Why Can’t We All Just Get Along?
So far my understanding of religion is as follows:
Every religion is an attempt to understand the un-understandable, tame the un-tamable, and to control the uncontrollable. After a life of philosophical contemplation, it’s my conclusion that humanity’s three dimensions and five senses are hardly adequate to comprehend the infinite quantities of information (in the form of energy) that constitutes us and our surroundings. The previous statement tends to incite fear in its contemplator, because there is so little really known about our universe and an infinite amount that is as of yet un-known.
This is where religion serves its purpose; for better or worse, religion alleviates this fear by postulating a fundamental belief for its followers to rely on. The universe’s enigmatic abundance is less scary with a foothold: something to ground all other beliefs in. Religion takes the empty void and inserts something tangible for its believers to build upon. Even though different religions all start with different fundamentals, their motivations for doing so are all the same.
Either man practices a religion because of a societal reason (i.e. family, culture), or he is looking for some way to explain the intangible. It is my belief that if understanding of the un-understandable is within human reach, the answer was, is, and always will be inside of us. Each founder of the world’s religions found their path to righteousness, and as others became aware of this, they tried to make the founder’s path their own, and thus a religion is born. It is not my belief that one can become spiritually sound by methods that are not their own. In order to get the desired effect, religion has to be a deeply personal thing. This is not to say two people cannot both practice one religion, they can, as long as they both made the religion their own. Religion was not made by Ford in a factory, of essence it is and has to be completely customizable.
Considering that every man’s belief system is going to be fundamentally different from everyone else’s (even mommy dearest), we should learn to avoid fighting wars founded on problems that arose from conflicting belief systems. Even you and your mom will differ at some point, and do you really want to fight a war with Mom? In the assumption that no man would kill his mother over a difference in opinion, why kill a foreigner for his?
When all men cease to live by a religion that is not their own accept that we are all different (which we do?), then the world would harmonize into a state of perfect peace.
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I’ve always thought that the religion is aquired because of social pressure and it is kept by persons because of that pressure and the fear of the unknow (which includes fear of dead).
For example a person who is born will most likely learn and believe in the religion of its parents. As that person grows and starts to mature his intelligence he may realize certain things which aren’t coherent with his religious belief. But because the religion avoids having to think of certain things which causes fear -like death or being born or even sex and mating- by setting faith based truths, then one will avoid leaving that belief since it’s safer than admiting that certain things can’t be know or even admiting that some things doesn’t happen the way we would like to happen.
Just a thought I had after reading your post. Hope you don’t mind.
PS: Sorry for my English, it is not main Mother-lenguage.
Comment by Ismael C. — On 07-27-05 at 5:03 pm
word motherfucking up
(and i’m a freaking reverend!)
Comment by Rev. Poopnick Bibelot — On 07-27-05 at 7:41 pm
Thanks for your comment Ishmael C.. If you notice in the introduction to the thrid paragraph, it mentions the second big draw to religion, culture and family. I chose to focus on the soul-searching aspect of religion. Thank you, you’ve given me a very nice topic to write on.
Comment by Ubiquity — On 07-28-05 at 12:50 am
It all comes down to belief. What you believe to be true is true, as all things are subjective and there is not one but infinite realities, at least as many as there are intelligent minds to think about them.
I choose to believe in myself as a microcosm of the universe, and vice versa. Beyond that, it’s just a matter of imagination.
Comment by R. Meme Blast — On 07-28-05 at 1:10 pm
the comment in the piece was for world peace. It was about acceptance of others regardless of your differences. Imagine actually letting go of eery lst hypocracy of yours that you’ve held your whole lives: the ones you are aware of and the ones you arn’t. Actually treating people is as equals is hard, because you have friends, and god knows that friends are family.
What I mean to get at is religion. Religions bring people together, and they a part of lots of good community and networking. Although “love thy neighbor” is poiicy, it seems as if many christians and others take the phrase literally, and don’t see past their door mat. This is quite unfortunate, because the methaphor is much more beautiful, where neighbor includes even those cute little asians. If you practice Christianity or any other religion, please know what you are practicing.
Yes, we all do live in our own unique microcosm, but that does not remove society. unfortunatly humans seem to be socially dependant.
Acceptance, then we live together in harmony. Wham bam thankyou MAM.
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