Of course, it is true that all kinds are wars have been fought in the name of religion. We have the whole history of fighting for Christendom. As well as that, we have the terrorism, such as the tension and Catholicism and Protestantism in Ireland. There has been the whole tension between the Christian dominated countries and the Islamic nations, although that may have been about oil too. As well, we have the Islamic terrorists and the war against that. One could go on and on.

We could say that violence and war is a problem for human beings generally, but certainly we can see that religion has given rise to it in many ways. However, this is in contradictions to the ideas of the founders, such as Jesus's message of turning the other cheek. There is also the contrasting approach, of non violent protest, as expressed by Mahatma Gandhi.

I think that you are right to speak of the social dimension to religion. This can be about rituals and community life. The rituals around baptism, marriage and funerals play such importance for so many people. I also know that for many Hindus the marriage ceremony is not just a day but much longer, perhaps up to a fortnight. Rituals are such a major part of life for people and often people who would not go to church ordinarily go for these. I once went to a funeral for someone who did not have any religious beliefs. It took place in a church, but without any prayers at all and it seemed so stark.

So many people do rely on church for social life. I went to the youth club at my church a few times, but I didn't really enjoy it. A lot of people even go to church events to find potential marriage partners. It is such a feature of community life and one which is unavailable to people currently. At present, in England, churches can open but there are restrictions on the numbers. A lot of people are attending church services by Zoom, and whoever would have imagined virtual reality church services.

It is interesting to see some input on Hindu and Buddhist ideas. I am saying that not just from my own issues but also thinking about how this reads when people log into the thread, especially if someone is new to the forum. My aim with the thread is not just to sort out my own concerns but for the thread to be the most possible open minded and broad discussion, taking in diverse approaches. I can't believe that I am the only person on the forum who has struggled with worries about religion because there is so much overlap between religion and philosophy questions.

The aspect of Hinduism you have presented is new to me because I have only read about the Theravada school of it, as there are so many traditions. I have read some books on Buddhism, but once again there are many schools, and so much written about it. Sufism is the area of Islam that interests me and I would like to read on it. The main writer who I have read on the comparative religion is Ninian Smart.

I do believe that you are right in saying that Jesus was speaking about his imminent divinity, and I don't think that he was saying that he was the Son of God, as the only one son.

I do think that we are probably like a load of crewmembers on a ship of fools. I prefer you quoting Plato to the Bible. I am rather sensitive about ideas such as the beast and 666. This probably goes back to groups of evangelicals who used to try to tell me that the music I was listening to was the work they the devil etc. Even before that, as an early teenager I got in such a state over the passage in the Bible over the unpardonable sin, which is the mysterious sin of 'blasphemy against the Holy Spirit'. One of the reasons I am such a fan of Jung is because I discovered through reading his autobiography when I was in sixth form that he worried that this. Later, I read that Kierkergaard worried about it too.

Religion, especially Christianity, can create such fear and I have known people, including friends, who have experiences religious psychosis. I have come across people who have believed they were the Antichrist. I am glad that I never developed that delusion. However, I do have a certain sensitivity like I felt a bit anxious when I came to write my number 666 post on this forum, and fortunately it wasn't about anything particularly contentious.

I am not really opposed to Christianity at all, just find it conjures up so much fear, but I feel so really stressed if I go into an old church. The new ones don't seem so bad, because so much light seems to come through the windows whereas I get such a sense of the uncanny in the old ones. One could say that perhaps I should not have written a thread about religion if I have such a sense of fear, but I do think that we do not to face our fears. But I did get worked up when I got the quote about the beast of revelation.

Aside from issues about religion, in other threads there is quite a lot of thinking that we are coming to the end of a cycle, if not the end of civilisation. However, I do think that the fundamentalist Christians are too literalistic in their interpretation of the Bible. I am genuinely sympathetic to most belief systems, including atheism, because it is a tenable form of thinking. But, you are right to say that we are like crew on a ship of fools and I realise that you are just someone finding your way as well, so I am not annoyed with you, and I am interested in Simone Weil's ideas.

