The more I study religions the more I am convinced that man never worshipped anything but himself.
Author: MuckAbout
Retired Engineer and Scientist (electronic, optics, mechanical) lives in a pleasant retirement community in Central Florida. He is interested in almost everything and comments on most of it. A pragmatic libertarian at heart he welcomes comments on all that he writes.
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All prayer is directed to an image. That image is a construct of the mind. That image is not God, but just a projection of the one praying and can be nothing else. If God exists, He must come uninvited to a quiet mind, not a mind that chatters incessantly and is full of desires.
And not a mind hoping to use God as a tool to accomplish its own ends rather than seeking to find God and do what he wishes instead of what their personal desires of the moment dictates to them.
Religions in most cases are pointless rituals and mindless superstitions . It’s the only thing that seperates us from the animals !
Note the wealthy supports of most chruches synagogues mosks temples pick one . Very few address the true evil that men are capable of and work tirelessly to heal and prevent the damage incurred . Most just have there hand out like the Clinton Foundation and many other fund raising scams .
One should do good works and attempt to assist his or her fellow humans because it is a moral right thing to do and protect infancy and innocence with a will of iron . All this we should do because it brings us pleasure .
In closing remember also most religious organizations explain how your human condition sucks now but when you die it’s going to be great . As they cruise off in a limo to a palace made with wealth extracted from the masses of true believers . What do you bet most are democrats ??
I don’t understand.
If religion is the “only thing that seperates us from the animals” …. then why are (most) of their observances “pointless”?
Sarcasm my friends , I attempt to practice my faith with daily reflection and hope for the future as I witness unthinkable acts committed world wide daily often by people considered intelligent and acts committed by blind ignorance or lunacy .
Don’t worry though all the faiths promise a better life after death and the poorest accept this and the richest pray that the poorest will continue to believe as they cheat the masses at every angle to support their oppulant lifestyle !
Mortality consciousness is the separation (from other animals, so far as is known). That begets existential dread. Religion’s the opiate.
I never saw a wild thing sorry for itself. A small bird will drop frozen dead from a bough without ever having felt sorry for itself. ~ D. H. Lawrence
@BoatGuy: Religion is not the only thing that separates us from run of the mill animals. Just the simple fact that we contemplate our own end (ie: die) is yet another. There are dozens and more when you stop to think about it.
The massive step between ordinary animals, other living things and man (including all other living things on the planet) is oh so small, but Oh So Large as to boggle our minds.
I don’t know about you, but it humbles me to be a man, knowing what I know compared to everything else that lives on this Earth. We, by our intelligence are by default caretakers of everything else and if we fail that job, we have failed all and do not deserve to be the top of the food chain – much less what we really are..
Time will tell if we are worthy of the job. My own personal opinion?
We aren’t.
muck.
Given that Richard Burton was an actor and actors tend to be full of themselves, that quote is a good example of the Complementary Projection Bias in which people believe that more people share their beliefs and values than actually do.
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Burton’s might be mixed up.
http://www.quotationspage.com/quotes/Sir_Richard_Francis_Burton/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Francis_Burton
Atheism is the highest form of man worshipping yet put into practice.
Then anarchism must be the highest form of other leader\authority worshipping yet put into practice.
Theism & archism are one & the same coin.
Mystic parasites the one side, military parasites the other.
Fiat, central banks are projections…of\for\by fiat authoritarians, & their fractal fan bases.
— “Then anarchism must be the highest form of other leader\authority worshipping yet put into practice. ”
No. Atheism places man at the top of the self awareness pyramid (with provisions for potential aliens).
You super screwed up the inversion comparison. Atheism worships man over the environment man exists within (God/Verse/Truth). Environmentalism is the pretending to not worship man as being superior to the environment as opposed to just another variable. Materialism is the worship of man’s perception of material.
Atheism has been the most successful mass promotion of worshiping man instead of higher ideals and standards in (recorded) history.
I’ve noticed you’ve been getting sloppy as of late.
Ha. I’m usually pretty loose. That’s different from sloppy.
The a\an prefix is negation. Takes away, or neutralizes, what’s in front of it. No leaders. Secularnatural ones, nor supernatural ones, either. That’s all it means.
I don’t think I’ve written anything that would lead anyone to believe I worship man in general or particular men, either. As for self awareness, that’s fairly rare…while pyramids, & schemes, are all over the place – which is to say inside a lot of folks. I take people one by one, as I find them – as they show themselves to me. Respect is as close to worship as I get, which isn’t close at all. Respect is contingent. Worship is desperate. Or it’s hopium.
Either case, it’s the smaller space that swaddles & comforts a smaller stature or reduced circumstances. See the scene in “Temple Grandin” in which she builds a “hugging machine” to comfort cows – & a little later uses it on her autistic self to accomplish the same comforting. It’s like that. All kinds of self-medication in the world. (Not that Grandin hasn’t made much of her unique perspective.)
Life is like a poker game. Just people around a table (but without the strict deck of cards probabilities…life is a multi-multi-deck shoe). My comprehension’s pretty good. I’ve had a lot of practice. And a lot of necessity for paying attention.
I know the games people play, the various levels of analysis of transactions. I know the etiology of religious defense contracting-bargaining – or at least the most likely explanation. Pascal’s wager is on a par with buying lotto tickets. “You can’t win if you don’t play.” Fact is you can’t win if that’s the way you play.
You might have a silver exterior accident. But that’s not a win. If that happens, I’ll bet the dark lining outcome, because “winning” that way is a set up. Those are the odds. Easy come easy go. The foundation matters. How matters. Survivor guilt & “winner” guilt are flip sides of the same coin. The self-aware know this…& no – or damaged – awareness of others without awareness of self.
Inalienable\unalienable a priori property rights, in individual selves & their satellites, is the highest ideal, because it is true & because the common disregard of truth generally, this one particularly, makes for seeing it in the wild rare. Rarity & value tend to go together. Familiarity breeds lower values, if not contempt.
The posit that not worshiping gods creates an abhorred vacuum that’s gotta be filled with something else is projection – from a too low self-awareness threshold. Or an error in logic. This is a posit that assumes – needs to believe – we are all the same. But we’re not.
Liberté, égalité, fraternité is a fine bicycle, as soon as you get those two latter training wheels unbolted. Those latter two•saints end up being about licensing the first one. 007 licensing it. Training the wheels predominates. Wheeling into education, actual learning, not so common.
Equalitarian fraternization insists training is learning, but our smart family dog knows what a lot of people don’t: tricks are just rotes. (It’s also a sugar laden kid-degrading cereal.) All the mass stuff is Jonestown. All of it.
Amen. Leaves us with no excuses and only ourselves to blame.
muck