Do we need a new global religion?

[Someone here]

In fact what I feel is today we are, religiously speaking, increasingly becoming fundamentalists, and religious fundamentalism is loosening everywhere.

We know most religious are counterattacking one another and are posing threats. Most religious fundamentalists are kind of indoctrinating small children. Small children are not fortified against their programmings or indoctrinations.

Of course there are words of virtues in religious texts and we have failed to make abundant use of them and of course there are toxic ideas too, and we seem to be focused on the intoxicants of religious texts.

Now I feel that we need a new religion and that will select only virtues from all religious texts. And this will help us to forge peace and order in our world

[Oeaohoo]

The only real religion is Truth, Consciousness, Love and an infinite testing-ground and play-ground. Every religion starts off as a potent symbol of this reality but gradually deteriorates through consecutive stages of involution. The ideas within religion are not “toxic”, they only become so when they are used for purposes which have deviated from their original intention, and people have been making abundant use of them for thousands of years.

Given that no religion seems to be driving many people towards these things, you are probably right that we need a new one! Interestingly, the word religion is derived from the words re-lig-o, which means “to join back together” or “to reconnect”. Generally this is interpreted as a reconnecting of man and God, the creature and the Creator, but we could also understand it as the reconnection of man with his fellow man. This would fit with your idea that a new religion could unite the world.

Personally I think we are already witnessing the emergence of the new global religion. The only trouble is that it is Satanism! It is an inverted counter-tradition which emphasises totally paradoxical values: collective solipsism, individual agency and collective victimhood, total fragmentation under the sign of “one world” and “one love”, rights without responsibility, enclosure and security without walls and borders, and so on. The religion has a mantra: “I want to have my cake and eat it”!

[Someone here]

5 minutes ago, Oeaohoo said:

The only real religion is Truth, Consciousness, Love

Yes 
I have learned so much from God
That I can no longer call myself
a Christian, a Hindu, A Muslim, A Buddhist, a Jew.
The Truth [of Love] has shared so much of Itself with me
That I can no longer call myself
a man, a woman, an angel, or even a pure soul.

7 minutes ago, Oeaohoo said:

Every religion starts off as a potent symbol of this reality but gradually deteriorates through consecutive stages of involution. The ideas within religion are not “toxic”, they only become so when they are used for purposes which have deviated from their original intention, and people have been making abundant use of them for thousands of years.

I think that the old religious doctrines have to die away and the whole world become secular before a new universal religion can rise from the destruction of the old.I'm not advocating revolution , just evolution of ideas. It's already happening.

 I agree with you. However the old religious language and imagery are so imbued with superstitions and revenges and rewards, that they have to be superceded by a new language and a new imagery of spirituality.This does not mean that the poetry of the Qur'an and the Bible should be scrapped, these are among our heritage of beauty , but they should be understood not as beliefs about facts, but as human experiences.

[Preety_India]

The only religion is love. 

 

[snowyowl]

2 hours ago, Someone here said:

Now I feel that we need a new religion and that will select only virtues from all religious texts. And this will help us to forge peace and order in our world

Well, there's lots of people who already think their religion should be the world religion (Christians, Muslims, Bahais, even atheists) but it's often done in a supremacist and imperialist way so is a big source of conflict and evil in itself. If you are thinking of a liberal non-creedal religion which respects all historical faiths there's the Unitarians (Unitarian Universalists in the USA) who're already doing that too.

It sounds like you're rather giving up on the old religions to be able to educate their members in peace & order, why do you think they've failed? We need to learn what's gone wrong in the past so we don't repeat the mistakes. One possible reason is that folks can get very hung up on believing the exact correct thing, or practicing in the right way (a literalist view). And they rely too much on their scriptures as the revealed word of God, so any deviation from their version of God's word is necessarily wrong and/or evil, so feel the need to change other people to their approach. Also people conflate religion with community, meaning that the whole thing becomes tribal and there's favouritism towards members of your own religion and othering of everyone else. 

Edited June 13, 2022 by snowyowl

[Zega]

I just tell people I'm an omnist now, it's easier to explain to normies. 

[Husseinisdoingfine]

Forget global religion, let’s handle the basics first. I propose a global language.

