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A Nature of Religion
Posted: Sat Sep 13, 2025 3:52 am
by Eodnhoj7
Religion is a ideological process of forming reality to a given set of values by the act of faith as a driving force, where rituals are the means of transforming perspective.
Idolization is not limited to forming gods outside a specific religious practice, it also includes the idolization of religion as a god itself. Religion often contradicts itself in these respects. The vehicle was turned to a god to release people. And why do people idolize a religion? Often times it is because it provides a means of percieving existence that gives a specific experience that they become attached to. It is the the degree of attachment to an experience that determines if and why people view there religion as "the correct one".
The truth is people from all religions convert to other religions all the time and the apocalyptic "end of the world" scenario exists within all religions where the common thread of "the end times" is "people leaving the faith". "End of the world prophecies" are but a collective projection, mediated through individuals called "seers", "holy ones" and "prophets", as the subconscious fear of the finiteness of their specific viewpoint.
The nature of religion is inherent within man as people naturally resort to experiences, outside the usual, that they call "revelations", where the revelations, ie experiences that are but deviations of the average experiences of life, act as foundation points on how to interpret reality through a conceptual measuring process call "theology" which is merely a mask of the philosophical nature of man, that is often times condemned out of fear of personal accountability of one's attention capacity, thus necessitating that theology is merely a collective projection of how groups percieve existence in light of one or more people's deviations in experiential reality where the experiential deviation becomes a mirror of how people percieve things due to it inherently being "unknowable" in cause.
It is statistically inevitable people will have deviations in experiential reality, and statistically inevitable that some people will have greater deviations than others. "Revelations" are but a normal mathematical anomaly akin to a frequency within the individual and collective psyche that ebbs and flows, excites to a point and then recesses.
Religions emerge and dissolve, and while a religion exists it observes a "ship of theseus" nature.
The only true religion that underlies them all is the natural act of "paying attention" and the corresponding effects that stem from this everpresent cause.
Re: A Nature of Religion
Posted: Sat Sep 13, 2025 4:18 am
by Age
The word, 'religion', can just mean and/or just refer to,
The belief in and/or worship of one with, or perceived to have, power or powers or intellect above and/or beyond others. people can have belief in and/or worship any one, like, "jesus christ", "Mohammed", "albert einstein", or "neil's bohr". for example
A particular system of faith and worship. The "scientific community", for example, can be, and even is, a very religious system. Which can be, and is, a 'cult' in and of itself, with its own followers and believers. Just like 'capitalism', itself, is a 'cult' with its own unsuspecting followers and believers, as well.
A pursuit or interest followed with great devotion. 'Consumerism' and 'a love of more money' are examples of not yet fully aware people pursuing an interest with great devotion.
So, 'the nature of religion' is, more or less, just the following, worship, or pursuing of an interest, system, or of one with no real full insight of why one is doing it, other than just 'believing' that it is the better, or best, thing to be doing.
All types of people can end up 'religious', or within 'a religion', without even recognizing nor realizing that 'they', "themselves", have succumbed to the very nature of religion', itself. Take 'politics', for example, some people end up 'believing (in)' "one side" or "the other side", and then fight and even kill "each other" in some 'belief' that "their side" is 'better' than the "other side", or 'other perspective'.
In fact every one of you adult human beings, in the days when this is being written, are 'religious', and/or in some form of 'religion' or another.
Even though some of you will, obviously, not want to admit to this irrefutable Fact.
Re: A Nature of Religion
Posted: Sat Sep 13, 2025 7:04 am
by Fairy
“The only true religion that underlies them all is the natural act of "paying attention" and the corresponding effects that stem from this everpresent cause.”
——-
Perfect pure wisdom. Thanks for posting this pearl.
Re: A Nature of Religion
Posted: Tue Sep 30, 2025 2:31 am
by popeye1945
Eodnhoj7 wrote: ↑Sat Sep 13, 2025 3:52 am
Religion is a ideological process of forming reality to a given set of values by the act of faith as a driving force, where rituals are the means of transforming perspective.