Thank you for inputting the quotes from Lao Tzu. I definitely didn't set up this thread for it to be one to be dominated by Christian thought. So, when I had a long quote from the Bible, about "the beast and 666' late at night I felt really unnerved. At a couple of points in my life this aspect of religious thinking made me begin to get unwell mentally. Even now, I do get a bit 'wobbly' if people start to preach to me.

I suppose that by starting this thread I was likely to get a certain amount of 'preaching'. Some of the responses have been good, but I am a bit disappointed that there has been less constructive dialogue. Apart from brief discussion about Buddhism, there has been little discussion about other religions. I am personally extremely interested in other views, ranging from Hinduism to Jainism. It could be that people on the forum do see religion mainly about the big divide between believing in God or not, in the conventional way. Or, it could be that people who fall outside of this, just avoid the religious threads. I was not looking for some kind of watered down discussion but some more diverse and independent thinking.

Some people find the Bible so comforting, but I find it the exact opposite. Even last night, I got stressed out by someone writing a long quote about the devil. But I do think that the fundamentalist religious people and their interpretations are the ones who really lead people to atheism.

Yes, I do find approaches such as Taoism more easy to take on board, but I do find my views hop around from one view to another, which is why I gravitate towards comparative religion. Really, I am constantly thinking up more and more questions. Perhaps I have philosophy disease.

I have just seen your latest response and perhaps it is religious fundamentalism which I find oppressive, but there are so many fundamentalists. Perhaps, I am an agnostic, but I do have sympathy with the underlying message of Christ and the Buddha.

My aim in starting the debate was to break down the divide between the religious and the atheists and I think that the whole field of comparative religion enables clearer possibility of this. You speak of the danger of getting lost, but, my genuine view is that I see the mythical perspective of understanding religion as the one that makes sense to me, because I don't see it as completely false or true.

What I don't understand is the way in which the whole area of religious thinking has to come down to those who see the central issues viein literal ways(Christian or other views), or the other alternatives of atheism. Both seem so extreme. The reason why I admire Jung was because he was one of the thinkers who was able to break down this division, but I am sure that there are many who can see that the whole question of God does not have to be a definite yes or no. I feel almost alone on the forum because I am not religious conventionally, but not an atheist.

The reason I believe it is important to understand myths is to understand the recurrence of themes underlying religious experience. I don't think that any one religious belief system has the whole picture of truth. However, I do think that the questions underlying religions are a central human need and are of importance. I don't think that there are any absolute answers but I do not that these issues are central to philosophy and for living.

Your answer seems to be a rather literal interpretation of the 'Book of Revelation.' I don't come from that angle. That was how I thought when I began university, but I see things in a much wider way. I do think that we are at a critical juncture in history but I don't interpret it all in a Biblical way.

I think that the better question would be is what evidence do you have to suggest that Jung was a 'crank'? I think it is difficult to measure his ideas and probably the only way you could do this would be to measure the way in which his ideas or Jungian therapy have a positive impact on people's lives.

Really, the reason why I brought in his idea of the collective unconscious was because it is seen as a useful construct for thinking about recurrent themes and symbols, underlying myths and religious narratives. Do you know of any better way for considering them?

Hopefully, those who study history seriously wouldn't go by Hegel's ideas on history. I did an evening course in anthropology and it did approach the whole subject from a historical angle.I think it is always a bit of a distortion when the various disciplines are split off so clearly. Of course, it is not possible to study all the disciplines, but the ideal may be if people read outside of their own specialised fields. I believe that it's important to read as widely as possible and see all the crossovers in thinking rather than just view from a narrow angle.

I definitely believe that there has always been some kind of perennial philosophy in existence because human beings do need to find meaning. There is a great need for answers. You are right to say that in the jungle people were far more aware of rhythms and cycles. We have been taking modern life for granted and grumble if the transport is behind schedule or even if the Wifi does not work as we expect. It is so easy for us in this technological age to lose sight of wisdom.

