Anyone else find belief in -a- god to be infantile?

[Romanov]

There is a reason why God is referred to as “Father”. People grow up physically, but most remain children and I’m not talking about child-like innocence where everything has a wonder to it, but flat out spiritual immaturity. Because man is so small and fragile on the surface, it has concocted the idea that there must be some sort of transcendent god. This is what half of America believes, even more so than Canada and Europe. I just don’t see how attributing divinity to something else other than yourself is empowering at all. It just seems like spiritual immaturity has been conflated with virtue. Believers accuse non-believers of lacking humility while they get on their high horse about how right and correct their irrational belief in a god is, it’s pure hypocrisy. And again, this mindset makes up half the U.S. population. 

[Tyler Robinson]

I think some part of it has to do with the infantilism that has been passed on since Biblical times. People have been indoctrinated since ancient times that the only way they could get their lives sorted out were if they believed in a higher power. Back then there was no technology remember? 

But the human brain tends to memorize information and create a print out of it that gets genetically passed on from one generation to the next. 

That's pretty much the case with all the early brain programming from Biblical times.. To some degree the human mind is also searching for something to assign blame to other than the self, so it's kinda easy to pin everything on God, an external entity. 

All justifications aside, I do believe in God, I've felt God's presence on multiple occasions, don't ask me why or how. 

People often experience God on DMT too. 

It takes a vital shift in consciousness to experience something beyond yourself. 

Don't take that for granted. 

[Carl-Richard]

According to a Pew research poll, 49% of people in America has had what they would consider a religious or mystical experience, and 30% of them were not affiliated with a particular religion. I think if you're brought up religiously and are prone to mystical experiences, it could amplify your affinity with the traditional framework (because it's the path of least resistance), but if you're non-religious, you would try to find a framework which best captures the pure experience, which would usually be the New-Age forms of spirituality (which draws on Advaita, Buddhism, etc.). There are so many ways to interpret Christianity and religion in general, so many beliefs to omit or fixate on, that you can always somewhat mold it to fit your mystical experiences. Rupert Sheldrake is an example of a person who has a particular affinity for Christianity despite having had mystical experiences and having travelled to India.

Edited December 11, 2022 by Carl-Richard

[UnbornTao]

Pretty much, yeah.

Edited December 11, 2022 by UnbornTao

[Romanov]

29 minutes ago, Carl-Richard said:

According to a Pew research poll, 49% of people in America has had what they would consider a religious or mystical experience, and 30% of them were not affiliated with a particular religion. I think if you're brought up religiously and are prone to mystical experiences, it could amplify your affinity with the traditional framework (because it's the path of least resistance), but if you're non-religious, you would try to find a framework which best captures the pure experience, which would usually be the New-Age forms of spirituality (which draws on Advaita, Buddhism, etc.). There are so many ways to interpret Christianity and religion in general, so many beliefs to omit or fixate on, that you can always somewhat mold it to fit your mystical experiences. Rupert Sheldrake is an example of a person who has a particular affinity for Christianity despite having had mystical experiences and having travelled to India.

So does Richard Rohr, a priest or pastor I believe. Although he admits that Christianity in its current state is misunderstood and its essence got lost due to it being filtered through dualistic Greek thinking. Of course, the fundamentalists will say he’s the devil. 

Edited December 11, 2022 by Romanov

[Oeaohoo]

It is more senile than infantile. If you were a 2000 year old religion, you might be a bit senile too!

40 minutes ago, Romanov said:

Of course, the fundamentalists will say he’s the devil. 

Extending this analogy, Fundamentalism is like the rigidity and brittleness of the elderly body.

Christianity has become an increasingly intolerant religion as it has “progressed”. The main appeal of early Christianity to the late-Roman converts was its universalism, which suited an expansive empire. After this Empire fell in the West, Catholicism peacefully co-existed with residual forms of paganism and ordinary life for quite some time. The fusion of Christianity with pagan European spirituality can be seen beautifully depicted in the Grail myths, illustrated Christian texts like the Book of Kells, the chivalric love poetry which culminated in the greatness of Dante, and even just the general ambience of medieval Christendom. It was only towards the end of the Middle Ages that the famous persecutions and inquisitions came to predominate. The endless panoply of sects within Christianity, and the intolerance between them, mostly emerged with Protestantism, particularly in its Puritanical expressions. Many of these Puritans became the American settlers, such that contemporary American Evangelicals are the absolute bottom of the barrel when it comes to Christianity.

We should try to think more systematically about religions, not as static entities to be generalised about, but as organisms with a life-cycle. Christianity today is a dying organism gasping for air… I was recently fascinated to discover that, according to the Prophecy of the Popes written in 1595, the present Pope is the last Pope!

If all forms of Christianity were as brittle and intolerant as you make out, Christianity wouldn’t have survived for as long as it has.

[Oeaohoo]

3 hours ago, Romanov said:

I just don’t see how attributing divinity to something else other than yourself is empowering at all.