Idolization is not limited to forming gods outside a specific religious practice, it also includes the idolization of religion as a god itself. Religion often contradicts itself in these respects. The vehicle was turned to a god to release people. And why do people idolize a religion? Often times it is because it provides a means of percieving existence that gives a specific experience that they become attached to. It is the the degree of attachment to an experience that determines if and why people view there religion as "the correct one".
The truth is people from all religions convert to other religions all the time and the apocalyptic "end of the world" scenario exists within all religions where the common thread of "the end times" is "people leaving the faith". "End of the world prophecies" are but a collective projection, mediated through individuals called "seers", "holy ones" and "prophets", as the subconscious fear of the finiteness of their specific viewpoint.
The nature of religion is inherent within man as people naturally resort to experiences, outside the usual, that they call "revelations", where the revelations, ie experiences that are but deviations of the average experiences of life, act as foundation points on how to interpret reality through a conceptual measuring process call "theology" which is merely a mask of the philosophical nature of man, that is often times condemned out of fear of personal accountability of one's attention capacity, thus necessitating that theology is merely a collective projection of how groups percieve existence in light of one or more people's deviations in experiential reality where the experiential deviation becomes a mirror of how people percieve things due to it inherently being "unknowable" in cause.
It is statistically inevitable people will have deviations in experiential reality, and statistically inevitable that some people will have greater deviations than others. "Revelations" are but a normal mathematical anomaly akin to a frequency within the individual and collective psyche that ebbs and flows, excites to a point and then recesses.
Religions emerge and dissolve, and while a religion exists it observes a "ship of theseus" nature.
The only true religion that underlies them all is the natural act of "paying attention" and the corresponding effects that stem from this ever-present cause.
EXCELLENT!!
Re: A Nature of Religion
Posted: Tue Sep 30, 2025 6:48 am
by Veritas Aequitas
Eodnhoj7 wrote: ↑Sat Sep 13, 2025 3:52 am
Religion is a ideological process of forming reality to a given set of values by the act of faith as a driving force, where rituals are the means of transforming perspective.
The only true religion that underlies them all is the natural act of "paying attention" and the corresponding effects that stem from this everpresent cause.
Your definition is not accurate nor realistic.
Religion is an evolved cultural system, rooted in humanity’s will-to-survive and shaped by innate predispositions (H1–H6), that transforms existential fear and suffering into symbolic worldviews, practices, and institutions promising meaning, order, and relief from mortality-related anxiety.
Re: A Nature of Religion
Posted: Tue Sep 30, 2025 4:50 pm
by Eodnhoj7
Veritas Aequitas wrote: ↑Tue Sep 30, 2025 6:48 am
Eodnhoj7 wrote: ↑Sat Sep 13, 2025 3:52 am
Religion is a ideological process of forming reality to a given set of values by the act of faith as a driving force, where rituals are the means of transforming perspective.
The only true religion that underlies them all is the natural act of "paying attention" and the corresponding effects that stem from this everpresent cause.
Your definition is not accurate nor realistic.
Religion is an evolved cultural system, rooted in humanity’s will-to-survive and shaped by innate predispositions (H1–H6), that transforms existential fear and suffering into symbolic worldviews, practices, and institutions promising meaning, order, and relief from mortality-related anxiety.
The will to live is a subset of experiential transformation of reality. The will to live exists because of the desire for experiential transformation. Life is an experience, and the will to live is a will to experience. Experience is determined by values and these values act as the means for reality being formed.
Religion does not negate existential anxiety. Some people rather have nothingness when they die...Hinduism and Buddhism offer this. For some religion is rooted in fear of punishment, others it is because they where indoctrinated in it. So on and so forth.
Fundamentally religion is an interpretation of existence.
Given religion is premised around experience, the underlying thread of all religions is the act of paying attention for by attention experience both comes forth and is changed.
Worship is just attention.
Re: A Nature of Religion
Posted: Wed Oct 01, 2025 12:55 am
by Veritas Aequitas
Eodnhoj7 wrote: ↑Tue Sep 30, 2025 4:50 pm
The will to live is a subset of experiential transformation of reality. The will to live exists because of the desire for experiential transformation. Life is an experience, and the will to live is a will to experience. Experience is determined by values and these values act as the means for reality being formed.
