Religion

Talks about what all religions have in common.

Religion & Believing

Published on by Jim

The value of religion is to keep the gullible masses in check. Unfortunately the apposing forces of domination, the trouble makers like Jesus or myself have not been doing our job in stimulating the masses to question the authority of the religions or wake them up from their unconscious gullibility.

Religions are not like educational systems that have a program in which if you follow it you will eventually graduate from the system. Instead religions want to keep you bond to them indefinitely: perpetual bondage.

As there are some dogs that seem too stupid to understand the dangers of life in a city where there are cars on the road, there are people who are too stupid to understand the dangers of life in a world where there are unscrupulous people who will injury or harm them. Many of those unscrupulous people work in churches and states, religion and government, but they are not always as unscrupulous as some other people who could do greater harm.

BUT, this is how nature works to get rid of stupid people and stupid creatures; it allows them to get run over by cars. Hence, because of religions and governments we have a world over populated by stupid people who are destroying their own planet.

Why People Believe

People choose to believe something because they do not have actual knowledge of something but the THOUGHT of that something is emotionally attractive. They want that which they believe to be true.

For instance, they believe that an airplane they are about to fly on is going to function appropriately and that they pilot is competent. They don’t know this to be a fact but want it to be true. The belief calms their mind somewhat.

The same thing happens in religious beliefs. A religious believer have some beliefs that are creating discomfort for them so they choose other beliefs to give them comfort from the first set of belief.

If they would just question their original assumptions till they can see that those are not real then they would have no need to lie to themselves about the other beliefs.

The Value of Sloth & Apathy

Published on by Jim

When I think of sloth I am reminded of something that Jesus said, “Come unto me all ye who labor and are heavy burdened and I shall give you rest” (Matt 11:29). Then I think about the “Protestant Work Ethic and how Protestant Christianity teaches people to work harder and be slaves who are “good servants to their masters” (Paul’s language). Christians are taught to believe, obey and submit to the ruling classes. Yet this is NOT what Jesus taught or did…it was NOT Jesus’ way or truth.
Sloth is called one of the Seven Deadly Sins and is defined at disinclination toward work or effort. I don’t remember any stories of Jesus or Siddhartha (Buddha) working really hard.

If you were an owner of slaves would you want somebody like Jesus to hang around your slaves or would you rather have somebody like Paul who would teach them to be good servants to their masters? It does not take a genius to see that Paul and his minions (Christians) would be more valuable to the slave owners than Jesus and other Christs.

Apathy is defined as a lack of feeling, emotion, interest or concern. It can also be seen and detachment, being above the world, contentment, equanimity, indifference and peace.
If people want peace then they have to let go of caring, quit storing your treasures here on earth where anything can attack them. This means not caring even out your “self”, your body, mind and/or soul.
This does not mean that you NEVER care or have emotion, feeling, interest or concern, only that when you are tired and need rest that you stop caring while you rest. This is like breathing in and breathing out, both are necessary for you to be healthy, both have their time.

My Contention with Christianity

Published on by Jim

I like Jesus. I have been and am inspired by Jesus. As a young man when I came to my midlife crisis I was inspired by Jesus to seek a way out of my feelings of being trapped in a meaningless world. I realized I wanted what Jesus had. I did not know what that was at the time, I just knew that I wanted whatever it was that he had had.

I also knew from previous experience that I could not go to Christians for help in this regard. I say this because my experience of Christians and Christianity was perfectly reflected by Gandhi when he said, “I like your Christ but I don’t care for your Christians; for your Christians are so unlike their Christ.”

Here is the crux, Christians don’t follow Jesus’ way, truth or life, they follow the apostles, particularly Paul. In the bible Paul admits that when he started out his mission was to turn people away from Jesus’ way and, as he puts it, bring that back to sound doctrine.

I sought to find what Jesus found and found it. I did not follow the Christian way; I pretty much followed Jesus’ way. When I went to share this with the Christians all I got was resistance and rejection. As I looked into why Christians resisted my way (and Jesus’ way) I found several particular points that Christianity teaches AGAINST Jesus’ way.

First, Jesus did not think of himself as a sinner and taught that neither should we (Matt 5:48, “Be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect.”) Being perfect means to be whole and complete, lacking nothing, without flaw. Perfection, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder. If we actually try to do what the bible tells us then we will NOT take of the tree of knowledge of good and evil; in other words, we will not think we know what is good and what is evil, what is righteous and what is sinful. Or, to put it as Jesus did, we would be innocent as children to enter the kingdom of heaven. I also feel he was saying the same thing when he said, “Great is the God that reveals the truth unto babes but hides it from the wise and learned one (Mt 11:25).” The learned ones are those who think they know what is righteous and what is sinful.

