Questions about personal views and religions

[illykitty]

I have two main questions in this topic. You can just answer the ones applicable to you.

1- What are some differences between your personal views (what you feel is right) and your religion (what the religion teaches is right)?

2- How does a person reconcile the difference between what they feel is right and what the religion says?

To expand on the questions, let's use an example: One's religion could forbid homosexuality but someone might personally feel the right thing to do is to support LGBT rights. How would one make these compatible or is it necessary to sacrifice one for the other?

I am asking this in effort to see if religions are really off the map for myself. I often struggle with some difference or another, so I want to learn from various perspectives about how to handle something like this. Perhaps other could use this topic too. As I have not grown in a religious household, I don't know anything about these things and books don't often talk about it.

So I hope someone at least will answer, otherwise I have no idea how I am supposed to learn about this.

 

[DawudTalut]

I have two main questions in this topic. You can just answer the ones applicable to you.

1- What are some differences between your personal views (what you feel is right) and your religion (what the religion teaches is right)?

2- How does a person reconcile the difference between what they feel is right and what the religion says?

To expand on the questions, let's use an example: One's religion could forbid homosexuality but someone might personally feel the right thing to do is to support LGBT rights. How would one make these compatible or is it necessary to sacrifice one for the other?

I am asking this in effort to see if religions are really off the map for myself. I often struggle with some difference or another, so I want to learn from various perspectives about how to handle something like this. Perhaps other could use this topic too. As I have not grown in a religious household, I don't know anything about these things and books don't often talk about it.

So I hope someone at least will answer, otherwise I have no idea how I am supposed to learn about this.

Peace be on you.
Speaking from Ahmadiyya Muslim understanding:
A perfect religion from perfect God guides fully in all walks of life.
Personal differences is other name of some questions are unanswered to person, so one needs to clear these by learning within the said religion IMHO.

 

[yiostheoy]

I have two main questions in this topic. You can just answer the ones applicable to you.

1- What are some differences between your personal views (what you feel is right) and your religion (what the religion teaches is right)?

2- How does a person reconcile the difference between what they feel is right and what the religion says?

To expand on the questions, let's use an example: One's religion could forbid homosexuality but someone might personally feel the right thing to do is to support LGBT rights. How would one make these compatible or is it necessary to sacrifice one for the other?

I am asking this in effort to see if religions are really off the map for myself. I often struggle with some difference or another, so I want to learn from various perspectives about how to handle something like this. Perhaps other could use this topic too. As I have not grown in a religious household, I don't know anything about these things and books don't often talk about it.

So I hope someone at least will answer, otherwise I have no idea how I am supposed to learn about this.

1 - The church I attend sporadically and semiannually has lots of items that have crept in over the centuries which are completely extra-biblical.
2 - I go with my own judgment on matters where I disagree with the Church.

 

[Quintessence]

The thing about affiliating with non-dogmatic religions is that these things cease to be an issue at all. There are no teachings in contemporary Paganisms, Druidry included, that must be accepted or else. Furthermore, in Paganisms, what is "right" is rarely regarded so one-dimensionally - it is rare that I see people say "this is the right way, this is the wrong way, period, end of story." And even if someone does do that, it's irrelevant considering there are no pope-like authorities in Paganisms that make such statements carry any weight for others.

 

[Vouthon]

Hi Kitty,

Great question!

I don't have time to provide a thorough answer at the moment but I'm leaving you with some relevant materials from my religious tradition...
​

"...No one ought to act against his own conscience and he should follow his conscience rather than the judgement of the church when he is certain..."

- Pope Innocent III (1198-1216)

​

Read this:

https://books.google.co.uk/books?id...NAhWsCMAKHaKAB3IQ6AEIJTAA#v=onepage&q&f=false

"...It is in a letter of Innocent III, written in 1201...A woman called Guleilma had left her husband, alleging consanguinity, recently discovered. But the husband was also notoriously violent. To outsider with partial knowledge of the facts, the true motive of the wife must seem doubtful. Was her desertion really due to her discovery of an impediment? Or vice versa?...[If so] they might excommunicate her for disobedience.This was the question that came to Pope Innocent III...

None the less, Innocent's wisdom insisted, she must obey her conscience...

