"All the World's a Stage We Pass Through" R. Ayana

Thursday 16 July 2015

Why Religion Is Dangerous, Outdated, and Spiritually Toxic


Why Religion Is Dangerous, Outdated, and Spiritually Toxic

 





One of the main things we need to do as a society is let go of paradigms of thought that are false and are no longer serving us.  There is nothing more toxic to the soul or dangerous to your development as a person to believe in something that is wrong, misguided, and outdated.

What I am talking about here specifically is religion.  Now let me be clear. I’m not talking about religious texts necessarily, or God, or Christ, or Buddha, or any of the wisdom contained within various religions.  I am talking about religious fundamentalism as it currently exists.

There is a difference between having a personal relationship with God and being buried head-deep in religious dogma and spiritual ignorance.  There is a difference between reading the Bible and other ancient texts as sources of spiritual wisdom and accepting everything in them as being literally true at face value.  Most importantly, there is a different between being religious and being spiritual.

I grew up in a church, went to a Christian private school, was home-schooled under a Christian curriculum, and used to have church services at my house. Since then, I have been heavily involved in theological thought, apologetics, and philosophy.  I say this because I am well-versed in Christianity, and in all honesty, I think that most of the New Atheists and anti-religious people despise religion because they are ignorant, angry at God for something, or have a misunderstanding of the religions they hate.  But in this article, we are going to explore things from a non-emotional and purely objective point of view.

Here are 3 reasons why all forms of religious fundamentalism is dangerous, out-dated, & spiritually toxic.

*Note: There is a difference between holding religious faith in something and being a hardcore religious fundamentalist or extremist.


1)  Religion is man-made




When people think of religion, one of the first things that pops into their minds is Catholicism.  Mary is worshiped and prayed to, sins are confessed to priests, incense is burned, and the “Vatican” is this economic powerhouse adorned with gold and jewels.  None of these things are even mentioned as necessary in the Bible or by Jesus, and seeing as they are totally man-made, they cannot be seen as necessary.

Like really. Who is the pope, why is he on a thrown, why does he wear jewels, and why does he have so much money? How is this Biblical or even fair?

There is nothing wrong with sourcing wisdom from ancient books, but keep in mind that they are JUST ancient books.  If you grew up somewhere in nature and were completely unexposed to culture, you could very well develop a relationship with God through his revelation in nature and in your conscience.  But you would never leave that forest as a Muslim, a Mormon, or a Hindu.  There is nothing about meditating in a forest for 40 years in search of a relationship with the Creator that will teach you the propositions “God hates f*gs” or “Allah wants the world to become Muslim”.

You aren’t born as a religious fundamentalist, and there is no natural experience that would cause you to become a religious fundamentalist.  You are born as a soul in a body capable of connection with God.  If religion acted as a catalyst for you, that’s great.  If it works for you and adds value to your life (as it even has to mine to a degree), the that is also great.  But it’s learned, man-made, and not necessary.  In fact, most people it actually acts as a hindrance and a virus, as we will explore in the next point.


2)  Religion prevents spiritual growth, critical thought, and honest reflection



Religion puts your consciousness into a box and keeps it there.  Anything new you learn of experience MUST be understood in terms of your religious framework.  For example, let’s say you have a crazy experience while you are sleeping and have an extremely vivid dream of a dark shadow who won’t stop looking at you through the mirror.  A religious person may say “That was a demon”, and then close the book on the case.

A more spiritual person may say, was that a shadow aspect of me? Was that a reflection of my subconscious mind? Was it an alien, an astral entity, or some other form of spirit trying to show something to me symbolically by appearing to me as my reflection?  Spirituality encourages you to look, reflect, and analyze from a non-biased place in order to discover the answers for yourself.  Religion spoon-feeds you the supposed answers and then discourages further introspection (unless that introspection fits within the framework of that religion).

It also discourages search for meaning and mystery in life because it already assumes it has the answers.  People read the texts literally and then stop searching.  What happens when we die?  “Well you either go to heaven or hell depending on whether or not you are saved”, and that is the end of the discussion.  We don’t even know what gravity is, what 90% of the matter in the universe is, how consciousness works, or how life started on this planet, but we know for certain cut and dry what happens to the human soul when it leaves the body because there are a handful of verses about it in some religious texts?

