Religion is belief in someone else’s experience.

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   Castlepalomaposted 6 years ago

   My personal experince, most atheist fear going into any discussions with any depth about imagination and spirtual topics. They fear the out of mind experience. Meaning leading with the heart, that they would call just a muscle rather than a second brain. My daughter and I are fearless. Everyone dies yet not everyone lives. We don't fear death, it just this unknown spiritual world, that Religion claim to have found it.
   
   “Religion is belief in someone else’s experience. Spirituality is having your own experience.” Spiritual meaning explore  the 99℅ unknown, until its manifest into our ego self. Everything I have ever achieved in life was all once imagined and the same for the history of  of mankind.
   
   Beauty is truth, we all lie, it just in degrees each of us lie. My only two simple rules is to not to harm and be honest, keeping it to the lowest degree. BS is the worst kind of lying, you don't even care that you are lying. To claim a book to be the universal truth and knowledge, is the greatest BS story ever told. Both extreme poles don't make it the concrete truth.  A freight train won't make a quick right hand turn neither.
   Answers are better settled on middle grounds.

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      Live to Learnposted 6 years agoin reply to this

      Atheists are, from my experience, just people who lack an interest in the idea and can oftentimes be less than cordial toward people who don't. They might read a book like the Bible and, even though they can spout line and verse, not be able to grasp the concepts. I've been there with other books. I remember reading 'The Sun Also Rises' in school and getting a bad grade for not catching the underlying meaning. If you lack interest a lot of stuff escapes you.
      
      My opinion of the difference between religion and spirituality is it doesn't really exist. They are synonymous. I think religion has gotten a bad rap and people are attempting to distance themselves from the word. But, you can't distance yourself from your desire for God, or the higher reality,or your cosmic connection...or whatever you choose to call it. If understanding is your goal. I've noticed many who claim they are spiritual appear to be selfish in their quest for understanding because they are quick to judge anyone else's journey and be critical of it. They appear to be in search of the personal gain and want recognition for their higher understanding. They want to be unique. This, to me, appears to signify absolutely no understanding.
      
      Has religion failed us or have we failed religion? I think the idea of perfection in unity is simply beyond our ken at this stage of our development.

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         Castlepalomaposted 6 years agoin reply to this

         Atheists having the best worldwide knowledge of any group, don't lack interest in protecting themselves from Religion. When the concept is when Jesus talks about hell as much as heaven. It's from Jesus experience from being in hell then telling the tortured victims in hell, he is suffering more than them. No humans have returned from this insane concept they call a spiritual world.
         
         IF you ask a hard Christians their demonimation is all spiritual and they are going to heaven. Where the majority of other God believers and non believers are going to hell. A  spiritual sided person would not claim to know the spiritual world base on non experience.
         
         Religion has gotten a bad rap when you base your facts on Ken Haim Creatiism museum and Christians documentaries call Flintstones. Worst is Flintstones Christmas's special. Being lost in space is beyond me.
         
         My aim is to be spiritual sided  of being self serve to service others better. I respect and accept their Religion's chosen elusions. They do not accept me for not giving my soul up to a limited thinking group. I  found no other group that is more judgmental than Christians.
         
         I am unique in my artist profession, where I spend most waking hours of my life. Due to I don't like fighting the competition. A jealous Yahweh must Divide and fight the majority from all sides. Since basically people don't like fighting, that is why non religious are the fastest growing group in the world.

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         wildernessposted 6 years agoin reply to this

         Perhaps just semantics, but do you really see spirituality as requiring a belief in an omnipotent creature from another universe as nearly all modern religions do?  And is the "higher reality" truly a different reality that is accessible only through mental/emotional gymnastics or just an extension that most people never understand (are the intricacies of string theory a "higher reality")?  The "cosmic connection" may be spiritual...or it may be nothing more than a feeling - a feeling without connection to reality.

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            Live to Learnposted 6 years agoin reply to this

            Yes. I see spirituality as the twin of religion. You just create your own but both begin with the premise that a higher consciousness exists.
            
            String theory, though incredibly interesting, hasn't been completely worked out. But, even so. Sure. We feel a connection to the universe and grapple for the understanding of why. Most people I know, who feel this, have an insatiable interest in such things. The why. The how. I would say these folks have more interest than a lot of atheists. Because the why, the how, are what started both religion and science.
            
            I know personal experience holds no sway with you. I'm different. I believe they are to be listened to. I believe they happen. I also think our beliefs cloud our judgement. We can easily read too much into them. We can believe they validate our beliefs when they contradict them. Coming to the wrong conclusions does not invalidate the reality of the experience.

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               wildernessposted 6 years agoin reply to this

               I would define religion, perhaps, as a subset of spirituality.  It professes to be spiritual, but very often is not.  That's just me, though.
               
               Sounds like your spirituality, or religion, is far more about feelings than it is about fact.  As feelings are 100% subjective how can anything be accomplished, how can anything be known true and real when it is feelings?  Surely, that truth is there for the single person, but just as surely it cannot be there for anyone else (in the same form).
               
