ON THE WHOLE, ARE RELIGIONS GOOD OR BAD FOR SOCIETY?

Do angels or other evolved entities belong to religions? Can a person be faithful to a benevolent higher power with belonging to a religion?

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Permalink Reply by Peter Kraft on August 10, 2012 at 9:04pm

This topic was cleverly dealt with in Back to Hades: Eustice Seeney Returns to Hell, DD Cross.
I don't want to give it away, but it was a stunning twist.

Permalink Reply by Jill Celeste on August 11, 2012 at 6:44pm

Jill's view.......No, angels do not belong to a religion.....religions are a manmade entity

Yes, One can definitely be "faith-full" to a benevelent higher power without belonging to a religion. That is the choice I and many others have made. Often, in direct action away from a narrow minded organized religion they were expose to in childhood. I think religions served a purpose in the past..... to teach morality...to remind people of where they came from, care for the poor, a myriad of things..But I don't think they fill the needs of the people as much anymore. The consciousness of the human race is expanding and if a religion cannot keep up with an equally expanded consciousness it will become irrelavent.

Most great saints and sages did not want religions formed around them...including Jesus...They wanted their followers to follow their example and understand their teachings. They did not want to be worshipped as God but saw themselves as messengers....Humans made up the organized religion. The worst premise that has come out of religion is that we need someone to interceed for us with God....As if we are not worthy to speak to him or confess to him directly......That is just not true.

The problem as I see it is that as religions and churches fail to meet the needs of their members...Individuals and families must work hard to develop their own relationships with God(a good thing) and then teach that individual responsibility to their children

Permalink Reply by Janet Starr Hull on August 12, 2012 at 11:52am

Nice post, Jill. I am not a religious person by any means, but I am a deeply spiritual person, so I agree 100% with your comment that religions are manmade entities. They have had both a positive and negative social purpose, then and now, but history shows that purpose has been more of a "what not to do." Organized religion is behind most wars, judgment and prejudice, cruel death, materialism, and fear of the unknown. Organized religion has shackled human growth for centuries.

To me, the Earth is my church, all life is my congregation, and the Universe is my alter. My communion is food picked from my garden and drinking from the "cup" of a clear spring. My angels speak to me through the wind and the chirp of a baby bird, and I see them in rays of sunlight piercing through the clouds.

Nice thread, Jeff.

Permalink Reply by Jill Celeste on August 13, 2012 at 10:36pm

Janet,

Beauty is Love Manifest...It is everywhere if we just open our eyes and our hearts and allow it in.

Thanks

Permalink Reply by Sherry Antonetti on August 13, 2012 at 9:55pm

You are asking two questions. Angels are God's messengers, beings of pure spirt, with full knowledge of their role and their capacity. As to can a person be faithful to God absent a religion, yes, but speaking as a religious person, I'll take all the aid I can get.

As to the beginning question, is Religion Good for Society? If you think feeding the hungry, clothing the naked and caring for the sick are good things, those came from religion, if you think the dignity of the individual human is good, then that's from religion too. Devotion to something beyond ourselves, makes us strive to make our society better. We aspire to Heaven, thus we seek to better Earth. We love --God is love.

If we would not dismiss government as bad for society because people and parties are corrupt and have a history (all of history) of struggling with corruption, then we ought not dismiss religion simply because flawed and sinful people practice it or struggle with practicing it.

Permalink Reply by Jill Celeste on August 13, 2012 at 10:48pm

Sherry,

Religion is a structure needed by many in order to fulfill their duties as brothers and sisters of man. It is not necessary or required or needed by everyone to practice a life of service and sacrifice. I and many others I know feed the hungry, clothe the naked and tend to the sick without belonging to any religion at all.

Personal choice...I feel closer to God since I left organized religion at an early age....others have found closeness to God when they found religion.

I think that the current state of separatism between religions is what is intolerable...A societal change in focus to what is the same among all human beings rather than what is different is paramount. I keep hoping that churches and religions might lead the way, by dropping petty differences and joining together in their common belief in a Divine Source of all beingness..

I believe that over the next 100-200 years a "World Religion" will evolve from all of the commonalities of all the religions and I think that would be a good and unifying force in the world.

Permalink Reply by LOU LOU B.A.Hons , Dipl on August 14, 2012 at 6:57am

Hia,

I am back from a brilliant weeks holiday in Matlock, Derbyshire. Our 17th Century cottage was great, and haunted by a friendly spirit. Lot's of walking in the woods , fields, with plenty of fresh air. The weather was hot and the locals were very kind people. We stayed in Cromford , a sweet village with plenty of interesting history and walks.

I bought several crystals , collected fresh sheep wool from the fields , hand made lavender soap from a craft shop and i also picked a massive bunch of fresh lavender. This is also lovely to paint and delicate for my greeting cards. I use water colour paper and vintage envelopes.I package them myself in clear pockets and pop a sticker on back advertising moi', then they are ready for sale.

I found lots of fresh inspiration for writing and I took 2 hundred photos of wild flowers to paint, for my hand made water colour greeting cards. I also took pics of sheep , horses. cows, crows and many different breeds of dogs. I love sheep , i would love a lamb as a pet,but my fiance' prefers it on his plate. The black crow is my favourite bird , it's also my protector, if i lose direction , the crow always turns up on the right path and makes his crows noise, for me to hear and follow. Sounds strange , but that's how my crow helps me.

I started a short story on holiday based in our cottage for a ghost story competition i am entering next month. I love the challenge , as competitions help me to stick to deadlines and word count.

Hello to my friends and everyone else, it's good to back on site. So back to the discussion .