The creation of the universe is mysterious and awe-inspiring.  How space and time came into being, the insane amount of energy that would have had to be present at the first moment in time, the speed of the expansion of the universe, the presence of finely tuned initial conditions and universal constants that were plugged in at the moment of creation to allow for things like matter to even exist, the development of elements, stars, planets, galaxies, and life.  Religious people will think to themselves “God did it” and then hang-up any further intellectual pursuits because they have a nice tidy mental picture of how everything happened.

And if someone wants to deviate outside of fundamentalism and try to combine the worlds of spirituality and science, they get called “lost” because they believe there is more to the creation process than the 6 day Adam and Eve story.

It can sometimes prevent honest philosophical, scientific, and spiritual inquiry into the raw nature of reality.  If you are having a hard time believing that there is other life in the universe, that the universe is as old as modern science tells us, or that evolution is impossible because of what was/wasn’t written down on animal skins 3000 years ago, I think it’s time to step outside of your fundamentalism a little bit.


3)  Religion creates separation




If all religions preach peace, why aren’t all religions peaceful?  If the core of most religions is love, community, and God, why is there so much hatred, war, and violence?  Here is why. When you learn something unnatural to your natural state of being and use it to define yourself, you begin to identify your sense of self with your belief system.  “I am a Mormon”, really means that my sense of individuality is now consumed by what it means to be “Mormon”.

When “I am” identifies with an ideology, it sees other people through the veil of that ideology.  “I am a Mormon, and that person is a Christian. They are lost and in need of direction because they believe false things”.  Instead of feeling the aliveness of another person and connecting with them at a heart-to-heart level, you begin to judge them based on what man-made ideology they identify with which results in competition and resentment. “That’s my neighbour John, yeah he’s secular and needs to be saved.  Allah does not love non-believers so I don’t know if I should either.” And then we carry on interacting with them with a background sense of pity or non-acceptance.

There is a hesitation within religious people to fully accept and embrace ‘sinners’ and non-believers in their faith.  “Oh wow, he was a really nice guy” becomes replaced with “Oh wow, he was really nice for an atheist”, or “I didn’t know Hindus were so open-minded”.  Instead of seeing and experiencing your sense of unity with other people, it becomes a game of “this persons belongs to that religion, and they believe some weird sh*t that’s different from what I believe.”


We need to focus on having religious experiences, not religious beliefs




Religion without spirituality is the real issue here.  I’m not saying you can’t be both spiritual and religious, but being religious is not sufficient if you want to live a spiritually fulfilling life and connect with God.  Everyone is entitled to believe what they want to believe, but there comes a point at which we need to compromise our beliefs is the contradict our experience of reality.

I feel that any people who are religious who may be offended of this article would be totally liberated if they did a thought experiment where they allowed themselves to become silent and detach from their belief systems.  What if you allowed yourself for just a few minutes to experience a state of consciousness that isn’t premised on religious beliefs?

What if in that silence, you found a bigger and better version of God that you didn’t know existed?  What if you stopped trying to “learn” and started trying to experience?  What if we stopped living as humans who believe in God and started living as humans connected to God in a real untainted way?  What if your rigid belief systems are preventing you from stepping into the fullness of an experience of God because you are convinced of a view of God that is too narrow?

We shouldn’t believing in something because it makes us feel comfortable. We should believe it if it is true and stands its ground against evidence and logical defeaters.  As someone who is heavily involved in Christian apologetics and theological philosophy, I am not saying that we need to get rid of God and move into atheism.  We need to get rid of religious fundamentalism and move into a personal experience of our true nature which is already connected to God.


About the author: My name is Steven Bancarz, and I am the creator of ‘Spirit Science and Metaphysics’. I am working on a new social platform is being built called ‘The Conscious Forum‘ to provide the best place online for open-minded people to discuss, engage, and connect with one another in a way never offered before.  To learn more, click the photo below:







For more about the regional lies known as religions see http://nexusilluminati.blogspot.com/search/label/religion
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9 comments:

  1. Do we ever notice that the theological philosophy of religious thought is based entirely on what we don't know? Religion is simply a contrived notion of what it means to institute a language and or code that puts its followers plainly under the rules of law created for the benefit of a self-righteously proclaimed and ordained elite. Yes, religion is set up to insure us all that the idea of a hierarchy of fallible men remains in place just as GOD ordained it to be. LOL.... Greatest BS story ever told is the bible!