It is interesting that you should speak of the idea of 'descended from above'. In some perennial accounts, including that of Blavatsky, there is the idea that evolution in that way. Rather than human beings having descended from apes there is the idea of the first human beings as angelic beings who were with more subtle bodies, and how after the fall of Atlantis, fell into the gross bodies. Blavatsky and others have developed these ideas and there is the whole 'new age' myth of the process of 'ascension.' I went through a period of reading books on this which suggested that human beings could ascend again to the state of the human beings prior to the fall of Atlantis. However, I am aware that there is very little evidence for its historical existence.

It is possible to get carried away with these myths but it does present a radical alternative way of seeing than we are accustomed to and it does give some hint of a possibility of conscious evolution. It is hard to know what the idea of conscious evolution does mean exactly. I have read a little of Henri Bergson.

Also, I do believe that the majority of human beings only use a very tiny part of human potential. Here, I can even mention another mythic idea in 'new age' thought, the idea of DNA activation. I have been to the mind, body and spirit festivals in London, in which there are workshops offering this. It is based on the assumption that people only use 2 strands of DNA and the rest is known in science as junk DNA, but it is not really junk at all. The workshops were about enabling additional strands of DNA to be activated to release untapped potential. But I won't go on any further as it will probably sound like gobbledegook to many reading it. But, it is an alternative way of seeing to conventional narratives. Generally, I do think that the whole new age movement draws upon the mythical ideas of perennial wisdom.

It is interesting to hear that you are a graphic designer. I thought about training in that when I left school but decided to follow other studies, but I have pursued art to a lesser extent in certain ways and from a different angle. I used to illustrate a poetry magazine at university, and did do an evening course in illustration, which was focused on the technical aspect of drawing and painting. However, I did go on to do some study of art therapy and that is where I probably began thinking about getting in touch with the symbolic dimension, especially as I did undertake personal therapy with a Jungian therapist. So that forms the background to the approach I come from. Also, I was in discussions about exploring other dimensions in art on a thread about whether art was creative about 2 months ago.

But, probably my basic idea is that of tuning into the collective unconscious. Do you believe in the collective unconscious? This is probably where it fits into the discussion with myth, because these involve archetypes, and these are also central to the narratives within the various religious traditions.

I am inclined to spend loads of time thinking about questions, but in writing I think it is important to experiment with lines of thinking. Certainly, I am not trying to say that I have the answers. But I am open to you raising any questions which really stand out because these forum debates do allow for such useful dialogue, so much more than thinking alone.

I just saw your comment to Athena about myths. This is a fascinating area, touched on briefly so far. It will be interesting to hear Athena's view, but I think it would be helpful if you spoke a bit more about the myths you grew up with, because I was mostly brought up with the Christian ones, so I am interested in your experience.

I am sorry if it appears that the discussions seem to focus on Christianity. That is certainly not my intention and I would like it to involve many other traditions. I am interested in the whole area of comparative religion, but more familiar with Christianity because that is the background in which I was raised. I would love people to discuss the other religions and atheist perspective, because this dialogue would be fantastic. Feel welcome to input any ideas of your own because I have certainly not wished to create a thread which is focusing completely on Christianity.

I think that most people who do just adhere to religious beliefs still believe in the existence of evil but they do not see it in exactly the same way, as the devil, but real, nevertheless. It does seem that most secular philosophers still see a basic duality between good and evil. Mill saw human beings as having higher and lower pleasures. T Huxley, who was an agnostic saw conflict and destructiveness as problems.

In the psychoanalytic perspective saw the tension between Eros and Thanatos. These were the life and death forces, but, to some extent to some extent his whole notion of the death instinct seems a bit like evil because it is about destructiveness. He sees life as being about instincts, with the superego being like conscience, with ego mediating between the two.
Perhaps complexes are like inner demons.