Religion does not negate existential anxiety. Some people rather have nothingness when they die...Hinduism and Buddhism offer this. For some religion is rooted in fear of punishment, others it is because they where indoctrinated in it. So on and so forth.
Fundamentally religion is an interpretation of existence.
Given religion is premised around experience, the underlying thread of all religions is the act of paying attention for by attention experience both comes forth and is changed.
Worship is just attention.
AI Wrote:
I see where the gap is between your position and your interlocutor’s. Let me map the disagreement clearly and then offer a way you might respond.
1. Your Core Claim
Religion must be grounded in existential fear of mortality (death anxiety) that arises uniquely from self-awareness (H6 → H7, Terror Management Theory).
Religion is therefore not just interpretation, but a cultural adaptation that provides relief from mortality-related anxiety.
Even Buddhism’s “nothingness” fits this, because it is precisely an attempt to escape the cycle of suffering caused by clinging to existence.
2. Your Interlocutor’s Position
They reduce the will-to-live to a subset of “the desire for experiential transformation.”
For them, religion is about experience and attention: worship is just focused attention; religion is interpretation of experience.
They dismiss the centrality of death anxiety by suggesting some religions offer nothingness, some fear punishment, some indoctrination—thus treating religion as plural motivations without a unifying evolutionary driver.
3. Why Their View Falls Short
No explanation of universality
“Paying attention” or “interpretation of experience” is far too broad. Philosophy, art, or even science could be defined the same way.
What makes religion distinct? Your model answers this: it is a cultural response to mortality awareness.
Misunderstanding Buddhism
Buddhism does not simply “offer nothingness.” It diagnoses clinging as the root of suffering, which arises from mortality awareness.
Nirvana is liberation from the cycle of death and rebirth—a direct confrontation with death anxiety, not its denial.
Failure to explain persistence
If religion were only about attention or experience, why has it endured across all human cultures?
Your model shows persistence is due to its adaptive role in managing existential fear—a universal human condition.
Category mistake
Equating “worship” with “attention” collapses religion into a psychological act, ignoring its symbolic, ritual, and institutional layers.
Religion is more than attention—it is the systematization of attention into a worldview that manages mortality-related suffering.
4. A Strong Response You Could Offer
You might frame it this way:
“The difficulty with defining religion as simply attention or interpretation of experience is that it misses what makes religion religion. Art, philosophy, or science are also interpretations of experience, but they are not religion. What sets religion apart is its adaptive function: it arose from the uniquely human awareness of mortality. Self-awareness generates existential anxiety (TMT), and religions—whether promising heaven, reincarnation, or nirvana—offer symbolic systems that relieve this anxiety. Even Buddhism’s doctrine of nothingness is not a denial of death anxiety but a path through it: release from the suffering produced by clinging to existence. Without the central role of mortality awareness, the definition of religion loses explanatory power and risks collapsing into vague categories like ‘experience’ or ‘attention.’”
Re: A Nature of Religion
Posted: Wed Oct 01, 2025 4:27 am
by Eodnhoj7
Veritas Aequitas wrote: ↑Wed Oct 01, 2025 12:55 am
Eodnhoj7 wrote: ↑Tue Sep 30, 2025 4:50 pm
The will to live is a subset of experiential transformation of reality. The will to live exists because of the desire for experiential transformation. Life is an experience, and the will to live is a will to experience. Experience is determined by values and these values act as the means for reality being formed.
Religion does not negate existential anxiety. Some people rather have nothingness when they die...Hinduism and Buddhism offer this. For some religion is rooted in fear of punishment, others it is because they where indoctrinated in it. So on and so forth.
Fundamentally religion is an interpretation of existence.
Given religion is premised around experience, the underlying thread of all religions is the act of paying attention for by attention experience both comes forth and is changed.
Worship is just attention.
AI Wrote:
I see where the gap is between your position and your interlocutor’s. Let me map the disagreement clearly and then offer a way you might respond.
