The Cauldron: A Pagan Forum

 
I have faith because it's either that or I'm completely batshit - and as it seems to be not-dangerous, I'm gonna go with faith.  I'm pretty sure if it was just straight batshittery it would be odder.

I have religion because I find it a useful structure for articulating how to live with other people and how to make the world better.

Why do you, personally, have a religion? (or faith, or a path...)

Um...because?

I have a religion because, for me, it is unthinkable not to.  

Why should you have a religion? Are some reasons better than others

I don't think there's a "should" about it.

I have to agree with Shad here (although I'm not an FK adherent), and Veggie too, at least to the degree that "my path gives me a framework for living in the world and dealing with others, and hopefully making a little improvement to either myself or the world along the way." It's a Buddhist thing.

No deities necessary. No faith, either.

1.

Why do you, personally, have a religion? (or faith, or a path...)

2.

Why should you have a religion?

1. It's the way I interpret the world, my "operating system" for processing the raw data, the lens through which all the random bits get pulled together to make sense. I didn't plan it (I considered myself an atheist for the longest time); it just sort of happened.

2. Because it's really rewarding for me, a great exploration.

Why do you, personally, have a religion? (or faith, or a path...)


(Full disclosure - I was told in a dream that I should ask people that question. While it felt more like brainspam dream than a genuine encounter, I've spent the morning thinking it's an interesting and important question and one I'm not sure I have an answer to.)

And trying to answer it:

I list my religion as bokonist - from Kurt Vonnegut, where it is a religion invented purely to fufil social functions. For me, that's a structure for awe and being greatful for the natural world, and a reminder to have quiet "sacred" time. I'm researching chaos magic because it seems to contain that self-referential playfulness that allows me to keep my skepticism and explore magic at the same time. But all the ideas I've had are things it brings me, not things my having religion gives to gods, community or the wider world.

Which makes me think:

Why should you have a religion? Are some reasons better than others?

*random musing of the day*

Okay, this is going to sound odd. But, a lot of what I say probably does to many, so....

I'm sort in the same boat as HeartShadow is on this one. I border on atheism, but living the total atheist life wasn't working for me. I am a total schitz if I do not have or pay some type of attention to religion. I like having it, I like what it does for me, I just can't really put my finger on deity, right now. It's been this way for 18 years, now.

The original definition of "religious" was "a set of actions repeated over again, over the course of many weeks or years", for instance, "She brushes her hair religiously."
That being said, I'm rather OCD, so, having a set religious traditions that I observe "religiously" helps keep me sane.

Why do you, personally, have a religion? (or faith, or a path...)


Why should you have a religion? Are some reasons better than others?

*random musing of the day*

 

GAIA:

Hi and Merry Meet, Unmutual -

First, i think it's important to note that there are important differences between spirituality and "religion"; and (at least for me) before i could meaningfully define that difference, there's another word i  had to understand:  "Numinous".

The Numinous can be difficult to define -perhaps i can best describe it by relating an experience written by someone else -
(Please forgive the length; i think it's important to post the entire thing to really understand.)

In the book, “Contact”, author Carl Sagan has his heroine, a scientist in charge of the SETI Program (Search for Extra-Terrrestrial Intelligence) , contemplating the meaning of spirituality one day, and she says:

"...The theologians seemed to have recognized a special, nonrational aspect of the feeling of sacred or holy. They call it "Numinous". The term was first used by....Rudolph Otto in a book called, "The Idea of the Holy." He believed that humans were predisposed to detect and revere the Numinous;  He called it, "The Mysterium Tremendum"....
In the Presence of the Mysterium Tremendum, people feel utterly insignificant but not personally alienated....and the human response to it as "absolute astonishment."

Now if that's what religious people talk about when they use words like sacred or holy, i'm with them. I felt something like that in just listening for a signal [from outer space proving intelligent life] never mind in actually receiving it. I think all of science elicits that sense of awe....

"...I  think the bureaucratic religions try to institutionalize your perception of the Numinous, instead of providing the means so you can perceive the Numinous directly - like looking through a six-inch telescope.

If sensing the Numinous is at the heart of religion, who's more religious would you say -- the people who follow the bureaucratic religions, or the people who teach themselves science?"

Then her boyfriend replies:

    "Let's see if I've got this straight...it's a lazy Saturday afternoon, and there's this couple lying in bed reading the Encyclopedia Britannica to each other, arguing about whether the Andromeda Galaxy is more numinous than the Resurrection. Do they know how to have a good time or don't they?"