The one who called himself the Apostle Paul taught that “all have sinned.” Christians who follow Paul’s faithless doctrine think that no one can perfect as Jesus was perfect. This is NOT true. Paul’s statement is obviously false (to me) for if ALL have sinned then that all must include Jesus. Yet most, if not all Christians than confess that Jesus was without sin. Therefore that proves that ALL have not sinned. But because Christians have been taught to treasure scriptures as inerrant they get trapped in a bind when shown that this is not true, so they cannot talk about it further.

Jesus started his ministry by telling people to “repent” or completely change their ways of thinking. It is in our ways of thinking that effects the quality of our life experience. If we think like Jesus thought and how he suggested we think than we can experience that Kingdom of Heaven that is AT HAND, here, now, today.

I will try to point out more examples of the differences between Jesus’ way and the apostles way (Christian way) in the future.

The Virtue of Laziness

Published on by Jim

Jesus was lazy and so was the Buddha.Both of them could read and presumable write but neither of them wrote anything down; probably because they were lazy.They were too lazy to be industrious and they did not ‘create’ anything.They just enjoyed talking and that is all they really did.They had no home to support or take care of.They had no bank account.Their possessions were only what they could carry.They were beggars.

It is true that they lived in climates that did not require much in the way of protection from the elements.In my world,America, I find that the elements, including society and its governments, do not allow me to live the way that Jesus or the Buddha lived.

But I am just as lazy.

I have short passions that motivate me to get up off my lazy butt and do something, but it only lasts for a short time.Then the drive falls away.

I love to talk to people, and I think I have something to offer them.ButAmericadoes not have ‘public market places’ the way they had in Jesus’ or the Buddha’s time.Americahas become a nation isolated from its self.People here spend all their time at home or at works and very little in public places.

Today, to reach out to people you ‘have to’ write something, and I am really too lazy to write anything, except short little topics like this.

We Buddhas and Christs have found a peace with the world and this peace kills our productivity.Being not productive we have no desire to hurt any one or anything; we have no inner “dis-ease”.With this peace there is no busyness or business in our world.No business, no work.We Buddhas and Christs tend to live off the charity of others; we beg for our food.

Lazy people tend to be healthier for they do not stress themselves out by working so hard.We just sit around and enjoy what life offers.I will walk or hike ten miles in a day just for the joy of it, but I will not walk a mile to look for work.

We Buddhas and Christs are so lazy we do not create wars.We Buddhas and Christs are so lazy we have a very low impact on the environment.Yet we tend to have a tremendous impact on the human environment.About half of the planets population plays lip service to Buddhas or Christs, but that is about all they do in regard to Buddhas and Christs.

I have too many possessions.I live in a small motor home that I have to maintain and support, and in this day of high fuel prices that takes a lot of work.I have this computer which I use to communicate with people. But it is probably time to get up off my lazy or cowardly ass and go out and talk to people, wherever I can find them.I know I have something to offer, I just find it hard to find people to offer it to.

So in conclusion, lazy people do not hurt anybody and they have a low impact on the environment.How much better would the world be if everybody was at least a little bit lazier?

Unholy Religion

Published on by Jim

From a web page titled “All Have Sinned” (http://www.santacruzbible.org/findingGod/allHaveSinned.php)

Man is SINFUL and SEPARATED from God, so we cannot know Him personally or experience His love

Romans 3:23 “For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.”

Romans 6:23 “The wages of sin is death” [spiritual separation from God].

Romans 8:6-8 “The mind of sinful man is death, but the mind controlled by the Spirit is life and peace; the sinful mind is hostile to God. It does not submit to God’s law, nor can it do so. Those controlled by the sinful nature cannot please God.”

A great gulf separates man from God. Man is continually trying to reach God and establish a personal relationship with Him through human efforts, such as living a good life, philosophy, attending church or religion. But he inevitably fails.

I find this as a sick attitude or should I say, following a sick doctrine from a sick individual.The apostle Paul who wrote the above mentioned doctrine admitted that he did not get it (Philippians 3:12) so he was what Jesus called the “blind leading the blind” who “neither enters the kingdom of heaven nor allows others to”.(Matthew 15:14, 23:13)

From a more intelligent perspective, to tell people that they are ‘fallen’ or separate from God or failures or sinners or anything like that is to destroy any faith they might find in themselves to be good and healthy beings.