Innocent III's letter would be duly preserved in Gregory IX's Decretals where it would calmly declare to every student of the subject, without ant special warning of the time-bomb it actually contained, the ultimate supremacy of conscience. Hostiensis himself, the most zealous apostle of the pope's fullness of power, expressly acknowledged that the authority of conscience was in the last resort even greater..."​

Some commentary on this:


https://books.google.co.uk/books?id...7NAhXiB8AKHYvQBBQQ6AEIJzAC#v=onepage&q&f=true

"...The basic idea of the supreme authority of conscience had already been endorsed, in stronger terms [than ever before], by Pope Innocent III (1198-1216)...Here one sees the beginnings of the idea that conscience can trump even the objective law.

Noah Feldman observes that the idea of freedom of conscience is already being suggested here: 'If it was sinful to act against conscience, there might be reason to avoid requiring anyone to act against conscience'..."​

So here you have a medieval Pope telling a woman that her individual conscience is ultimately supreme even over the authority of the Pope or Church. There is a difference in Catholic theology between the "objective" sinfulness of an act and the "subjective" culpability of the individual concerned. Read this Catholic theological study on ‘conscience’:

2. According to common Christian teaching, one must follow one’s conscience even when it is mistaken. St. Thomas explains this as follows. Conscience is one’s last and best judgment as to the choice one ought to make. If this judgment is mistaken, one does not know it at the time. One will follow one’s conscience if one is choosing reasonably. To the best of one’s knowledge and belief, it is God’s plan and will. So if one acts against one’s conscience, one is certainly in the wrong (see S.t., 1–2, q. 19, aa. 5–6).


Thomas drives home his point. If a superior gives one an order which cannot be obeyed without violating one’s conscience, one must not obey. To obey the superior in this case would be to disobey what one believes to be the mind and will of God (see S.t., 1–2, q. 19, a. 5, ad 2; 2–2, q. 104, a. 5). It is good to abstain from fornication. But if one’s conscience is that one should choose to fornicate, one does evil if one does not fornicate. Indeed, to believe in Jesus is in itself good and essential for salvation; but one can only believe in him rightly if one judges that one ought to. Therefore, one whose conscience is that it is wrong to believe in Jesus would be morally guilty if he or she chose against this judgment.

3. Still, one is not necessarily guiltless in following a conscience which is in error. If the error is one’s own fault, one is responsible for the wrong one does in following erroneous conscience. As Vatican II teaches: “Conscience frequently errs from invincible ignorance without losing its dignity. The same cannot be said when someone cares but little for truth and goodness, and conscience by degrees growspractically sightless as a result of a practice of sinning”.[1]
​

 

[Jayhawker Soule]

I view religion as both perspective and period-piece, and I rely on the perspective to navigate successive periods.

 

[Rival]

My religion doesn't dictate this sort of thing.

 

[LuisDantas]

I have two main questions in this topic. You can just answer the ones applicable to you.

1- What are some differences between your personal views (what you feel is right) and your religion (what the religion teaches is right)?

I don't think there should be any. That would be weird and an unnecessary source of conflict, IMO.

2- How does a person reconcile the difference between what they feel is right and what the religion says?

By accepting the responsibility for one's own beliefs. It is for the believer to justify his beliefs, not the other way around.

To expand on the questions, let's use an example: One's religion could forbid homosexuality but someone might personally feel the right thing to do is to support LGBT rights. How would one make these compatible or is it necessary to sacrifice one for the other?

Some religions are more dogmatic than others. All religions need to be cared for and kept meaningful and relevant by their believers, even though quite a few people and whole faiths state the opposite.

Dogmatic beliefs are doomed to lose meaning and relevance. And that is how it should be.

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

I have two main questions in this topic. You can just answer the ones applicable to you.

1- What are some differences between your personal views (what you feel is right) and your religion (what the religion teaches is right)?

2- How does a person reconcile the difference between what they feel is right and what the religion says?

To expand on the questions, let's use an example: One's religion could forbid homosexuality but someone might personally feel the right thing to do is to support LGBT rights. How would one make these compatible or is it necessary to sacrifice one for the other?

I am asking this in effort to see if religions are really off the map for myself. I often struggle with some difference or another, so I want to learn from various perspectives about how to handle something like this. Perhaps other could use this topic too. As I have not grown in a religious household, I don't know anything about these things and books don't often talk about it.