Hi Jill,

I agree with you , I left penticostal church at the age of 12, I had been in my fathers control to attend church, every other weekend when I visited him and had no choice , as he was born again and such a strong believer in the one god , reading the bible all the time and to me!. I have no issue with his way , but I found my own way to pray, wish , and feel gods presence.I love Angels, Fairies, Crystals, Gothic history, Dracula being my most best story.

Stephanie Baudet, my teacher in my children's writing course, has written a YA book called

DRACULA IS BACK. I have bought it and it's brilliant.

I love New Age and like the freedom it gives me to feel natural and spontaneous, following my instinct to read a certain passage or write freely without thinking, is this ok to do ?

The love , energy and magic comes from all that is natural and pure. This is my God, with freedom to believe in what ever we wish to, because our energy will grow into making our dreams manifest.

I think organized religion was once a way of controlling people , to create some law, order and structure, to help people to have some kind of grounding in a strict way. This was needed, but, I think this also stopped our natural talents to develop. Telepathy, psychic abilities , following your intuition were lost, making people feel scared to practise their own magic.

I would like to think that some day every one will see that the all loving God, source , energy , is for all to see and use in any way they choose .

I like Churches and Cathedrals because they are all built along lay lines , or energy lines , that connect to the sun, giving energy to the people . I love the Gothic Architecture and gargoyles. Massive Angel structures, all comming from the bible.

I believe Angels come to us wether we are religious or not , our Gaurdian Angels protect us , so do other Angels , they are everywhere in the spiritual realm , fighting for us , helping and loving us.

This is a fascinating discussion , but must make some lunch. Looking forward to more chats.

I will catch up soon Jan , got lots of photos to down load for you.

Best wishes .

LOU LOU

Permalink Reply by Jill Celeste on August 14, 2012 at 12:37pm

Lou Lou,

Interesting you mentioned Cathedrals and Churches... I was sent a small book on the lay lines and cathedrals in England from an e-mail acquaintance. I love it. I am leaving in 2 days for a 4 week spiritual retreat in India and I will be visiting many very obscure temples in the Hardwar Rishikesh area. Ancient temples that mark sacred spots of cosmic evolution...not just earthly lay lines.

Our Mother earth is a Temple that has been allowed to contain some of the cosmic energetic points from which the Universe became a physical reality. We are very blessed!

I've been to India on retreat 13 times but each time I am more and more excited to go...Only 48 more hours until my plane leaves! I am traveling with three other women... I may try to post a picture on my page of the 4 of us from last yea. We were in Puttaparthi India when the Purna Avatar Sathya Sai Baba took his Samadhi.....700,000 Indians and 4 white ladies from the USA it was surreal.

Permalink Reply by Janet Starr Hull on August 14, 2012 at 1:05pm

Interesting that you brought up lay lines in juxtaposition to churches and other religious sites. I think this takes us back to the original core of spiritual/religious ceremonies and the 3-D - Higher Connection or bridge. Before "organized" religion realized how easy it was to control the masses and profit from them, this seems to be the core of "religion." Words are manmade, anyway. In this context, religion and spirituality mean the same thing. I assume that people who are genuinely religious are spiritual in this way, so their religion is their spirituality, which fits. Modern religions seem to draw sides, and it's one or the other. It's actually both.

Permalink Reply by Sherry Antonetti on August 14, 2012 at 1:33pm

It seems I am a minority here. For I do identify myself as Catholic. I practice that religion, not because it has a perfect history or because I have been brainwashed or am a simpleton, but because I know it to be true. My faith and reason have led me here, to know that God is love, that we are made to love, and that all of our words, actions, thoughts and deeds are to be manifestations of our desire to love God and others as we love God.

Karl Marx thought religions were to manipulate the masses. Except he also thought the masses and those who celebrate masses should be mass exterminated.

Religion, at its core, no matter the religion, seeks to get at how we relate to God, what is our role in this society based on that relationship, and ultimately, is about seeking Truths, truths that are above what comes 1) through self gratification 2) through power and 3) beyond what we can manage if this world were purely Darwinian and Hobbsean in nature. It's why beauty is so connected to Truth. There isn't a real reason for beauty, or for our love of it, except it calls us towards the ideal, and the ideal we recognize as being good, and what is more, desirable to be infinite. We want the good to go on forever. (It is part of how we know, our deepest longings are for the Infinite Good, God). Thus I would say, religions that seek truth, that seek to reach out to the Infinnite Good, are good for society, for they encourage those who practice it (minus the fallen nature of all of us), to seek to live out that infinite goodness in our lives.

That we are to love our neighbors as ourselves, is not something someone came up with to manipulate people, it is something that resonates in our hearts, and which demands certain courses of action as a result --namely, that we be stewards of our children, of our past and of our future.

Permalink Reply by Jill Celeste on August 15, 2012 at 12:23am

Sherry...the sentences below are your quotes.....I believe the same as you do.....

God is love, that we are made to love, and that all of our words, actions, thoughts and deeds are to be manifestations of our desire to love God and others as we love God.

That we are to love our neighbors as ourselves..... is something that resonates in our hearts, and which demands certain courses of action as a result --namely, that we be stewards of our children, of our past and of our future.

However, I am not catholic nor do I ascribe to a particular religion....nor do I ascribe to "New Age" These values can be taught and felt and practiced through a religion but they do not have to be.

Permalink Reply by Sherry Antonetti on August 15, 2012 at 7:09am

I never said they had to be. But I would submit, it is easier to get to a desired destination with a map. And the question was of the worth of religions to society. A lot of us need a gps in our soul to not get lost. :)