, you
come to the conclusion that GOD does not exist and this spread of atheism which has gone
on for over 200 years is simply a function of the lost belief in the old isms of the “Christian world”.
The current atheism will cease, once a new religion, new beliefs become born. The future will
have a new set of religions, new set of political beliefs, a new culture. We will not live long
enough to see the birth of the new Culture. just as the switch from hunter gatherer to the cities
and towns and became the Greco-Roman world which lasted thousands of years and the switch from the Greco-Roman culture to the Christian world which was basically the middle ages (from 500 AD to 1300 AD) the next switch
will last a long, long time and future historians will call it the new dark age.
So from 1900 to ? and then the new culture, the new isms, the new belief system will become the new way
of life and that will last x number of years (most likely thousands of years) and then a new system will come
into play and a new dark age will occur and the cycle continues until human kinds ends itself or we outgrow
the changes and become something new. I foresee a time when there is no need for ideologies, for ism’s,
for religion, for churches, for political systems. this is why I became an anarchist, for the time
when ism’s are no longer needed and why I left anarchism because that time is a long, long, long time from now.
We exist in that period between the old and the new and that is why things seem to be out of whack and we
feel we have lost our way and the world is upside down. We have lost the old and we haven’t yet replaced it
with something new.

Kropotkin

6

the way is the golden rule…simple but hard to do…probably we will not survive

7

Thank you man I learned a lot from this. Hey I thought this forum was all about chaos and testosterone.

8

Oh, but it is.

9

You are welcome! You are probably right about chaos and testosterone though :wink:

Regards

10

Bob,

I am afraid that you are slightly off track on this issue.

The term Dharma in the Hindu mythologies is very complex and it is not a synonym of religion, as gernerally perceived in the west. Religion is restricted to devotion, faith and spiritual practices but Dharma is not. Actuallly, there is no exact counterpart of Dharma in English language.

The closest translation of Dharma is to judge one’s duty to everything in this world judiously and objectively and act honestly upon it.

Religion is merely a part of it. Dharma is applicable to every aspect and situation of the life; as a child, as a young, as a parent, as an old, as a teacher, as a student, as a king, as a businessman, as a soilder, as a sweepar, as a doctor, as a husband, as a wife, as a sage , as a friend and even as an enemy.

Gita is also Dharma. Lord Krishna was doing nothing but just trying to show the way of Dharma to Arjuna.

with love,
sanjay

11

Thanks Sanjay for that, but except for the definitions, which I took from other sources, I still see the point of my OP intact. You complemented that with your statement:

What I was getting at was that there is a code of behaviour which is beneficial to us all, and we can know it, because the ancients had worked it out. The various Scriptures followed religious (and other) experience as a means to give their (spiritual) observations expression but equally as an attempt to comprehend those observations.

Hence I feel that we have lost our way, because we in the west have lost the connection to those sources and resort to fundamentist views, which are essentially a sign of insecurity.

Namasté

12

The point of western religion isn’t to teach people how to get along or how to live healthy, theologians and priests have never claimed that it’s the point, and judging Western religion has having ‘lost it’s way’ because it doesn’t teach people how to get along or live healthy makes as much sense as judging modern dance as having lost its way because it doesn’t teach people how to spell. Taoism does a good job teaching people how to calm down and not abuse each other. Islam does not. Why does this matter? Because the person doing the comparison has made a prejudicial assumption that all religions should be trying to accomplish the same thing, and is evaluating them as such.
I can’t say it enough: If you begin with the assumption that the supernatural is bullshit and God isn’t real, as Bob does, and try to analyze religion in terms of what’s left over when you strip away everything you’ve made a prior commitment to disregarding, religion isn’t going to seem like it’s worth very much. Its’s no different than the evangelical fundamentalist that decides that modern music isn’t worth a damn because it doesn’t talk about Jesus enough; it only matters to that fundamentalist because he has made a prejudicial decision that media is only valuable insofar as it relates to Jesus. The same thing is happening in this thread.

13

I have to disagree that the ancients completely “worked it out”. They generally, crudely worked it out, but insufficiently to maintain it and have it grow. “The Behavior” (aka “The Spirit”) is one that brings about its own permanence and spreading.

14

So long as there is a Western tradition that deifies rugged individualism, ego will trump Tao.

15

Which is probably one of the reasons we’re in such a mess. Western society has been largely guided by Christian ideals, whether or not Christianity is actively lived. But it has created a largely insecure society, worried to death and intervening in the world to prevent its worst fears come true – but they did, by the very means that were meant to prevent them. Whether it was demon-worship or communism (or a multitude of other “evils”), the struggle to prevent these things only gave them momentum.

Common sense and teaching how to get along or live healthily could have prevented quite a lot of the modern “evils” of society.

The person writing the OP was presumptuous enough to claim that we’re in a mess and that Christianity has had a major role in that.

The supernatural is actually irrelevant to Christianity, it is the belief in the supernatural that plays the big role. In fact, if the supernatural were to try to take over the church, I believe that the belief in the supernatural would get in the way. Why? Because there are so many ideas about the supernatural, that anything different to these ideas doesn’t stand a chance. Christianity has largely become a speaking and not a listening belief, it is a knowledge and not a searching for many people, it is often judgemental and seldom humble.

