This illustrates our failure to communicate.
It is fascinating and perplexing how total the failure to communicate on this subject can be. Totally different frames of reference, it seems. I find it utterly compelling to try to bridge the gap.
A religious person believes they were created for a purpose, which is to serve their God.
Fine. And I was created, too, and I assume that I'm just here and what I make of that is up to me. So far, so good.
Through eons of thought by philosophers and religionists, and from claimed revelations, there exists a body of wisdom as to what God expects of us; wisdom as to what is right and what is moral (e.g., the ten commandments). In the end, a believer in God has the free will to act upon their own innate conception of how they should serve God.
Like I don't do that? This reminds me of the triangulation discussion with Jewel. We look to whatever sources we have to figure out what we should do with these wonderful lives that we have. You may do that to serve God and I may do that to determine what to make of it all and how to proceed. The exercise is the same. I may discard "claimed revelations" or assume them to be made up by humans for some purpose or other. And I may not pray. Maybe I meditate, instead. Seems to me that the processes that believers and non-believers go through are much more alike than different. One of them involves a deity and the other doesn't. People could theoretically reach the same bottom line either way, one thinking he got it from God and the other thinking he got it from sorting through this collected wisdom.
Of course, it is always possible to simply choose not to think about the subject at all.
Of course. I imagine that some do.
My thought was that any person who does not believe in God would have to subscribe to all of these tenets to be intellectually consistent. I see nothing pejorative in any of them
I don't find them pejorative. Just off base. For example, why would you assume that life choices should be governed by the needs of society? I find them exceedingly personal. There's nothing more personal. Life choices we make for ourselves, in consultation with our God, if we so choose. Society can mind its own business.
When the existence of God is denied, a vacuum is created which must be filled with an countervailing credo.
Which brings us back to your vacuum. You took exception to describing religion as a collection of morals, institutions, traditions, etc. But those are what's on your list. Those are the things you offer as vacuum fillers. If the traditions, myths, etc. aren't religion, as you say, and religion is simply the "ego" thing of belief in God or lack of belief, then there's no vacuum to fill. |
