Posted by pellmell on August 27, 2001, at 11:24:18
In reply to Re: Sal(vation) Army 4 Me » Cam W., posted by JahL on August 27, 2001, at 9:32:30
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> > If sexual orientation and being "saved" is a requirement to get into heaven, count me out. The far more interesting and informative people must be somewhere else.
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> Cam; I'm with you on this one ;-)
>
> I'm also uneasy about religious organisations trying to recruit people who are at their most vunerable. People who might confuse hope with reality.
>
Me too. Although I wouldn't imply that I've got a firm grip on this "reality" thing (an uncertainty carefully cultivated through a postmodern education in English lit ;)). So I'm not so afraid that people drawn into conservative incarnations of religion will blinded to The Truth About Reality (the "real world," atoms and forces, etc.), because I don't think we can be productive sentient beings without illusions. I'm afraid that the illusions that conservative religions supply promote (and often *require*) a turning away from self-knowledge and what feels true and compassionate. Also, containing oneself in a strict religious structure can lead to a spiral of self-loathing, especially when it tries to deny our fundamental biology. (The human race would've died out a long time ago if it weren't for lustful thoughts. ;)) Striving to "be like Jesus" is setting yourself up for constant failure. We can't take constant failure without breaking down, so we create even more desperate illusions that distance us from ourselves. Conservative religion is superb training in the denial of negative evidence; I think that's part of why we here in the USA can keep believing that global warming, for example, doesn't exist.To balance this, I think Jesus was probably a amazingly compassionate, charismatic person. We can't know what exactly he was all about, but he almost certainly wasn't a big fan of violent conflict. So what's with all this military jargon in conservative religous organizations like The Salvation Army??
> > Hanging with the atheists, agnostics, human secularists, Hindus, Muslims, Buddists, et al - Cam
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> Aren't Muslims rabidly 'homophobic' too? I don't pay a lot of attention to organised religion so I could be wrong...
>
Yep, but we've been there already. :)Hey, and don't forget the Unitarian Universalists (my particular religious subscription).
-pm
poster:pellmell
thread:76532
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20010822/msgs/76588.html