Since it seems we've both said what we wished to say, I'll wrap up and let you have the final word unless you or anyone else wants to continue this discussion.
However, I would ask you to consider something. It seems to me that folks who insist religion is this dark and sinister thing, responsible for the wars and woes of history, solely motivated by an inherent evil desire to repress, without any significant redeeming feature, have utterly failed to change the minds of religious folk at all. I would posit that your line of thinking has caused religion to become more reactionary and more fundamentalist. When religious people hear the rhetoric you use, they just dig their heels in deeper. And personally I don't blame them, I find your argument lacking because it boils down to attempting to shame anyone who doesn't agree that religion is what you claim it is.
Is it possible that by seeing what is good in others, listening to them on their own terms and considering that they are motivated by good impulses and just acting on them in the wrong way may cause them to become more tolerant? That is the essence of what I am advocating.
And, yes that means that I do see folks like you as being good and valuable members of society as well, even though, I think you are provoking the opposite of what you intend. Obviously you do sincerely believe you are standing up against intolerance. However, I believe humanity is good in all its intents and motivations. That puts me at odds with a lot of religious folks and a a lot of non-religious folks like you. So be it. I will stand up and defend the idea that all human beings are creatures motivated by an essential goodness even when they do what is judged to be evil. If religion was created by humans than religion must have had an essentially positive purpose. We don't have to join it, we simply have to acknowledge we can learn from it.
All I see is your repeating of previous statements as if that's proof for their validity. Exactly what I expected.
I repeated some things and I gave new counterexamples to show that you were oversimplifying. If you only saw repeats of previous statements you either didn't read carefully or aren't being honest again. I'll assume you didn't read carefully and are trying to repeat my comment back to me to be cute.
The fact is you are repeating a well-known and standard argument. I am not. I don't claim that makes me right, its just something you should be aware of if you want to be convincing. See the following comment for clarification.
What exactly are you talking about?
Fighting against human rights and civil liberties was always connected and affected by religious beliefs and religious followers. We can't free the slaves; it says so in the Bible was a oft heard set of words during abolition. No one said anything about getting rid of anything; but I damn sure won't pretend like Religion has had a net positive effect on our world and societies.
Wow... my point went right over your head there. Maybe I was too brief. I was saying that wars have been fought for human rights, for civil liberties, for free markets and for other secular ideals. You name it, any ideal that may be noble in some circumstances can also be used to motivate ignorant people to kill.
You made the point earlier that religion creates willing soldiers. So I was giving a counter-example that other ideals and philosophies have created willing soldiers as well. Just because something, such as free markets, can create willing soldiers, does not mean it is worth getting rid of. (PS - that means I never accused you of wanting to get rid of those things. In fact my point depended on you not wanting to eliminate those things.) I simply want you to consider that religion is one of many things that can be used to get people to kill.
Look at all the atrocities of the Vietnam War, the Cold war, Korea, etc; sorry, but religion does not explain war in modern times. My overall point is that pinning all war on religion is over-simplifying things.
Psychologically, it is common to blame yesterday's "devil" for today's evil. People don't want to face the fact that their consumerism is killing as many people as religion could kill in a generation. So they earn some ease in their conscience by blaming today's problems on the thing that held power over society centuries ago. This is another reason I try to take a balanced approach to the pros and cons of religion: scapegoating isn't psychologically healthy and needs to be resisted no matter who the scapegoat is.
The original cause of Christianity, Islam, etc was not to free the people from tyranny; just because people break off and start their own unrelated sects to the original founders doesn't make the original cause of religion less valid. Christianity was nothing but a replacement of the old religions; you had to believe or you faced consequences.. it was pushed by the Roman State.. it was pushed by the Catholic Church..
I agree that freeing people from tyranny was not the original aim of either religion, but then neither was motivating people to go to war. Your argument here cuts both ways. Every philosophy can degenerate into something negative, which I would agree that Christianity has done. My point is that every religion creates positive as well as negative consequences. Christianity was of course a replacement, and in many ways a synthesis of older religions and mythologies. If more Christians would remember that instead of believing it to be some god-given revelation, I think Christianity would be more valuable. However, all ancient societies had consequences for not being with the zeitgeist of the times. The Catholic church was and still is a disaster in many ways, but on the other hand it also gave us advances in architecture, music, law and art as well as preserving many ancient texts, so again, I wouldn't want to erase it from history. I value its beautiful creations of art too much for that.
It's just a sad truth that most won't accept. You will get great rewards for being faithful to your lord; you may be starving you may be hungry.. but your spirit shall always be filled. (Ignoring the wealth system of those times in favor of promises in the beyond is the best tool the wealthy ever created to keep your minds off the power of concentrated wealth and poverty.
This is a standard claim, often repeated without evidence. I'm really not trying to be rude on this point, but this is what every college sophomore says after taking one class on Marx. Again, look a little deeper and you will see that just as often the working poor are often more willing to stand up and say "give me liberty or give me death" once they believe there is more to life than this one, material manifestation. I have read a lot of Marx and I am convinced that although he was quite bright, he made a big error here. Marx did not intend to make people more compliant, but clearly that was the effect of Bolshevism. The idea of a spiritual existence beyond the physical is what motivated Ghandi, MLK, Tolstoy and others to say "fuck it - I don't care if they kill my body - I'm gonna resist damnit." Belief in life after death often just makes people less afraid of death. So again religion has both pros and cons and the accusation you make is only true half of the time.
When did every "shaman" become a preacher for the same things? It sounds like your lying to me. Or more likely your putting your perspective onto shamans.
Not quite sure when I said every Shaman is a preacher for the same things...(maybe you are honestly confused here, I really am willing to give you the benefit of the doubt.) I simply claimed that if you spend time looking at Shamanistic world views and read the research, as well as spending time with a shaman, you will find that their framework, by and large, is akin to the Taoist world view. I never said any particular Shaman would use Taoist terminology or preach something similar. I find it hard to fathom how anyone could have interpreted my statements in this way. I am not quite sure why this is such a sticking point.
Let me make one last attempt to clarify. I have spent time being initiated into a Lakota lodge. I have some indigenous ancestry, but so little that for all intents and purposes, I am a white boy. However, I have found, to my surprise, that the majority of elders who have mentored me have no feelings of blame, reproach or anger towards white folks, western religion, organized religion or other such things. College professors stir folks up to get outraged and hysterical over these things, not real shamans. I consider such an inclusive, forgiving viewpoint to be in line with the Taoist ideas of yin and yang.
I could write a lot more here about what Shamanism shares in common with organized religion but I will shut up in an attempt to be brief, unless someone asks me to say more. My basic point was that the dichotomy between the two largely comes from without.
Good luck on trying to understand what yin and yang actually represent.
Um...thanks...the longer one works on understanding that the more one realizes how far off we all are. Is this kind of like when a churchgoer ends a conversation with "I'll pray for you"? - When they say that I just say "Thanks, I'm glad to be taking some of your energy."
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