So I hope someone at least will answer, otherwise I have no idea how I am supposed to learn about this.

- "I should not be gay" does not necessarily imply "I should make sure nobody in my religion is gay"
- even "I should make sure nobody in my religion is gay" does not necessarily imply "I should make sure that non-adherents are legally penalized for being gay."

Also: something to keep in mind for "sola fide" Christian denominations (i.e. most Proestants): yes, they have universal standards of behaviour, but:

- abiding by them without faith won't save you.
- if you have faith, the "indwelling Holy Spirit" will cause you to abide by them.

... so trying to enforce those standards on people without faith is especially useless.

 

[crossfire]

I have two main questions in this topic. You can just answer the ones applicable to you.

1- What are some differences between your personal views (what you feel is right) and your religion (what the religion teaches is right)?

2- How does a person reconcile the difference between what they feel is right and what the religion says?

To expand on the questions, let's use an example: One's religion could forbid homosexuality but someone might personally feel the right thing to do is to support LGBT rights. How would one make these compatible or is it necessary to sacrifice one for the other?

I am asking this in effort to see if religions are really off the map for myself. I often struggle with some difference or another, so I want to learn from various perspectives about how to handle something like this. Perhaps other could use this topic too. As I have not grown in a religious household, I don't know anything about these things and books don't often talk about it.

So I hope someone at least will answer, otherwise I have no idea how I am supposed to learn about this.

I would say to look for the symbolic/psychological interpretation for the religious doctrine, and how that principle might be applied internally within your own mind. For instance, the Jungian Shadow is the same gender as the person, whereas the person's anima or animus is the opposite gender of the person, so you could take the meaning that how you approach Anima/Animus is not an appropriate way to approach Shadow.

 

[idav]

I have two main questions in this topic. You can just answer the ones applicable to you.

1- What are some differences between your personal views (what you feel is right) and your religion (what the religion teaches is right)?

2- How does a person reconcile the difference between what they feel is right and what the religion says?

To expand on the questions, let's use an example: One's religion could forbid homosexuality but someone might personally feel the right thing to do is to support LGBT rights. How would one make these compatible or is it necessary to sacrifice one for the other?

I am asking this in effort to see if religions are really off the map for myself. I often struggle with some difference or another, so I want to learn from various perspectives about how to handle something like this. Perhaps other could use this topic too. As I have not grown in a religious household, I don't know anything about these things and books don't often talk about it.

So I hope someone at least will answer, otherwise I have no idea how I am supposed to learn about this.

I feel like someone can have the highest personal standard even to the point of straight out celibacy, without expecting others to adhere to your high personal standard. In fact it would be crazy to expect anyone to agree with us on everything.

 

[Laika]

I have two main questions in this topic. You can just answer the ones applicable to you.

1- What are some differences between your personal views (what you feel is right) and your religion (what the religion teaches is right)?

2- How does a person reconcile the difference between what they feel is right and what the religion says?

To expand on the questions, let's use an example: One's religion could forbid homosexuality but someone might personally feel the right thing to do is to support LGBT rights. How would one make these compatible or is it necessary to sacrifice one for the other?

I am asking this in effort to see if religions are really off the map for myself. I often struggle with some difference or another, so I want to learn from various perspectives about how to handle something like this. Perhaps other could use this topic too. As I have not grown in a religious household, I don't know anything about these things and books don't often talk about it.

So I hope someone at least will answer, otherwise I have no idea how I am supposed to learn about this.

Forgive the abuse of the term "religion" to include a political ideology and philosophical worldview. The inner experience is probably identical though in terms of the discipline it involves. But here we go;

1. My belief system (communism) justifies death and destruction on an industrial scale. My own feelings on that swing wildly. there aren't many ways to understand being all but a nazi struggling with a conscience. There has to be a way to reconcile the objective realities of it with my own feelings. Feelings matter and my revulsion to many aspects of my beliefs cannot be ignored in the long run. It's often to the point of openly wanting to reject or oppose it but it has got easier with time.

