3. Are you religious or spiritual?
I think of myself as a stoic plodder and am probably more agnostic than either atheist or religious. I am not fond of sterotypes, but I would say I am spiritual - however, I would argue that can't people be a bit of both? The question infers you can have either/or rather than both. Some get hung up on doctrines, concentrating on judgment or hatred, rather than the messages of love behind it. I was brought up in a Christian Spiritualist family, which changed more towards the New Age movement in the mid/late seventies. For a while, I followed that path. I concede that there were some very salient points, but at times, it was just plain flaky. In my mature adult life, I have largely left that side of my life behind, but I keep an open mind.
Some people cannot acknowledge the wonders of our imaginative lives within ourselves, as part of our brain chemistry and function, and prefer to project them on to (fictional) external agents.
I value the world of the imagination and fantasy, but I know that it is my internal world. it is not an objective/external reality.
It seems to me that 'religion' deliberately obfuscates this: it's a live-action FRP game in which the players have either forgotten or wilfully deny that it is a game, that the rules are man-made by long-dead human GMs and there is no celestial GM in reality. When they dispute the rules, they can even kill each other over what is, basically, "fandom-wank".
I've been accused of being a 'New Atheist', except I'm not remotely new. I value art and mythology and story-telling, but I think it's important to remember they are all human-made. All gods are creations of the human imagination: ultimately, we control them, not vice versa. One of the strengths of Classical mythology was that the narratives were flexible and open to being re-written by playwrights and poets. There was none of the text-fetishism and labelling of alternative versions as 'heresy' which is one of the most pernicious legacies of the Middle Eastern mono-god cults. When people acknowledge that myths are man-made and exist to serve us (not the other way around), they can be made more responsive to our changing needs as a society and as individuals; instead of people enslaving themselves to myths that no longer reflect their lives and values.
Edited at 2016-11-14 05:44 pm (UTC)
That's me to a T.
; '