[Someone here]

5 hours ago, snowyowl said:

Well, there's lots of people who already think their religion should be the world religion (Christians, Muslims, Bahais, even atheists) but it's often done in a supremacist and imperialist way so is a big source of conflict and evil in itself. If you are thinking of a liberal non-creedal religion which respects all historical faiths there's the Unitarians (Unitarian Universalists in the USA) who're already doing that too.

It sounds like you're rather giving up on the old religions to be able to educate their members in peace & order, why do you think they've failed? We need to learn what's gone wrong in the past so we don't repeat the mistakes. One possible reason is that folks can get very hung up on believing the exact correct thing, or practicing in the right way (a literalist view). And they rely too much on their scriptures as the revealed word of God, so any deviation from their version of God's word is necessarily wrong and/or evil, so feel the need to change other people to their approach. Also people conflate religion with community, meaning that the whole thing becomes tribal and there's favouritism towards members of your own religion and othering of everyone else. 

Yes ..one challenging question to answer is on what basis do we cherrypick the right religious texts .

on what basis could we ever edit the sacred texts of all or the main religions and come up with a unified text shorn of all the “toxic” exhortations and commands? That is tantamount to expecting that we can unify the world’s diverse cultures and moral standards , a task far beyond our desires and capabilities so far. We argue every day about what “evil” is and what “good” is. I am good, so you must be bad, etc., etc., ad nauseam!

Furthermore ,and this is admittedly the biased remark of an anti-religionist , I don’t think religions are born out of unselfish love and desire for peace and order in our world.

[AtheisticNonduality]

4 hours ago, Husseinisdoingfine said:

Forget global religion, let’s handle the basics first. I propose a global language.

Esperantonglish

[DnoReally]

8 hours ago, Someone here said:

Yes ..one challenging question to answer is on what basis do we cherrypick the right religious texts .

This is the funniest shit in the world to me.

So guys, lets get all together, everyone grab a seat and we're gonna debate what texts and values will be part of our brand new religion. This is so far detatched from reality, from what religion is, how it comes about, how people relate to it and the cultural context in which it emerges.

It's only fitting someone proposed Esperanto as an accompanying language.

[Oeaohoo]

2 hours ago, DnoReally said:

This is the funniest shit in the world to me.

So guys, lets get all together, everyone grab a seat and we're gonna debate what texts and values will be part of our brand new religion. This is so far detatched from reality, from what religion is, how it comes about, how people relate to it and the cultural context in which it emerges.

Not really, people have been attempting this for centuries now. The Theosophical and Anthroposophical societies, Ken Wilber’s Integral Theory, Guénonian Traditionalism (which claims that all religions are derived from an original Primordial tradition, see particularly Frithjof Schuon’s The Transcendent Unity of Religions), and many other movements have sought to integrate or “cherry pick” the religious material that remains today into a new and cohesive whole. These movements had precursors such as Nicholas von Cusa from at least as far back as the Renaissance.

Christianity itself emerged out of a very syncretistic context: it inherited stylistic and architectural elements from Rome, it’s morally dualistic metaphysics from Zoroastrianism, the emphasis on devotion and submission from the “pagan” Great Mother cults of North Africa, mythological themes from Osirified Egypt and of course many elements from the Semitic world. The early Fathers spent many years debating and even occasionally slaughtering each other to establish which of these elements would be included in official Church doctrine.

[Matt23]

A newer stage yellow philosophy designed for the future human.  

I haven't delved into it fully (they also said they just scratched the surface of the philosophy in this talk), but a big thing that stood out for me in this was their take on values:

• They are attempting to integrate the traditional and modern-postmodern views regarding value so as to take what's true about them while avoiding what they got wrong.
•  
• Where each perspective got it wrong:
  • traditional: values are unchanging and fixed.
  • modern-postmodern: values are subjective human creations.  The universe itself is ultimately meaningless. 
•  
• Where each perspective got it right:
  • traditional: values are inherent aspects of the universe.  Not simply human creations.
  • modern-postmodern: values change and evolve.

They seem to be attempting to create a new philosophy adequate enough for the future; a future that makes the universe sacred again by pulling the truths that traditionalism had regarding values (i.e. the universe has inherent values and is itself sacred), thus avoiding nihilism and meaninglessness, while also integrating the modern-postmodern truths of value which see how values change and evolve, thus avoiding "stuckness" of the traditional views.

