I normally applaud and very much agree with your writings. But I think you've got this one wrong, big time. If you hold, as I certainly do and I believe many people do, that there is a God or a higher being, a spirit, a force, a light if you will, and that this God (let us call the force this name to make it simpler) has no religion, but just IS, then this frees you to view religions as what they are always have been: community. For as long as their have been people, there have been religions, as a way for people to organise and create community, and add vast amounts of color to their lives. Without digressing into trying to imagine a world lacking in religion and how colorless it would be, try instead to imagine how it would be if we could reach a state wherein everyone simply respected everyone else's religions (or lack thereof) and we thus reveled in the beauty of the special days and markers that those religions give us? No indeed, pointing at religions as one of the factors getting us into trouble these days is as useless as it is painful; in many ways, the keepers of the old religions and their ways are the only people holding on to our history and much that is sacred, and holding back the tidal wave of the binary computer world that teeters at the edge of swallowing us all into the ether of its non denominational cyber vastness.
I agree. Also, I used to work with members of the Acoma Pueblo in New Mexico, a few of whom lived permanently on Sky City with no electricity or running water. I subsequently moved to Pennsylvania Dutch country where I now live among the Amish and old-order Mennonites. The unselfconscious ease with which both groups negotiate an off-the-grid lifestyle gives new meaning to "the meek shall inherit the earth" in my opinion. They're the only ones who will know how to adapt to and survive the coming environmental collapse.
I don’t accept that religion creates community. It segments communities into those in and those not in. It reiterates the dualistic differentiation that is at the root of all Christian sects. Religion is ideology, false ideology Marx would argue, because it is all predicated, not on what is in our real world, but what is in our muddled minds.
Perhaps this is your experience of it. But I can guarantee you that for many, many people, this does not hold true and that it provides the fulcrum in fact for family and community (myself included). It could be that this is one marker or divider between the more developed and aetheist world and the world of more traditional societies. I'm not sure. But one thing I *do* know is that anything Marx said about religion is irrelevant insofar as religion existed far before his time, and will continue to exist far beyond our time, and because his words led to one of the most miserable components of the Bolshevik revolution itself, which was the closure of churches and places of worship in Communist countries. So to look to Marx for his viewpoint on religion is a bit akin to looking to a vegetarian for their view on backyard grilling.
It isn't my experience, it's the history of the human species. You don't have to guarantee that loads of people identify with a deity. I'm not arguing otherwise. Religion is the institutionalization of ideation as truth. Many people are convinced that if enough people believe something then it must be true. This is nonsense. If we look at educated cultures that do not promote proselytizing or indoctrination before a certain age (because indoctrination of children has been construed as a form of child abuse), religion is not the political force or social controlling agent that it is in most capitalist societies.
I normally applaud and very much agree with your writings. But I think you've got this one wrong, big time. If you hold, as I certainly do and I believe many people do, that there is a God or a higher being, a spirit, a force, a light if you will, and that this God (let us call the force this name to make it simpler) has no religion, but just IS, then this frees you to view religions as what they are always have been: community. For as long as their have been people, there have been religions, as a way for people to organise and create community, and add vast amounts of color to their lives. Without digressing into trying to imagine a world lacking in religion and how colorless it would be, try instead to imagine how it would be if we could reach a state wherein everyone simply respected everyone else's religions (or lack thereof) and we thus reveled in the beauty of the special days and markers that those religions give us? No indeed, pointing at religions as one of the factors getting us into trouble these days is as useless as it is painful; in many ways, the keepers of the old religions and their ways are the only people holding on to our history and much that is sacred, and holding back the tidal wave of the binary computer world that teeters at the edge of swallowing us all into the ether of its non denominational cyber vastness.
I agree. Also, I used to work with members of the Acoma Pueblo in New Mexico, a few of whom lived permanently on Sky City with no electricity or running water. I subsequently moved to Pennsylvania Dutch country where I now live among the Amish and old-order Mennonites. The unselfconscious ease with which both groups negotiate an off-the-grid lifestyle gives new meaning to "the meek shall inherit the earth" in my opinion. They're the only ones who will know how to adapt to and survive the coming environmental collapse.
I don’t accept that religion creates community. It segments communities into those in and those not in. It reiterates the dualistic differentiation that is at the root of all Christian sects. Religion is ideology, false ideology Marx would argue, because it is all predicated, not on what is in our real world, but what is in our muddled minds.
Perhaps this is your experience of it. But I can guarantee you that for many, many people, this does not hold true and that it provides the fulcrum in fact for family and community (myself included). It could be that this is one marker or divider between the more developed and aetheist world and the world of more traditional societies. I'm not sure. But one thing I *do* know is that anything Marx said about religion is irrelevant insofar as religion existed far before his time, and will continue to exist far beyond our time, and because his words led to one of the most miserable components of the Bolshevik revolution itself, which was the closure of churches and places of worship in Communist countries. So to look to Marx for his viewpoint on religion is a bit akin to looking to a vegetarian for their view on backyard grilling.
It isn't my experience, it's the history of the human species. You don't have to guarantee that loads of people identify with a deity. I'm not arguing otherwise. Religion is the institutionalization of ideation as truth. Many people are convinced that if enough people believe something then it must be true. This is nonsense. If we look at educated cultures that do not promote proselytizing or indoctrination before a certain age (because indoctrination of children has been construed as a form of child abuse), religion is not the political force or social controlling agent that it is in most capitalist societies.