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Do People Need Religion?

Migrated topic.
I think it depends on the religion, and what you classify as religion. Certainly religion where direct experience of the divine is not allowed is not a religion for me. Like modern christianity, go to a catholic church a just watch how hollow all the rituals are and imagine if the sacrament was replaced with say dmt. Now that would be a religion I could get behind. A religion that helps you have direct experience of the divine and acknowledges that their way of interpreting it is but one possible way, is one that I would be part of.

I think people do need religion to some extent, everybody worships something. I think religion is hardwired into who we are. Whether you are a chemist and worship the soma, or a musician and worship the divine vibrations, I believe we all practice religion in some way and the degree that you are spiritual is the degree to which you recognize the divinity in the things you worship.

In a way the nexus could be seen as a religious community.

Just because orthodox religion has soured our views doesn't mean religion is necessarily a negative thing, people get too uptight when it comes to religion, I believe.
 
adam said:
Whether you are a chemist and worship the soma,
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:?:

say what? I don't worship anything.

I don't think this is a religious community at all. We all just happen to have an affinity for a psychedelic compound. To me, and many others, the idea of organized religion has been corrupted. It is a collective, some with heirarchies (like catholicism), many with megalomaniacs.

there is a difference between observing the divine on your own terms, and having someone preach it to you as if they're trying to sell you something. I can take a drive out here in this small town (suburb of a medium-sized city) for five minutes, and find about as many churches of different denominations, each claiming their way is the right way. There are yellow road signs that read "CHURCH", and people put flyers on your door and in your mail, just like companies trying to get your attention ("buy into what we're selling" )... oh yeah, and they're tax-exempt..

Ever notice how churches love to meddle and influence policy-makers with regards to social issues, but never seem to get actively involved with environmental concerns?
(except maybe have "prayer vigils" for rain, but that's passive, not active)
 
hug46 said:
Jesus, consciousness, god etc it"s all the same thing to me. I still don"t know whether i believe any of it.
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Hard not to believe in consciousness, isn't it? Even were you to choose not to, what instrument would make that choice?

JBArk the subconscious
 
I know you guys know this, and it's kicking the horse carcass, but religions probably started with good intentions, observing the "golden rule". Unfortunately, the reality is religions have also been the cause of a lot of turmoil and strife over the course of history, and have a nasty habit of polarizing people. Nowadays, some are more subtle about it than others. The dangerous thing about religion, is that people become very vulnerable, and impressionable, when they enter the "mystical" state and toss all critical-thinking and reasoning out the window.

Zen and the like, are philosophies. you can observe the spirituality on your own, you don't need to sit in front of a preacher, lecturing to you. When you observe spirituality on your own terms, eliminating the church, you also eliminate the political element (let's face it, you get a group of people together, and politics happens).
 
why not?

I don't worship anything either and neither do any of my friends. I find it perfectly believable
 
benzyme said:
then enlighten me...what do you think it is that I could possibly worship?
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Life. Music.

Don't you dance sometimes? Couldn't this be considered a ritual?

Dancing at least is my personal ritual of worshipping life.
 
then by that reasoning, getting in the car and putting on your seatbelt can be considered a ritual.
I don't worship my car.

I don't dance anymore, but I still observe music. I don't worship it. Worship implies a deeper level of spirituality (in the pure sense). I'm never really in that state of mind.
And in the context of religion, worship implies a deity or idol.
 
benzyme said:
then by that reasoning, getting in the car and putting on your seatbelt can be considered a ritual.
I don't worship my car.
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But your life, that's why you put a seatbelt on. ;)

But anyways...I think I get what you mean and I agree on that organized religion is BS.

But I stand behind the claim that there is other than organized religion, which somehow is pacticed by everybody in regards of believing in anything, that makes their life worth living.
 
benzyme said:
:?:

say what? I don't worship anything.
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Maybe not, but you would be the exception that makes the rule than imo. I think that most of us deify something whether we are aware of it or not. Whether it be money, sex, drugs, dogma, God, DMT, etc.

I totally agree with you on the state of organized religion today, all that I am saying is that worship and religion don't necessarily have be a bad thing. I can imagine a religion that puts power into the peoples hands, and guides people to have their own revelations, and helps them sort out the consequences of those revelations, much like the nexus does.:p

I believe we are all worshipping dmt or the experience it evokes to some extent in this community. Whether or not you believe it is supernatural gift from God, or is just some sort of biochemical tool that helps us access realms of our unconscious or whatever other beliefs people have about it doesn't really matter, because it is the experience that we revere. I argue that this can be seen as religious.

Anyways my original point is that this is all semantics and doesn't need to be offensive, that religion doesn't need to have this connotation of being challenging to those who have their own brand of spirituality. Religion is powerful, greedy people have recognized this and capitalized on this fact, effectively smearing the true nature of religion ( which I believe is abiding in the beatific state), and made it difficult for people to achieve this without facing alienation and mentioning religion without starting some sort of revulsion from people who identify themselves and non-religious or those that avoid labeling their beliefs.
 
benzyme said:
that's simple preservation of self, it's hardwired into our DNA.
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Not really. If so, there couldn't be suicides. Or would you say commiting suicide comes from somehow broken DNA?

Anyways...I'll just let adam talk from now on. He's able to say, what I want to. ;)
 
steppa said:
benzyme said:
that's simple preservation of self, it's hardwired into our DNA.
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Not really. If so, there couldn't be suicides. Or would you say commiting suicide comes from somehow broken DNA?
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that is certainly an exception. there are always exceptions, particularly with humans.
consciousness plays a large role in it.
Suicide is such a personal thing, and by your definition, it would seem the person committing it wouldn't be worshipping anything,
 
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