>>From: John Thornton "Most xtians claim to believe one thing but when
>>questioned thoroughly you will find they actually believe something else."
>As in...?
One example. People profess to believe that god is everywhere and attends to all things simultaneously. He can't flit back and forth solving one problem after another or he may miss something. Yet when questioned thoroughly most xtians will talk about god perhaps not knowing that they needed such and such a thing or that perhaps he was busy and didn't hear their prayer. When pointing the contradiction out most will correct their answer to something like "well god did hear my prayer and his answer was no" yet they really think of god in anthropomorphic terms even though they profess not to. There are of course other examples but I'm trying to learn to be more brief in my answers. Something anyone who actually reads my posts will probably admit is needed.
>>"We have no need of religion to have these good things and trying to find
>>them in religion still ties them to that rest of the baggage whatever
>>attempts anyone makes to prevent that. Zeus is no longer relevant in
>>peoples lives and it is time Jesus, Mohammed, Buddha, and Brahma joined him."
>> John Thornton
>If this was true, then people throughout history would not have kept
>various spirituality in their ethos. ___________________________________
>Tommy Kelly
The fact that people have kept spirituality in their ethos does not make it a requirement. Because of the way the mind seems to work a form of spirituality or mysticism will in all likelihood exist for some time to come but that does not necessitate religion. Why does Jesus have the moral authority to tell me to love my neighbor but the society I live in doesn't? People can easily assign the same moral authority to their social conditioning as they do to Jesus or Muhammad. I do think it is not at all clear that we can assign that moral authority only to ourselves or not. Maybe that is your real objection? I also hate the terms mysticism and spirituality but have not found better terms to describe the concepts involved. They sound magical and superstitious but they do not have to be. Perhaps we need a new vocabulary to describe these ideas?
John Thornton