Notes on Religion

Several of my contemporaries keep insisting I get to work on this whole religion thing, which I guess isn't a bad idea under the circumstances. I hesitate though, because I know I'll be misinterpreted at various points. Religion is a powerful thing in the human world, and a misinterpreted religion is one of the most dangerous things that can be. Our history as a culture speaks to that fact.

I'm not a prophet. I may use the word occasionally, out of humor or necessity in conversation, but prophets are bringers of law. I'm not here to tell everyone exactly how they should live. The idea is ridiculous. How would I know? There's no rule I can tell anyone that they can't figure out on their own, should they look in the right places. It's all right there in our biologogy and our history and our anthropology.
The problem is we've convinced ourselves that there ARE no rules to be found, either in ourselves or in the world at large. Instead we turn to the agents of supernal beings who, if they exist even remotely in the way we think they exist, do so in a manner so far removed from our own existence that any opinion they might have concerning right and wrong becomes laughably irrelevant.
Why should the rules be so hard for us to access, when apparantly every other successful species on the planet knows them and lives by them effortlessly? Ours is the only species plagued by addiction, suicid, and murder. Ours is the only culture that eradicates entire species systematically and regularly. Whey can't we figure it out? Why do we need someone to tell us? Again, it's because we've convince ourselves that:

-There are no rules for us to find.
-If there are rules, they don't apply to us. If this is true,
they're the ONLY natural rules that don't.
I won't go into details on these two points. Read Daniel Quinn

I think the most important thing is our concept of religion itself. Like our prophets are removed from us as humans, so our religions have a tendency to be removed from ou lives in a very practical way. Religion means taking time out of your day to express your faith. Why Does this suggest that you're being less faithful when not performing rites of some kind, or at least "thinking about your faith?" I see no reason that every moment can't be a religious moment. Is not even the most devout Christian the one who seems to live by their tenets most easily? Having to work at your faith means your faith is incomplete.
In societies as they exist today, all laws are extrapolated in some way from commonly held moral paradigms, just as all moral theory is ultimately extrapolated from degrees of mysticism (for the purposes of this argument, religion and mysticism or synonymous). If our laws are meant to express our moral delineation between right and wrong, which themselves are derived from our religions, why make any attempt to separate social theory from religious mandate? They both serve the same purpose.

-Religion is not what creates commonality. Commonality is a
fucntion of culture, and religion (modern use) is a narrowly
defined expression of the mystical aspects of a culture.
-No amount of religious dogma will cause individuals with no
social commonality to unite on a social level.

So the problem then becomes formulating a mode of religious or mystical expression that ignores (through inclusion) the details of widely variant cultural (and subcultural) paradigms. I think this will necessarily create a rather simple religious system, covering little more than the basics at its core.

-Religion is the recognition of the manner in which one attempts
to live in accordance with the Law of Life as it is embodied
in him and those things that affect him.
-Culture does not create religion. It creates modes of religious
expression.
-All religious operations are inherently magical. Not all magical
operations are inherently religious.
-There is no limit to Love, and Love's expression and bond cannot be
shaped by the laws of men.
-Love thy neighbor completely for no reason at all.
-Hate only for a reason. Hate is a tool, which, like unto a gun,
may consume the victim, the weilder, and the whole world.
-Each man is master in his own home, and his word is law. His
domain ceases outside the environment he immediately controls.

We of the Shierran faith refer to the higher power responsible for "all of this" as The Great Spirit. It was chosen over the thousands of other possible Names for its neutrality/ambiguity in so far as gender, disposition, etc. are concerned. Whether The Great Spirit is male, female, good, evil, or indeed even sentient at all, is to me completely irrelevant. Whether It is an abstract expression of mathematical possibilities or an omniscient, omnipresent, self-aware sky-daddy makes no difference because the effect are the same either way.
A large part of religious expression is concerned with making one's life as pleasant and meaningful as possible, in one way or another. What has created todays high number and diversity of religious systems is the haphazard and highly ethnocentric manner of their creation. Everyon insists that their description is the only true one, and either take up arms or sniff in contempt against non-believers.

All forms of religios expression are symbolic
All forms of mental apprehension are symbolic, in one way or another. All sentient beings relate and react to their world in a symbolic way. Religions are symbolic systems in which we attempt to understand, explain, and sometimes affect aspects of our world outside our immediate physical and mental control.

Here witness the "higher nature" of religious expression as opposed to scientific expression. This is not a qualitative statement. Religion expresses that which man can perceive incompletely. So science is the firmer expression of that knowledge, late in the coming but indispensable. The one takes us higher, the other secures our footing. And neither remains without the other.

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