(Carl Sagan, “Contact”  p 159)

   
   This – a personal, first-hand experience of the Numinous -- is what most religions were originally about – contacting the Numinous directly, personally, immediately; --

   Here’s a wonderful example of an experience of the Numinous –  (What is also called in Psychology, a “Peak Experience”) --  by Jean Houston, in her wonderful book, “A Mythic Life” (which I strongly recommend!).   – The incident takes place when she is but six years old:

   “Sitting there, drowsy and unfocused, I must in my innocence have unwittingly tapped into the appropriate spiritual doorway, for suddenly the key turned the door.to the universe opened. Nothing changed in my outward perceptions.  There were no visions, no sprays of golden light, certainly no appearances by the Virgin Mary. The world remained as it had been.

Yet everything around me, including myself, moved into meaning. Everything became part of a single Unity, a glorious symphonic resonance in which every part of the universe was a part of and illuminated every other part, and I knew that in some way it all worked together and was very good. (

My mind dropped its shutters. I was no longer just a little local ''I;' Jean Houston age six, sitting on a windowsill in Brooklyn in the 1940S. I had awakened to a consciousness that spanned centuries and was on intimate terms with the universe.

Everything mattered. Nothing was alien or irrelevant or distant. The farthest star was right next door, and the deepest mystery was mystically seen. It seemed as if I knew everything, as if  I was everything. Everything-the fig tree, the plane in the 1sky, the pups in the closet, the planets, Joey Mangiabella's ribs, Linda Darnell, the Atcheson, Topeka, and the Santa Fe Railroad, Uncle Henry (the black porter who took care of me on the train across the country), the little boy fishing in the lake who waved to me 'on the train when I was crossing Kansas, the chipped paint on the ceiling, the mind of God, the Virgin Mary, my Nana's special stuffed artichokes, my Mary Jane shoes, galaxies, pencil stubs, my father's typewriter, the silky ears of corn in a Texas cornfield, my Dick and Jane reader, and all the music that ever was—

-- Was in a state of resonance and of the most immense and ecstatic kinship. I was in a universe of friendship and fellow feeling, a companionable universe filled with interwoven presence and the dance of life. This went on forever, but it was actually only about two seconds, for the plane had moved only slightly across the sky.

Somewhere downstairs a door slammed, and my father entered the house laughing. Instantly, the whole universe joined in. Great roars of hilarity sounded
from sun to sun. Field mice tittered, and so did angels and rainbows. Laughter
enlivened every atom and every star until I saw a universe of  inspirited and spiraled . joy, not unlike the one I read of years later when Dante describes his great vision in paradise, "D'el riso d'el universo" (the joy that spins the universe). This was a knowledge of the way everything worked.   It worked through love and joy and the utter interpenetration and union of everything with the All That Is…..”
(Jean Houston, “A Mythic Life”, pp 64-65)


   Well, (imo) that is what Spirituality and Religion are supposed to offer us – a personal, immediate, prfound experience of the Numinous.

Psychologists have even discovered that human beings seem to be "set up" (ie, psychologically and physiologically designed) to experience the Numinous.

But unfortunately, (many)  religions became burdened by and with leaders who thought the way to ensure that everyone experienced the Numinous, was to instill rules and dogma around it; which of course are actually antithetical and inimical to   the experience!   In fact, they only serve to remove people further and further from the actual experience of the Numinous.

IMO, spirituality is the ( Culurally determined) way(s) that people seek to experience the Numinous - from dancing around a fire under the stars, to sitting reverently and meditatively in a Cathedral listening to hymns, to (ostensibly) "goin' fishin'" -- just getting out in Nature and experiencing its beauty.  There are of courrse many other ways of evoking the Numinous - great sex, beautiful music, poetry, etc - Sometimes, it's whatever makes us gasp or sigh, sob or weep or laugh out loud....

And Religion (which often involves such things as):
- creeds and statements of belief,
- rules and expectations of behavior,
- sanctions to encourage such approved behavior and punish UNapproved ones,
- formal and informal systems of acquiring, exercising and passing on authority and power,
- provides spiritual communities,
- etc.

Religion Is (again, imo) yet another step removed from the personal, direct experience of the Numinous --

But that doesn't mean it has (or can have) no value in our lives.

Just some more random thoughts --

Blessed Be ~ Gaia

I have faith because it's either that or I'm completely batshit - and as it seems to be not-dangerous, I'm gonna go with faith.  I'm pretty sure if it was just straight batshittery it would be odder.

I have religion because I find it a useful structure for articulating how to live with other people and how to make the world better.

Damn.  Second post in the thread and HS nails it.  

To add: I was an avowed atheist for several years, and after a while that worldview just stopped adding up for me.  Many get by on being straightforward, logical, and atheistic, and it works for them, I guess I'm wired differently.  To me, observation of the natural world seemed to suggest a creator presence, a first cause, whatever.  As if the universe were a giant clock, that would suggest there was a clock Maker.  
I've bounced around traditions since coming to a 'belief', and am still bouncin', to a degree.