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Politics : View from the Center and Left -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: epicure who wrote (54914)	3/21/2008 5:15:34 PM
From: Katelew	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 542201

But I'm not sure how you can't lean that way when you study many many religions. They all so clearly serve the various and sundry needs of the populations who created them.) Actually, if one's belief in God is grounded in emotional experiences AND one then studies the histories of religion, etc., one can end up holding both positions concurrently, i.e. God created man, AND man created God. Such a person also can find the study of all the world's religions to actually be faith affirming. For example, my own such studies have led me to envision God as a kind of radio broadcast, a constant transmission that simply says I am here. Through the ages, different human beings scattered across the world, most of whom are lost to history, have picked up on this message, i.e. experienced the emotional power of it as it empowered them to be a stronger and better version of their natural self. The so-called "born again experience". The problem came in when man then tried to explain it, quantify it, personalize it, codify it, indemnify it....and so on and so on. Here you have 'man creating God', in other words. Hundreds of different religions and sects that did indeed reflect the needs and even the geography of the populations involved. And, of course, people end up warring over their various interpretations. There is another thing about studying all the world's religions that can be faith affirming rather than destroying. This is the similarities one finds with regard to the process itself of 'connecting with God'. For example, in most religions adherents will turn to fasting, meditation and prayer to connect. Long before Christ came on the scene and wandered in the wilderness for 40 days in order to commune with God, you had Budhist monks doing pretty much the same thing. There are also similarities with regard to the response to the experience of 'connecting with God'. It falls into a category I've mentally labeled as the Reluctant Prophets, as each exhibited similar and highly emotional behaviors. There are many examples, but the ones that pop into my mind are Moses, Jeremiah, and Mohammed. Moses was so frightened and lacking in confidence that he copped out by getting God to make Moses' brother, Aaron, do the actual public speaking. In fact Moses argued a lot with God and managed in the process to get several other biblical figures of the times to do some of the heavy lifting. And when God tapped Mohammed to be his servant and write down God's messages, Mohammed was so terrified he ran for miles home and hid under the covers of his wife's bed. It was years of entreaties by God before Mohammed forged the courage to put his own life at risk by codifying a monotheistic message for the arab peoples. There could be, and maybe are, books written on this process of man meeting God, being terrified by the experience itself, but later, instead of blowing the whole thing off as an aberration, instead finding themselves inspired to risk life and limb in order to share their experience and insights. So if a person has 'experienced' God in a somewhat similar jarring emotional way, then reading of these experiences by others is validating. Especially the ones outside your own religious sect, for ex. Mohammed. I hope this make some kind of sense.....too lazy today to elaborate :-)