victorialis

What's the difference between a "religion" and a guide?

I think of religion as no more than the social manifestation of a set of standardized behavioral rules that arose from metaphysical speculation. These behavioral rules get standardized (made into doctrine) so people can agree (badly) upon their use. Religion, then, is what people do socially with these ideas.

The fluctuating quality of the religious consensus is a consequence of how it's applied; it doesn't invalidate the speculative conclusions that gave rise to the doctrine. Anyone can apply a technology (a body of applied knowledge) badly. This reflects upon the user, not upon the technology.

A knee-jerk reaction to the words "religion" and "dogma" separates us from the benefits of centuries of human thought. It is quite possible to avoid this disadvantage without personal compromise: all that is required is the ability to entertain an idea without being overtaken by it.

Which can be done at any time, in any place, within the privacy of one's own mind.

[ May 19, 2002: Message edited by: victorialis ]</p>

AdamWho

victorialis:

The difference I see between a guide and a religion is that religion doesn't change a guide does (or at least can). My arguments against religion are against the inflexible part, the dogma.
We don't look the ancients for answers in any other subject except religion and philosophy, why, because they were wrong or our ideas are better. Ironically religion and philosophy have some of the poorest results of all human endeavors.

Why do so many people believe that old ideas are good ideas?

victorialis

I think of old ideas as experimental prototypes. If we trash them unexamined, we're losing out on all the R&D that went into them. Those who came up with them worked every bit as hard as we do, and in many cases much harder, within the limitations of their time.

Really: how much time do we have today to give such things the kind of thought they really deserve?

Biologically and experientially, human beings haven't changed much since the old ideas were mooted. "Old ideas suck" shows a dangerous lack of historical sense. I have been amazed at how many phenomena that I thought were new in my lifetime are not new at all, in any respect that counts. It's the same game played with different players and different toys. My education should have made this clearer than it did. Oh, well.

AdamWho, I agree with your distinction between religion and a guide -- although religions do change, they don't and can't change as easily as individuals can. Today that's a powerful argument against religion. I know how unfashionable it is to say this, but experience nevertheless tells me that the conscious individual is much more mobile and dynamic in cognition than any group.

Three cheers for that, because the group is beset with seemingly insoluble operating limitations. If we must all go forward together, then none of us are going anywhere better in the foreseeable future.

Religion and philosophy's poor track records point up the complexity -- and the importance -- of the problems they attempt to solve. I don't believe this invalidates either pursuit; quite the contrary.

boneyard bill

Victorialis writes:

I don't see it that way. All language is metaphor. If I say "all reality is One" I am using a metaphor. The claim isn't to be taken literally. If it were literally true, it wouldn't be necessary to state it. So there is a sense in which all reality is one, but there is also a realization that there is a good deal of separateness to our existence. Indeed, our existence is defined by its separateness - yin, yang and all that.

So abstract language tries to express its private message through metaphor just as mythopoetic language does. They are just different types of metaphor. We get into a great error when confuse either of these types of metaphors with reality. This, I think, is where something like Zen comes it. It stresses the impossibility of communicating reality through language.

On the other hand, we do communicate private reality through language all the time. Sometimes there is a common experience underlying our language and sometimes there is not. Christians who have "found Christ" can talk easily about there common experience. But is this the same experience as a Buddhist who has achieved Nirvana? I suspect it is, but we can't possibly say for sure anymore than we can say that my experience of the color red is the same as yours.

The great advantage of Buddhism is that it acknowledges this difficulty of linguistic expression while Christianity only addresses it only among its most erudite practitioners.

Still I think there is a great tendency to want to reify abstractions in Buddhism just as there is in the modern scientific world-view. The important thing to realize is that these abstractions are no more "reality" than are the mytho-poetic forms encountered in religions and literature.

boneyard bill

St. Robert writes:

Well, in a sense this is what I've been trying to say to Victorialis. The death and suffering of Christ on the cross, the dying and sacrificial God
is the way Christianity defines God. And in many ways that is more powerful than the Buddhist claim to a mere "compassionate" ground for our existence.

But I also think that how we define God also determines how we define the self, or at least what we understand the self to be. The Buddhist's non-theistic approach leads to a more rarefied sense of self-understanding and that, I think, is why it is criticized for being so passive and life-denying. Christian imagery is much more passionate, more involved, and more concrete.

But I still think it is an error to accept the concrete imagery of Christianity or the abstract language of Buddhism as final. All language is necessarily an approximation.

boneyard bill

St. Robert writes:

But this doesn't answer the question. Having had no opportunity to accept Jesus, does this mean that Siddharta is burning in hell? Or does it just mean that he's rotting away and does not exist anymore and was denied salvation.

If so, is this a just God? This is a God, after all, who saves wretched slave traders. (As the author or Amazing Grace points out). So why were so many good and even saintly people denied salvation? Why did God wait so long to redeem the world?

Of course, you could argue that he didn't. You could argue that people were saved before Christ came to earth and you could support it from scripture. But that doesn't seem to be the interpretation that is in vogue among Christian evangelizers these days.

ex-preacher

Apparently St Robert is not the patron of good spellers. I love this word: crucifixation. I propose to define it

cruci fixation an obsession dealing with crosses and the imagined superiority of one's religion to all others

boneyard bill

Grizzly writes:

Is St. Robert really that far off-topic? I'll admit he has been overt in his professions of his faith, but he has also focused on questions of suffering, desire, and the spiritual peace which are gemaine. It may be a borderline case, but I find the contrasts and similarities between Christianity and Buddhism to be an interesting part of the discussion as well. I suppose it depends on just how broad you want the topic to be.

boneyard bill

Adam Who writes:

Perhaps because they've stood the test of times? After all we don't believe that all old ideas are good ideas. We don't practice human sacrifice anymore for example.

But consider all the "new" ideas that haven't stood the test of time: Freudian psychology, Behaviorist psychology, Keynesian economics, Locke's theory of government, Hegelian rationalism. Marxism is on its last legs and I'll wager that Darwinism isn't far behind.

boneyard bill

Victorialis writes:

I absolutely agree. And I would add, look at all the much greater difficulties we have encountered from those people who try to remake the world on the basis of the writings a single philosopher or a single generation or two of philosophers? I'm talking, of course, about the totalitarianisms of communism and fascism and their pre-cursors going back to the French Revolution.

The modern world tends to confuse the technological advances due to the scientific method with the search for truth and meaning at a deeper level.