The Meaning of Life

[Felasco]

All religious people volunteer to be tethered to the priest class Religion is the school of easy answers to those that find it to hard to think for themselves and wish to indulge in subservience, and servility.

Blatantly false, revealing the triumph of emotion over reason. On this subject, you are what you're against.

[chaz wyman]

[quote="chaz wyman"All religious people volunteer to be tethered to the priest class Religion is the school of easy answers to those that find it to hard to think for themselves and wish to indulge in subservience, and servility.

Blatantly false, revealing the triumph of emotion over reason. On this subject, you are what you're against.[/quote]

Risible. Please support your ridiculous assertion. I think you are missing the point.

The symbolism of the poem is obvious enough, it claims falsely that a tethered falcon can thrive better than one that is free - well I beg to differ. You might as well write a poem about a dancing bear, or a caged lion. God it the cage and the the tether.

[Bernard]

'The Prophet' by Gibran is the best of all, and that's backed up by its popularity over nearly eight decades. Its deeply religious but has no religious affiliations. Its good to be religious.

You are wrong. It cannot be 'religious' and not be affiliated. I can be spiritual perhaps, engaged with human feeling and emotion. But being religious is by definition the notion of being bound or attached to a creed and dogma.

Why do you cofine the term religion to its most meaningless form? Religion means to link, to connect. The meaning you give it is up to you, but large hearts and minds use it in the sense of connecting in a subjective personal way to others and life as a whole.

You miss the Hafiz poem entirely. You don't get how imaginative and poetic his Arab mind is. We have one word for love whilst they have about 100! God is infinity in the poem, and Hafiz is tantalised by infinity and longs to experience it completely, which can only occur when self is no more, ie; when he dies. Its very simple stuff.

Here is Gibran on religion:



On Religion

Kahlil Gibran

Have I spoken this day of aught else?
Is not religion all deeds and all reflection,
And that which is neither deed nor reflection, but a wonder and a surprise ever springing in the soul, even while the hands hew the stone or tend the loom?
Who can separate his faith from his actions, or his belief from his occupations?
Who can spread his hours before him, saying, "This for God and this for myself; This for my soul, and this other for my body?"
All your hours are wings that beat through space from self to self.
He who wears his morality but as his best garment were better naked.
The wind and the sun will tear no holes in his skin.
And he who defines his conduct by ethics imprisons his song-bird in a cage.
The freest song comes not through bars and wires.
And he to whom worshipping is a window, to open but also to shut, has not yet visited the house of his soul whose windows are from dawn to dawn.


Your daily life is your temple and your religion.
Whenever you enter into it take with you your all.
Take the plough and the forge and the mallet and the lute,
The things you have fashioned in necessity or for delight.
For in revery you cannot rise above your achievements nor fall lower than your failures.
And take with you all men:
For in adoration you cannot fly higher than their hopes nor humble yourself lower than their despair.


And if you would know God be not therefore a solver of riddles.
Rather look about you and you shall see Him playing with your children.
And look into space; you shall see Him walking in the cloud, outstretching His arms in the lightning and descending in rain.
You shall see Him smiling in flowers, then rising and waving His hands in trees.

[chaz wyman]

'The Prophet' by Gibran is the best of all, and that's backed up by its popularity over nearly eight decades. Its deeply religious but has no religious affiliations. Its good to be religious.

You are wrong. It cannot be 'religious' and not be affiliated. I can be spiritual perhaps, engaged with human feeling and emotion. But being religious is by definition the notion of being bound or attached to a creed and dogma.

Why do you cofine the term religion to its most meaningless form? Religion means to link, to connect. The meaning you give it is up to you, but large hearts and minds use it in the sense of connecting in a subjective personal way to others and life as a whole.

You miss the Hafiz poem entirely. You don't get how imaginative and poetic his Arab mind is. We have one word for love whilst they have about 100! God is infinity in the poem, and Hafiz is tantalised by infinity and longs to experience it completely, which can only occur when self is no more, ie; when he dies. Its very simple stuff.

Here is Gibran on religion:



On Religion

Kahlil Gibran

Have I spoken this day of aught else?
Is not religion all deeds and all reflection,
And that which is neither deed nor reflection, but a wonder and a surprise ever springing in the soul, even while the hands hew the stone or tend the loom?
Who can separate his faith from his actions, or his belief from his occupations?
Who can spread his hours before him, saying, "This for God and this for myself; This for my soul, and this other for my body?"
All your hours are wings that beat through space from self to self.
He who wears his morality but as his best garment were better naked.
The wind and the sun will tear no holes in his skin.
And he who defines his conduct by ethics imprisons his song-bird in a cage.
The freest song comes not through bars and wires.
And he to whom worshipping is a window, to open but also to shut, has not yet visited the house of his soul whose windows are from dawn to dawn.


