If you could flip a switch and erase all religion would you?

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I think you are too much limiting the definition of religion. Beliefs and facts about what we know about Existence are only one small part of religion. Religion is also a certain lifestyle including the performance of certain rituals and practices. If there are no rules and regulations that govern the particular religious lifestyle, you can hardly speak of a religion.


Which market do you exactly mean? I thought markets are about buying and selling goods. If money is being made, it is a business and not a religion.


I would call the latter spirituality (spiritual practices and spiritual philosophy) rather than religion. Religion embraces the irrational and dogma's but only spiritual practices and spiritual philosophy are in harmony with science because they are based on true experiences rather than a fantasy view of the world. If you don't clearly separate spirituality from religion, there is going to be confusion about the irrational nature of religions. There may be some spirituality at the heart of religions but spirituality without dogma or the irrational cannot be called religion. Such paths should be called what they are namely spiritual paths or spiritual cults.


I would argue that this will mean the effective end of religion as we know it and the beginning of universal spiritual humanism. A clear break with the foundations of religions therefor.

Very interesting. You're Matt. 7:21-23 quote is further reinforced by the latter half of the sheep and goats parable. This view certainly resolves the problem of "what about people who never heard of Christianity?" that becomes an issue for extreme faith-based salvationists. However, works-based salvation would also seem to undermine the point of Jesus' sacrifice and crucifixion.

I find such discussions interesting, but I tend to refrain from taking a definite position on salvation because I really don't know. So far as I can tell, God has not appointed me to judge the world, so I will leave that task to Him.

I have to keep it a bit short it's late where I am. That is a single simple definition. I tend to simplify things so that everyone can understand me. I could write extensively just on what the concept of religion means but I prefer simple definitions. Religion is larger than one single human being. I also am a bit of a specialist. I tend to work on a very narrow area of religion. I write prayers, although I have lost a few over the years. Religion is far more complex than the definition that I gave you. But that is the level of definition I chose to give you. A religion is the philosophy that has been written for it. A religion is the rituals and practices associated with it. A religion is partly about the prayers that are part of it. A religion is the style of architecture that goes into designing it's temples. A religion is for the individual. A religion is for groups of people. A religion has a certain shape and size, if one wishes to see it a little abstractly. A religion can be a religion of 1 person, or 2 people, or 10 people, or a million people. A religion of 1 person is still a religion. A religion shapes the very future of our species. What I gave you was a simple definition. I try not to get to academic or abstract at people I tend to find it rather counterproductive. But you know that's your choice. Trust me there is nothing limited about my vision in relation to all the possibilities in Existence in relation to religion. There are many rules and regulations by which Universalism functions as a religion. My religion is far more complex and deep than you know I am guessing. I am only giving you an infinitesimal part of the totality of my religion. I would have thought that was obvious but I tend to assume people have the same ability to see all the possibilities and probabilities inherent in Existence, like I do. Every living being has the right to write religion in anyway they choose, the only rules are the rules one imposes on oneself when one writes it. Trust me, there are a great many rules to writing Universalism and in relation to being a good Universalist. There are even rules one must master if one wishes to become a true adept at my religion. And there are benefits for those that do master the philosophy of the religion I write. There are quite tangible benefits. Most religions tend to not actually deliver in the tangible department but mine does.



It's an analogy I use to get across how I understand what religion is in society. An analogy is a fairly common practice amongst writers and thinkers to help convey what the author is trying to say... I can draw an aweful lot of analogies in relation to religion if that will help you. That's funny you mention business because I don't know of many, if any religions that do not need to make money to fund it. So that's another irrelevent point you have made. Actually to draw another analogy, you can think of setting up a religion as no different to setting up a small business. But you know once again, that's just an analogy. Obviously, religion is far more complex than that. Those temples, private schools, accountants, teachers, blah, blah, blach don't get paid for and built for free, yah know. Duh.



Yeh look I am a master of semantics hey, I could intellectually and academically get really abstract and bend semantics any way I want but I choose to keep things simple and comprehensible to everyone.



Yeh ditto. One has to be careful not to fall into the trap of getting to academic with their semantics. Once one gets to abstract and academic with their semantics constructive discussion becomes almost useless. I tend to simplify things so that I can communicate what I am trying to get across. What I write is religion. I consider what I write my religion. My wife has converted to my religion because it works for her and she converted from christianity. My philosophy is my religion, I consider it my religion. One can tippy toe around the concept of religion, and call what I do spirituality, theology and whatever other stupid things people say to me but in the end it's my religion. Granted I only write the philosophy of my religion. I write about the spiritual practice of my religion and how people should follow it. I write about the future of my religion. I write about how I would like my temples built and why. I write about prayer practice in Universalism. I write about what I believe about how the Universe is governed.

