Religion as a Fantasy?

[Ellen Brown]

I think the toughest test for Religion is: does it improve the follower? I've had a long, long time to read and research ideas like Religion, Anthropology, Psychology ad nauseum. Having worked very hard, for a long time, my retirement sometimes makes me feel like a kept woman.

Of late, I've been very interested in what I suppose they would call "Pre-history". I also see evidence that the time during and before Abraham, Ezekiel, and the book of Genesis at times seems to make an oblique reference to beings not known.

It is disappointing to me that most Archeologists I've read and met don't seem to believe in anything spiritual. There are Books and Videos that bring to rise many confusing Ideas. This morning I wakened to the idea that perhaps large parts of all our Religious documents are so heavily censored as to make them almost useless?

Not attacking the 1st Commandment at all. Many treat the time before the giving of the tablets, the time before Genesis as something forbidden to be spoken of. There is not much doubt in my mind that the Zoroastrian Ahura Mazda existed, so what was his relationship to the one modern folk call God, G_d, Allah SWT? Are they the same being?

Lots of the ancient artifacts we now find, seem to depict a war between beings we have not seen. Many present day Anthropologists heavily support the idea that erect bipedals were sentient as far back as 200,000 years ago.

Pondering, pondering.

 

[sun rise]

The way I've reconciled some of what you've written I take from Meher Baba who explained why each manifestation of the one and same Avatar manifests the Single Truth differently in different times and places:

Every Avatar adopts a particular aspect of his time. He adapts and embodies his mode of working according to the attitudes of the people. The outstanding weakness that marked the attitude of people in the time of Jesus was pomp, cruelty and pride. And to do away with that and set an example, he based his working or mode of life on simplicity, humility and suffering. And so there was no necessity for him to marry.*

"In the time of Muhammad, lust dominated in the minds of men, so much so that nearly every man used to have sex with several women. Muhammad, marking this point, made it lawful for every follower of his to have only a certain number of wives, and himself married seven. Had he, like Jesus, not married, then it would have been deemed essential to make it lawful for his followers to remain unmarried. But nobody, in that case, would have followed him. It would have been even worse than useless to come to nil from numerous, so he fixed the number to seven from scores.

"The people were too much steeped in materialism in the age of Buddha. Therefore, stressing the nothingness of maya, he set an example of true renunciation, and left his wife and children. He founded his system on renunciation and sanyas.

"Dry atmosphere marked the age of Krishna. The predominating elements then were internal strife, jealousy, greed. So he preached and founded his teachings on the gospel of love and gaiety, so that people began learning lessons in and developing love and merriment.

"The hopelessness of the situation in Zoroaster's time, when people progressed neither materially nor spiritually, made him base his system so as to make them live the life of the world, yet be spiritually inclined, in search of God and Truth. He enacted certain laws, and made it incumbent on his every follower not to marry more than one woman, and not to regard any other with a lustful eye. He founded his religion on the tenets of good thoughts, good words, good deeds.

"In reality, all these Avatars were the manifestations of the same one divinity, void of desires and above lust, greed, anger."

 

[LuisDantas]

Archeology is a specialty of Anthropology. From my semester of Anthropology I recall that not too few of them are Christians, but have noted that while living inside a community it is hard not to get carried away and sort-of-temporarily adopt the beliefs of the place.

I hope that helps.

 

[Twilight Hue]

I think the toughest test for Religion is: does it improve the follower? I've had a long, long time to read and research ideas like Religion, Anthropology, Psychology ad nauseum. Having worked very hard, for a long time, my retirement sometimes makes me feel like a kept woman.

Of late, I've been very interested in what I suppose they would call "Pre-history". I also see evidence that the time during and before Abraham, Ezekiel, and the book of Genesis at times seems to make an oblique reference to beings not known.

It is disappointing to me that most Archeologists I've read and met don't seem to believe in anything spiritual. There are Books and Videos that bring to rise many confusing Ideas. This morning I wakened to the idea that perhaps large parts of all our Religious documents are so heavily censored as to make them almost useless?

Not attacking the 1st Commandment at all. Many treat the time before the giving of the tablets, the time before Genesis as something forbidden to be spoken of. There is not much doubt in my mind that the Zoroastrian Ahura Mazda existed, so what was his relationship to the one modern folk call God, G_d, Allah SWT? Are they the same being?

