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Groupthink and fear of being themselves. I have no issues with faith, (I'm somewhere between an agnostic and a pantheist) but I do have issues with many types of organized religion. Sure, they help some people, but do so much harm to society, especially to those who don't toe their line.
...individuals DO benefit from religion, especially in the ways I mentioned above. If you define religion in terms of purely "give vs get", you would see you "get" more than you "give" when you embrace it. Therefore, religion makes sense, at least from an evolutionary perspective. Of course, that doesn't make it true, but don't you do the same thing every time you spend a dollar? A dollar is fiat currency, based on nothing and is only valuable as long as people believe it is valuable.
Your responses made the most sense to me.
To dismiss religion as most people have done in this thread is to accept the ridiculous proposition that religion serves no beneficial purpose in human affairs. Natural selection would have eliminated our propensity toward hierarchical belief systems if it didn't serve to strengthen social groups.
Being social creatures, we have a powerful need to be bound together in an organized system that functions like an organism. Having self-awareness creates enormous problems for a social species and for individuals. It raises questions that cannot be answered and it gives rise to concepts that are capable of tearing apart the social fabric on which we depend.
Faith in supernatural forces and spiritual ideas provides a unifying paradigm for a social unit and permits the creation of stable hierarchies. With this unity and organization, the group survives, the individuals have answers to the big questions in life, everyone feels a sense of belonging and purpose, and the strength of such a group leads to superiority in survival skills and in warfare.
In modern times many of these needs have become almost irrelevant, so there is much more tendency for individuals to question what we've been told, to search on our own for meaning, and to dispose of the baggage of superstition.
they simply no longer can believe they are the center of the universe or a creator.
summing up the mistakes they have made and the cards dealt they should be dead but are not, hence the discovery of god.
I agree with Cango....Money is the same thing...but different....Religion is what we believe in...
Mathew 6:24 clearly says the same thing...?....or...God does more with less.
And Money only causes more problems in the grand scheme of things...
As it is Money creates Poverty, destitution,sickness, and other sins to get it, and have it, and then It's final problem is Death, because of it being made too important in our lives to get to work for, or more important than God...in taking us away from what God has asked we do.
So Money is just like an anti God....a demigod
Just some people do not like to look on the other side of the coin to see the truth of it, and its problems.
As with God we can see with what is here in this reality...it is based on Life.
for with out life, there would be no death and death was said to come from sin..Disobediance of God's word and will,...and because in life we seem to have money as the engraven thing God said not to have in his/her lives, because of the commandments told to us all...aswell as Jesus saying face to face with the Phareices and their kind...That they were making a den of robbers and thieves! (sinners) and (Evil doers)...because they embraced the ideal of wealth and the idol over life and even God!
And here we are today...doing the same things, or being force to comply...and those kind of people Jesus spoke about are very prevalent in my reality......so they made POLICE...which doesn't solve the problem...Money created in the first place.
So GOD, JOHN THE BAPTIST (ELIJAH), JESUS (THE WORD OF TRUTH), MOSES (THE LAWS OF GOD), and MATHEW (REASON AND LOGIC) FORESAW....
Money limites us to the amount or non amount...and creates sin and evil, and makes God upset...
But God has no limites...and because God is a living God..he works for the living who abide by his/her WORD.
NO MONEY REQUIRED...TILL, SOW, AND GROW THE GARDEN , SINLESSLY RESTORING ALL PLANTS TO THEIR RIGHTFUL PLACEMENT...= GARDEN OF EDEN , AND GOD SAID MULTIPLY THAT...WHICH WOULD BE...EDENS.
AND THERE IS NO LIMITE TO HOW MANY, OR WHERE THEY ARE IN THE UNIVERSE WITH GOD AND US WHO HELP SOW THOSE SEEDS SINLESSLY FOR LIFE TO BE IN THE FLESH.
Take a good look at the world/Earth and its eco systems being polluted by weath and bent people living in luxuries...with out a care in their heads, of the outcomes they are now employing indirectly, so that a great backlash is coming in sorrows!....they are creating more woe...more sickness, more suffering, more problems...and there is never enough Money to solve them....never!
So God is being proven correct.
Jesus is being proven correct.
Moses is being proven correct.
And Mathew is being proven correct.
And I am a witness to that....So by being observant..we come to the realization that there is a God through observing the opposites, and taking notes on the sins, and evils we have in this world...over many generations...the same kind of people are being reborn with the same kind of spirits...over and over again...
So something is true about those who were with Jesus when he walked the Earth...and him telling of a time when he was Going to return...that they would all see him coming...this time.
Even those who killed him..
And this can only be true if the resurrection is true of the spirit and the flesh!
Is this possible?...we are all reincarnations of someone from the past entity...?
Could be...for I saw some people who look like the deciples,....and someone who to my mind was walking like Jesus...and having a heavey weighted burden in coins...
I asked him...why do you carry so much coin , when you can use Bills and lesson the weight....he said to me, because I wish to feel its true burden.
Only Jesus would do such a thing in my mind....funny paradoxes I say...
There is a need for some place to shove up into all contradictions. As modernity solves contradictions, well, more are created because of the growing complexity-this is why the christian god is especially efficient. The god concept from this religion rises to the infinite and can hold all contradictions. The need actually increases for god or some similar concept. The formalisms, threats, scare tactics, etc (used by religion, but also politics-global warming and the end of the world as we know it, the medical industrial complex and the need to have a live in doc and mri machine, national association of hen pecked husbands, etc) are techniques of people management.
The god concept from this religion rises to the infinite and can hold all contradictions.
"...contradictions..."
Such as?
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