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Old 07-15-2015, 03:50 AM
bUU
 
Location: Florida
12,077 posts, read 10,680,765 times
Reputation: 8798

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Quote:
Originally Posted by mordant View Post
The list is short and most of them are dead or dying. However I think it is overrated.
It cannot be overrated.

Quote:
Originally Posted by mordant View Post
No one lies awake nights longing to know me more deeply.
It isn't for them. It's for you.

Quote:
Originally Posted by mordant View Post
And in all honesty it's mutual.
It isn't for you. It's for them.

Quote:
Originally Posted by mordant View Post
No one is THAT interesting, frankly. Or that reliable.
Yes. We're human. However, on the other hand, we're human.

Quote:
Originally Posted by mordant View Post
People who are more extroverted / social and sufficiently emotional / impulsive might fantasize about pouring out their innermost thoughts and feelings for group hugs all around but in practice it doesn't really work out that way.
Small group ministry, specifically, affords the introvert opportunities for engagement that participation in the large groups does not. Please don't knock it until you try it, facilitated by a trained, qualified and talented leader (like me! )

Quote:
Originally Posted by mordant View Post
You would just end up competing with all the other's needs for validation and sympathy.
On the contrary, you would end up "competing" with each other to express loving kindness to each other.

Quote:
Originally Posted by mordant View Post
The best way to get what you're talking about is to learn how to be present for others and to cultivate real caring for others.
That's exactly what we're talking about.

Quote:
Originally Posted by mordant View Post
I have tried to build up a rainy-day fund of investment in others.
It is true that it doesn't work like a brokerage.
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Old 07-15-2015, 04:24 AM
 
Location: Buffalo, NY
605 posts, read 489,589 times
Reputation: 888
Quote:
Originally Posted by Grandstander View Post
I question the thesis behind your question.

Was religion "developed" with the specific idea of using it to control the masses? Or did religion come into being, and later it was recognized that it could be exploited to help control the masses?

If the former, do you have any evidence to present which shows any religion that came into being as the product of people who were seeking to assert control? Or is your thesis merely an assumption on your part?
I agree with your argument generally, however:

"do you have any evidence to present which shows any religion that came into being as the product of people who were seeking to assert control?"

L Ron Hubbard once said, "Religion is where the money is." Scientology's current business model proves it so. So, scientology. Other religions/cults were created to exert control, perhaps in less obvious ways. These would all be latter-day religions, however. Interestingly, a guy on a science/philosophy forum I post on recently said that a friend of his is attempting to create a religion at this very moment to cash in, get his kicks, whatever.
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Old 07-15-2015, 04:39 AM
 
Location: Buffalo, NY
605 posts, read 489,589 times
Reputation: 888
Quote:
Originally Posted by Katzpur View Post
For those of us who find value in our belief in God, your opinion means diddly squat.
How far are you willing to take that line of thinking? We all find value (and are meaningfully invested psychologically) in things that antagonize or compromise others, directly or indirectly. This is why life is absurd, as the ultimate psychological asymmetries and antagonisms that exist are impossible to resolve and indicative of a universe that is ultimately zero-sum. 2nd law of thermodynamics does not NOT apply to us, and with beings as complex as we are, our rise requires complexity/'glory' and our demise entails complexity/'tragedy' relative to other life forms whose death seemed imminent from moment of birth, which in all likelihood had no way of being noticed by any sentient creature to begin with.
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Old 07-15-2015, 04:59 AM
 
Location: Buffalo, NY
605 posts, read 489,589 times
Reputation: 888
Quote:
Originally Posted by expatCA View Post
Notice I said "real" Christians.

Jesus did not stand in front of a temple to Zeus, in front of a slave market or a house of prostitution and protest. He preached and taught, and that is what real Christians do VS pseudo Christians.
Yeah, but he ("He") supposedly went to the temple and flipped the tables of the money changers. Doesn't that contradict the point you were attempting to make?
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Old 07-15-2015, 05:04 AM
 
Location: Buffalo, NY
605 posts, read 489,589 times
Reputation: 888
Quote:
Originally Posted by AnywhereElse View Post
I don't think you'll recruit many to this train of thought. There are people that know God and others who do not.
by know, I assume you actually mean to say intuit, surmise, assume, imagine, etc. Please do not willfully abuse the English language by responding to this message that you do in fact "know" god.
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Old 07-15-2015, 05:14 AM
 
Location: Not-a-Theist
3,440 posts, read 2,633,138 times
Reputation: 481
Has religion and the concept of god outlived it's usefulness?

Unfortunately no.

The underlying inherent drive that manifest the concept of religion and idea of God is almost-like [not exactly but almost] the need to breathe.

Whilst the above inherent drive in the minority is somewhat suppressed, for the majority [masses] religion and theism is a critical necessity to deal with that inherent drive entangled in an existential dilemma. The point is religion and theism work very immediately and effectively in dealing with the existential angst. It is like morphine relieving pain and it get one hooked on it. Marx is definitely right on this.

Since the inherent drive is embedded in the human DNA/RNA it is not avoidable. What need attention at present is some religions are very malignant and a threat to the well-being of humanity. The only solution is to find net-positive foolproof alternative solutions to deal with that unavoidable existential dilemma.

Religions and theism will be around for a long time unless we can find benign alternative solutions soon. However what is at issue is there is a critical malignant religion, i.e. Islam-in-part [not whole] which is a serious threat to the well being of humanity with the terrible evils and violence committed by SOME Muslims acting on a significant levels of evil-laden element in the holy texts. There is no issue with the majority of Muslims who are just like any other ordinary people who MUST resort to a religion to deal with the inherent existential dilemma to keep their heads above water.

