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BASE104
Social climber
An Oil Field
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Sep 24, 2015 - 08:53am PT
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Mike said,
You could apply it to everything human, if you wanted to.
I couldn't agree more.
And BB, I look around and see the churches of my youth, the differing churches of protestant Christianity, and see them losing their flocks. They are moving into these shopping mall churches, who want your money.
That is sad. My experience with religion was that it was all about the poor and meek. Not the rich.
My grandfather used to often tell me the line in the Bible: It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven."
So, when you die, hopefully you don't have any money left. You did something brave like give everything to the poor.
I am a big proponent of panhandlers, beggers, anyone who asks me for money. If I have any on me (sometimes I don't!), I always try to give as much as I can. It makes me feel good to give.
I'll never give my money to Kenneth Copeland or Joel Osteen, or that crowd. The way that they take away from people to live their rich life is totally against the way that I was raised concerning the church. Our pastors were never rich men.
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Ward Trotter
Trad climber
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Sep 24, 2015 - 09:15am PT
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That is sad. My experience with religion was that it was all about the poor and meek. Not the rich.
Whether or not major Christian denominations survive the changes they encounter in history with its radically shifting cultural climate is not a function of their capacity to poor-mouth society in general,or to maintain some sort of altruistic motive/credo --but rather in their capacity and willingness to consistently cultivate a historically persistent centralized structural authority with a unifying set of rituals and institutional mainstays such as is clearly evident in the Catholic Church .
Several perceptive observers as far back as nearly 300 years ago saw these distinctions clearly even then and remarked upon this very point in their endless organic comparisons of Protestanism and Catholicism. The Catholic Church has suffered the same overall decline --- but due to various historical factors and to the reasons I mentioned above, have been in a much better marginal position to endure the onerous onslaught of secular modernity. Not the least of which has been the enduring chameleon-like political nature of the office of the Pope ,which I mentioned in my last post.
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MikeL
Social climber
Seattle, WA
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Sep 24, 2015 - 09:36am PT
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BB: what about spiritually? Do you feel fulfilled, and are you done with questions?. . . .For instance, what are your thoughts on what the pope has done thus far?
Any religious leader who asks a common man to pray for him is good in my book. When I saw him do that to another priest in the crowd, I busted out laughing. The pope has a huge responsibility, and given the way he asked (almost whispering), I thought, “yeah, you bet, why not?” Having others hold that kind of intention for you must do good things in the world.
I see nothing wrong with praying. Praying is an invocation and an evocation. Isn’t it the same thing we do before starting up a challenging climb that we are concerned with? Isn’t any ritual that we go through with the tools of our trade a kind of prayer to get our heads right? To clear and focus our minds for the challenge that we’re about to take on?
Do I feel fulfilled? I feel large—and larger as my life goes on. Being “fulfilled” is becoming less important to me as time goes on, but fulfilledness seems to follow along. What I’m trying to say is, how can there be some kind of limit or amount that one can hold? Somehow the question seems to be focusing on something that doesn’t really exist.
Questions are evaporating. I guess I’m not done with them—I mean I have them—but when I sit with them, they tend to disappear. When I look at the apparent forces that lead to manifestations, I see no questions anymore. Put a cork in water and question why it goes up and down as the water level goes up and down. What questions do you have about the situation, the effects? It’s all rather clear, isn’t it? Do you think there is anything to be done or should be done about corks and bodies of water? :-)
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Ward Trotter
Trad climber
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Sep 24, 2015 - 09:53am PT
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MikeL:
Most humans are constructed like salmon -- to fight upstream in a focus to reach something seen or unseen.
You belong to the category who for various reasons does not struggle upstream but rather have decided to let go so as to drift effortlessly to wherever the rushing water takes you.
But remember, you are still a fish and you are still in the water.
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BASE104
Social climber
An Oil Field
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Sep 24, 2015 - 10:07am PT
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There was one religious guy who I really admired. Still do, in fact: Jimmy Carter. I hear that he is dying of cancer, but he has done a lot of good since he was a politician.
Making the Guinea Worm extinct is quite a task. Cheap, too. All it took was someone with a voice to care.
It still doesn't change my views too much about man, though. We are treating our home poorly.
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Marlow
Sport climber
OSLO
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Sep 24, 2015 - 10:36am PT
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MikeL:
There is no “we.” It just looks like it.
There are no objects. It just looks like it.
There is no manipulation. It just looks like it.
We’re in roles in a movie, as it were.
Let things take care of themselves.
It looks like there's a lot of posting going on in this thread. Sorry, MikeL, I forgot "only": It only looks like there's a lot of posting going on in this thread.
