That much is obvious and doesn't need explanation.
But the end, itself, is believed in by virtue of the tool. Experience is great and all, but out of religious context, it's nothing more than an experience.

Spiritual experience has been around far longer than organized religion. But prior to religion, it never had a face. Never had a name.
Religion, in my opinion, merely serves as that face, that name. It fits each and every spiritual person personally and when it doesn't, they whittle and carve away at it until it does.
To me, something that malleable could never be taken seriously.
If it ultimately ends up all being for my own personal benefit, then what difference does it make whether I worship Jesus or the BattleToads?

because it's not just about your personal benefit, it's about you as a social being and as a spiritual being, both of which are about considering yourself as part of a greater whole rather than as a self-enclosed island. for the moment Jesus is a more effective idol to organize people around than the BattleToads, but ultimately the proliferation of images will lower them all to the same status. i don't really have a point to prove here, except maybe that you seem to be missing the point.

If it's not about personal benefit, then heaven and hell would not need to exist...
Theologically, of course.

I understand what you're saying, but if Christians are merely using Jesus as an effective morality teacher, then how can Christians lend credibility to divinity?
What is that, a consolation prize?

They do tend to be mutually exclusive, but its not always the case. I tend to lean on the former, but I can't speak for the other who-knows-how-many christians in the world. Forgive me if I display a sort of arrogance, but I believe I understand Christ's true nature and intentions whereas I believe the majority of self-professed christians do not, Hence I do not call myself a christian since I do not relate to or necessarily practice conventional christianity.
Not to keep spouting off bible verse, but Mattew 6:33 - "seek ye' first the kingdom of heaven, and all these thing shall be added unto you" has always been important to me as it reminds me that above all else the pursuit of a relationship w/ the divine is most important and anything that follows as a result of that will be subordinate. In other words I follow a moral code as a result of my relationship w/ the divine and not as an attempt to put myself in good standing with "the big man who lives in the sky".
Christianity is not a bad religion per se, its just that whenever a you have a corporate belief system it often represents itself at its lowest possible level of consciousness. As the Tao te Ching roughly states "Those who know don't speak, and those who speak don't know".

That was as eloquent as it could possibly be said.
But I ask you, you obviously believe in a sentient creator as described in the bible, right?
Just curious.

No, I don't. I believe that what we refer to as God is, in a nutshell, pure consciousness, as Kahlil Gibran Put it "Life yearning for itself". I am pantheistic, which essentially means that God is literally in everything, or is the universe. I also believe that we all are a part of a collective divinity and that we can aspire to the same divine potential that Jesus attained.

it was disorganized but religion was there well before any of the Abrahamic or monotheistic religions. it seems that religion has doggedly pursued mankind throughout its history, no matter the culture or peoples.

i think most religion stems from humans' natural incapacity to grasp the sheer scale of the universe without resorting to explanation and myth. even today, modern science has sought to create a 'timeline' for the existence of the universe (which is in the greater sense a contradiction of scientific belief). it's much easier to say "THIS is how it all began" rather than probing the definitions of a beginning for which there can be no physical ascription ('in the absence of time').

i'd go so far to say that the big bang theory is no less just another extension of religion, a way to placate our own limitations for understanding of the universe as humans.

and if everyone understood the pure absurdity in that there would be no more conflict

the absurdity of the beliefs that I asserted were my own or the absurdity of the anthropomorphic God of the bible?

I'll leave it to the illustrious Alan Watts to put things into perspective.
These should keep everyone occupied for a while

the absurdity of a god that plays hide-and-seek with himself. i'm not saying it's absurd in a bad way, it's sometimes ecstasy sometimes terror. it is pretty ego-shattering though, most people torture themselves through life with unreasonable expectations.

I hate to say that your post did little to clarify things.

a lot of people go through life competing with others, trying to prove/improve themselves, trying to solve the ultimate puzzle or provide the ultimate answers, and if pantheism is correct (which i also believe) all this competition is ultimately just a struggle against yourself, which to me is the pinnacle of absurdity.