Jung certainly saw complexes as being like demons arising from the unconscious. Of course, I am aware that whether to rank Jung as falling into the religious or secular is highly debatable in itself because he wrote so much about religion and evil, and in some places he writes as if he is outside of religion and critical of it, but, at times, he writes as though he is coming from a religious perspective, as expressed in his famous interview quote, 'I don't believe in God, I know.' In some ways, he seems to come from a Gnostic perspective. He was involved in a lot of dialogue with a theologian, Victor White, about the whole problem of evil. Essentially, he seemed to side with the view of evil as a real force, as in contrast to one Christian perspective that evil is simply the absence of good. This was all documented by White in a book, 'God and the Unconscious.'

However, my main point is that it is not necessary to believe in God in order to believe in the existence of evil. That is not to say that all philosophers in the secular tradition necessarily believe in the existence of evil as a force. It is an area worth researching. I would be surprised if many believe in literal demons. Probably a lot of esoteric Eastern philosophers do believe in them. I know that many in the theosophical tradition do.
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I know that many people believe in four, of five dimensions, at least. The fourth includes time and there is the one of intersubjective experience, as well as the imagination. Carl Jung spoke of the importance of dreams and those coming from the collective unconscious. I do believe that the idea of the collective unconscious is useful for thinking about as a source from which images and stories evolve.

I am not sure if you are taking me too literally, in talking about art leading into other dimensions. With or without, I do feel as if there are other dimensions. It could be the idea of parallel universes spoken by scientists. However, I do believe that there are other dimensions, which do exist and it is from this that ideas and images arise in the first place. I do think that the mythical ideas arise on this level.

I think it would be a very limited philosophy if it was just about telling people what they should do. Philosophy is the whole history of analysis, and is needed for looking at assumptions arising in science. At it's best, philosophy is not about moralising but about looking beneath the surface of all views.

You suggest that conscious evolution is not possible for society but for the individual. Perhaps what may be true is that in past times it was only possible for rare individuals to explore conscious evolution. It could be that with education and technology, that it is becoming possible for more and more people to begin and pursue this possibility. Of course, it is far more than just a matter of having information. It requires a lot of time and energy. I do wonder if the period of self-isolation for great numbers at the present time could give rise to many going in that direction, as a possibility.

My discussion of Jung's ideas about anima and animus was not meant to be a discussion of gender, as construed in the modern world. Jung's ideas were never developed in that context at all, but more in the context of ideas such as Taoism, Plato and other philosophers. He was speaking of the psyche in a philosophical sense.

It is rather limited if people do view history as if people in the past were always in worse conditions. I don't think that approach was necessarily taken when I was taught history at school. There were difficult periods, such as th, but there were great civilisations in the past, especially the Romans, Greeks and Egyptians.

I do think that some people in philosophy circles tend to think of the history of ideas as if the progression of ideas is all progress, but, at the same time, many do appreciate thinkers of the past as having great value, especially Plato, but many others too. We are in the position to look back on the history of ideas but that doesn't make the ideas of our times any superior. Possibly, some scientists may think it does, including some psychologists.

When you compare history with anthropology it does seem to me that the two can be layed out similarly, one across time and the other across cultures geographically. However, I think that in some cases the sense of people viewing anthropology can be viewed with the same imperialistic bias. The West is sometimes viewed as more advanced.

So, you could ask to what extent are we able to look back on history and across cultures and not make assumptions about progress, and with an undercurrent of a sense of superiority? I think that some people are able to do this but, definitely, not everyone. To do so, doesn't just mean that the whole of the past are just evaluated relatively, but just not assuming that one's subjectivity, within time and culture is the supreme point from which to view all else.

It is quite interesting that you do paint because not that many people do. If you do get peak experiences while doing so that is important in it's own right, and you probably don't need to worry about shamanic techniques.

I see meditation as more of a process of attaining higher states of consciousness.I have also experimented a little with astral projection, or rather, I had some out of body experiences accidentally and decided to work with this more.

Art and the arts can be about self expression, but it can also be about entering into different states of consciousness and that is where it is more shamanic. The shamans did sometimes use stimulating herbs, but there are other ways to stimulate this including certain music.

I got up again, because I couldn't sleep, as usual.