1. Your Core Claim
Religion must be grounded in existential fear of mortality (death anxiety) that arises uniquely from self-awareness (H6 → H7, Terror Management Theory).
Religion is therefore not just interpretation, but a cultural adaptation that provides relief from mortality-related anxiety.
Even Buddhism’s “nothingness” fits this, because it is precisely an attempt to escape the cycle of suffering caused by clinging to existence.
2. Your Interlocutor’s Position
They reduce the will-to-live to a subset of “the desire for experiential transformation.”
For them, religion is about experience and attention: worship is just focused attention; religion is interpretation of experience.
They dismiss the centrality of death anxiety by suggesting some religions offer nothingness, some fear punishment, some indoctrination—thus treating religion as plural motivations without a unifying evolutionary driver.
3. Why Their View Falls Short
No explanation of universality
“Paying attention” or “interpretation of experience” is far too broad. Philosophy, art, or even science could be defined the same way.
What makes religion distinct? Your model answers this: it is a cultural response to mortality awareness.
Misunderstanding Buddhism
Buddhism does not simply “offer nothingness.” It diagnoses clinging as the root of suffering, which arises from mortality awareness.
Nirvana is liberation from the cycle of death and rebirth—a direct confrontation with death anxiety, not its denial.
Failure to explain persistence
If religion were only about attention or experience, why has it endured across all human cultures?
Your model shows persistence is due to its adaptive role in managing existential fear—a universal human condition.
Category mistake
Equating “worship” with “attention” collapses religion into a psychological act, ignoring its symbolic, ritual, and institutional layers.
Religion is more than attention—it is the systematization of attention into a worldview that manages mortality-related suffering.
4. A Strong Response You Could Offer
You might frame it this way:
“The difficulty with defining religion as simply attention or interpretation of experience is that it misses what makes religion religion. Art, philosophy, or science are also interpretations of experience, but they are not religion. What sets religion apart is its adaptive function: it arose from the uniquely human awareness of mortality. Self-awareness generates existential anxiety (TMT), and religions—whether promising heaven, reincarnation, or nirvana—offer symbolic systems that relieve this anxiety. Even Buddhism’s doctrine of nothingness is not a denial of death anxiety but a path through it: release from the suffering produced by clinging to existence. Without the central role of mortality awareness, the definition of religion loses explanatory power and risks collapsing into vague categories like ‘experience’ or ‘attention.’”
Worship is the act of attention. Worship is how people interact with reality.
Re: A Nature of Religion
Posted: Wed Oct 01, 2025 5:06 am
by Veritas Aequitas
Eodnhoj7 wrote: ↑Wed Oct 01, 2025 4:27 am
Veritas Aequitas wrote: ↑Wed Oct 01, 2025 12:55 am
Eodnhoj7 wrote: ↑Tue Sep 30, 2025 4:50 pm
The will to live is a subset of experiential transformation of reality. The will to live exists because of the desire for experiential transformation. Life is an experience, and the will to live is a will to experience. Experience is determined by values and these values act as the means for reality being formed.
Religion does not negate existential anxiety. Some people rather have nothingness when they die...Hinduism and Buddhism offer this. For some religion is rooted in fear of punishment, others it is because they where indoctrinated in it. So on and so forth.
Fundamentally religion is an interpretation of existence.
Given religion is premised around experience, the underlying thread of all religions is the act of paying attention for by attention experience both comes forth and is changed.
Worship is just attention.
AI Wrote:
I see where the gap is between your position and your interlocutor’s. Let me map the disagreement clearly and then offer a way you might respond.
1. Your Core Claim
Religion must be grounded in existential fear of mortality (death anxiety) that arises uniquely from self-awareness (H6 → H7, Terror Management Theory).
Religion is therefore not just interpretation, but a cultural adaptation that provides relief from mortality-related anxiety.
Even Buddhism’s “nothingness” fits this, because it is precisely an attempt to escape the cycle of suffering caused by clinging to existence.