2. Basically, if I think about it hard enough it gives me cognitive dissonance- which is really unpleasant. If this were a religion, this is like realising your God is evil. The easy route would be to say "God does not exist" but that isn't true. Certain key ideas in communism are either true or so close to being true that it is in practice irrelevant whether they are true or not. The alternative is choosing to believe ideas which are largely or wholly false simply because they are morally more acceptable. So I cannot simply fake ignorance to remove the problem.
so the second option is a combination of systematically re-examining my own beliefs looking for errors both in terms of being logically inconsistent or in conflict with the evidence so that my beliefs can evolve. you have to learn to pose a different question which is soluble rather than one which isn't. This can involve a great deal of existential angst, long walks and quiet but intense thought. It fails probably about a third of the time but often this is enough for minor stuff.

The third one is to take a step back and re-evaluate what is important and what I can and cannot control. Very often this means taking a strongly hedonistic break from thinking about it and revisiting it at a later date. Almost always it means looking at ideas which are directly hostile to my current beliefs and incorporating useful aspects of them into my own. That also gives me an opportunity to reconsider the problem in terms of the wider context as part of the beliefs. the mistake I have made is taking a too simplistic understanding of communist ideas and then changing how it "adds up". Approaching these things too intellectually and abstractly is the big problem.

Finally, there is a trade off. I may well be able to get rid of some of the worst aspects of my belief but they are an attempt to reflect the world at large. You have to accept somethings are beyond your control and that choice is often an illusion when looked at from a much bigger picture. There are some really bitter-sweet moments when you realise you can't make the world perfect and how dangerous it is to try. The world isn't kind but the point of knowing the truth is it gives you the power to know how to change it.recognition of your own power to change and to be at fault changes you. So the "civil war" between my beliefs and my conscience in my head goes on a daily basis. I was too honest about my beliefs and paid a very high price for it. it is therefore a series of precarious compromises.

This is an almost daily process which has got easier with time. It is Not a great way to live and is in the context of mental illness and depression, but if you walked in my shoes for a week and shared that pain of knowing what "my comrades" who shared these beliefs did and coming to terms with the collective guilt makes for some profound experiences. You get to "feel" humanity at its best and its worst and greatly expands how you understand the human condition. I feel older than I look and stuff like this is undoubtably aging. In the dark you have to be the light. That is what makes us human, the over powering desire to live in the face of the absurdity of believing that in our insignificance we matter all. I wouldn't trade that for anything as its at those moments you feel most alive.

 

[illykitty]

By the way, I don't want anyone to feel I just made a thread and not replying, I'm trying to digest the replies and formulate some thoughts. It can take some time.

 

[Orbit]

I have two main questions in this topic. You can just answer the ones applicable to you.

1- What are some differences between your personal views (what you feel is right) and your religion (what the religion teaches is right)?

2- How does a person reconcile the difference between what they feel is right and what the religion says?

To expand on the questions, let's use an example: One's religion could forbid homosexuality but someone might personally feel the right thing to do is to support LGBT rights. How would one make these compatible or is it necessary to sacrifice one for the other?

I am asking this in effort to see if religions are really off the map for myself. I often struggle with some difference or another, so I want to learn from various perspectives about how to handle something like this. Perhaps other could use this topic too. As I have not grown in a religious household, I don't know anything about these things and books don't often talk about it.

So I hope someone at least will answer, otherwise I have no idea how I am supposed to learn about this.

My solution was to give up organized religion because it encourages intolerance and I didn't want to be a part of that. Problem solved. No dogma, no intolerance.

 

[yiostheoy]

My solution was to give up organized religion because it encourages intolerance and I didn't want to be a part of that. Problem solved. No dogma, no intolerance.

I have to agree with you on giving up organized religion.

My own reason however is more philosophical however.

I did not want the Pope in Rome telling me what to think or do.

So for me it is more of a matter of Freedom than anything else.

 

[yiostheoy]

Forgive the abuse of the term "religion" to include a political ideology and philosophical worldview. The inner experience is probably identical though in terms of the discipline it involves. But here we go;

1. My belief system (communism) justifies death and destruction on an industrial scale. My own feelings on that swing wildly. there aren't many ways to understand being all but a nazi struggling with a conscience. There has to be a way to reconcile the objective realities of it with my own feelings. Feelings matter and my revulsion to many aspects of my beliefs cannot be ignored in the long run. It's often to the point of openly wanting to reject or oppose it but it has got easier with time.