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Jan
Mountain climber
Colorado, Nepal & Okinawa
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Sep 24, 2015 - 11:25am PT
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I'll leave the analysis of the political aspect of the Catholic Church to others. I think as far as the person attending mass, the pull of ritual is a very strong in the human psyche and the feelings of social connection to other people going through the same rituals. In an age of highly educated people, ritual has also proven more appealing to more people than long sermons telling people how to think.
The mainstream Protestant religions are dying in my estimation, because they tried to make religion, which appeals to our irrational and aesthetic minds, rational and austere. Just because something is written in a book and everyone can read it, doesn't make it rational, and educated minds prefer to make their own interpretations these days.
The forms of Protestantism that are flourishing are the very emotional pentacostal types with preachers claiming to use the same book but utilizing peoples' more primal emotions. A few others like the Mormons are very successful because they provide ritual and a very strong social support system.
If atheists want to provide an alternative to religion, then they will need to incorporate ritual, aesthetics, and social support systems to be successful. Just being against something is not enough. Witness the problems of mainstream Protestantism -no one really cares much anymore about the battles of Luther and Calvin against the established church. What could be interesting for atheists and agnostics to contemplate, would be the creation of nature based rituals and creeds, music etc. along with community based projects to restore and support nature and the ecology.
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BLUEBLOCR
Social climber
joshua tree
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Sep 24, 2015 - 12:03pm PT
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Just because something is written in a book and everyone can read it, doesn't make it rational, and educated minds prefer to make their own interpretations these days.
Jesus abolished rituals. That is His text! One if the problems with the Catholic Church is they say whatever the pope says today is doctrine and over rules what was written 2000 yrs ago. They gotten twisted way out of shape. I think this new pope realizes this. People are excited about his confronting today's problems. But if you listen to his exact speech it isn't modern : )
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Jan
Mountain climber
Colorado, Nepal & Okinawa
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Sep 24, 2015 - 12:30pm PT
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Jesus didn't abolish rituals. He visited the temple in Jerusalem, the center of Jewish ritual (the first we hear of him after he was born was at the temple) and he observed the many Jewish home based rituals such as Passover. He also worshipped and taught in the synagogue. Protestants have preferred the model of worship of the synagogue which focussed heavily on scripture and interpretations, the Catholics and Orthodox have focussed mostly on the rituals of the Temple and the idea of symbolic sacrifice.
And isn't it the evangelicals who are saying the temple at Jerusalem must be restored along with its rituals, before the Second Coming can happen?
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BASE104
Social climber
An Oil Field
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Sep 24, 2015 - 12:31pm PT
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BB, where did Jesus do away with rituals?
I'm asking, because very few of the old testament laws mentioned in Leviticus are even mentioned today, other than the one about a man laying with a man.
No animal sacrifices or other temple shenanigans seem to exist these days.
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Ward Trotter
Trad climber
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Sep 24, 2015 - 12:34pm PT
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I think as far as the person attending mass, the pull of ritual is a very strong in the human psyche and the feelings of social connection to other people going through the same rituals. In an age of highly educated people, ritual has also proven more appealing to more people than long sermons telling people how to think.
Yes, this is one of the elements that has allowed the Catholic Church to maintain its enduring appeal in a secular age. I think it was James Joyce who attending perhaps his last mass referred to the ceremony as "reptilian" which in my mind touched upon the primal nature of ritualistic practice (in general) as largely originating in the lower regions of the brain. This fact has allowed much of formal Catholic practice to operate sort of under the ever-probing radar of modern liberal rationalism; whereas Protestantism has always vainly tried to shape that rationalism, in a very broad sense, within the constraints of the balancing act between multi-denominational Protestant individualism and the demands of communities buffeted by ever-changing merchantilism, capitalism, and industrialism.
But nevertheless religious ritual does not have significant appeal among highly educated people-- who always experience some level of cognitive dissonance when confronted with traditional religious practice. Ritualism still maintains its primary appeal to the relatively uneducated, who don't by and large experience this dissonance,and where the Catholic Church sees its strength in numbers; brought about by an accident of history, so to speak, where the nominally Catholic colonial powers introduced Catholicism to regions of what would later become the very populated third world, such as Latin America, the origins of the present Pope.
If atheists want to provide an alternative to religion, then they will need to incorporate ritual, aesthetics, and social support systems to be successful.
Well they've already tried the support system part-- it was called communism/socialism.
They also took forays into the ritual side, and continue to do so. One only needs to observe the NKorean military goose-stepping about to be aware of this. Very reptilian.
Ritual social/political practices of the sort suggested has already taken place in the atheistic/totalitarian world, and continue to be on full display.
[Click to View YouTube Video]
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Norton
Social climber
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Sep 24, 2015 - 12:52pm PT
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Although growing in number, based on polling, the Atheists in America are still Lepers.
I can see not believing in god, but an Atheist? as was once said to me....
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Ward Trotter
Trad climber
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Sep 24, 2015 - 12:56pm PT
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Atheists in America are still Lepers.
