There are numerous definitions of religion, the typical dictionary definition of religion refers to a belief in, or the worship of, a god or gods or the service and worship of God or the supernatural. Though this doesn’t cover everyone’s perception of what it means. It seems to be true that the belief in spiritual beings exists in all known societies. The anthropologist Clifford Geertz defined religion as a system of symbols which acts to establish powerful, pervasive, and long-lasting moods and motivations in men by formulating conceptions of a general order of existence and clothing these conceptions with such an aura of factuality that the moods and motivations seem uniquely realistic. The sociologist Durkheim, in his seminal book The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life, defined religion as a unified system of beliefs and practices relative to sacred things. By sacred things he meant things set apart and forbidden—beliefs and practices which unite into one single moral community called a Church, all those who adhere to them. Sacred things are not, however, limited to gods or spirits. On the contrary, a sacred thing can be a rock, a tree, a spring, a pebble, a piece of wood, a house, in a word, anything can be sacred. Religious beliefs, myths, dogmas and legends are the representations that express the nature of these sacred things, and the virtues and powers which are attributed to them. When religion is seen in terms of sacred, divine, intensive valuing, or ultimate concern, then it is possible to understand why scientific findings and philosophical criticisms do not necessarily disturb its adherents. Faith is confidence or trust in a person, thing, deity, or in the doctrines or teachings of a religion or view (e.g. having strong political faith). The word faith is often used as a synonym for hope, trust or belief. In religion, faith often involves accepting claims about the character of a deity, nature, or the universe. While some have argued that faith is opposed to reason, proponents of faith argue that the proper domain of faith concerns questions which cannot be settled by evidence. Other examples of faith may include empirical reasoning, statistics, past experience, and other more concrete factors, such as faith in an aircraft, bridge, spouse, or pet, and so on. Faith in Holy books is not faith in God or the Universe but is instead, faith in the words of the people who wrote those words. If a first grader wrote a book about building a drawbridge and he or she was cute and seemed sincere would that mean we should build our bridges based on those words? Holy books were written thousands of years ago and like a book on building drawbridges written by a first grader they might seem appealing, especially if that first graders parents had lots of money, people and enthusiasm to promote their words but that first grader must still lack the fundamental engineering and mathematical knowledge to describe the mechanism and structural features of a functional drawbridge. Now if the parents and other relatives and friends of that first grader printed and distributed millions of copies of those drawbridge instructions, there would be a whole lot of them possessed by lots of people and a whole movement might start to build all bridges according to the first graders instructions even if they were simplistic and showed a complete lack of comprehension of engineering principles but once the bridges were built and started plunging cars and trucks to their destruction, dont you think it might be time to recall and remove those books? Look around you at our civilization. What do you see? You see the results of our following the lessons contained in Holy Books as defined and described by people who have their own agendas and could care less about collateral damage. They say they are following the dictates of Gods or Allahs word or the word of various other deities. The reason they like to follow the words of those Holy books is it absolves them to a certain extent of any blame when the advice of the Holy Books or those who interpret them goes awry and disaster results. God was on our side. theyll shout, but there must have been too many unbelievers amongst us! Theyll shout this to the rooftops because all of the Holy Books contain contradictory messages depending upon who interprets those messages and again, it absolves them in their eyes of blame. The Nazi Party and The Italian Fascists read the Bible and they thought God was on their side. The Japanese looked upon their Emperor as a living God. Both the North and South during the American Civil War believed very strongly that they were favored by God and had regular Bible readings to support their war efforts. We have been duped, we have been fooled but unfortunately, as Mark Twain said, it is much easier to fool people than to convince them that they have been fooled. True Faith is something we exhibit every day. We have faith in the rules of existence. We believe in Gravity and that each breath we take will supply us with oxygen and that food will nourish our bodies and all other so called natural laws work. That is true faith. We do not doubt these things. If we have faith that the Universe makes sense then we must believe that there is a benign intelligence in charge and there is no need for vindication or assurances that we understand the truth because we KNOW WHAT IS TRUE through our consciences and the TRUTH allows us the freedom to be human! BE HUMAN, my friends. BE WELL and make 2014 the year where the human race regains its humanity.
Posted on: Tue, 20 Jan 2015 00:27:46 +0000