2. Your Interlocutor’s Position
They reduce the will-to-live to a subset of “the desire for experiential transformation.”
For them, religion is about experience and attention: worship is just focused attention; religion is interpretation of experience.
They dismiss the centrality of death anxiety by suggesting some religions offer nothingness, some fear punishment, some indoctrination—thus treating religion as plural motivations without a unifying evolutionary driver.
3. Why Their View Falls Short
No explanation of universality
“Paying attention” or “interpretation of experience” is far too broad. Philosophy, art, or even science could be defined the same way.
What makes religion distinct? Your model answers this: it is a cultural response to mortality awareness.
Misunderstanding Buddhism
Buddhism does not simply “offer nothingness.” It diagnoses clinging as the root of suffering, which arises from mortality awareness.
Nirvana is liberation from the cycle of death and rebirth—a direct confrontation with death anxiety, not its denial.
Failure to explain persistence
If religion were only about attention or experience, why has it endured across all human cultures?
Your model shows persistence is due to its adaptive role in managing existential fear—a universal human condition.
Category mistake
Equating “worship” with “attention” collapses religion into a psychological act, ignoring its symbolic, ritual, and institutional layers.
Religion is more than attention—it is the systematization of attention into a worldview that manages mortality-related suffering.
4. A Strong Response You Could Offer
You might frame it this way:
“The difficulty with defining religion as simply attention or interpretation of experience is that it misses what makes religion religion. Art, philosophy, or science are also interpretations of experience, but they are not religion. What sets religion apart is its adaptive function: it arose from the uniquely human awareness of mortality. Self-awareness generates existential anxiety (TMT), and religions—whether promising heaven, reincarnation, or nirvana—offer symbolic systems that relieve this anxiety. Even Buddhism’s doctrine of nothingness is not a denial of death anxiety but a path through it: release from the suffering produced by clinging to existence. Without the central role of mortality awareness, the definition of religion loses explanatory power and risks collapsing into vague categories like ‘experience’ or ‘attention.’”
Worship is the act of attention. Worship is how people interact with reality.
What are you talking about?
In a religion, i.e. theistic, a believer worship [act of attention] God.
But God is never real in reality, how can that be interacting with reality.
Worshipping God as real is being delusional.
Re: A Nature of Religion
Posted: Wed Oct 01, 2025 5:16 am
by Eodnhoj7
Veritas Aequitas wrote: ↑Wed Oct 01, 2025 5:06 am
Eodnhoj7 wrote: ↑Wed Oct 01, 2025 4:27 am
Veritas Aequitas wrote: ↑Wed Oct 01, 2025 12:55 am
AI Wrote:
I see where the gap is between your position and your interlocutor’s. Let me map the disagreement clearly and then offer a way you might respond.
1. Your Core Claim
Religion must be grounded in existential fear of mortality (death anxiety) that arises uniquely from self-awareness (H6 → H7, Terror Management Theory).
Religion is therefore not just interpretation, but a cultural adaptation that provides relief from mortality-related anxiety.
Even Buddhism’s “nothingness” fits this, because it is precisely an attempt to escape the cycle of suffering caused by clinging to existence.
2. Your Interlocutor’s Position
They reduce the will-to-live to a subset of “the desire for experiential transformation.”
For them, religion is about experience and attention: worship is just focused attention; religion is interpretation of experience.
They dismiss the centrality of death anxiety by suggesting some religions offer nothingness, some fear punishment, some indoctrination—thus treating religion as plural motivations without a unifying evolutionary driver.
3. Why Their View Falls Short
No explanation of universality
“Paying attention” or “interpretation of experience” is far too broad. Philosophy, art, or even science could be defined the same way.
What makes religion distinct? Your model answers this: it is a cultural response to mortality awareness.
Misunderstanding Buddhism
Buddhism does not simply “offer nothingness.” It diagnoses clinging as the root of suffering, which arises from mortality awareness.
Nirvana is liberation from the cycle of death and rebirth—a direct confrontation with death anxiety, not its denial.
Failure to explain persistence
If religion were only about attention or experience, why has it endured across all human cultures?