Sum metaphor/example:

• The "mother" archetype has been around since humans existed.  Yet it's obvious that that archetype has changed immensely from the first humans to modern societies, even though its foundational form as "the mother" has remained the same.

[Oeaohoo]

7 hours ago, Matt23 said:

A newer stage yellow philosophy designed for the future human.  

I haven't delved into it fully (they also said they just scratched the surface of the philosophy in this talk), but a big thing that stood out for me in this was their take on values:

• They are attempting to integrate the traditional and modern-postmodern views regarding value so as to take what's true about them while avoiding what they got wrong.
•  
• Where each perspective got it wrong:
  • traditional: values are unchanging and fixed.
  • modern-postmodern: values are subjective human creations.  The universe itself is ultimately meaningless. 
•  
• Where each perspective got it right:
  • traditional: values are inherent aspects of the universe.  Not simply human creations.
  • modern-postmodern: values change and evolve.

They seem to be attempting to create a new philosophy adequate enough for the future; a future that makes the universe sacred again by pulling the truths that traditionalism had regarding values (i.e. the universe has inherent values and is itself sacred), thus avoiding nihilism and meaninglessness, while also integrating the modern-postmodern truths of value which see how values change and evolve, thus avoiding "stuckness" of the traditional views.

Sum metaphor/example:

• The "mother" archetype has been around since humans existed.  Yet it's obvious that that archetype has changed immensely from the first humans to modern societies, even though its foundational form as "the mother" has remained the same.

This is an interesting formulation but I think it would be good to clarify what it means for values to be unchanging and fixed from the Traditional perspective.

T.S. Elliot said an interesting thing about the Christian Church:

Quote

But the Church cannot be, in any political sense, either conservative or liberal, or revolutionary. Conservatism is too often conservation of the wrong things: liberalism a relaxation of discipline; revolution a denial of the permanent things.

It is a mistake to conflate tradition with blind conformism and submission to authority which can therefore never change or adapt to new circumstances; it might have become that in recent times but that is largely to protect itself from the modern cult of Change.  Tradition in a higher sense only seeks to conserve that which is eternally true: the ultimate truths of existence must not be discarded but the expression of these truths may change. After all, every tradition in the world has changed over time and has a system for comprehending these changes: in Buddhism through the turning of the wheel of the Dharma; in Christianity Joachim of Fiore spoke of the Age of God, the Age of Christ and the Age of the Holy Spirit (incidentally, we are now in the fourth unspoken Age: the Age of Antichrist! See Carl Jung’s best book Aion for more on this); in Hinduism through the appropriate forms of spiritual practice for each Yuga (Hinduism gives a very sophisticated description of how spirituality changes to fit the conditions of cyclical time); and so on.

The traditional religions already understood that everything in this world is changing. The aim of religion is to get to “the other shore”, the shore of eternal principles which is Being purified of all craving for the wheel of mundane existence, i.e. becoming. After all, the Platonic Ideas or eternal forms that went on to be so important for Christian thought are only meaningful in opposition to ordinary things with have a life-cycle of birth and death; the term Samsara can be translated simply as “the world of change” and, though Greek thought shows embryonic forms of the vanity and intellectual confusion that has become so rife today, the Heraclitean school saw clearly that aspect of things from which everything is mere flux and becoming.

The mistake of postmodernism is to claim that the eternal (when I say eternal, I only necessarily mean for as long as this world and particular form of existence lasts) principles of existence themselves change. This mistake justifies itself by appealing to the vague discrepancies in world mythology but these can all be explained through reference to the same universal principles. Like you said, the Mother archetype has changed throughout history: however, it is only the expression and the emphasis on certain aspects of this function which have changed, and they have only changed in exact accordance with the principles of cyclical time. The essential nature of motherhood could never change, it simply Is and is a reflection of one aspect of the feminine polarity of existence Herself. 

I think in its own way this demonstrates that every religion is itself a cohesive whole. It does not need to be “integrated” in with insights from secular science, psychology, sociology and the like because these sciences are all approximate and meandering; they are like nets which close in ever-more-tightly around the essential things which they will never comprehend. So many of these “Stage Yellow” theories are rooted in the dumb conception of tradition that secularism and atheism had already prepared for it.