Your daily life is your temple and your religion.
Whenever you enter into it take with you your all.
Take the plough and the forge and the mallet and the lute,
The things you have fashioned in necessity or for delight.
For in revery you cannot rise above your achievements nor fall lower than your failures.
And take with you all men:
For in adoration you cannot fly higher than their hopes nor humble yourself lower than their despair.


And if you would know God be not therefore a solver of riddles.
Rather look about you and you shall see Him playing with your children.
And look into space; you shall see Him walking in the cloud, outstretching His arms in the lightning and descending in rain.
You shall see Him smiling in flowers, then rising and waving His hands in trees.

He can re-define any term he wants, but what then does he call the other sort of religion? What does he call it when a creed or ideology has you in its grip, where you do the bidding of the priest or imam? What he is talking about here is not religion, but the sort of awe and wonder for the world that we all have atheists and if they are lucky enough to have the freedom - the followers of religion too (as long as they do not follow closely).
For me it is a complete contradiction to call that engagement with the world; religion.

This is religion;" And he who defines his conduct by ethics imprisons his song-bird in a cage."

And in his poem he is drawing a contrast between his apprehension of life and religion. If you were half as free thinking as he was then today you would reject most of what you have previously posted about how we ought to live our lives.

Religion comes form the word 'to bind'. When you shrug that off you abuse language and pretend a quality for religion that does not exist, and give an excuse for its worse abuses of the human spirit. By asserting, even poetically that religion is "Is not religion all deeds and all reflection, ", you render it meaningless, because it is so obviously not that.

[Felasco]

Chaz, the thing is, you are so hopelessly reactive on this particular subject, that it undermines your own point of view. Your writing on this subject reads more like a holy war crusade than it does reason. On other subjects you are much more insightful, objective, and interesting.

Religion is huge. It's impossible to slap a "Good!" or "Bad!" label on the whole thing, because religion contains both the best and worst of what human beings are capable of, and everything in between.

As example....

There's plenty to complain about within the Catholic Church, that's a fact for sure. Don't get me started.

It's also a fact that Catholic Charities is the second largest provider of services to the needy in the U.S., topped only by the federal government.

Reason is objective and clear minded, taking all known facts in to account, weighing them dispassionately. Reason is not a bus we take to our favorite conclusion.

Reason is a lot like faith, in that it requires a form of surrender. The problem of course is that once we become locked in to particular conclusion, ego takes over, and surrender goes out the window.

What I'm attempting here is not converting you to religion, but converting you to your own chosen path, reason.

[chaz wyman]

Chaz, the thing is, you are so hopelessly reactive on this particular subject, that it undermines your own point of view. Your writing on this subject reads more like a holy war crusade than it does reason. On other subjects you are much more insightful, objective, and interesting.

Religion is huge. It's impossible to slap a "Good!" or "Bad!" label on the whole thing, because religion contains both the best and worst of what human beings are capable of, and everything in between.

As example....

There's plenty to complain about within the Catholic Church, that's a fact for sure. Don't get me started.

It's also a fact that Catholic Charities is the second largest provider of services to the needy in the U.S., topped only by the federal government.

Reason is objective and clear minded, taking all known facts in to account, weighing them dispassionately. Reason is not a bus we take to our favorite conclusion.

Reason is a lot like faith, in that it requires a form of surrender. The problem of course is that once we become locked in to particular conclusion, ego takes over, and surrender goes out the window.

What I'm attempting here is not converting you to religion, but converting you to your own chosen path, reason.

A personal attack in which you use to avoid the reasonable points I have made is a poor reflection on your engagement with the topic at hand.

It's you that needs a good dose of reason, my friend.
If you want me to take you seriously then you will need to address the points.

[Bernard]

Some terms have been abused beyond recognition over the last 100 years, especially the last 20, but do we try and resucitate or create new terms to suit? Or perhaps use an affiliated term instead?

[chaz wyman]

Some terms have been abused beyond recognition over the last 100 years, especially the last 20, but do we try and resucitate or create new terms to suit? Or perhaps use an affiliated term instead?

