Francois Tremblay

Which god ?

Amos

Sorry, I did not know you know many of them, but I mean the one you deny its existence.

jpbrooks

This is going to reveal a lot more about my personal views than I am accustomed to sharing with people in my (rare) conversations about religion. (I am normally a very reserved and introverted individual, more content with listening to people than talking, at least in public.)
But perhaps, if anything in the natural world can plausibly be considered "intrinsically sacred", it would be the ability (itself) to hold things, beings, or ideals as "sacred".
After all, if that ability did not exist in us, nothing else could be held by us to be "sacred". That is one reason why I tend to take all religions very seriously, even if I don't agree with them. The world religions all represent distinct applications of that apparently innate ability.

[ February 16, 2002: Message edited by: jpbrooks ]</p>

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Is anything intrinsically sacred?

Oh, my God.

This question shows how far biased people can go from grasping reality.

Intrinsically sacred things exist only for religious people. They are they only ones who have the notion and the feeling of what is sacred.

Any secular use of the term "sacred" is figurative, i.e. technically false.

crocodile deathroll

I the word "sacred" is to be used at all (which is a word I hate using by the way) at least apply it to entities that are proven to exist i.e
Would a Cow be considered more sacred than God I suggest the Cow as is has that greater advantage of reality should be considered the more sacred.
We should also consider Earth to be infinitely more sacred than this imaginary and delusionary "Heaven"

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Oh, when people revere the cow as being sacred, do you think it's really the cow in flesh there that they adore.

If you do, then you need to revise your notion of what "sacred" really means.

You cannot find anything sacred if you're not the one to believe in the divine.

Divinities can have representation on earth, but their essence is not earthly.

You show you veneration to the divine essence beyond the earthly things you hold as sacred when you're a believer.

You refuse the divine plan, you reject the idea of the sacred altogether.

Or you use it with its figurative meaning.

Sophi373

I think the word "sacred" has to be defined by each individual person. Do we have to limit "sacredness" to the divine? Every person has some place that is special to them. That place holds a special meaning for them, a "sacred" meaning. For some religious people a church or chapel or synagogue is sacred because that is where they fell closest to God. For other people, a "special" or "sacred" place might be where they first fell in love or had some other meaningful experience. I don't think we can limit "sacredness" to the divine. I think "sacred" could mean any place or thing that has significance for an individual where they can cross from the "normal" or "ordinary" world into a spiritual "world".

Valis

I think sacredness is something that exists in the relation of a person or people to some thing in the world.

As such, the sacredness isn't intrinsic to the thing in the world which is called sacred - for were there no people or peoples to relate to that thing, the word "sacred" could not apply.

However, I also don't think the sacredness is simply "made up" by those who call a thing sacred. In other words, sacredness, while it doesn't stem only from the object itself, also doesn't stem only from the people who call the object sacred. As I said, the sacredness exists in and as a result of the relation between the two.

I think the experience of the sacred is not created, but rather encountered.

-Kris