Edited June 15, 2022 by Oeaohoo

[Matt23]

@Oeaohoo I'd watch the video.

[Oeaohoo]

@Matt23 Just skimmed through it, way too many hyphenated words and vain pontificating. Truth should be simple! So much of Stage Yellow just seems like nerds mentally masturbating and sharing their ejaculate with an internet community. Maybe I’ll come back to it another day!

[Gesundheit2]

Self-help is the new global religion.

Basically, anyone who's had access to the internet from an early age is subscribed to it, but without them knowing. The values of self-help are all across the board anywhere you go. Everyone subscribes to them subconsciously in this materialistic world, but only a few realize that.

Skeptical? Try saying to anyone that working hard is a bad thing and see their reaction. You'll get insight into the bigger heads in this world.

Edited June 16, 2022 by Gesundheit2

[Oeaohoo]

1 hour ago, Gesundheit2 said:

Self-help is the new global religion.

It is rather that self is the new global religion. For the wiser practitioners of this religion self-help is included within that but many others are not really helping themselves at all, they are just indulging their lowest and basest self.

Often today the self is applauded precisely in contrast to any ideal of self-improvement: “you’re beautiful just the way you are”, “I don’t need to change for anybody”, “don’t let anybody rain on your parade”, and so on…

In the post-second-World-War Western world self-expression seems to be the highest value; the quality of that self, unfortunately, seems to be of much less importance! Sometimes it even seems like the worse your self is the more it is deemed you should express it, like Yeats beautifully described in his poem The Second Coming: “The best lack all conviction, while the worst / are full of passionate intensity”.

1 hour ago, Gesundheit2 said:

Skeptical? Try saying to anyone that working hard is a bad thing and see their reaction. You'll get insight into the bigger heads in this world.

Working hard isn’t the same as self-help and some self-help folks are rather lazy! The religion of work seems to have been more prevalent during the industrial period (the Protestant “work ethic”) and the Soviet era (the glorification of the ”Worker” in Socialist doctrine and the art of Marxist realism) but it definitely still persists today.

Many people now, though, would ideally like to abolish work altogether, and this is no wonder given the pointless and mechanical nature of most of the work available today. Interestingly, labour is one of those words which the Christian faith inverted: in ancient Latin civilisation, “laborare” had largely negative connotations and it was even synonymous with toil and misery. In Christian civilisation, however, phrases like Laborare est Orare (to work is to pray!) emerged and the early forms of the fetishisation of work which you have described are probably to be found here. Of course, Latin also had the word “Opus” to refer to work in a higher sense.

Incidentally, this is one of the ways in which Nietzsche was right that modern leftism, particularly socialism and the cults of Work and Change, are a sort of secularised Christianity. The same is true for words like humility and pity whose connotations were also largely negative; after all, we still call bad experiences “humiliating”!

Edited June 16, 2022 by Oeaohoo

[Gesundheit2]

42 minutes ago, Oeaohoo said:

It is rather that self is the new global religion. For the wiser practitioners of this religion self-help is included within that but many others are not really helping themselves at all, they are just indulging their lowest and basest self.

You're totally lost in the illusion of the self-help religion. Sorry! 

Quote

Often today the self is applauded precisely in contrast to any ideal of self-improvement: “you’re beautiful just the way you are”, “I don’t need to change for anybody”, “don’t let anybody rain on your parade”, and so on…

Just a band aid to help people continue the rest of the rituals of working for the bigger heads (non-conspiracy-wise).

Quote

In the post-second-World-War Western world self-expression seems to be the highest value; the quality of that self, unfortunately, seems to be of much less importance! Sometimes it even seems like the worse your self is the more it is deemed you should express it, like Yeats beautifully described in his poem The Second Coming: “The best lack all conviction, while the worst / are full of passionate intensity”.

Oh, the deep illusion.

Quote

Working hard isn’t the same as self-help and some self-help folks are rather lazy! The religion of work seems to have been more prevalent during the industrial period (the Protestant “work ethic”) and the Soviet era (the glorification of the ”Worker” in Socialist doctrine and the art of Marxist realism) but it definitely still persists today.