Lots of the ancient artifacts we now find, seem to depict a war between beings we have not seen. Many present day Anthropologists heavily support the idea that erect bipedals were sentient as far back as 200,000 years ago.

Pondering, pondering.

There's no doubt mysteries are intriguing for which you can stir up the imagination in so many ways.

 

[Ancient Soul]

I think the toughest test for Religion is: does it improve the follower? I've had a long, long time to read and research ideas like Religion, Anthropology, Psychology ad nauseum. Having worked very hard, for a long time, my retirement sometimes makes me feel like a kept woman.

Of late, I've been very interested in what I suppose they would call "Pre-history". I also see evidence that the time during and before Abraham, Ezekiel, and the book of Genesis at times seems to make an oblique reference to beings not known.

It is disappointing to me that most Archeologists I've read and met don't seem to believe in anything spiritual. There are Books and Videos that bring to rise many confusing Ideas. This morning I wakened to the idea that perhaps large parts of all our Religious documents are so heavily censored as to make them almost useless?

Not attacking the 1st Commandment at all. Many treat the time before the giving of the tablets, the time before Genesis as something forbidden to be spoken of. There is not much doubt in my mind that the Zoroastrian Ahura Mazda existed, so what was his relationship to the one modern folk call God, G_d, Allah SWT? Are they the same being?

Lots of the ancient artifacts we now find, seem to depict a war between beings we have not seen. Many present day Anthropologists heavily support the idea that erect bipedals were sentient as far back as 200,000 years ago.

Pondering, pondering.

And that's what most people don't want to even consider, that there were many, many, human civilizations that came and were destroyed either by their own doing, or natural disasters. Always with enough humans surviving to start all over again. But at best the only trace of them may be some stonework, or statues, with the rest ground down and reverted back into the earth.

As to religions, yes they are all fantasy. I say that because all the religions that I know of have some type of physical man/"god" as their "god". When the True God could best be described as invisible spiritual energy, without form. So all religions use their man/"god" construct to make it easier to con their followers because they can only relate to that which they already know.

 

[Ancient Soul]

I think the toughest test for Religion is: does it improve the follower?

I wanted to address this separately.

What you say is a good start, but I firmly believe that the "toughest test for Religion" would be: Does it answer why life was created, why the universe was created, why were you (each individual) created, for what purpose, the true spiritual nature of God, his relationship with the life forms he created, what IS a soul, what is "Heaven" like, what will the "afterlife" be like, etc, etc, etc...

In that test they ALL fail.

 

[YmirGF]

The way I've reconciled some of what you've written I take from Meher Baba who explained why each manifestation of the one and same Avatar manifests the Single Truth differently in different times and places:

Every Avatar adopts a particular aspect of his time. He adapts and embodies his mode of working according to the attitudes of the people. The outstanding weakness that marked the attitude of people in the time of Jesus was pomp, cruelty and pride. And to do away with that and set an example, he based his working or mode of life on simplicity, humility and suffering. And so there was no necessity for him to marry.*

"In the time of Muhammad, lust dominated in the minds of men, so much so that nearly every man used to have sex with several women. Muhammad, marking this point, made it lawful for every follower of his to have only a certain number of wives, and himself married seven. Had he, like Jesus, not married, then it would have been deemed essential to make it lawful for his followers to remain unmarried. But nobody, in that case, would have followed him. It would have been even worse than useless to come to nil from numerous, so he fixed the number to seven from scores.

"The people were too much steeped in materialism in the age of Buddha. Therefore, stressing the nothingness of maya, he set an example of true renunciation, and left his wife and children. He founded his system on renunciation and sanyas.

"Dry atmosphere marked the age of Krishna. The predominating elements then were internal strife, jealousy, greed. So he preached and founded his teachings on the gospel of love and gaiety, so that people began learning lessons in and developing love and merriment.

"The hopelessness of the situation in Zoroaster's time, when people progressed neither materially nor spiritually, made him base his system so as to make them live the life of the world, yet be spiritually inclined, in search of God and Truth. He enacted certain laws, and made it incumbent on his every follower not to marry more than one woman, and not to regard any other with a lustful eye. He founded his religion on the tenets of good thoughts, good words, good deeds.

