Subject:
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Re: What are your axiomatic religious beliefs and why?
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.off-topic.debate
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Date:
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Thu, 26 Oct 2006 03:41:45 GMT
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Viewed:
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2225 times
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In lugnet.off-topic.debate, Brendan Powell Smith wrote:
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What would you say are your axiomatic religious beliefs?
Let’s pare things down to the most basic essentials. Which religious beliefs
do you consider unquestionably true beyond a sliver of a doubt? And why do
you think these particular beliefs have come to attain this status for you?
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In appreciation of your recent efforts here of late, the least I can do is
answer your question :-)
Taking a simple definition of religion, being belief in the existence of a god
and its consequences for human behaviour, I discover that I do have axiomatic
religious beliefs! Who knew!? :-)
1. I believe the something which created the universe to be powerful and
intelligent beyond my understanding.
I call this god.
2. I believe god is not interested in addressing my personal needs.
This god so powerful, so outside the range of my experience and imagination, as
to create the entire universe, in all its immensity and complexity, cannot be
interested in changing the universe to suit me.
I accept that god could be entirely inconsistent with my experience of life, but
my experience of life and my cognitive abilities are all I have, and I refuse to
be paralysed by imperfect information.
In support of my belief , I note that in my experience and to my mind,
compassion, particularly compassion that reaches across species, is a factor of
intelligence and understanding (call this wisdom), and my observation and
experience of great wisdom teaches me that compassionately considering action to
address the needs of great numbers of beings necessitates an appropriate
diminution in the value of each individual’s needs in relation to the whole, so
that my personal needs must perforce be appropriately diminished as to be
essentially zero.
It follows then that my adoration of and obedience to god will not bring me
god’s intervention in my favour in my life. Nothing will.
3. I believe that I honour god’s intention (whatever it is) by using the
faculties of the mind and body that I find I have, to the utmost of my
abilities, to determine my actions.
Happily this coincides precisely with what I would want to do anyway.
Its god’s universe, god gave (deliberately or recklessly) me a hand of cards to
play, and surely the test (if there is one) is to play the hand I have been
dealt.
Its also probably rather irrelevant to god - my observation and experience of
great wisdom teaches me that the very wise understand the present to a level
that enables the to see the future more clearly, and that they do not ascribe
value based tags to actions (good/bad etc), but rather understand why people
behave the way they do. The wise punish for a purpose, not for the sake of it
or out of anger, but to teach the less helpful mindset and to reinforce the
helpful. Wisdom and jealousy are inconsistent. I cannot conceive a purpose for
eternal punishment. So while I believe I honour god’s intention, I do not
anticipate a reward, nor do so to avoid a punishment, nor expect for a minute
that it worries god either way..
That would be three axiomatic religious beliefs I guess.
The last two lead to my rejection of most religious ritual and dogma outright.
I don’t reject it for others, I reject it for me.
It also follows that god does not benefit by or require my adoration for god’s
sake.
Add one more observation, which is not religious, but certainly a belief:
4. The one evident purpose of life is to replicate itself.
This together with the previous three elements leads to my embracing of much of
the social instruction of various religions (do unto others etc). Its a bit
convoluted to get there, but its all pretty consequential stuff.
To finally touch on a biggie, worth noting for completeness - nothing in my
experience and understanding causes me to believe in an afterlife. What a
positively bizarre idea.
And here I am :-)
Richard
Still baldly going...
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Message is in Reply To:
 | | What are your axiomatic religious beliefs and why?
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| This is an off-shoot from a (URL) discussion> John Neal and I were having on OT.debate, but I'd like to open up the following question to any religious believers who feel like answering. What would you say are your axiomatic religious beliefs? Let's (...) (18 years ago, 24-Oct-06, to lugnet.off-topic.debate, FTX)
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