Well, perhaps atheists have an brand/image problem -- such as,at least in some quarters, being associated with Marxism/totalitarianism. Totally undeserved ,of course.
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Jan
Mountain climber
Colorado, Nepal & Okinawa
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Sep 24, 2015 - 01:00pm PT
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Good point Ward. I was thinking more however, of the communal practices I have seen in Asia. If you ask Japanese if they are religious, they will say no, yet they all partake in what started out as religious rituals.
Millions of people in Japan spend New Year's Eve at a Shinto or Buddhist temple, with its food stalls and music, before stopping in the temple to buy their next year's fortune, hang it on the temple railings, drop a small coin in a box, pray for a good new year, buy house and car charms for good luck, and maybe have their car and family blessed in addition. All children aged 3,5, and 7 are dressed in traditional kimonos and brought to the temple for a blessing on a certain day of the year. On the summer festival for the dead, there are street vendors, people dancing in the streets and temple court yards for the dead, and floating small candle boats for the ancestors down the major rivers. People also pray and make food offerings at family altars before consuming most of the food.
Because Buddhism and Shinto have been non dogmatic and non crusading, educated secular people feel free to participate in these rituals in Japan whereas intellectuals in the West have a hard time with the dogma and the history of our religious equivalents. Meanwhile, I feel we have lost something psychologically and culturally as a result.
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Jan
Mountain climber
Colorado, Nepal & Okinawa
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Sep 24, 2015 - 01:03pm PT
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Well, perhaps atheists have an brand/image problem
No doubt. That's why I think their eventual acceptance will hinge on having institutional structures that resemble a religion, including atheist charities with high profiles.
To succeed in the larger society, atheists have to reach the point where they are not just standing against something but can also be identified as standing for things which are acknowledged to be useful and admirable in the larger community.
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Ward Trotter
Trad climber
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Sep 24, 2015 - 02:03pm PT
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The track record of atheism in doing good for society as a sort of crusading ethos has not been good. Atheism, hitherto simply defined as a rejection of a god, has yet to prove that it can successfully function as an overarching altruistic motive in addressing broader social needs of the sort commonly suggested. Thinking that atheists as a group can overthrow traditional social forms and then seamlessly go about simply just mimicing what is arbitrarily considered to be the communal mechanisms and requirements of a functioning society ---is nothing less than a robotic recipe for simply establishing their own hegemony within that society. Like going through the motions but without the conviction. Merely replacing God with the state or with science, and so on.
Again, not a good track record there.
I don't think atheists are particularly good at forming the type of communal outlook that would be necessary were they to become the head cheeses. Not because of anything inherent in atheism(atheism as a philosophy is actually boringly simplistic, which is one of its foremost strengths) but because of the general character type of most atheists--whether even atheist themselves realize this--tends to reject imposed social structures and strictures--not just of a religious sort. When you talk of modern human society then are talking of structures and strictures. It's a fact of life. Many, perhaps most ,atheists have been to some degree damaged early in life by the psychologically brutal impositions of those with whom they fundamentally disagree .(Typically hypocritical family and/or churches) Usually in the form of sin, God's disapproval , and this sort of thing.
In the same way that atheists don't want to be ruled politically by religious folks, religious folks don't want to be politically ruled by atheists. Both are personal positions and choices and should remain so.
Despite the fact that the U.S. remains at present a largely God-believing society not many atheists would trade living here for life in an officially atheistic society.
This I do know.
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healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
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Sep 24, 2015 - 02:08pm PT
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Atheists don't need to do anything beyond personally forsaking a need for god mythologies and voicing objections to the imposition of religious beliefs by governments.
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jgill
Boulder climber
The high prairie of southern Colorado
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Sep 24, 2015 - 04:13pm PT
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Goddamn . . . watch it, DMT! Capitol letter please! Show a little respect for Blu and others.
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Jan
Mountain climber
Colorado, Nepal & Okinawa
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Sep 24, 2015 - 04:50pm PT
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Atheists don't need to do anything beyond personally forsaking a need for god mythologies and voicing objections to the imposition of religious beliefs by governments.
That's fine in and of itself. That is the traditional stance of atheists but that's not what the new atheists are doing.
Instead, they are going around the country giving angry speeches trying to convert the rest of society to their point of view and complaining that they don't get the same respect as religious institutions that are engaged in public service to the neediest and least lovable in society.
They can't have it both ways. They can be angry and irresponsible and not very well appreciated, or they can join the rest of society and try to figure out workable programs and institutions.
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WBraun
climber
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Sep 24, 2015 - 04:51pm PT
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Atheism, by definition, doesn't require a goddamn thing.
There's god in your sentence.
Proves once again and every time without god nothing moves nor exists.
Atheists are sooo stoopid they unknowingly need god to even become atheist.
Major epic fail once again by the stooopid atheists as always ......
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