"In reality, all these Avatars were the manifestations of the same one divinity, void of desires and above lust, greed, anger."

I do wish the Meher Baba got more exposure than he has. He was a remarkable personality.

 

[Ancient Soul]

The way I've reconciled some of what you've written I take from Meher Baba who explained why each manifestation of the one and same Avatar manifests the Single Truth differently in different times and places:

Every Avatar adopts a particular aspect of his time. He adapts and embodies his mode of working according to the attitudes of the people. The outstanding weakness that marked the attitude of people in the time of Jesus was pomp, cruelty and pride. And to do away with that and set an example, he based his working or mode of life on simplicity, humility and suffering. And so there was no necessity for him to marry.*

"In the time of Muhammad, lust dominated in the minds of men, so much so that nearly every man used to have sex with several women. Muhammad, marking this point, made it lawful for every follower of his to have only a certain number of wives, and himself married seven. Had he, like Jesus, not married, then it would have been deemed essential to make it lawful for his followers to remain unmarried. But nobody, in that case, would have followed him. It would have been even worse than useless to come to nil from numerous, so he fixed the number to seven from scores.

"The people were too much steeped in materialism in the age of Buddha. Therefore, stressing the nothingness of maya, he set an example of true renunciation, and left his wife and children. He founded his system on renunciation and sanyas.

"Dry atmosphere marked the age of Krishna. The predominating elements then were internal strife, jealousy, greed. So he preached and founded his teachings on the gospel of love and gaiety, so that people began learning lessons in and developing love and merriment.

"The hopelessness of the situation in Zoroaster's time, when people progressed neither materially nor spiritually, made him base his system so as to make them live the life of the world, yet be spiritually inclined, in search of God and Truth. He enacted certain laws, and made it incumbent on his every follower not to marry more than one woman, and not to regard any other with a lustful eye. He founded his religion on the tenets of good thoughts, good words, good deeds.

"In reality, all these Avatars were the manifestations of the same one divinity, void of desires and above lust, greed, anger."

I disagree.

As all of those what we now consider negative traits, always were part of the human condition for the most part. So you cannot break them down into groups and say these few were there in Jesus' time, these in Muhammad's time, etc. They were there in ALL the timeline of your copy and past.

 

[Firemorphic]

There is not much doubt in my mind that the Zoroastrian Ahura Mazda existed, so what was his relationship to the one modern folk call God, G_d, Allah SWT? Are they the same being?

Yes they are words (not deities) for exactly the same thing (Zoroaster was one of our prophets afterall). There's no contradiction between (authentic) Zoroastrianism and Islam.

Blessings

 

[Ellen Brown]

I wanted to address this separately.

What you say is a good start, but I firmly believe that the "toughest test for Religion" would be: Does it answer why life was created, why the universe was created, why were you (each individual) created, for what purpose, the true spiritual nature of God, his relationship with the life forms he created, what IS a soul, what is "Heaven" like, what will the "afterlife" be like, etc, etc, etc...

In that test they ALL fail.

The way we treat those around us has to be a big part of it.

 

[Ancient Soul]

The way we treat those around us has to be a big part of it.

Oh right, I keep forgetting that religions have nothing to do with offering any true spiritual teachings, so can only offer the "being good" and some man made rituals as a placebo to con people into thinking "that" is being "spiritual".

 

[David T]

I think the toughest test for Religion is: does it improve the follower? I've had a long, long time to read and research ideas like Religion, Anthropology, Psychology ad nauseum. Having worked very hard, for a long time, my retirement sometimes makes me feel like a kept woman.

Of late, I've been very interested in what I suppose they would call "Pre-history". I also see evidence that the time during and before Abraham, Ezekiel, and the book of Genesis at times seems to make an oblique reference to beings not known.

It is disappointing to me that most Archeologists I've read and met don't seem to believe in anything spiritual. There are Books and Videos that bring to rise many confusing Ideas. This morning I wakened to the idea that perhaps large parts of all our Religious documents are so heavily censored as to make them almost useless?

Not attacking the 1st Commandment at all. Many treat the time before the giving of the tablets, the time before Genesis as something forbidden to be spoken of. There is not much doubt in my mind that the Zoroastrian Ahura Mazda existed, so what was his relationship to the one modern folk call God, G_d, Allah SWT? Are they the same being?

