What religion were you born into and are you glad that you are of that faith?

True, but life is better than the alternative... for us anyway lol

 

My view on life, the universe, and everything is pretty similar to that. However, I think that's a little bleak. I am not religious at all, but spiritual I suppose. If I had to label my beliefs I'm closer to indigenous animism. Which I derive from a very deeply help belief that reality is far far more complicated than we think.

 

Why do you think that?

 

Pick up a book on particle physics, or string theory.

 

If we did that, we'd have a better grasp of particle physics or string theory, not a better grasp of your personal view on indigenous animism.

 

Ahhh I see, My direction to read those books was in regards to the statement that reality is a lot more strange than we give it credit for. I had misunderstood which part of my post you were asking for clarification on.

So onward to my strange religious views then. It's hard to articulate the specifics of this, I'm a visual thinker and I've not really ever written anything down about it before. So apologies if this post is a little less than structured. To put it simply it is the result of my own personal observations of the world around me, more than any kind of firm religious view. Now I'm not talking about animism in the strictest anthropological sense. The "tenets" so to speak would be just a few basic concepts. They are that everything that is alive has a sense of "self". I'm not talking about higher order thinking, just a sense of "me". Also reality is more complex than we yet know. There's a whole lot of other stuff as well but that's probably enough to go on.

I used to be an atheist. In a sense I still am. I don't believe in god in the sense that western society accepts it. God has always been what we have used to explain what we don't understand. That's kind of where I'm sitting right now. I could just be crazy though. That's always a possibility. When does one find out they went around the bend?

 

You've pretty much written a lot and said nothing that defines anything. I'm curious as to how animism can be different than the strictest anthropological sense, since what you seem to be saying appears to be fairly traditional. I'm not trying to harass you--I'm really curious, since I know a few people who practice Wicca and I can't understand how nature-based religions have much relevance in this day and age--not that my faith is much more modern than those (and, technically, Wicca is a modern religion), so I'm not trying to be dismissive.

 

It's not very much different from quite a lot of traditional nature based religions, I'm just cautious of using many anthropological terms as I find them a little patronizing at times. At the same time I don't want to compare my views to traditional beliefs as I've never had the opportunity to live among any of the groups I'm really interested in and so I could only give a vague synapses of their views. Maybe in an attempt to not be presumptuous I'm tying myself up in semantics.

Let me attempt to be more clear by starting fresh. I'll quote a great comedian to start.

All matter is merely energy condensed to a slow vibration, we are all one consciousness experiencing it's self subjectively, there is no such thing as death, life is only a dream and we are all the imagination of ourselves." -Bill Hicks

Basically I think this may possibly be the case. It's not quite what these older religions were saying but it kinda sounds similar to me. I could go on at great length but I'm leery of looking like a complete loon and hijacking the thread too much.

As to the relevance of nature based religions today I would say they are more relevant today more than ever. Nature based religions produce of themselves a high reverence for nature Q.E.D. Nature is in disarray we are pumping all the oil out of the ground, cutting down the trees, poisoning the water, fouling the land, polluting the sky. There are large floating trash islands in the oceans. And I'm not even going to start about global warming. The Ya̧nomamö haven't done nearly as much to hurt the land as say BP. Maybe we could learn a thing or two from them?

Edit: for spelling

 

So what were you before you became an Indigenous Animist?

 

My family is Christian. When I was a teenager I was pretty heavy into Wicca but found it shallow and full of either the same power trip riders that annoyed me at more traditional churches, or new-agers who were so open minded their brains fell out, as well as your average curious young person who was interested but eventually moved on. At that point I started reading about a lot of different religions. Got pretty heavily involved with Christianity for a bit until again observable reality could no longer be seen to coincide with the framework of the religious idea. Then I became an atheist. At this point I don't put any kind of label on what I think, there are a few modes of thought that I agree with to various degrees. If god exist I imagine we probably have it figured all wrong.

 

My mother was a non practicing Methodist and my father was a non practicing Protestant. My mom was agnostic and my dad is an atheist. I guess I would consider myself agnostic. I'm not sure what I believe. I've never seen any proof that there's anything else out there and I have a hard time believing that something, like the Bible, that was passed down from generation to generation to generation and then written in a book is the be all end all. Plus there are so many religions that use the same Bible but have different beliefs and then you have all the religions that don't believe in the Bible, and then the religions that believe in only the Old Testament. With so many different believe systems out there how do you even know what to believe? Sometimes I wish that my parents had chosen a religion and stuck with it and made me go so at least I'd have some believe in something. It's almost harder not knowing what to believe.

 

I understand, but personally I want that freedom. I need it. I take it lol

 

I was a ward of the State of West Virginia since I was two years old. I was placed in many homes, but eventually landed in a boys farm when I was about seven. The caretakers of this farm did not believe in God, or never showed that they believed in religion. But when I was 12, I made my way out to one of the local Catholic churches and started attending. I grew up, went to college, seminary school and wanted to become a priest. However, while in college, I met my wife and when it came to the time of ordination, I could not do it. I wanted my wife more than I wanted to be a priest. I eventually fell away from the Catholic church and got ordained in the Methodist church. I was a senior pastor for 12 years. I stopped for several reasons, but organized religion turned me off churches. I do attend a church, but am not a member of one certain church. I still believe in God and Jesus Christ, but in my own way.

I think that organized religion has become a business, or at least a lot of them have. I think Jesus Christ wants me to come to him. It is one on one, not through a church. Now we can argue about religion, but my Bible says that this is useless and does not build each other up.

Do you think religion has become a business?

 

I'm not overtly religious, or have any complaints about an individual's right to believe in whatever diety they want... as long as they allow me to do the same. My issues with religion are when they spread their faith to people they believe are heathens or whatever. I especially have an issue with religion when it becomes a matter of law or political in nature. It's one thing to desire a civilized society, it's another to force obedience through laws. Morality especially is a matter of perspective, what may appear immoral to one person is acceptable by others. Making something illegal based on moral-objection is wrong IMO.

IMO, the larger the religion is, the more members it has, the more it becomes a business. There are exceptions I'm sure, smaller community-type individual churches (for example), even when tied to a larger organization, are less like a business than the larger organization it may belong to.

Individual, personal belief isn't ever a business though, not the true kind (as differentiated by the faith of some pastors that behave like showmen and rake in millions from their "flocks"...I question their actual motives and beliefs).