Yes, I agree completely, although I am pretty guilty of obsessing over the search for truth.

it's hard not to, just like it's hard not to talk about once you think you've found it. you probably don't need this advice, but i do: don't fly too close to the sun or the ocean... keep to the middle path.

Mmm yeah, as the old Buddhist saying goes "before enlightenment: chop wood and carry water. After enlightenment: chop wood and carry water"

a
:D

chop water and carry wood

I know Kerry Wood pitches for the Indians, but who's Chop Water?

I just found this thread. I'm sorry I'm not willing to read the whole 51 pages at the moment but what are we discussing now? There's gotta be something I can try to ridicule.

Do you have a mirror?

or you could go the mature route and try to be respectful.

I recently discovered shamanistic paganism. Surprisingly, the rituals are pretty much the same. At full moon they sit down and share wine and bread....which is surprisingly close to the christian and catholic tradition of the blood and flesh of Christ. And pagans were around hundreds of years before Christ. That's enough to make me a non believer of everything. All religions are so similar to each other, I think the idea is there, but nobody is 100% right.

generally speaking they're all trying to explain why life exists and what happens when your body dies. languages and cultural barriers being what they are provides ample means for ideas to be lost in translation at best or interpreted as condemning and threatening at worse.

ok i got a question what is the difference between like baptists, catholics, methodists, and all those other things. i mean there are some slight differences i see like catholics pray to the Virgin Mary more and baptists pray more directly to God. but other than that why do there have to be so many different names when its basically all the same thing

this made me laugh.

Different interpretations lead to different beliefs lead to different denominations.
The differences that exist between their beliefs are apparently important enough to them for denominations to have sprung up.

is it necessary though its not big differences though

Apparently it is, to them.
I'm pretty sure followers of any particular denomination don't want other denominations mucking around with their interpretations.

Haha, I was playin.

I don't like the idea of organised religion and I don't pretend to know what's gonna happen to us. But my idea is we are all connected by some energy blah blah blah but there is no higher being. Its just like this same life runs through all of us and nothing ever dies, it just changes.

you mean this:

http://iwicsyi.files.wordpress.com/2...mbsuavzzcc.jpg

duh, everybody already knows THAT.

here is what i don't get. If there is no god how do you explain these two things?

How did an a sexual reproducing organism evolve into 2 sexes?
How did a 3 chamber heart evolve into a 4 chamber heart?

wat

Evolved genders before evolving the system which yields higher output.
The fourth chamber proved to be better for survival and thus better for reproductive purposes.

Genders is a good way to get genetic diversity which again makes the organisms more adaptive. There are animal species that only have one known sex - f.ex there are some fish hybrids, at least one or two species of reptiles and many stick insect species seem to get by just fine without males. What you have then are obviously females that produce clones. These species are generally viewed as more vulnerable because of a lack of genetic diversity.

Genders are not the same in different species, it doesn't always mean XX or XY chromosomes. In honey bees, the male is a haploid "clone" of the queen which basically means that the queen just lays an egg containing a male and that male has only one set of every chromosome so he has only half as much genetic material as his diploid mother and sisters. Offspring as a result of mating between a haploid male and the diploid queen will result in diploid female offspring.

went from talking about religion to genetic diversity?

If you try to grasp what's going on, you might see that Darkest Hour posted the argument that genders can't be explained without a God .. but it can. Like so many other things, evolutionary theory explains how it evolved from natural selection.

Some time ago, creationists were pushing the idea of irreducable complexity saying that certain things could not have evolved because until they were "finished", they would serve no function. Their arguments have since been refuted by biologists and, more than anything else, only really served to showcase creationists' typical lack of understanding of evolutionary theory and their tendency to "prove" their own theories only by pathetic pseudo-scientific attempts at disproving others.

"Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind." - Albert Einstein.

Ah, creationists and how they love to use misinformation, taking quotations out of their respective context and thus altering their meanings.

>> Source

A good guideline is that if a site looks like it might be made by creationists, never ever believe anything they say without thoroughly checking sources first. They are deliberately spreading misinformation in order to manipulate you.

^Wow, I was literally going to make that exact same post using that same source, lol. Typical creationist behaviour to paste random facts or quotes, only to manipulate its meaning entirely in a non-legitimate way. haha