Aha, may I suggest that you yourself are doing the same? Your prejudice stands in the way of asking whether it may be a relevant question.

16 
Is this you creating another thread to bitch about how terrible Christianity is, that thing I said in our last discussion is basically the only thing you do here anymore, which you denied?

Anyway, you are missing my point. You made up a standard of “What religion is for” that is a product of Eastern mysticism and your own wishful thinking, and now you’re judging Christianity according to that standard. It’s irrelevant.

Better stick ‘evil’ in scare quotes so you don’t offend the demon worshipers.

So could actually following the teachings of Christianity.  Your imagination of how the world could have been if only things were the way you wish they were is always going to be superior to reality.  

 There you go. You've twisted Christianity into something it's not, in order to force it to fit your interpretation of the universe, which includes as a pre-rational prejudice that there's something wrong with Christianity.  And then you go on to bitch about what you imagine people would do if faced with the supernatural- because of course, Christians AREN'T faced with the supernatural, because in your pre-rational prejudice, it isn't there for them to be faced with it.  Do you understand how circular this is?

I'm the only  one in the thread who DID ask if it was a relevant question, you just don't like my answer, so you're calling it prejudice.  You just declared that religion only matters insofar as it fits your humanitarian ideals, and that the supernatural aspects are just stories to force ethical behavior.  In other words, 'Given atheism, theistic religion isn't that great'.  Well no shit.  I'm simply pointing out that declaring the core doctrines of a ideology to be based on lies, then judging that ideology according to the remaining bits that you prefer, is probably not going to give you a realistic assessment.  
Again, I gave an example that I figured you'd have a response to- if you judge Taoism by it's ability to get people closer to God, Taoism is absolutely useless.  Isn't the proper response to this observation "Yes, but getting people closer to God is not the function of Taoism, so who cares?''  See the lack of prejudice in my principle?  Judge a movement by it's stated goals within the context of it's stated dogmas.  I don't care which one...
17

And what is a relevant question? The relevant question for Isaac Newton was different than
the relevant question for Einstein and the relevant question was different for Socrates and
different for Plato and different for Kant and different for Nietzsche and different for
Gandhi and different for … even for you and me. The surprising thing for me is not
the differences of people but how do people even agree on something, anything. We all stand
on our little molehill and declare our viewpoint to be the right viewpoint thus ignoring all the
other molehills declaring the truth of their viewpoints. We doubt as to who actually knows
the “truth”. So our question becomes, on which molehill do we plant our flag on and say,
“Here lies the truth”? We have lost our way because we are 6 billion atoms acting like
atoms and simply moving around like atoms. Find a way to connect those 6 billion atoms
and we suddenly have found our way.

Kropotkin

18

Contrary to Ucci, I can’t very much disagree, especially with your last line; You can’t see a way out. But that doesn’t mean there isn’t one. For specific types of individuals (which changes through time), there is.

19

Yes, and where would it best be posed as a question if not on such a forum as we have here?

I don’t see a way out and I ask if we have lost our way. It could be an invitation to disagree and present proposals for the “way out” of a supposed predicament.

I agree too, that the ancients have only worked out something rudimentary, on which we have to work, but my point was, that they have and it is there to read. The interpretation of these ancient texts and the way we make use of them will change over time, depending on how our society progresses. I would hope that religion would also progress, and not attempt to stand at the same door as for centuries or millenia, which we can see by the history of theology has been the case. The question remains for me, whether conservative theology can claim to be the only theology, since I have read many theologians who have come up with a different concept, but have been shouted down.

I read of theologians discussing whether the Spirit is in fact the underlying energy of the universe, whilst at the same time preserving a traditional devotional practise, so I see that there are people out there who can diversify the argument and use rationality rationally, and see emotion as what it is. It just seems that here there are few such people.

The immediate supposition by some, that I am only here to “bitch” about Christianity ignores my OP and attacks me, the poster. But I am used to that.

20

One would think, huh.

But there is truly only one way to know truth without taking someone else’s word for it. It is not by the feeling of truth nor appearances (perception) no matter how confident they might be sensed. And if one doesn’t know who’s word to take and also doesn’t know “the way” to know truth … that is truly “lost”. But then, why should you believe me when I say that? Only if you already knew it and I merely pointed it out, shown light upon it.

The truth is that no one ever really believes anyone but themselves. But they defer proclamation of truth to others based upon their own assessment of those worthy to be believed, or at least their perception of those others. They try to guess who to believe when in reality, they can never escape that it is only in themselves, in their own judgment, they have any confidence. And when they confuse themselves, they lose even that, having no truly deep confidence in anything.

“We” have “lost our way”, because “we” have never really known it and only been guessing; “always do this”, “always believe that”, “always believe Him”. I can tell you that truly the only “way” to knowing truth rests within yourself, but then why believe me? What does that even mean? What could I say that you don’t already know that would bring such a light to sight? And upon saying it, who is it that you would finally believe, if not only yourself?