While I'm the first to say that I don't care about other people as much as I do my family, I do care about the human race. I have compassion, morals, values and no religion. Most non-profits that give "out of the goodness of their heart" are religious based. At least those that get the notoriety.
That's why I was inspired after stumbling across some of the efforts of the Center for Inquiry Secular organizations can show real human morals come from within, not a book or a magical god in the sky.
I'm inspired and vow to do my part as a human. Which right now primarily involves helping myself and my family. But that does not mean I can't help others help themselves.
My husband recently conceded that "religion is the anti-christ." I kind of have a sense of religious teachings as pointing toward a human consciousness as being God in some ways. I try to be pretty open, but find some purely strict teachings to create a sense of unhappiness and also a sense of defeat.
ReplyDeleteWhen someone just can't "get it right," and fights against his own nature then meets with some of the adversity we commonly find in life, he doesn't know how to naturally act to move past his situation.
I know quite a few people struggling with poverty, and they are caught in this web of strictly defining themselves within a narrow scope of religiously based notions. How does one resolve his own issues in life when everything is pre-defined?
Great points, I understand the "human consciousness as being God in some ways." I tend to think of god as some sort of ultimate energy force, such as gravity, but way more powerful. The search for truth is, in my opinion, godlike and brings people closer to "god," if we want to put that label on it.
ReplyDeleteWe do ourselves a great disservice by binding the good of humanity up into religion. Agreed, resolving our own issues is also extremely difficult in this context. In my opinion, I benefited in this way from having less guidance as a youngster.
I wasn't pushed into any specific doctrine either. I feel quite alright. I like that you suggested the energy force could be defined as "god" if necessary, because I always felt that by saying its "God," we're stapling specific attrubutes, human attributes, to some being.
ReplyDeleteDoes it really matter what we call it?
Don't think it does matter much. I've found that when discussing these things with religiously inclined people, it may help them understand where I'm coming from a bit better when I refer to the "energy" as god. Really, what I'm talking about is closer to what scientists (i.e. Einstein, Hawking) would refer to simply as a theory of everything.
ReplyDeleteWhen we as humans get closer to this theory of everything, theoretically we should be in a position to do bigger and better things and make wiser choices.