The Relativity of Religion

Is there a God? If so, what is She like?

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Nick_A
Posts: 6208
Joined: Sat Jul 07, 2012 1:23 am

The Relativity of Religion

Post by Nick_A »

Religion is one of those words like art and love which have layers of meanings and relative value. I always value the writings of those who made the transition from atheism into the essence of religion. Their dedication to truth allowed them to avoid blind denial and for one reason or another become open to the depth of religion. But they are a minority. Those still held captive by blind denial still have influential positions in schools and do their best to teach blind denial as a human value. This often leads to metaphysical repression

From a description of Jacob Needleman’s book “What is God.” It describes Jacob Needleman’s transition from atheism into valuing the essence of religion. If he was fortunate to have such an opportunity, what do you think will happen to those not so fortunate but still need what the essence of religion provides for their being and what those around them are killing in them?
In his most deeply personal work, Needleman cuts a clear path through today's clamorous debates over the existence of God, illuminating an entirely new way of approaching the question of how to understand a higher power. Needleman begins by taking us more than a half century into the past, to his own experience as a brilliant, promising, Ivy-league educated student of philosophy. Atheistic, existential, and unwilling to blindly accept childish religiosity. But an unsettling meeting with the venerated Zen teacher D. T. Suzuki, combined with the sudden need to accept a dreary position teaching the philosophy of religion, forced the young academician to look more closely at the religious ideas he had once thought dead. Within traditional religious texts the scholar discovered a core of esoteric and philosophical ideas, more mature and challenging than anything he had ever associated with Judaism, Christianity, and the religions of the East.

At the same time, Needleman came to realize - as he shares with the reader - that ideas and words are not enough. Ideas and words, no matter how profound, cannot prevent hatred, arrogance, and ultimate despair, and cannot prevent our individual lives from descending into violence and illusion. And with this insight, Needleman begins to open the reader to a new kind of understanding: The inner realization that in order to lead the lives we were intended for, the very nature of human experience must change, including the very structure of our perception and indeed the very structure of our minds.

In What Is God?, Needleman draws us closer to the meaning and nature of this needed change-and shows how our present confusion about the purpose of religion and the concept of God reflects a widespread psychological starvation for this specific quality of thought and experience. In rich and varied detail, the book describes this inner experience-and how almost all of us, atheists and "believers" alike, actually have been visited by it, but without understanding what it means and why the intentional cultivation of this quality of experience is necessary for the fullness of our existence."
Nick_A
Posts: 6208
Joined: Sat Jul 07, 2012 1:23 am

Re: The Relativity of Religion

Post by Nick_A »

The strange thing about the concept of religion is that it is either loved or hated. It lacks relativity of quality for the majority. Religion becomes reduced to either blind belief or blind denial. The value of the religious feeling essential to reveal religious quality becomes lost. There have always been a minority who transcend blind belief and blind denial so as to experience the essence of religion for the world. We just need more of them since more often than not they are just shouted down. Here are examples.
... "He who has Art and Science also has religion, But those who do not have them better have Religion ... Johann Wolfgang von Goethe ..
Einstein wrote in conclusion:

http://www.williamhermanns.com/Cosmicman.html
How can cosmic religious feeling be communicated from one person to another, if it can give rise to no definite notion of a God and no theology? In my view, it is the most important function of art and science to awaken this feeling and keep it alive in those who are receptive to it.
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