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  2. Yes, the idea religious philosophy indicates a willingness to study all that we don't know, and all that we don't know is the premise of what forms all of modern societies concepts related to who rules whilst all that we do know through science is relegated to the annals of some dark chambers of deranged minds!

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  3. The gem within the text:
    "We need to focus on having religious experiences, not religious beliefs"

    As I read I was focussed on the proposition put forward "spiritual/good, religion/bad". I decided to visit a dictionary (my comments in capitals):
    spiritual ~ adj uncommon

    1. concerned with sacred matters or religion or the church
    religious texts; a member of a religious order; lords temporal and spiritual; spiritual leaders; spiritual songs
    HERE RELIGION=SPIRITUAL

    2. concerned with or affecting the spirit or soul
    SPIRITUAL=PERTAINING TO THE SOUL. QUITE A LOT OF RELIGION REFERENCES THIS.

    3. lacking material body or form or substance
    ENERGY IN ALL ITS FORMS SATISFIES THIS DEFINITION

    Conclusion, religion/spiritual is a false dichotomy. Yes, religion is full of dogma but its orbit does include the spiritual.

    Instead I would call for the scientific method in all things, including consciousness, which is a more precise word than spiritual. The scientific method is observation+verification by others. Works by Indian and Buddhist illuminati contain plenty of scientific observation on the nature of consciousnesses and its relation to the physical condition of the human body. The leading consciousness scientist of 20th century was Gopi Krishna, who's contacts in the classic scientific establishment were lofty (Max Planck Institute). The Quran (not to be confused with Arab behaviours and vestiges from the Old Testament) is quite scientific in it's approach too.

    Summary: let us call for scientific method and use of our God given brain.

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    Replies
    1. No dog gave me my brain. No dog, no master. And aye, some beliefs are actually useful for the evolution of one's consciousness and provide useable techniques to develop higher faculties - unike all forms of cultish Abrahamism. But any dogma with priests attached is always automatically suspect. Bums to the wall when a 'religious figure' appears, kiddies!

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    2. Beliefs are a value judgement are they not, Illuminator. Beliefs are founded on what we don't know, and what we don't know often takes precedence over what we do know through the laws of nature (science). The clash between the science of what we do know and religious superstitions tells us that all hearsay is representative in man made laws of poppycock that lays the foundation for more of the same kind of fairy-tales

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    3. Beliefs are not value judgements; neither is faith. They are no substitutes for knowledge. Aye, the concept of law is a human confabulation; there is only lore, and some fairy tales are inherently pernicious programs.
      How do we 'know' anything? THAT is the real and only question worth considering - if we truly search for truth or the secret core of consciousness.

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    4. We simply would not have any beliefs if our values were not inherently related to a corresponding definition!

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  4. The word spiritual relates to an abstract concept defined by easily repudiated opinions! The experience of being alive is defined for us through and or by the laws of natures. Nature demonstrates cause and effect relationships between various energy particles, not knowing the relationships between these particles, and their actions and reactions determines the objectivity of our collective ignorance through the abstract concept of chaos which simply doesn't exist in a well ordered universe. We allow for our ignorance to triumph over what we know through social contracts as they relate entirely to our beliefs about what we don't know. Fairy-tales interfere with our current know how and that is the primary problem!

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  5. http://www.amazon.it/Sun-Myung-Moon-Little-Syndrome-ebook/dp/B011HRMB56/


    Would you want to create your own cult? To became the pope of your group or even a messiah? No problem: some dollars, a bit of imagination and... done! Learn it through the Korean unifying movement of the self-styled “messiah plus reverend” Sun Myung Moon: the Unification Church! Very active in the richest countries in the world. From the campaigns against Marxism and Christian culture to the help for Jean-Marie Le Pen party in France, in 88s. Strategies “no profit” to recycle a remarkable amount of money, in normal activities “full profit”. The secrets of the fundraising and sales “door to door”. An economic empire built on fundraising, making anybody believing of feeding nagger kids and not doing that even for one. A deepened report of the most picturesque enterprise of the history: the Moon’s sect! Probably the cleverest fraud until now! A narration, that pertains one of the primary ruinous evil of our era: the impoverishing speculation on the money in purpose of mere acquisition, without producing nothing for the common benefit! A recognition in the language denoted of plagiarism and self plagiarism, that denote the interpersonal deal in the mystical micro-cults.

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