amorphous_constellation
Well-Known Member
So from my point of view, it seems like most mainline religions, at least in the western world, tend to focus on instruction. Instruction about about how and where to meet god's approval, instruction about how to live your whole life, what to think, what to do etc. You meet god at one point or another by following a number of rules, by praying and believing, by fulfilling, and through all of this instruction you believe that you may activate god, and it might do something for you, either on earth or elsewhere. Or if you don't believe that, at least you will believe that it may not harm you for following tenets.
First of all, all of this becomes quickly antithetical, I might argue, to our native proximity to physical reality as apparent corporeal objects. Sine qua non, It crosses a fine line to embrace the metaphysical, and relieves the physical to a mere anecdotal spiritual standing.
A religion that is descriptive, arguably speaking to that which we lack, might show an infinitely more explanatory set of datums for that which is physical, concerning all of the things (all of the physically proximal real things of a vast multitude in standard reality) that mankind has so long grappled with understanding in the wake of a focus on following instructions.
In the Bible for example, genesis is the only book I find that shows some small reserve of interest in the descriptive qualities of human experience as opposed to the instructive. It of course, quickly becomes intensely instructive full stop. Adam is allowed to name animals and birds, but this of course is a grossly incomplete taxonomic act in proportion to nature. I'm skeptical that the insects, plants, and fish were ever so named. And so Adam may never have been brought in proximity to an anglerfish to name it, and thus implicit in the omission, the organism is not spiritually or instructively important.
Adam may not have even known much about the garden he was within, or the exotic forests thereabout. In there being a forbidden fruit, there is of course even a spiritual trepidation that he should even understand nature. (this trepidation has probably not served mankind well ever since) Thus, the descriptive value of natural reality, which is so very proximal to our own, seems to have earned here a taboo.
We modern people learn new things every day. Not so long ago, they would have learned for example, something about the highest mountain on mars, Olympus Mons. This mountain however, is as insignificant to common instructive religion as would be an anglerfish. Whatever the surface of Venus is like, or whatever is within Jupiter, all of that is not important to Adam. What was important to adam is specifically that he should focus on instruction, and in his embryonic case, actually the avoidance of learning some random particular about nature.
I guess my point is, I think that a descriptive religion may have worked to shape us in an opposite way, and at the expense of instruction, we might now be living in a more advanced age of information. (the river is going that way anyway folks) However, we may never know.
First of all, all of this becomes quickly antithetical, I might argue, to our native proximity to physical reality as apparent corporeal objects. Sine qua non, It crosses a fine line to embrace the metaphysical, and relieves the physical to a mere anecdotal spiritual standing.
A religion that is descriptive, arguably speaking to that which we lack, might show an infinitely more explanatory set of datums for that which is physical, concerning all of the things (all of the physically proximal real things of a vast multitude in standard reality) that mankind has so long grappled with understanding in the wake of a focus on following instructions.
In the Bible for example, genesis is the only book I find that shows some small reserve of interest in the descriptive qualities of human experience as opposed to the instructive. It of course, quickly becomes intensely instructive full stop. Adam is allowed to name animals and birds, but this of course is a grossly incomplete taxonomic act in proportion to nature. I'm skeptical that the insects, plants, and fish were ever so named. And so Adam may never have been brought in proximity to an anglerfish to name it, and thus implicit in the omission, the organism is not spiritually or instructively important.
Adam may not have even known much about the garden he was within, or the exotic forests thereabout. In there being a forbidden fruit, there is of course even a spiritual trepidation that he should even understand nature. (this trepidation has probably not served mankind well ever since) Thus, the descriptive value of natural reality, which is so very proximal to our own, seems to have earned here a taboo.
We modern people learn new things every day. Not so long ago, they would have learned for example, something about the highest mountain on mars, Olympus Mons. This mountain however, is as insignificant to common instructive religion as would be an anglerfish. Whatever the surface of Venus is like, or whatever is within Jupiter, all of that is not important to Adam. What was important to adam is specifically that he should focus on instruction, and in his embryonic case, actually the avoidance of learning some random particular about nature.
I guess my point is, I think that a descriptive religion may have worked to shape us in an opposite way, and at the expense of instruction, we might now be living in a more advanced age of information. (the river is going that way anyway folks) However, we may never know.
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