I mean you could ask yourself is christianity a cult or a religion? Is scientology a cult or a religion. Is the bahai faith a cult or a religion? If you wish to get academic about it then techniqually they are all religions. One could break them down into different classes of religion using semantics if one wishes. The bahai and scientology religions are new religious movements. Christianity could be labeled in many ways, you could group it with judaism, islam and christianity and label them judeo christian religion. One could almost group christianity with all the ancient religions, from roman religions, to the oceanic religions, that predate the last 100 years, and call it a primal religion. It's just semantics dude.

If you bog yourself down in your own abstracts and semantics then you don't get your message across clearly to people. And you just end up speaking s**t, you know.

Is Universalism a spirituality, a cult, a religion, is it a theology? That's just semantics. I write Universalism as a religion. I follow the ways of my philosophy as a religion. My wife converted to the religion I wrote. I didn't ask her to. The philosophy of my religion converted her, I didn't. Like myself, she considers herself a Universalist.

Universalism is a religion because that is what I have written it to be. Writing religion is what I hone my skills at, year by year. Writing religion is my intention when I write.

Last edited by Transcention on 16 Oct 2008, 10:50 am, edited 16 times in total.

What do you call your religion?

I'm still working out the quote thing, soz slowmutant. I am sure you and I have spoken in the past. I drop in every one or two weeks to vent my frustration with my cognitive disorder.

I call it Universalism.

I came up with it, then found out the christians were using it. Then thought f**k it, it's way to sweet a name for them to have it and used it anyway.

Yeah, that's pretty much it. I have a couple of personal nuances and wrinkles that I like to throw into it (I like to think of God more as a necessary precondition than necessarily a first cause, although He could be both). I like to throw around the word "potentiality" a lot to refer to that which doesn't exist or isn't seen, but could potentially. I think it all started when I had this little thought experiment about what would happen if you tried to write the complete and unabridged history of absolutely everything ever to happen in the history of the universe. You'd run out of ink before you were done, even if you converted all the matter in the universe to ink and paper. Not only would it be impossible to store this data as efficiently as it is within the universe itself (that is, the object itself "stores" it just by being there), you'd have to dedicate space to the writing of the book itself. It's from the first one that I started to develop this sort of idea - that Knowledge is basically a dull Xerox copy of Truth in any form that it exists, be it in the mind, a CPU, or on paper. Truth exists in the sense that it is either a) present within the universe or b) potentially expressible within the universe. Truth is the Knowledge of God (or the Universe, if you prefer to think of it that way).

The part where I pissed off the fundamentalist was when I said that you're more likely to find God in Nature (as in a long walk alone in the forest beneath the setting sun) than in the Bible (or any other holy book) - it can be a good guide, but ultimately you have to seek God to find God. Another place where I deviated from this guy was the fact that I said it was not productive to think or even care about the afterlife, but rather the things that can be controlled here and now. Whatever happens (or doesn't happen) will happen based on the kind of person I was. Ultimately, I ask myself - will I have made a positive impact (however small) on the world? Will I leave behind a "legacy," so to speak, of a good person. Will I have led a good life? If the answer to those questions is yes, then Paradise will follow from there. Still, I can't see Paradise. I can't choose when I get there, or even prove it exists. It's things like inner peace and Hell on Earth that I'm worried about, because it's something I can SEE and DO something about. Wherever else it may or may not exist, it can be shown to exist HERE.

This doesn't even begin to cover everything, nor do I mean it to. If I were to cover EVERYTHING, I'd end up spending way too much of everybody's time qualifying everything that I say. I once was asked by someone what I believed, and I tried to explain it to him in terms he could understand (there are some occasions where I have to repeat myself a lot because I'm talking over people - it's one thing I'm not very good at). About fifteen seconds later, his eyes kinda glazed over, and shortly after that he just asked. "So...it's kinda like Star Wars?"

I just gave up and said, "Yeah, it's like Star Wars."

In any case, I totally get where you're coming from, too. I actually did espouse a form of agnosticism for a brief period of my life (based mostly on the question of "how can we possibly say anything about the nature of Nature, given how little we can know or even define?"), and that period continues to affect my mindset when it comes to these matters. Total knowledge of the universe is impossible, and I myself make a point of never saying in unambiguous terms that I KNOW I'm right. Ultimately, I don't know anything. I'm just making an educated guess. Just making assumptions flat-out is arrogant and presumptuous, so I try to start with the few things in life that are certain and move down from there.

It's interesting stuff, but it's DEFINITELY nothing I would talk about on, say, YouTube (seeing as how the comments section there is pretty much the a**hole of the Internet).