Thus priority should be directed to understand the proximate cause of the part of Islam that is generating evil and deal with it immediately. In the longer run [75-100 years], humanity need to wean off all religions on a voluntarily basis and replace them with net-positive spiritual approaches to deal with the inherent unavoidable existential dilemma. I am optimistic this is a possibility based on the existing trend of the exponential expansion of knowledge and knowledge in many advance fields.
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Old 07-15-2015, 06:44 AM
 
Location: USA
18,461 posts, read 9,108,050 times
Reputation: 8495
^ I was dead before I was born, and it was no problem.

Existential dilemma solved.
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Old 07-15-2015, 07:12 AM
 
Location: Northeastern US
19,825 posts, read 13,364,699 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Grandstander View Post
I question the thesis behind your question.

Was religion "developed" with the specific idea of using it to control the masses? Or did religion come into being, and later it was recognized that it could be exploited to help control the masses?

If the former, do you have any evidence to present which shows any religion that came into being as the product of people who were seeking to assert control? Or is your thesis merely an assumption on your part?
I have always regarded religion as an organic development started with good intentions. The "primal scene" I envision for The Invention of Religion probably goes simplistically something like this. A guy is cowering in a cave during a violent thunderstorm just after his family has been swept away in a flood. He's terrified and bereaved and trying to make sense of the senseless. Since he is dwarfed by the violence of the storm, a superior being or beings must be behind it. Since it seemed directed very personally at him, he must have done something to offend the being(s). He doesn't know where his family is but the being(s) took them and so there must be place where the dead go, mediated by the god(s). And so a backstory is invented to explain it all.

When human society got more organized of course there would be a power elite who could manipulate this kind of thinking to their advantage. And to do so, such a power elite wouldn't even have to entirely disbelieve in the religion. They need only, for example, to think of themselves as specially privileged by the god(s) to interpret the beliefs and judge the fidelity of those following it.

And still later, you have, as m. pointed out, people like L Ron Hubbard who invent religions from the get-go purely to extract $$ and fealty out of others. But that is a relatively recent evolution of the situation, an artifact, I think, of our increasingly superstition-averse society where you can have unbelievers cynically manipulating those who really want to believe in something.
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Old 07-15-2015, 07:48 AM
 
Location: Northeastern US
19,825 posts, read 13,364,699 times
Reputation: 9822
Quote:
Originally Posted by bUU View Post
It isn't for them. It's for you.

It isn't for you. It's for them.

Yes. We're human. However, on the other hand, we're human.
All-righty, then. Paradoxes, riddles, and deepities have convinced me.
Quote:
Originally Posted by bUU View Post
Small group ministry, specifically, affords the introvert opportunities for engagement that participation in the large groups does not. Please don't knock it until you try it, facilitated by a trained, qualified and talented leader (like me! )
It is a lot like the commendations one gets for psychotherapy, but in practice, "trained and qualified" has little relationship to "talented", ultimately, and you end up going through a half dozen practitioners before you find one that has some sort of intuitive grasp of the human condition, much less your particular rendition of it. And even then, you just come back face to face with yourself and the hard work of personal growth which no one can do for you or even particularly facilitate. We have finally bagged a "talented" counselor for our stepson after others diagnosed him with everything from schizophrenic prodome to Asperger's and now we're supposedly dealing with ADHD and OCD. But I see zero progress anyway. At least they respect each other and enjoy each other's company, and unlike a couple of his predecessors, he doesn't regard parents as meddling interlopers, but as allies.

All of this for a stiff fee ... which I'm grateful at least that my stepson's birth father pays.

Anyway with regard to small groups, the place I go turns small groups into a crap shoot. Some are closed to new members, some are at odd times, some have particular themes / expectations of participants, and you end up with maybe one you could actually attend and there's no way to evaluate the skill or lack thereof behind the leader other than to give it a go. For people who no longer have enough hope to triumph over experience, that is a lot to ask. And then if it fails there's the stigma of having walked away from someone's notion of "Reaching Out".

I am not convinced that most people really want to vent in front of others or find some similar cathartic release, they just want comfortable, reliable, uncomplicated relationships that have decent flow and Just Work. I have stumbled on such things in the past, but I think by their very nature you don't find them very deliberately. My wife is this way too, she does not rush new relationships, she lets them die natural deaths when they head south and eventually one or two stand the test of time. Relationships are funny, the more you strive for them the more elusive they become. You have to almost not really care and then maybe something nice will fall into your lap. Makes absolutely zero sense to me but that has been my consistent experience. My biggest problem in life has always been caring too much and trying too hard. My biggest successes have been in areas, like my profession, that I'm really more or less indifferent to.
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Old 07-15-2015, 08:28 AM
 
Location: Upstate SC
792 posts, read 493,879 times
Reputation: 1087
Quote:
Originally Posted by Freak80 View Post
^ I was dead before I was born, and it was no problem.

Existential dilemma solved.
I think it goes beyond that for some people. Even if you have peacefully accepted the outcome of your existence, there are other things many people struggle with. For instance, the fact that there really does seem to be no point to any of it, the only meaning in life is what/how you define it. The fact that we are just existing on a slightly warm wet rock in the middle of a impossibly massive cold empty uncaring universe with no real purpose or value. etc.
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