Lots of the ancient artifacts we now find, seem to depict a war between beings we have not seen. Many present day Anthropologists heavily support the idea that erect bipedals were sentient as far back as 200,000 years ago.

Pondering, pondering.

You know there was a noahs ark discussion. I said based on the evidence that story has roots that are about 15k-20k years old so good luck trying to understand it at all from here, impossible...

Interestingly atheists were the most challenged by that. I laid out the evidence and they were like young earth creationists. All i did was point out that there wew factually, epic monumental floods 12k 20k years ago. Factually all continents developed flood stories in pre literate times. You know what they said? i had no proof. I said what would ypu deem as proof? a book 20k years old.

My point lack of spirituality is an emotional issue in particular related to modernity and how we intellectual the world. From a pre literate perspective which is almost impossible for us Noahs Ark is easy. God and nature was the same thing long ago for everyone. Touching into that today is very difficult for most people. We werent as "stupid" as we believe we were from our very modern and now secular perspective.
I also might say we werent visited by aliens but how we formed and drew and created art is very sophisticated. I live in the northwest and our native pre literate art is stunning. We were telling very rich and full stories about ehat we call today nature but also what we used to understand as god at one time. Give em a chance! They (we) might surprise you how accurate they (WE) WERE!

 

[Ellen Brown]

You know there was a noahs ark discussion. I said based on the evidence that story has roots that are about 15k-20k years old so good luck trying to understand it at all from here, impossible...

Interestingly atheists were the most challenged by that. I laid out the evidence and they were like young earth creationists. All i did was point out that there wew factually, epic monumental floods 12k 20k years ago. Factually all continents developed flood stories in pre literate times. You know what they said? i had no proof. I said what would ypu deem as proof? a book 20k years old.

My point lack of spirituality is an emotional issue in particular related to modernity and how we intellectual the world. From a pre literate perspective which is almost impossible for us Noahs Ark is easy. God and nature was the same thing long ago for everyone. Touching into that today is very difficult for most people. We werent as "stupid" as we believe we were from our very modern and now secular perspective.
I also might say we werent visited by aliens but how we formed and drew and created art is very sophisticated. I live in the northwest and our native pre literate art is stunning. We were telling very rich and full stories about ehat we call today nature but also what we used to understand as god at one time. Give em a chance! They (we) might surprise you how accurate they (WE) WERE!

I live in Portland, Oregon, but have not been able to explore the Archeological ruins as much as I wanted to because at the time, I was more interested in Geology. However, many years ago I did write a Sci Fi tale which involved the Anasazi at Mesa Verde.

I'm very imaginative, so the idea of Aliens are sort of implanted into my mind. It is likely that the the Heavenly Beings so heavily entrenched in the Bible, are Aliens with the ability to function in multiple dimensions. That would explain so much. It is likely that the Bible is true from the point of view of a primitive man. If those same incidents happened today, people would be panicked.

 

[David T]

I live in Portland, Oregon, but have not been able to explore the Archeological ruins as much as I wanted to because at the time, I was more interested in Geology. However, many years ago I did write a Sci Fi tale which involved the Anasazi at Mesa Verde.

I'm very imaginative, so the idea of Aliens are sort of implanted into my mind. It is likely that the the Heavenly Beings so heavily entrenched in the Bible, are Aliens with the ability to function in multiple dimensions. That would explain so much. It is likely that the Bible is true from the point of view of a primitive man. If those same incidents happened today, people would be panicked.

You are an artist. We can be very very imaginative bunch. Someti. Es good sometimes oh well. But i do love magic! Properly understood because the world is filled with it if you learn to look.

If you come to astoria look me up?!! Beer is on me... Oh have you been to the grotto off sandy? i love the grotto. Art and plants awesome stuff its all dedicated to OSM!!!

 

[Ellen Brown]

You are an artist. We can be very very imaginative bunch. Someti. Es good sometimes oh well. But i do love magic! Properly understood because the world is filled with it if you learn to look.

If you come to astoria look me up?!! Beer is on me... Oh have you been to the grotto off sandy? i love the grotto. Art and plants awesome stuff its all dedicated to OSM!!!

Yes, I did not get to the Grotto this year, but I love it. Right now I do not have a car, but perhaps will get another next summer?

Happy New Year.