If you ask me, this is a classic New Age mistake. Hardly anybody knows that they are God. It’s the ultimate Secret. Simply telling people, “You’re already divine! You don’t need any guidance or a framework to facilitate your spiritual development!”, will not create a society of God-realised beings. It will mostly just produce confusion and chaos.

Edited December 11, 2022 by Oeaohoo

[Romanov]

5 minutes ago, Oeaohoo said:

If you ask me, this is a classic New Age mistake. Hardly anybody knows that they are God. It’s the ultimate Secret. Simply telling people, “You’re already divine! You don’t need any guidance or a framework to facilitate your spiritual development!”, will not create a society of God-realised beings - it will produce a mayhem of egotistical chimps frantically scrabbling for material success! Speaking of which, “here’s one I made earlier”…

Yes, very true. That is about the only pitfall I can think of.

But aren’t those who attribute divinity to something else other than themselves already egotistical? The Christians think they’re right, the Muslims think they’re right, etc. In a way, they are already playing God. I think there’s a lower chance of being egotistical when told that you are divine since most people would find that hard to believe anyways. 

[Breakingthewall]

I think its normal. if your ego is dense you can only think in terms of duality and separation. Logically you can intuit that reality is supernatural, and give credit to some religion that resonates with you or in which you have been educated. you can intuit its truth but you can only think in terms of cause effect, creator creation, etc. so god necessarily has to be something separate from you 

I think that people who adopt the belief that I am God without having experienced it are just as childish.

Edited December 11, 2022 by Breakingthewall

[Oeaohoo]

5 minutes ago, Romanov said:

But aren’t those who attribute divinity to something else other than themselves already egotistical? The Christians think they’re right, the Muslims think they’re right, etc. In a way, they are already playing God.

The ego can graft itself onto anything. That doesn’t necessarily invalidate the thing itself. The atheists also think they’re right and they aren’t attributing divinity to anything!

They aren’t necessarily playing God either because God created all of the religions as paths back to Himself. What you are describing here would be a sort of straying off of the path by mistaking the path for the goal.

Also, some of what you are describing here is not primarily the result of a belief in a theistic God. Christianity and Islam are ways of life as much as they are systems of belief, and these ways of life are in many ways incompatible.

On the exoteric plane, there is always going to be conflict. It is an inevitable product of the diversity of life and a beautiful thing in its own way. Unity, on the other hand, is esoteric (though it includes all of this conflict within itself).

7 minutes ago, Romanov said:

I think there’s a lower chance of being egotistical when told that you are divine since most people would find that hard to believe anyways. 

I’m not sure that I agree with this. When an ego becomes convinced that it is divine, that is called megalomania! It is only true to say that the self is divine when it has reclaimed it’s original divinity. 

[Romanov]

[Matt23]

 

22 minutes ago, Romanov said:

I think there’s a lower chance of being egotistical when told that you are divine since most people would find that hard to believe anyways. 

...ermmm... lol.  I dunno about that.  Seems more likely cuz it's about you rather than something else.  It's easy to turn something into a belief structure.  But maybe. 

3 hours ago, Romanov said:

I just don’t see how attributing divinity to something else other than yourself is empowering at all.

Hope.  Something to pull you through tough times.  I watched a podcast with a world-class surgeon who travelled the world (including areas of the states with lots of religious people).  He was asked if he thought that having religious beliefs helped people's prognosis vs. those who didn't.  His answer was like "for sure".  He himself isn't religious I don't think.  It's the actor Jon Bernthal's brother.  You can check it out on YT.  

3 hours ago, Romanov said:

This is what half of America believes,

I'm sure there's more nuance within that half than you may believe. 

I feel you may be reacting from something; perhaps experiences you disliked or that didn't align totally with what you felt was right, virtuous, or just growing up or something?  I guess I feel bad when people bash others unconsciously from their own pains and feel you may be doing this.  I feel bad about it lol.  

I myself am not religious, nor did I grow up in a religious family (West Coast of Canada), but I had some religious friends and acquaintances.  They seemed normal enough. Not pushy.   I didn't grow up in an area with huge amounts of religiosity so I don't really relate to people bashing it or backlashing from it lots.  So maybe that's why I feel sort of unjust when people bash religious people.  I dunno.  

I feel like I understand the motivation to believe in some high power for sure.  It's just that I haven't had many bad experiences with religion so I don't feel bad, resentful, or frustrated by religious people.  I just feel they have something to offer perhpas (not saying I wouldn't improve anything also; lots to develop).  The literal beliefs n stuff, ya, not so much.  But that basic drive to believe in something higher or other than you to me feels soothing almost.  

[Jodistrict]

The idea of “God” in the Abrahamic religions is patterned after the middle eastern monarch.  It is a mechanism of political domination, control, and property acquisition that has little to do with spiritual inquiry.   In the East, the sages recognized early on that the issue was the search for “self”, finding a path out of the illusion, and union with the one (yoga).  I avoid the word “God” because of the cultural baggage and confusion it brings.