Your model shows persistence is due to its adaptive role in managing existential fear—a universal human condition.
Category mistake
Equating “worship” with “attention” collapses religion into a psychological act, ignoring its symbolic, ritual, and institutional layers.
Religion is more than attention—it is the systematization of attention into a worldview that manages mortality-related suffering.
4. A Strong Response You Could Offer
You might frame it this way:
“The difficulty with defining religion as simply attention or interpretation of experience is that it misses what makes religion religion. Art, philosophy, or science are also interpretations of experience, but they are not religion. What sets religion apart is its adaptive function: it arose from the uniquely human awareness of mortality. Self-awareness generates existential anxiety (TMT), and religions—whether promising heaven, reincarnation, or nirvana—offer symbolic systems that relieve this anxiety. Even Buddhism’s doctrine of nothingness is not a denial of death anxiety but a path through it: release from the suffering produced by clinging to existence. Without the central role of mortality awareness, the definition of religion loses explanatory power and risks collapsing into vague categories like ‘experience’ or ‘attention.’”
Worship is the act of attention. Worship is how people interact with reality.
What are you talking about?
In a religion, i.e. theistic, a believer worship [act of attention] God.
But God is never real in reality, how can that be interacting with reality.
Worshipping God as real is being delusional.
God is an experience which guides a person, there are many gods. God is another word for experience.
People who worship do so for an experience, this experience they call God or god.
Re: A Nature of Religion
Posted: Wed Oct 01, 2025 5:23 am
by Veritas Aequitas
Eodnhoj7 wrote: ↑Wed Oct 01, 2025 5:16 am
Veritas Aequitas wrote: ↑Wed Oct 01, 2025 5:06 am
Eodnhoj7 wrote: ↑Wed Oct 01, 2025 4:27 am
Worship is the act of attention. Worship is how people interact with reality.
What are you talking about?
In a religion, i.e. theistic, a believer worship [act of attention] God.
But God is never real in reality, how can that be interacting with reality.
Worshipping God as real is being delusional.
God is an experience which guides a person, there are many gods. God is another word for experience.
People who worship do so for an experience, this experience they call God or god.
Playing with words??
God is not an experience per se.
Humans has experience of something [physical or mental] via its cognitive system.
God is an idea, i.e. a thought that do not have any empirical equivalent, thus never real empirically [scientific].
The experience of a God is no different from experiencing a hallucination as in the case of Temporal Epilepsy which is a mental illness.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qIiIsDIkDtg
The Temporal Lobes and God - Part 1
Re: A Nature of Religion
Posted: Wed Oct 01, 2025 5:48 am
by Eodnhoj7
Veritas Aequitas wrote: ↑Wed Oct 01, 2025 5:23 am
Eodnhoj7 wrote: ↑Wed Oct 01, 2025 5:16 am
Veritas Aequitas wrote: ↑Wed Oct 01, 2025 5:06 am
What are you talking about?
In a religion, i.e. theistic, a believer worship [act of attention] God.
But God is never real in reality, how can that be interacting with reality.
Worshipping God as real is being delusional.
God is an experience which guides a person, there are many gods. God is another word for experience.
People who worship do so for an experience, this experience they call God or god.
Playing with words??
God is not an experience per se.
Humans has experience of something [physical or mental] via its cognitive system.
God is an idea, i.e. a thought that do not have any empirical equivalent, thus never real empirically [scientific].
The experience of a God is no different from experiencing a hallucination as in the case of Temporal Epilepsy which is a mental illness.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qIiIsDIkDtg
The Temporal Lobes and God - Part 1
Playing with words? No. The people who experience God have an experience, this experience is God.
Experience determines how people interact with reality.
There is mental, emotional and physical experience.
These experiences determine how people are and what they do and do not further experience.
Re: A Nature of Religion
Posted: Thu Oct 02, 2025 8:40 am
by Veritas Aequitas
Eodnhoj7 wrote: ↑Wed Oct 01, 2025 5:48 am
Veritas Aequitas wrote: ↑Wed Oct 01, 2025 5:23 am
Eodnhoj7 wrote: ↑Wed Oct 01, 2025 5:16 am
God is an experience which guides a person, there are many gods. God is another word for experience.
