Why I Cannot Accept Any Religion

originally posted by: randyvs
a reply to: TheJourney

Well, I was using 'afterlife' as a synonym for after we die...so just replace 'afterlife' with 'after we die,' and my point still stands.

I'm sorry but that's pretty convoluted.

Replacing one word with a 3-word near-synonym is convoluted?

All paths are different just as all people are different even though many of them are similar.

No two people will ever take the same path even though they all cross each other at different points, each path is it's own.

Nobody can tell anyone else what their path is, only each one of us can choose it for ourselves.

Even if we assume there is one truth as our destination, we must all take a different route in getting there.

I am not you and you are not me so why would our paths be identical??? They can't be. They might be similar but they will never be the same.

Go find your path.

a reply to: TheJourney

You said,

It seems like you are making an absolute claim about the afterlife.

I said, I didn't even say there was an afterlife?

You're the one playing semantics if anyone is.

originally posted by: randyvs
a reply to: TheJourney

You said,

It seems like you are making an absolute claim about the afterlife.

I said, I didn't even say there was an afterlife?

You're the one playing semantics if anyone is.

You made an absolute claim about what comes after death. You objected to my analysis, and continue to, on the basis of 'you never said anything about an afterlife.' Thus I said, 'replace afterlife with what happens after death.' And now you're still saying, 'I didn't say anything about the afterlife.'

To quote your second post, which shortens the message of your first post:

originally posted by: randyvs
a reply to: TheJourney

I said there is one truth for all after we die.

So, again, replace 'afterlife' with 'after we die,' which was your phrasing, and the point of my first post still stands. I will quote my original analysis, and replace the word, for you.

It seems like you are making an absolute claim about after we die...which I would ask how you can possibly know...and regardless, note that you, and not I, are making a claim about after we die.

a reply to: TheJourney

One truth could be anything from non existence to heaven and hell.

My only claim is to the one truth for all. We will all experience that truth
what ever it is. I don't see what's so difficult to grasp here.

Whether there is an after life or not the truth will be an absolute and not
a variable experience for all of us. To further what Klass said.

originally posted by: chr0naut
a reply to: TheJourney

The truth is, though, that if one religion IS absolutely right then it follows that the alternates are wrong.

Religious choice is an unclear and confusing thing but is that a valid reason for not attempting at all to determine that absolute truth?

But the ultimate truth or untruth of a particular path is not what the thread is about. Suppose one particular religion is absolutely true. So I can say I believe that religion, but remain totally unchanged as a person. My mentality doesn't change, my behavior doesn't change. There is no internal transformation whatsoever. The only difference is that I say I believe *insert label.* Another person identifies with *insert different label*. This person undergoes transformational processes. He becomes harmonized internally and externally. He finds peace and happiness in the most simple things in life. He feels a genuine connection with the people he comes across in life. Even if the first religion is true, it is the second person who has made far more spiritual progress.

a reply to: TheJourney

Great post!

I think religious people should understand that their religion is only a path to the truth not the end of the road…
A religion is only a vehicle to a higher reality some of us call God or simply the truth…
IT IS NOT THE END AND BE ALL OF TRUTH

That’s the problem with religion, other than Quakers, Sufis, Buddhists and many mystical oriented religions, most religions become ethnocentric and dogmatic and then the people of that religion get delusions as if they are better than others of different religions, or they say: we are the only way to God…a belief of an ignoramus.

Then they are potentially dangerous to others when this delusion of being better or closer to God than others becomes internalized then you can have an Isil, a Westboro Baptist church, or like the Medieval Catholic Church burning people at the stake or the burning of Witches, indeed ethnocentric religions can be dangerous to civilization as we are witnessing today in this monstrosity called Isil.

People should look at their religion as a nutrient or guide for them personally to find God or truth and don’t be too quick to proselytize, or criticize other faiths, even before you yourself benefit and develop the best of what your religion can offer.

This Op is very apropos and instructive!

originally posted by: randyvs
a reply to: TheJourney

One truth could be anything from non existence to heaven and hell.

My only claim is to the one truth for all. We will all experience that truth
what ever it is. I don't see what's so difficult to grasp here.

Whether there is an after life or not the truth will be an absolute and not
a variable experience for all of us. To further what Klass said.

You can claim and believe that. This thread isn't about a particular belief, though. So I don't care to debate it. I don't even necessarily disagree. I'm just confused as to why you're asserting it as if in contrast to my post, when I never made any claims about what happens after we die in the first place. So, sorry but I'm not gonna keep going back and forth on a random claim you made which isn't even the topic at hand...I have before I'm threads of mine, and it can turn into an incredibly drawn out and utterly meaningless exchange.

a reply to: TheJourney

You said you can't accept any religion while you do find
truth in all of them. And this is what I see as having to
do with what I'm saying.

You can identify with a religion, and you feel that your religion is true, thus your identification with it means you are on the right spiritual path. And others who identify with other religions, are following false or lesser ways, and thuse they are on the wrong spiritual path.

Modified Jain version of

The Elephant in the dark

Six men entering a dark room are asked to determine what is inside the room

One man who feels something like a leg says he holds a pillar; the one who feels a tail-like material says he has a rope; the one who feels a trunk says I have a tree branch; the one who feels an ear of some sort says I have a hand fan; the one who feels something like a belly says I have a wall; and the one who feels a tusk says I have a pipe.