The trouble with using old bad words to describe new and nice things is that it often has the effect of making the old bad things seem more acceptable.
Religion was the way the powers enslaved the minds of its people by making them comply with the endemic authoritarian ideology. We had the enlightenment to put religion in its place, to free people's minds . It has taken 200 years for this to start showing real fruit.
Whilst the church arrogantly dismisses modern norms by denying female Bishops, others try to make religion cuddly.
Dogma is and evil, and that is what religion espouses.
If we forget that, we deny ourselves the truth about religion's worst abuses.

[Bernard]

How about all the damage love has caused then? Seriously.

[Felasco]

A personal attack in which you use to avoid the reasonable points I have made is a poor reflection on your engagement with the topic at hand.

Your points on this topic aren't reasonable (made of reason) Chaz, they're rather a repetitive one sided negative diatribe.

As example, if somebody were to characterize all your posts as diatribes, based on your posts on religion, that would be unreasonable too. To paint all your writing as one sided would be to grossly misrepresent the reality of Chaz.

That's what you're doing. You're cherry picking every negative thing you can think of, and trying to pass it off as an accurate representation of religion as a whole.

I'm sorry, but it's sloppy. And too much like the religion you so resist.

You'd be much more convincing if your bias wasn't so obvious.

[chaz wyman]

A personal attack in which you use to avoid the reasonable points I have made is a poor reflection on your engagement with the topic at hand.

Your points on this topic aren't reasonable (made of reason) Chaz, they're rather a repetitive one sided negative diatribe.

Again you resort to a poor personal attack without opening your mind and discussing my opinion.
Shame on you.


As example, if somebody were to characterize all your posts as diatribes, based on your posts on religion, that would be unreasonable too. To paint all your writing as one sided would be to grossly misrepresent the reality of Chaz.

My opinion on religion is garnered of a lifetime's experience and study. You do not have to agree with it, but you have failed to argue against it. Close you mind as you will, you are less well off for it.

That's what you're doing. You're cherry picking every negative thing you can think of, and trying to pass it off as an accurate representation of religion as a whole.
ANd you seem to be living in cloud cuckoo -land by accepting dogma that destroys the reasoning capacity of the human spirit. Religion is a system where an authority tells the public what to think. There is nothing worthy in religion.

I'm sorry, but it's sloppy. And too much like the religion you so resist.
SO you think religion is 'sloppy' - not much of an analysis is it?

You'd be much more convincing if your bias wasn't so obvious.

And you'd be a better interlocutor if you did not think you were unbiased. We've had this from you before, its rather childish.

[chaz wyman]

How about all the damage love has caused then? Seriously.

And all the love that religion has covered up, denied, destroyed and condemned - what about that?

[Felasco]

Again you resort to a poor personal attack without opening your mind and discussing my opinion.

I'm discussing your opinion that all religion is bad. That's blatantly false.

As example, some religious people feed the homeless. By your one sided lack of reasoning, feeding the homeless is now bad, a cynical attempt for world domination etc etc. Some people feed the homeless because they can feel the pain of being homeless, and that's all there is to it.

My opinion on religion is garnered of a lifetime's experience and study. You do not have to agree with it, but you have failed to argue against it.

You claim a life time of study, but you write as if you've never actually met any religious people.

There are literally millions of religious people all over the planet who are too busy serving their neighbors to evangelize you, or argue about ideology.

It's also true that there are millions of butt hole religionists. I completely agree, and don't dispute this at all.

Go in to almost any congregation, and you will find some people who are sincere about religion's idealistic goals, love and service etc, and you will find other people who are ideological hard heads seeking to control the minds of others etc.

Both kinds of people exist in religion, just as they do outside of religion.

Some atheists are sincere thoughtful people attempting to develop their understandings, while others are angry adamant blowhards repeating memorized slogans.

You are committing the sin of starting with a conclusion, and then gathering evidence to support your favorite conclusion. That's not reason, it's ideology. You are free to have a one sided ideology that ignores evidence, but you are not free to label that ideology reason.

ANd you seem to be living in cloud cuckoo -land by accepting dogma that destroys the reasoning capacity of the human spirit.

I'm attempting to cure you of a dogma that has destroyed your reasoning capacity, on this particular subject. On other subjects, you reason perfectly well.

[Bernard]

How about all the damage love has caused then? Seriously.

And all the love that religion has covered up, denied, destroyed and condemned - what about that?

And all the religion that lerrrvv has covered up, denied, destroyed and condemned - what about that?

[chaz wyman]

How about all the damage love has caused then? Seriously.

And all the love that religion has covered up, denied, destroyed and condemned - what about that?

And all the religion that lerrrvv has covered up, denied, destroyed and condemned - what about that?

I'm not sure what you are talking about here, but if there is such a thing - I'd rather love overcame religion rather than religion overcame love.