2. Basically, if I think about it hard enough it gives me cognitive dissonance- which is really unpleasant. If this were a religion, this is like realising your God is evil. The easy route would be to say "God does not exist" but that isn't true. Certain key ideas in communism are either true or so close to being true that it is in practice irrelevant whether they are true or not. The alternative is choosing to believe ideas which are largely or wholly false simply because they are morally more acceptable. So I cannot simply fake ignorance to remove the problem.
so the second option is a combination of systematically re-examining my own beliefs looking for errors both in terms of being logically inconsistent or in conflict with the evidence so that my beliefs can evolve. you have to learn to pose a different question which is soluble rather than one which isn't. This can involve a great deal of existential angst, long walks and quiet but intense thought. It fails probably about a third of the time but often this is enough for minor stuff.

The third one is to take a step back and re-evaluate what is important and what I can and cannot control. Very often this means taking a strongly hedonistic break from thinking about it and revisiting it at a later date. Almost always it means looking at ideas which are directly hostile to my current beliefs and incorporating useful aspects of them into my own. That also gives me an opportunity to reconsider the problem in terms of the wider context as part of the beliefs. the mistake I have made is taking a too simplistic understanding of communist ideas and then changing how it "adds up". Approaching these things too intellectually and abstractly is the big problem.

Finally, there is a trade off. I may well be able to get rid of some of the worst aspects of my belief but they are an attempt to reflect the world at large. You have to accept somethings are beyond your control and that choice is often an illusion when looked at from a much bigger picture. There are some really bitter-sweet moments when you realise you can't make the world perfect and how dangerous it is to try. The world isn't kind but the point of knowing the truth is it gives you the power to know how to change it.recognition of your own power to change and to be at fault changes you. So the "civil war" between my beliefs and my conscience in my head goes on a daily basis. I was too honest about my beliefs and paid a very high price for it. it is therefore a series of precarious compromises.

This is an almost daily process which has got easier with time. It is Not a great way to live and is in the context of mental illness and depression, but if you walked in my shoes for a week and shared that pain of knowing what "my comrades" who shared these beliefs did and coming to terms with the collective guilt makes for some profound experiences. You get to "feel" humanity at its best and its worst and greatly expands how you understand the human condition. I feel older than I look and stuff like this is undoubtably aging. In the dark you have to be the light. That is what makes us human, the over powering desire to live in the face of the absurdity of believing that in our insignificance we matter all. I wouldn't trade that for anything as its at those moments you feel most alive.

So you sound like a Machiavellian kind of guy -- or maybe Nietzsche.

 

[yiostheoy]

- "I should not be gay" does not necessarily imply "I should make sure nobody in my religion is gay"
- even "I should make sure nobody in my religion is gay" does not necessarily imply "I should make sure that non-adherents are legally penalized for being gay."

Also: something to keep in mind for "sola fide" Christian denominations (i.e. most Proestants): yes, they have universal standards of behaviour, but:

- abiding by them without faith won't save you.
- if you have faith, the "indwelling Holy Spirit" will cause you to abide by them.

... so trying to enforce those standards on people without faith is especially useless.

Gay or straight is simply an orientation based on front entry versus rear entry.

It has nothing really to do with religion.

Moses and St. Paul did not favor rear entry, so you just need to find something else in Religion that is ok with it -- like Episcopalianism etc.

 

[yiostheoy]

I don't think there should be any. That would be weird and an unnecessary source of conflict, IMO.



By accepting the responsibility for one's own beliefs. It is for the believer to justify his beliefs, not the other way around.



Some religions are more dogmatic than others. All religions need to be cared for and kept meaningful and relevant by their believers, even though quite a few people and whole faiths state the opposite.

Dogmatic beliefs are doomed to lose meaning and relevance. And that is how it should be.

Exactly.

Therein lies the power of Philosophy. It alone can make you the master of any Religion or any Scientific dogma as well.

 

[Vinayaka]

1- What are some differences between your personal views (what you feel is right) and your religion (what the religion teaches is right)?

2- How does a person reconcile the difference between what they feel is right and what the religion says?

I've always been encouraged to have personal view. So the religions view is to have personal views.

 

[LuisDantas]

Exactly.

Therein lies the power of Philosophy. It alone can make you the master of any Religion

Religion, IMO, was never supposed to be dogmatic.

or any Scientific dogma as well.

What would scientific dogma be?