One idea which I am familiar with about the gender of the soul is Jung's representation. Everyone has an anima and an animus side to the psyche, which is similar to the idea of yin and yang.The anima, which is the female aspect, is often projected by males onto females as lovers, and the animus, the male part in females is often projected onto males as lovers. This probably works a bit differently in gay and bisexual people. There is a similar idea to the anima in males expressed as the idea of the muse.

Independently of the whole question of world governance, I do think that there is a lot of recurrence between the ideas, as your equation show. Perhaps what is interesting is the whole division between the exoteric and the esoteric. Really, I have taken more interest in the esoteric side of religion than what the main leaders like the Vatican have to say. However, I think I am logging off for tonight because I am really tired, but if you write a reply to this, I will respond tomorrow.

Yes, I will probably interact with you again. It is easy to be up in the night on this site, and I often get up and read messages in the night, which is probably not a very good idea.

I do believe that everything is energy, which is consistent with the new physics and shamanism.I have read quite a bit about shamanism and the writings of Carlos Castaneda. I have heard that Castaneda's writings were probably fiction, but they still are an interesting perspective on reality.

I probably mean entering into mythic dimensions in the arts, in experiencing it or creating it. I read a lot of fiction, including fantasy and in listening to music, mostly alternative music. When I listen to music I usually lie in the dark and visualise to it. I have also experimented in trying to use what Jung describes as 'active imagination', in making art. That involves trying to find symbolism from the subconscious in drawing or painting, sometimes with music. I haven't done it recently but would like to do more of this.

I do agree that the central question is what happens when we die and I have engaged in discussion on that topic on this thread. Really, I see it as about the most important question in philosophy, more so than the existence of God, because if there is life after death it will affect us beyond this life, independent of whether or not there is a God.

I find it hard to come to a solid conclusion. So much does seem to involve the body and mind question in philosophy. I am interested in the whole issue of near death experiences but don't think they can be taken at face value because the person was not dead permanently.I would like to believe in reincarnation too, but just because I like the idea doesn't necessarily mean that I think it is necessarily true. What do you think about life after death?

I see that you mentioned the writer Gary Lachman in one of your posts. I have read a number of books by him and was very impressed by him. He was in the band, Blondie, and married to the lead singer, Debbie Harry, as well. The books which I read by him were on Jung, Madame Blavatsky, Rudolf Steiner, Colin Wilson and one on secret teachers within the Western world. Have you read much in the esoteric tradition?

I don't like discussion to be like wars, as you probably know from my whole thread about people wishing to be right. I do see us as all experimenting with ideas and a certain point of argument seems important to tease out the ideas fully. However, when it all comes down to people becoming really defensive, I end up feeling rather demoralised and depressed. After all, we are just trying to use ideas to serve us and I don't like it to be the other way round. Of course, often religious people have seen the battle being about fighting for the ideas, especially in the Christian tradition it was often viewed as the war of good against evil.

The whole idea of transformation which I am talking about is ways we can work on ourselves, including meditations practices and seek out achieve states of peak experiences for ourselves, rather than just follow rituals.

When I attended Catholic church services there was more of an emphasis on the ecumenical movement between the Christian churches than with other religions in sermons.When at university, I attended services, I went to services in different denominations and encountered a lot of moral panic about the whole idea of the 'new age.' movement.

I am not sure what to make of the idea of a new world order. I do think that there are ideas around about world governance, and I am suspicious of these. It does sound like a whole picture of centralised control. One movement which I am aware of is that of Share International, which was founded by Benjamin Creme, and seemed to propose the idea of a one world government. Personally, I think that there is a lot going on behind the scenes which we don't know about and that worries me.

I wish to suggest that the main idea which I think is central in the individual mythical and spiritual pursuit is that of transformation.

I think that we are in constant stories, some made by others and those made by others. We can be oppressed by them, or transform them into our own stories of empowerment. The mythic dimension is tapped into by the religious but even science involves a certain amount of myth: the missing link of Darwin's theory, neuroscience and so much more. We are in a constant web of fictive truths and knots, trying to find our way within the maze. Sometimes, it is enough to make me just want to crawl under my duvet, but I do believe that we have to get up, and transform our own lives into the best possible stories, of our own making.