That being said, regarding mass shootings of religious groups... that is not how you evolve beyond something. You cannot do it from outside. You do not have hate for others in order to evoke social evolution. That, is a sign you are on the wrong track.
We have a leadership in America right now in Donald Trump, that is nationalist and ignorant, greedy for power and wealth and evoking more ignorance. Denying science and reality and telling lies daily from our highest office which is inflaming the foolish and the mentally and emotionally and even socially, damaged in our society. Stop it. Americans should not kill Americans. The American government, should not kill Americans. Really, we should not be killing anyone, unless it is to stop them from killing or harming others.
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| You Need To Consider The Possibility Your Religion Is Mythology |
And we're seeing dysfunctional reactions within them against one another. Mostly based in the three desert religions of the Middle East. It's not really being noticed for what it is and is building in the so-called "First World" countries. And why is that?
Also, those Theists who support religion and do notice this are totally misunderstanding what is happening.
I don't believe anyone (certainly not me or anyone I know) are really against people exploring their spiritual beliefs, their religion, per se, or even wanting to end it tomorrow. This is still America, still a free country, regardless of the illiberal actions of some in power at this time.
Hopefully, with our attention and efforts, we will be putting an end to that very soon in 2020 and ending the conservative and Trump delusional form of governing.
However, there are still and always some obvious downsides to religion. Such as extremism. And religion's biggest travesty, "cherry picking" among their beliefs in order to fit them more closely into reality, sanity and logic.
Those who ignorantly profess their "faith" incorrectly and inaccurately enable their religions to continue and evolve when they should have died off centuries ago. It also enables those abusing others for their own misguided religions fundamentalism.
Those who are attacking such groups as transgenders, calling them child molesters, or ridiculously and ignorantly equating trans or gays with bestiality, when the reality is quite different and they are really quite normal, just different than the "norm".
If there's such a thing. When really it's about majorities and minorities. And where so often we see those types who call out others as degenerates, being charged with many of those same offenses themselves and so being outed as the hypocrites they were, to begin with. Typically all for reasons of position, power and wealth.
Kids More Likely To Be Molested At Church Than In Transgender Bathrooms
What this growing irritation is leading eventually to is a reaction against all those who are so-called believers. If they can simply follow their religion and keep their mouths shut, I don't think anyone would care to bother with actions against them in any way.
But when one considers all the bad actions and ill will that has been built around theism in recent times, what else could one expect? Pushing their beliefs into others faces, into our government, is illiberal and incorrect and even criminal. Certainly unconstitutional.
Those who say their religion requires them to do certain things, to get involved, to sway non-believer's beliefs in aggressive fashions, is just asking for a reaction against themselves, and others like them.
And then you have people like Donald Trump as POTUS who use religion in a morally reprehensible fashion for purely political purposes and lying, claiming he is a religious individual, which his only religion us capitalism and even beyond that to kleptocratic and oligarchical actions.
If you take this kind of behavior to its obvious conclusions, it's death for the future of religious institutions overall. To be sure it will take time. To be sure they may never really completely die off in a kind of half-life form of degeneration. Where they will halve in power and membership seemingly forever, but never quite go completely away.
Because religion is a symptom of the human mind, the human brain, and human evolution. It is a form of thought that should fade away as humankind evolves to the next stage and the ones after that. There are some beliefs that are more functional that some of the major religions today. Better than the ridiculous ones we hear of so often in the likes of Mormonism, Christian sects, Muslim sects, and even Jewish sects. As well as corporate thought style beliefs like Scientology.
Buddhism for one, the Buddha Dharma is far more functional that most if not all other "religions". While not a religion itself, but more of what we need in a mental discipline. I am not selling it as an answer. To be sure it too has fallen to the damages of the human reconstruction in ignoring its original teaches and adding nonsense to them down through the millennia so it too is viewed as more of another ridiculous religion.
The one saving grace is what Gautama (Siddhartha) Buddha Himself said, and you typically don't see in any religion, is to trust your instincts and if you're being taught something stupid, simply don't believe it. I dropped religion when I was younger, for sanity and reason themselves:
"In the time of the Gautama Buddha, many holy teachers and priests also wandered from village to village offering their teachings and principles to anyone who would listen. How can we differentiate an authentic teacher from a charlatan? According to tradition, Siddhartha Gautama offered the answer on one of his many journeys:
“Do not believe in anything simply because you have heard it. Do not believe in anything simply because it is spoken and rumored by many. Do not believe in anything simply because it is found written in your religious books. Do not believe in anything merely on the authority of your teachers and elders. Do not believe in traditions because they have been handed down for many generations. But after observation and analysis, when you find that anything agrees with reason and is conducive to the good and benefit of one and all, then accept it and live up to it.”
– Gautama Buddha
In what other "religion" would you come across koans or one such as:
“If you meet the Buddha, kill him.”– Linji
Humankind seems to wish for Magic, rather than Reality. It needs buffers to the daily grind and abuse of living. I learned of ancient Asian philosophies in grade school Isshinryu Karate classes in that Okinawan martial arts and philosophical system.
Through my life, I found one similarity after another to that. I found some similarities in the Catholicism I was raised with and abandoned by 9th grade. I became well read in philosophy from the Greeks to the ancients in India and China and Japan. I found people who grew up in Buddhist countries seemed the most oriented toward Buddhism as a religion. Which to me was reversed to what it was intended to be.
I found that the Catholic teachings appeared to have a basis in Buddhism. At university for my degree in psychology, I found many of the beliefs in that discipline to be very Buddhist in nature. At least the most functional forms. I learned about humankind's relationship to ritual and repetition. And I studied phenomenology and began to see how religion had gone awry.
How through anthropology and philosophy, sociology and psychology, it became clear where we began and how we evolved.
Religion is not the end, but the beginning, sadly. As when one learns how to walk, one changes and drops that methodology when one learns how to run, ride a bike and fly a jet or a spacecraft. And yet we hang onto the old ways out of fear. Out of conservatism. Out of ignorance. An ignorance we no longer need to cloak ourselves in.
We just need to be brave, learn the better ways and move into the future along with our overall inevitable development.
Still some, especially the conservative mind, holds onto it as if life depends on it. And it thoroughly does not. We may never evolve fully into our potential if we cannot finally let it go.
On the one hand, while they want to expand their ranks while religion is in this current phase of dying off. They aren't considering the reasons for religion's warnings because it's been discussed as a part of their theologies and epistemologies simply because they've been persecuted in the past.
Humankind and society have tried again and again to purge themselves of religious, but have failed repeatedly because they needed a replacement. A modern and functional form of mind management. It will happen, but it is like fighting an addict's cravings for what they are so used to, what they are indoctrinated into from childhood, to need.
While the individual may need something in daily life, society at large obviously does not. And we're seeing the dysfunctionality of it all over the world today.
One wonders perhaps why anyone would want to persecute someone else because of their beliefs until you have had to deal with someone being really and truly religiously annoying on continual and daily basis. Those who flaunt their mythology in the face of reality and against reality.
While religion will surely not end once and for all anytime soon, and while we do need to allow people their freedom in their choices, the rest of us should not have to suffer through living within their delusions around our society. It is a kind of reversed abuse. To be sure, enjoy your religion, just allow us the benefit of enjoying not enjoying it.
We can and should at least all agree that others are worshipping their chosen myths from the past, and then go on our way. Undisturbed and unperturbed by those theists who still wish to continue with this internal mental standing bicycle of a mentality spinning its wheels and going nowhere. Certainly not progressing into the future of the continued evolution of humankind.
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