However, I am aware that ideas about religion, including the philosophy questions about the existence of God are so bound up with our lives as human beings. I wonder how this all connects together and even if the need for religious experience is innate. I do think that my topic might be seen as a bit complicated for the forum and I apologise if this is the case, but it is the whole area which I grapple with and seek to explore in my own life. So, I am interested in exploring this with anyone else who is also interested in this too. — Jack Cummins
Complex and abstract terms like “God” “Heaven” “souls” are learned to us in our way of life when we are getting to the adulthood. — javi2541997
I hope my country realizes that education for technology has destroyed wisdom and that we return to education for wisdom. That is liberal education. — Athena
However, I am aware that ideas about religion, including the philosophy questions about the existence of God are so bound up with our lives as human beings. I wonder how this all connects together and even if the need for religious experience is innate. — Jack Cummins
Uncertainty (radical contingency) = freedom (agency) aka "dread". At best, philosophy is the critical check on, and active resistance to, the servile, totalitarian, temptations of "religious beliefs and ideas".Only when death (i.e. human Mortality) becomes (medically/technologically) optional will (the need for) religion die. Likewise, when ignorance (of ignorance, especially) is no longer an inescapable, or inexhaustable, aspect of human Existence will philosophy be dead and buried. — 180 Proof
The working definition of religion which I will offer is one offered by William James in, 'The Varieties of Religious Experience' :
'Were one asked to characterise the life of religion in the broadest and most general terms possible, one might say that it consists of the belief that there is an unseen order, and that our supreme good lies in harmoniously adjusting ourselves thereto.' — Jack Cummins
Why do people need religious beliefs and ideas? — Jack Cummins
I think that this involves the whole hypnotic power of beliefs and I wonder to what extent can we break free from it? — Jack Cummins
To find our own mythic structure of meaning seems worthwhile to me, but this might mean that we are in the minority of the extraordinary. — Jack Cummins
The one thing that I would say that I do wish is that the quest can be pleasurable too, because I think that without a certain amount of fun and light relief it would all become too overwhelming and beyond our human capabilities. — Jack Cummins
↪Nikolas
I do believe that it is essential that we hold on to the need to be able to hold onto the search for truth, wherever it takes us, into the rocky banks of seas of uncertainty. For some, it may lead into an abyss of nihilistic uncertainty and, for others to a spiritual paradise of knowing. I journey in between the two and embrace existentialist perspectives alongside aspects of Western and Eastern spiritual philosophies. I suppose one question is to what extent is it about objective searching and knowing and how much is it about psychological need? Personally, I admit that I have a certain amount of searching for what I wish to find, but objective questions about truth matter as well, in a very deep sense. — Jack Cummins
That's a pretty good non-sectarian definition of Religion. So, in that case, Albert Einstein was a religious person. But I would distinguish between a personal unofficial Philosophy and a communal doctrinal Religion.The working definition of religion which I will offer is one offered by William James in, 'The Varieties of Religious Experience' :
'Were one asked to characterise the life of religion in the broadest and most general terms possible, one might say that it consists of the belief that there is an unseen order, and that our supreme good lies in harmoniously adjusting ourselves thereto.' — Jack Cummins
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