I have observed many of my religious friends abandon their religious beliefs only to become ensnared onto the trendy beliefs of mysticism. I see these Kabbalah loving motherfuckers preaching peace, love, unity, one-ness, the way, the truth, and the rest and I think: you were better off a sheeple of Christianity. I have observed many men become athiests only to watch them become Satanists and I pity them… Of course, I have enslaved myself to other gods. But why?
Why do we abandon the shackles of slavery only to run into the deceitful arms of another master?
Are we doomed to ever seek something to fill in our “spiritual need”?
-Thirst
[size=84]P.S. Sorry, got to run, can’t expand. Anyways… my new sig line will explain my failure.[/size]
Well, because that other master is ultimately themselves. You see, a real religion will always have demands- a person who seeks well will sooner or later come abreast of situations where they have to change their own lives in order to be what they are taught is a better person. Often these changes will be demanding- stop doing this, start doing that, so on and so forth. Perfection isn’t easy, of course. So you have two choices-
Change your life to suit the demands of your religion,
or
Change your religion to justify the shortcomings of your life.
Maybe you used to be a Presbyterian, but the Kabbalah says something you want to hear about sex. Maybe you used to be an Orthodox Jew, but New Age says what you needed to hear about your affection for pot.
Now, the catch of course is that all these systems (except maybe New Age, which is as nothing) have their own restrictions- Oh, you like what the Kabbalah says about sex? Maybe you wouldn’t like what it has to say about booze, bacon, or working on Sunday. But here’s the magic of that- there’s so few people that follow the Kabbalah that you can be a big fat hypocrite and totally ignore the parts you don’t like, and that’s a secret just between you and the New Age section of Waldenbooks. If you ignore the parts of Christianity you don’t like, there’s actually people who can call you out, and make you feel responsible for your actions.
Here’s an experiment- get a couple dozen modern practitioners of these faddish faiths together, let them form some kind of church. Once they start comparing notes, and some of they raise their eyebrows at how some of the others are totally ignoring or misinterpreting the aspects they don’t like, and watch and see how fast they suddenly decide that Kabbalah isn’t ‘right for them’, and they seek out something even more obscure that nobody knows enough about to criticize them on.
“Hey bud - what’s do you think is the essential driving force behind human behavior, life, the universe, and everything…?”
“Scoople [size=75][Serene smile][/size] - it all reduces to scoople.” “Skoople…? Wtf is that…?”
“Nonono poor uninitiated one… Not Skoople, [size=75][Serene smirk][/size] hah - the very thought. No - Scoople.” “Jeeze - okay wtf is scoople…?”
“Well, scoople is the metacroaxis of the skwirlyphant. Isn’t it obvious…?” “Er… No…?”
“C’mon - skwirlyphant - you know - the highest expressificationer of the divine ethosphere…” “You haven’t a fucking clue have you…? You’re just making it all up.”
“Ahh… I see [size=75][Pitying grimace][/size], you’re just another gruntdegrader… Thou will never be as holy as I… [size=75][Serene smile][/size]”
“ARRRGGHH !!!”
It’s interesting that your final and primary question is “Are we doomed to ever seek something to fill in our “spiritual need”?” The word “spirit,” which you likely meant to mean something along the lines of deep metaphysical identities or souls, comes from “breath”–a basic and necessary part of human life. In other words, the people who first used this word “spirit” meant it to mean something you literally can’t do without, and it became strongly associated with religious ideas of fundamental sources of life.
To actually answer your question, I believe people do need to have an idea of the existence of permanence (and I mean this in the vaguest, possibly Bhuddist, fashion) underlying the world and our lives. Otherwise, we wouldn’t be able to even hypothetically completely justify getting up in the morning, or breathing.
Why do we abandon the shackles of slavery only to run into the deceitful arms of another master?
Are we doomed to ever seek something to fill in our “spiritual need”?
Because you want to live and in order to do so you must first die to the imagination that is your life and you don’t want to die. It is an old idea.
And Simone Weil’s priceless observation:
When we fall under the light of attention of the higher, the artificial or imaginary in us disolves since it is unreal. Since it governs our life it fights to create harmless interpretations that temporarily appear satisfying but don’t disturb our dreams in reality. After all, it has become our life. So as you say we adopt something else with basically the same results. However we are still stuck with an objective human need to be real and the inability to be free enough to open ourselves to it. Tough position.
Well if all else fails, there is always good Scotch.
Ok, consider the contrary: Everything about your life will eventually fade away. I don’t just mean you won’t be around, I mean every semblance of order that you’ve experienced will change without method/pattern and either continue to rasp and swirl without direction for eternity or fade into absolute void with the passage of time. Everything you’ve ever known will be lost in every sense of the word.
Which just utterly sucks, and it might not even be true, so not only is it probably impossible for someone to live without even an idea of the possibility of something besides oblivion, it’s kinda pointless. I mean, what’s the point in thinking everything is pointless (and that ‘everything’ also includes thinking)?
So to come back to an affirmative answer, ultimate permanence is the root of ideas of purpose.
To consider this important, as far as I can tell, is to neglect time, self, and the present. To imagine a void is to also imagine an observer of that void. Once you do that, that void isn’t so voidless.