An observer explains to them:
All of you have the truth. The reason every one of you is telling it differently is because each one of you touched the different part of an elephant. So each of you have a part of the truth…
But the greater truth is that you all have an elephant

This is a simplistic and well known and ancient parable with a version from many traditions of the way we view reality from different perspective within time and place...

The important thing is to take the medicine in your religion if you can find it, rather than the poison in it which is always readily available


If given time I can reconcile Christianity, Judaism and Islam

But who would listen

And after that I could take the other paths and throw then in and reconcile those with the others

But who would see
More important
HU WOULD UNDERSTAND

a reply to: TheJourney

and it can turn into an incredibly drawn out and utterly meaningless exchange.

Sadly so Journey. I was thinking the same thing as you state here. Hopefully you can rejoin your main theme and inspire more fruitful discussion.

Regarding truth I say there are watersheds to attain and minor points of progress.

Spiritual truth is normally a focused search to what we call “Salvation” or “enlightenment”

(Both things can be attained, imo, from any faith or even a non faith)

Beyond that may be what one can call real life

You talk about life after death.

How do you know you are even alive?

How do you know you really aren’t dead?

originally posted by: TheJourney

originally posted by: chr0naut
a reply to: TheJourney

The truth is, though, that if one religion IS absolutely right then it follows that the alternates are wrong.

Religious choice is an unclear and confusing thing but is that a valid reason for not attempting at all to determine that absolute truth?

But the ultimate truth or untruth of a particular path is not what the thread is about. Suppose one particular religion is absolutely true. So I can say I believe that religion, but remain totally unchanged as a person. My mentality doesn't change, my behavior doesn't change. There is no internal transformation whatsoever. The only difference is that I say I believe *insert label.* Another person identifies with *insert different label*. This person undergoes transformational processes. He becomes harmonized internally and externally. He finds peace and happiness in the most simple things in life. He feels a genuine connection with the people he comes across in life. Even if the first religion is true, it is the second person who has made far more spiritual progress.

If that second person is wrong, then the 'progress' is toward nowhere, pointless and unsubstantial. They would be just as lost as the one who has only applied a label.

Both conditions must be met. The path and the transformation must be true.

originally posted by: chr0naut

originally posted by: TheJourney

originally posted by: chr0naut
a reply to: TheJourney

The truth is, though, that if one religion IS absolutely right then it follows that the alternates are wrong.

Religious choice is an unclear and confusing thing but is that a valid reason for not attempting at all to determine that absolute truth?

But the ultimate truth or untruth of a particular path is not what the thread is about. Suppose one particular religion is absolutely true. So I can say I believe that religion, but remain totally unchanged as a person. My mentality doesn't change, my behavior doesn't change. There is no internal transformation whatsoever. The only difference is that I say I believe *insert label.* Another person identifies with *insert different label*. This person undergoes transformational processes. He becomes harmonized internally and externally. He finds peace and happiness in the most simple things in life. He feels a genuine connection with the people he comes across in life. Even if the first religion is true, it is the second person who has made far more spiritual progress.

If that second person is wrong, then the 'progress' is toward nowhere, pointless and unsubstantial. They would be just as lost as the one who has only applied a label.

Both conditions must be met. The path and the transformation must be true.

Becoming harmonized, peaceful, and joyful internally and externally would be pointless if you believed the wrong religion?

a reply to: TheJourney

All right, then I apologize for my meaningless drivel.
Carry on ye bastians of superior knowledge.

To probe deeper into this theme of inherent exclusiveness of religious thought. I think it really brings out and exemplifies how we create a sort of semantic model of our reality, and our relationship to all information comes to be defined in in relation to our self-created semantic model. And this is a major source of the problem outlined in the OP. You come to believe a particular religion. You read a statement by the figurehead of that religion, and you take it to be definitely true. Now, what is 'it' that you have come to accept as true? It is utterly dependent on your own understanding of the words used, and the subtle nuances which you ascribe to those words on the basis of your own understanding of the belief system which you have identified with. Thus the 'true' statement may not even have the meaning you think it does.

And then you read something from someone else, and it, according to your semantic model, differs from the previous statements which you have identified as true. Thus you reject outright the new information. Yet the new information too is defined in terms of your own semantic model, also in relation to specific utterances which were taken as axiomatic of your belief system. There may be harmony on a higher conceptual level, as blue and red are different at one level, yet the same at a higher conceptual level in that they are both colors,to give a simple analogy. And you are utterly closed off to this deeper truth which may have otherwise been revealed.

a reply to: TheJourney

You are correct to tie religion to language. In religious systems, what one believes in is not a god, a heaven, or a "truth", but the promises, the principles, and language related by someone other than themselves. This is where their true beliefs lie—on the language, whether it be contained in a book or related in a sermon.

originally posted by: randyvs
a reply to: TheJourney

All right, then I apologize for my meaningless drivel.
Carry on ye bastians of superior knowledge.

No brother or sister your ideas thoughts are as useful valuable and intelligent than anyone’s

It just may be that the OP is interested in something personal

originally posted by: randyvs
a reply to: TheJourney

All right, then I apologize for my meaningless drivel.
Carry on ye bastians of superior knowledge.

I'm not saying what you say is meaningless drivel. It's just that, I have found that inevitably when a dialogue begins with me having to clarify my position in terms of propositions introduced by other people that I feel no connection to in relation to my intention with an OP, and it goes back and forth multiple posts of simply trying to clarify meaning, it inevitably becomes drawn out with nothing substantial coming of it.