People who worship do so for an experience, this experience they call God or god.
Playing with words??
God is not an experience per se.
Humans has experience of something [physical or mental] via its cognitive system.
God is an idea, i.e. a thought that do not have any empirical equivalent, thus never real empirically [scientific].
The experience of a God is no different from experiencing a hallucination as in the case of Temporal Epilepsy which is a mental illness.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qIiIsDIkDtg
The Temporal Lobes and God - Part 1
Playing with words? No. The people who experience God have an experience, this experience is God.
Experience determines how people interact with reality.
There is mental, emotional and physical experience.
These experiences determine how people are and what they do and do not further experience.
I provided views, AI summarized:
AI Wrote:
Yes — it’s a category mistake and slides into a fallacy of equivocation: confusing the experience of something with the thing itself.
Here’s a direct, debate-style reply you could use:
“Experiencing something doesn’t make that thing real. A hallucination is an experience too, but we don’t say the hallucination is the object itself. Saying ‘the experience of God is God’ confuses the mental event with external reality—it’s a category mistake.”
Re: A Nature of Religion
Posted: Thu Oct 02, 2025 6:49 pm
by Eodnhoj7
Veritas Aequitas wrote: ↑Thu Oct 02, 2025 8:40 am
Eodnhoj7 wrote: ↑Wed Oct 01, 2025 5:48 am
Veritas Aequitas wrote: ↑Wed Oct 01, 2025 5:23 am
Playing with words??
God is not an experience per se.
Humans has experience of something [physical or mental] via its cognitive system.
God is an idea, i.e. a thought that do not have any empirical equivalent, thus never real empirically [scientific].
The experience of a God is no different from experiencing a hallucination as in the case of Temporal Epilepsy which is a mental illness.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qIiIsDIkDtg
The Temporal Lobes and God - Part 1
Playing with words? No. The people who experience God have an experience, this experience is God.
Experience determines how people interact with reality.
There is mental, emotional and physical experience.
These experiences determine how people are and what they do and do not further experience.
I provided views, AI summarized:
AI Wrote:
Yes — it’s a category mistake and slides into a fallacy of equivocation: confusing the experience of something with the thing itself.
Here’s a direct, debate-style reply you could use:
“Experiencing something doesn’t make that thing real. A hallucination is an experience too, but we don’t say the hallucination is the object itself. Saying ‘the experience of God is God’ confuses the mental event with external reality—it’s a category mistake.”
Lol...you cannot even use the AI correctly without messing up.
No, I never said the "experience of God" is a thing in itself, nor did I say "experience of a thing"...I said an "The people who experience God have an experience, this experience is God"....In other terms "experience of God is experience as God".
You and the AI are creating a fallacy of equivocation and by what logic is this fallacy existent? It purely seems to be assertion, without rationality behind it. So you misread, missquote and didn't give a rational explanation for why the misquotes/misreads are a fallacy.
Really?
So...to be direct.
We only know reality by experience, and what is defined as "real" or "not real" is purely a context based upon assertions of what is asserted real. Reality is a context of interpretation, it is a conceptual construct by which we make distinctions.
Experience is the only reality we know, to speak outside of experience is to effectively put something within the definitions of experience thus leaving us once again only with experience.
"God" is a word which effectively is defined as "an experience which guides" given we only know experience and cannot speak outside of it without making such reality a further experience. Given all human being are guided, or rather determined, by experience then "God" or "gods" exist...just not in the usual conceptualization.
Re: A Nature of Religion
Posted: Sun Oct 26, 2025 3:27 am
by Jori
In a broad sense, I see religion as an individual or group devotion to what is considered sacred or supernatural, manifested in one’s life through simple or elaborate faith-based beliefs, rituals, and norms of behavior.
Religion has physical, metaphysical, ethical, psychological, and social functions. The physical functions of explanation and control of nature has largely been taken over by science and technology. If religion declines, what will take over the other functions?