               Personal experience DOES count.  The problem is that whenever dealing with life, from bacteria to humans, it is not constant.  A rock will always fall, but when life enters the picture all that can be said has to be said in terms of probabilities.  So when personal experience comes into play it must come from thousands to achieve a meaningful statistical conclusion.  As people are extremely likely to draw conclusions from a single experience rather than thousands that single experience counts for very little.  IMO.

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                  Live to Learnposted 6 years agoin reply to this

                  I would agree that personal experience should not be used to build a belief structure for others on. Meanings are own to conjecture. I think my main problem is when presented with thousands upon thousands of individuals who have had experience the run of the mill atheist dismisses them, since the exact conditions and outcome cannot be replicated.
                  
                  It really comes down to differing personality types. Some insist no, until yes is proven beyond a shadow of a doubt and others the opposite.

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            Castlepalomaposted 6 years agoin reply to this

            Wilderness
            Spirituality as requiring a belief in an omnipotent creature from another universe.
            
            Not from my experience, even Aliens have not been proven to have landed. Or God would in his image, maybe like a Frog amphibian creature. Every idea of God I had ever encountered seemed either physically impossible or so vague as to be empty.
            
            My spiritual side is more like an agnostic, don't claim to know this spiritual world. Most people I met say they are spiritual rather than Religious. When we use our imagination toward Spirituality, Science, is the Future of this Planet.  I studies the entire universe as a single evolving entity as I study my own bubble Universe through imagination.
            
            I think in terms of higher energy and lower energy. That is when I'm tapped into my much higher self the subconscious followed shortly by my conscious mind.
            
            To have a God in my life, first he needs to exist with evidence in the same way that matter and gravity and culture exist. The Big Bang was symmetrical in all directions, why isn't the universe just a bigger soup? What caused galaxies and clusters of galaxies to form? The iron in our blood is the same as the iron in the galaxies as I think we are all connected.

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               wildernessposted 6 years agoin reply to this

               You think in terms of higher and lower energy.  Others mention higher consciousness or a higher plane. 
               
               But no one can define "higher" (or "lower"), or at least no one does.  It appears to be jargon - invented meanings peculiar to one particular discipline - rather than a definition common to all.
               
               Care to take a shot at what "higher energy" means?  I have a decent handle on "energy", I think, but haven't a clue what you mean by "higher energy".

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                  Castlepalomaposted 6 years agoin reply to this

                  For best optimal in Balance and harmony. Is the 3 brains the gut, the heart, and the brain.  All work together for our mental, emotional, and physical health ...I've known about this in the 70s in Asia from Taoism. Lead me to higher energy to achieve top world class ranking in sport and sculptures. Lower energy would be like illness, criminal, mental disorders and so on.

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         Castlepalomaposted 6 years agoin reply to this

         To live and learn.
         Early on you compare my credentials to Jesus.
         
         First there no photo or even painting of what Jesus would of looked like. There a dozen copy cat stories close similar to Jesus story throughout history.
         
         Jesus' miracles, like most biblical historical claims, cannot be proven with any evidence. Other than hearsay for Jesus Witnesses are all dead too.
         
         I don't claim to know the meaning of life and everything in it, maybe the answer is 42. The bible claim to be all and end. With credentials like Jesust majority of world just ignores him altogether.
         
         I can documents every talk I walk. Jesus did not even write or can be proven to have existed. I'm sure he give you warm and fuzzy feelings.

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            Live to Learnposted 6 years agoin reply to this

            Just to be clear. I've never compared your credentials to Jesus. And, thank heaven Jesus didn't write anything down. You've got people arguing over the Bible being directed by God, can you imagine the problem if any believed it was actually written by him. You'd see Islam all over again. The word would be stagnant. The spirit lost.
            
            The Old Testament makes it clear the Israelites had a choice. God wanted them to choose to follow his will but they were never forced. Why would Jesus be any different. He gave an example to live by. The individual has to decide how to understand the example and how to emulate.
            
            So, yeh. It does make me warm and fuzzy to know the God I believe in had enough love and respect for humanity to walk among us. Nothing of the writings from his followers reflects any of the judgmental hatred I find in your comments so, again, I see no room for comparison.

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   Kathryn L Hillposted 6 years ago

   I was an atheist for a while. It is very freeing and fun.
   Every one should try it. Until you realize ..... etc.
   
   
   The important word is YOU, as Sandcastlepaloma is trying to tell us.

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      lovetherainposted 6 years agoin reply to this

      i was an atheist for most of my life. I always still had questions

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         wildernessposted 6 years agoin reply to this

         Reasonable, as no one has all the answers.  The entire race, as a single entity, does not have all the answers nor will it ever have all the answers. 
         
         Perhaps the dolphins do, but I don't really know.

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            Castlepalomaposted 6 years agoin reply to this

            Very far from humans having all the answers, let alone a bible.
            
            It's interesting how the overrated mental brain of humans and Dolphins are. They are weaker than the brain power of the gut and heart. Look at the jellyfish with no brain yet out survives all animals on earth.

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