It's evolving. Isn't it nice?

Quote

Many people now, though, would ideally like to abolish work altogether, and this is no wonder given the pointless and mechanical nature of most of the work available today. Interestingly, labour is one of those words which the Christian faith inverted: in ancient Latin civilisation, “laborare” had largely negative connotations and it was even synonymous with toil and misery. In Christian civilisation, however, phrases like Laborare est Orare (to work is to pray!) emerged and the early forms of the fetishisation of work which you have described are probably to be found here. Of course, Latin also had the word “Opus” to refer to work in a higher sense.

God is The King, after all. What king would not have people working for Him?! This polishing and fetishization is necessary for Him to rule over you.

Quote

Incidentally, this is one of the ways in which Nietzsche was right that modern leftism, particularly socialism and the cults of Work and Change, are a sort of secularised Christianity. The same is true for words like humility and pity whose connotations were also largely negative; after all, we still call bad experiences “humiliating”!

https://stunningmotivation.com/self-improvement-principles/

1. Think Long-Term

2. Make Learning a Habit

3. Plan Ahead

4. Work Your Way to the Top

5. Build Productive Habits

6. Focus on the Process

7. Learn the Lessons

8. Take Care of Your Body

9. Take Care of Your Mental Health

10. Help and Inspire Others

 

More like the ten commandments for you to work for me.

Become a better worker, so that I can become a more lazier boss.

Work harder, so that I can work softer.

Inspire others! What's better than more devoted competitive workers?! (But see, you should be capable of handling and taking on a lot of work pressures, even though somehow there's still unemployment).

I'll give you incentives, you'll get a raise and a promotion. Isn't that the best thing you could ever dream of?!

Edited June 16, 2022 by Gesundheit2

[Oeaohoo]

27 minutes ago, Gesundheit2 said:

You're totally lost in the illusion of the self-help religion. Sorry! 

Well, if you’re going to worship the self you might as well do it well. The present narcissistic and self-obsessed world presents a certain opportunity in that true selfishness can be a spiritual path. After all, God is the Self. It seems to me that the few people who realise God in the present world situation will do so by pursuing their self-interest right up to the point of self-annihilation! Actualized itself is a very good example of this.

From a spiritual-historical perspective I am very much against the religion of self and of self-help. However, like you yourself said this is just where we are today and you have to start from where you are.

32 minutes ago, Gesundheit2 said:

Just a band aid to help people continue the rest of the rituals of working for the bigger heads (non-conspiracy-wise).

I agree, Woke Advertising has become a whole industry now and an ideology of lazy self-acceptance is perfect for keeping people dull and uninspired.

36 minutes ago, Gesundheit2 said:

Oh, the deep illusion.

I’m not sure what you mean by this.

39 minutes ago, Gesundheit2 said:

It's evolving. Isn't it nice?

I would say it is just getting more and more absurd, devolving…

Roman disdain for labour > Catholic work as prayer > Protestant “work ethic” > Socialist inverted religion of the Worker > ultimate depravity of work in postmodern world.

36 minutes ago, Gesundheit2 said:

God is The King, after all. What king would not have people working for Him?! This polishing and fetishization is necessary for Him to rule over you.

Indeed! Slave morality, as Nietzsche called it.

38 minutes ago, Gesundheit2 said:

More like the ten commandments for you to work for me.

Become a better worker, so that I can become a more lazier boss.

Work harder, so that I can work softer.

Inspire others! What's better than more devoted competitive workers?! (But see, you should be capable of handling and taking on a lot of work pressures, even though somehow there's still unemployment).

I'll give you incentives, you'll get a raise and a promotion. Isn't that the best thing you could ever dream of?!

Of course the contemporary workplace is a very superficial and stupid environment. I recently quit my office job because it was such a degrading and alienating environment. I’m sorry if you are currently having to deal with it!

[Gesundheit2]

4 minutes ago, Oeaohoo said:

Well, if you’re going to worship the self you might as well do it well.

Yeah, don't get me wrong. I'm the most dedicated slave there is. The difference is that I'm just awake.

Edited June 16, 2022 by Gesundheit2