This doctrine is “of the sick, by the sick, for the sick” and adds nothing to humanity.It does not come from a place of love (God), but instead comes from a place of fear (Satan) and judgment.

This is NOT Jesus’ teachings but the teachings of one who used to identify with those that diabolically opposed Jesus in his time (the Pharisees).Pharisees like Saul of Tarsus (the one called the apostle Paul) wanted to rout out any who would actually follow Jesus’ suggestion and came instead to bring them back to “sound doctrine”.But Paul’s doctrine is not sound or health, at least not today by today’s standards.It might have been better for people then what they had back in his day, but today only the sickest would consider it healthy doctrine.

And yet, it is taught here in an educated society as ‘sound doctrine’.I find that this is possible only because we have a taboo about questioning people’s “faith”, even if that is not faith but faithlessness.The only reason somebody would believe Paul’s faithless doctrine is because they DO NOT have faith in Jesus’ more faithful doctrine or ways of thinking.Where Jesus advocated that people “Be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect” (Matthew 5:48), which means they NOT think of themselves as sinners, Paul encourages people to think of themselves as sinner.These are diabolically opposed positions and any church that follows Paul’s way is following the way of the antichrist, or what we call today Christ-anti; Christianity.

To the Christian mind this is ridiculous because they have been programmed all their lives to see themselves and everybody as sinners.But to a healthy mind this is obvious.

Of course, Jesus came to save the sinners, for they were the ones who are still gullible enough to believe they are sinners.Those of us who are righteous do not need to be saved, for we can see that we were never imperiled.

Atheists

Published on by Jim

I find that atheist tend to “throw the baby out with the bath water” in that they reject the god concept while missing the underlining REASON for creating the concept of god. The etymology of the title “Holy Bible” shows that it means Health Book; meaning that it was a primitive attempt by primitive people to share what they had learned that was healthy for the mind, body and society. Atheists tend to miss this all together.

But one of the unhealthy aspects of religion is the belief in a personal creator god that rules the universe, for this belief in that leads to wars, torture, murder, terrorism and all kinds of suffering in the person, in society and for the planet itself.

So I feel that the idea is to get people to focus on a healthy DISCUSSION of OUR ways of thinking and our lifestyle choices and away from the superstition of theism.

Unfortunately, theists do not seem healthy enough to look at deep issues like this, so how do we get their attention, or how do we circumvent their unhealthy efforts to reach the youth of the world or those who would be open to it?

I want to raise the level of debate in the world but I am not sure how to do that, short of writing a book about it and going on the speaking trail.

Religious Sheep

Published on by Jim

I went to church tonight and was amazed at how dumb the eulogy was. The minister was trying to talk the people into thinking they were dumb animals: sheep. Maybe they really are that dumb…

The Root Cause of Terrorism

Published on by Jim

The root cause of terrorism is in the very first line of the bible, which comes out of a primitive, unhealthy mind.It says, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.”This is a silly construct that comes out of an immature, primitive mind that could not see that there was no beginning and there is no end.But their minds could not handle infinity and eternity so that created the illusion of beginning and end.With beginning then there had to be some ‘first cause’ or creator out there that created this world.If there is a creator then that creator must have had some reason to create the world.Then people can claim that they know the reason for this creation and they can create some laws based on that reason.With the “divine law” they can justify their mean spirited laws saying that if you do not do what “god” wants then we have a right to be mean to you.With ‘laws’ like the Torah, the Koran and the Bible, if you do not obey them then it is ok for us to terrorize you, to torture you and to murder you, for the is the law of the creator.

Therefore you can see that the root cause of terrorism is the primitive, barbaric and sick ideas of beginning and creator.

Fear of Self

Published on by Jim

Today I am struck by how people are so afraid of themselves. Everywhere I go I see people afraid. At first they seem afraid of me if they know anything about me, and sometimes even if they do not know anything about me.

I see this as a “problem” within society but here in lies the rub; maybe this ‘problem’ is only in MY mind. When I speak about this ‘problem’ with other people they only run from the discussion, so I speak about it more saying that people’s running from discussions is a symptom of the ‘problem’. The more I speak about it the more people seem to be afraid of me.

On the other hand, I recognize that I have had this same ‘problem’ myself and I found a solution to that problem: meditation or practicing relaxing around words, thoughts and ideas. I have found that what I make important I create tension around, so to relax I let go of making anything important. In order to share my insights with people I have to make them important, which creates tension or fear.

This is all a vicious cycle or a Catch-22 type situation.

I suppose that I just have to play with the dilemma; talk about it and then let it go.