Wipperwill

The Enlightenment is not a religion in the sense that it proposes anything about existence out of the material and temporal world. It is not a religion in the sense of having a hierarchy demanding adherence to a set of rules and submission to the hierarchy administering those rules. The Enlightenment was and is the justification of the individual to think for him- or herself. To the extent that a hierarchy of a church ministers to adherents without enforcing membership against the will of the parishioner, they are doing a service similar to that of the proponents of Enlightenment. There are congregations that engage in such altruistic service. I don't disparage congregations that only minister to their own, but do not demean individuals who decide to search for meaning elsewhere. The purpose of a congregation should be to provide comfort and support, but not to dominate. If  there is something beneficial about the teaching of a congregation, it should be evident without coerc

There must be facets of human thought I don't understand, but generally, religion is the human attempt to surpass the physical limitations of being human. All creatures are made of humus. So to an extent plants and other animals are human. Keep in mind that we share 40% of our genes with plants. And I do understand that other animals with brains can think to some degree although I would have a hard time understanding what insects experience with their small brains. But even more than the ability of these small compatriots of ours consider the existence of nature, our own species can consider a great deal more. So to that extent we have surpassed our limited physical natures, but we also surpass the limits of our existence by being able to communicate both with verbal symbols and written symbols. Again other animals have the capacity to think in symbols, but not to the extent that our species can. We are able to pass to others our experience while we are alive and after we die.

There are fundamentalists who claim they are the only Christians and that the Constitution mandate against the establishment of a church only bars the government from controlling their churches. They insist that the government is obligated to abide by the church law of their own sect whichever one it is. Actually, the ban against an established church has precedent in the intertwining of church and state in the history of Europe during the middle ages. Every facet of life was controlled either by the church or the state, and one enforced the authority of the other. There was no room for independent thought. So when pagan knowledge was brought back from the Middle East by the Crusaders, there was a Renaissance of thinking and culture that allowed people to question everything about life. The king's religion was continued through the Protestant Revolution, but the Enlightenment that came with the Renaissance still separated peoples' religious thought from their secular though

There is an unsportsmanlike class of people who think that sabotage is a legitimate form of competition. They are the gossips, hecklers, and back-bitters who prey on those they think cannot defend themselves. Exodus 22:18 in the King James Version of the Bible says not to suffer a witch to dwell among you, but there were no Wiccans at the time that Moses supposedly wrote that. The Hebrew word that was translated as witch actually means "poisoner." Since there was already a Commandment against murder, what was the point of specifically outlawing poisoning unless there was something else involved? That something else is this common tendency of human nature to cheat by gossiping, heckling, and back-biting. Sabotage is a blood sport as are those vulgar games that people play to implement it. Those who lack the talent to achieve use this method to steal from those who may not have the same intelligence, but can achieve by effort.

The book of Genesis has two different creation stories. First one is where God creates heaven and earth, and then creates the different animals as male and female creating man last also male and female. Then Genesis takes of the story again at the point that heaven and earth are already created, but says that God created Adam without a mate, and had Adam name all the creatures into being for God. It is left that these named creatures also had no mate and were also prototypes. Another peculiarity of Creation in Genesis is that both the Tree of Life and the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil are described to Adam as being in the midst of the Garden of Eden. The only way Adam (or Eve) could have decided what tree was really there is by their intentions concerning this tree. The tree has been an avatar for the Divine throughout the Bible. What is important about this avatar is its relationship to the type of existence that Adam (and Eve) chose. They chose the material world instead o

Despite what Divine principles people claim to adhere to, it is a common characteristic of human nature to try to make oneself more important by demoting someone else. I suppose this is a natural phenomenon exhibited in nature with the pecking order. There are many excuses for declaring someone else as undeserving of natural rights. It's a bit of a simplification to say that these excuses involve biases concerning biology, religion, society, and economics. It's all been used. Whether it is gossip, heckling, or lying, it is a blood sport.

I am dumbfounded by the demanding question, "Do you believe in the Bible?" For one thing, there are more documents that are the Bible for other religions besides the Bible of Christianity and Judaism that I know. There is certainly more understandings of that Bible I'm familiarized with besides just that understanding of the person demanding an answer. There is also the Muslim understanding of the Bible as demonstrated in Muhammad's Koran that is not the same. But what really confuses me is the mystical entity that the person demanding if I believe in the Bible is really asking about. The word "bible" means "library." The New Testament is really the books that Christians wrote in Greek. The "Old" Testament is really the books that the Jews or Israelis wrote in Hebrew or Aramaic. The Jewish Bible were documents what the Jews decided to declare special, and the Greek Bible were documents that the Christians decided to declare special

I find the Divine to be a poor excuse for demanding what anyone should agree to. If you have to force your beliefs on someone else, how do you know they really believe what you say? In ancient times, it was enough for the tyrant to declare how the Divine favored his (or her) regime. It really didn't matter to the poor guy at the bottom of the ladder what the monarch said. Life was not any better for believing it. It was only blasphemy against the tyrant that got anyone into trouble since the tyrant was always the Son of the Divine. It is not only in North Korea that the tyrant was considered God. Even the Roman Emperors were considered Gods which is the reason for the Greek word "blasphemy" was used in the Christian Gospel for the Sanhedrin deciding that Jesus committed blasphemy. They weren't saying that he declared himself their God. They were saying that he had declared himself a God equal to the Roman Emperor. The Western term God is derived from

Mammals and some other animals have a need for religion. When a new-born or new-hatched creature comes into this world, they develop a bond with the creature they see first. This is a function of empathy. I don't know how many animals have this capacity in their genes, but most humans and many other animals do. It is true that some individuals are born (and possibly hatched) without this capacity, but that has nothing to do with the overwhelming need in their species to identify with others (presumably their own species, but not always.) This attachment to others may be the start of religion, but for humans, the need to find meaning continues that need. We humans think too much. We realize our mortality. We need to understand what we are, and we think in terms of what the purpose of our life is. There is nothing wrong with religion providing comfort in this quest. It is just that there is power in this form of thought. There are those who are born without empathy or were trai

Religion may be an inevitable response to life for people with empathy, but it is not the first response. Babies are born with only the wonder of existence. Existence is a miracle that simply cannot be explained. We might track down the cosmic rays back to the initial Big Bang, and we can detect out of this Universe interference coming from the Multiverse from which our Universe exploded, but how can we understand the void of that Multiverse or its lack of beginning? Religion is how people derive meaning and purpose for their existence, and yet religions try to explain other-worldly existence as though it were superior to what we have already. Since there is the fear of dying to support such interest in otherworldly dimensions, I can see the pressure to prove such escapist thinking. But when such thinking is pushed onto me for the sake of bolstering those who insist on it, I have to wonder, "What about my life now?" And it's all fine and good for those who want to see