I guess this is why I get so confused. I don’t see the transition from imagining a voidless void to everything I do being pointless. Why should I worry about such things as long as my wife and daughter are safe and comfortable, more or less. I certainly believe that won’t be the case forever, but how does that stop me from worrying about tomorrow?
I’m not trying to mess with you here, I just don’t get it. Why does doing what I want to do need a root?
To consider what important? Permanence? Also, you’re meant to be the observer of the void with that idea; you looking at the future.
It seems to me that you’re defining your purpose in terms of yourself as an individual (this is just a simplfied guess; I’m trying to find common semantic ground), i.e. you feel your life is important because of the way it influences your identity and the identities of those around you. So, if there were no permanence, those identities would only be baseless, disorganized movements that will leave no lasting traces of themselves. Another way of explaining the way that I presume you’re thinking is that the idea that what you’re doing matters is so intuitive and obvious you don’t really realize that you believe it.
To relate that back to the topic, people who cannot do what you do, (again, assuming my shot in the dark is close to reality) and basically know that your life matters without needing to articulate some deep, universal constant, form or adopt a set of ideas about the permanent principles that govern the universe and form the foundation for their purpose, i.e. religion. Religion isn’t always this way either; some people similarly don’t need to think/justify so deeply into life’s purpose, but rather use religion to describe or express the feelings they have.
Yeah, my point is that there has to be an observer in order for it to suck. If our current situation was the result of some quantum void in the past, for example, it doesn’t really matter how long that void had existed pre big bang because there was no one to watch. The same goes for the future.
That’s as good as anything I can think of to explain it. My live matters, my life is important, my life has meaning because I decide that it does. To try to tie this up with my earlier post. The ability to do this seems to be what is called ‘terrible freedom’. For some reason, many people seem at pains to do that. They need an outside source.
Well, I accept the responsibility to make the choice that it does matter (What an awkard way to say that.) When I read threads like this one though, it certainly feels like I have a blindspot, that I’m missing something that others have keyed on. I don’t know, your former statement in the above quote still strikes me as a choice between two extremes.
And that’s just not how I see things. Simply put, if things were as disorganized as you state how could I make the choice. On the other hand, permanence is just as bad. Do you really want your life to be a never fading snapshot? One of the most frightening movies I’ve seen is AI. Imagine a permanent child with a permanent mom. It defeats the whole reason for raising children. Love is about evolving and change, if it isn’t, how can we legitimately call it love?
Yeah, I don’t really get that. Animals don’t seem to need such a ‘deep’ sense of permanence in the morning. Why should we? Again, we come to this existential angst and the only way I can explain is the realization of one’s freedom without wanting to accept that responsibility. The lingering religion bug if you will.
Religion as a symbol is fine, I think there’s a lot of power to ritual.
high fives Brad Have you read Fingarette’s “Secular as Sacred”? Classy book on the power of ritual.
Anyway, I think that religion is all about the right tools for the right job. Different people have different spiritual needs, so they will find a different vehicle.
For some people, the social component of a faith is the most important. These people find the orthodoxy of organized religions the most vital. With the social aspect taken care of, the spiritual aspect is quickly filled in.
For others, a more personalized approach is necessary. They don’t want some authority pontificating. So, they look for an authority which demands that they be individuals. Then, it goes on to explain what sort of an individual they ought be. Look at Punks.
Then there are those that truly need to be ‘different’. They will listen to the pontifications of leaders and then reject them purely because they were spoken from an authority figure. Look at Teenagers.
Then, finally, there are the unassuming ones for whom this alternate path is merely an attempt to understand their spiritual nature. They are rare, but definately exist. The absence of an orthodoxy doesn’t necessarily mean that a spiritual path is invalid. Look at Protestants, as a group . . . or some New Agers, as individuals.
I don’t mean that level of permanence, or even a level of permanence like an afterlife or reincarnation, but an underlying order to the way the universe works that is permanent. In other words, the universe makes enough sense that when you do something, it has effects that you can predict (or at least understand, and that last), likewise you can look at history and understand that current events are dependent on past actions. Without acknowledging that kind of permanence on some level, I don’t think self-aware beings can operate.
That’s not quite what I meant; I meant that the universe would be so randomly organized that your influence wouldn’t last or change anything, nor would there be any way it could be remembered. Also, I’m not precisely saying that the only way we can have a point is to accept determinism, I’m just saying some kind of order has to be believed to be consistent.
Because no one really belives in what they belive, they don’t really know, so it become’s just a fad, and once the fun dies they need something new.
This is also another irony of athiesism, they come up with these arguments and contradictions about god to try and convince the belivers who really arn’t belivers at all
The puropse of life is to know god…
When everyone knows god, all bad in the world will vannish…because resistancce is futile
I’m not following the logic there: resistance is futile, therefore all bad will vanish. Will the bad vanish (as in surrender) because it knows resistance is futile?
Mulfa, when you say ‘god,’ what, precisely, do you mean?
To consider this important, as far as I can tell, is to neglect time, self, and the present. To imagine a void is to also imagine an observer of that void. Once you do that, that void isn’t so voidless.