Every religious person believes religions should be erased. They just don't think THEIR religion should be erased.

Religion is an ever-changing scaffold surrounding the spiritual impulse. What's inside the scaffold is eternal and not subject to change. The scaffold itself, the structure, is subject to change.

RELIGION = FORMED

SPIRITUAL IMPULSE = UNFORMED

The reprecussions of such an event extend far beyond our comprehension can discern.

Well the concept is not entirely works-based salvation by itself, but rather that Jesus looks favorably upon such good works such that He will evaluate each person based on the ethics they held in life. According to what I've stated, Jesus' death and resurrection were still necessary, but such acts were for all, not just certain people that want to turn themselves into the exclusive "club" of Jesus. Jesus Himself rebuked the disciples engaged in such an action: keeping the children away from Him (in Matt. 19:13-15, He says "Let the little children come unto me, and do not stop them; for it is to such as these that the kingdom of heaven belongs.").



Well, I'm only stating my opinion. For all I know Jesus could very well be the Heavenly Bouncer... even though I prefer to see him as the Heavenly Morpheus, opening the door for all humanity, though each person must choose to step through. In the end though, only He knows His own nature. I'm just providing what I see in the Word. Other people have other takes on what God said. But in the end, only He knows what He means...

I leave you with a final thought, though: If Jesus chose to elevate the man that explicitly denied Him three times to be the rock that the church is founded on, will He not just as much elevate one who is merely indecisive, or one who merely walks a different path?

Can someone give me a quick link to how quotes work? I don't get how to have it say the person who's quote it actually is.

Okay, I think that agnosticism is the only posiiton that is worthwhile taking in Existence if one wishes to be truely enlightened. I heard an unusual and interesting term today: spiritual agnostisicm. I appreciate the sensitivity with which you responded to me. I will be equally respectful in response. Your thoughts are, and and your response to my post, is constructive and interesting.

You might find my own early philosophy on writing religion interesting.



Okay Platypus, nice, rational and constructive response to me. Your like aiming for a bullseye talking to me and you've done well in hitting that target.

I must admit I am devoutly agnostic. However, I sincerly, appreciate your input.

Yes, I appreciate how you feel, the Internet, more often than not, is a cesspool in relation to objective, rational, sensitive intellectual minds.

Especially, if one is deeply, severely afflicted, by Aspergers/Autism/Cognitive type disorders.

If it's any kind of spiritual consolation I believe that the only true paradise, or heavan, that we, as human beings can attain, is the one we create for ourselves in the Universe.

Well done Platypus, your response is inspiring and constructive. I can only dream that everyone in the world can construct such a thoughtful and self perpetuatingly, inspiring response to me, as you have.

You make it look so easy. I am disturbed by your lack of faith in Agnosticism but your creative and fascinating response to me, excuses that.

Slowmutant



Hahaha, a little abstract, but nicely done. I like it.

See, that's how it's done. It's that simple.

That's right Slowmutant, religion is created at the point in spacetime one finds oneself at, however religion needs to be written differently, in the future at every different point that human beings find themselves at, depending on the level of information they have attained, that directly relates to Existence. I am the foundation of Universalism, but as people are born after me that are as equally gifted in writing religion as I am, they will upgrade and improve upon my own philosophies in an evolutionary process that transcends my own ability. There are certain essential foundational principles in relation to religion that one needs to be enlightened about the reality of religion, in Existence such as: one must know and embrace the truth that religion can be written in anyway they can be rendered by the mind, the possible permutations of information in relation to how one writes religion are essentially infinite... Of course, if the permutations of information in relation to how one writes religion are essentially infinite then one can choose to write religion at extremily high levels on quality. One has to work hard to reach those higher, more enlightened levels of quality at which religion can be written. One has to dedicate every molecule of one's being to the task, if one wishes to attain those high levels of quality that religion can be written to. In Universalist religion, religion is an evolutionary process, not limited by the original author. I am the foundation of my philosophy and religion, but by the very nature of Universalism I am only one brick in that foundation. All living beings that coexist with me, and those who will come in the future, have the equal right to my own, to improve upon the philosophies of my religion. Religion is an evolutionary process. Universalism is a religion that is founded on the principle of evolution. I am ultimately limited by my humanity and can never be the final, absolute word on religion in the Universe. I need others to come along who are as equally, if not more gifted than I am, to take what I have said and have the cojhonies, to improve upon what I have said and can upgrade Universalism in ways that I could never have foreseen. Religion, Universal religion, and hence Universalism, is of course not bound by the limitations of my own Life.

I'm just writing this off the top of my head. I enjoy respectful discussion. And will respond in kind.