Syncretism

Discussion in 'Religion' started by paradisease, Jun 7, 2014.

  1. paradisease Registered Member

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    Do you believe in just one religion? If so, what do you think caused the development of other religions? I think many religions were inspired by something other worldly.
     
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  3. paradisease Registered Member

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    For instance, if you're a Christian and think the other religions were merely the product of mankind's imagination I find illogical, considering other religions have been talking about the spiritual and paranormal
     
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  5. paradisease Registered Member

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    And then there is the atheist perspective. I find it disconnected to say religions were a scam to control the population, considering so many separate cultures and societies all have a belief in something other worldly having an influence on mankind and our world, but from my perspective atheism could still be true. Ancient astronaut for instance is compatible with atheism and a belief in the paranormal to some degree. Paranormal to me is just to have an experience beyond the norm. This could encompass a lot of thing, such as a UFO sighting for instance.
     
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  7. Sarkus Hippomonstrosesquippedalo phobe Valued Senior Member

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    This would be merely an argument from popularity. It says nothing about the actual tenets of the religions, merely about the propensity of humanity toward belief in something greater than that which they can prove / have evidence for.
    The latter is something interesting enough but itself lends no credence to the tenets of the belief.
     
  8. Magical Realist Valued Senior Member

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    Well to the extent that all religions claim to have the exclusive scoop on who and what God is and what he wants, then it follows that they can't all be right. So atheism is pretty much inevitable, even for theists. IOW, they don't believe in all the gods and rituals of all the other religions. And how likely is it that any given person was born into just that one religion that got it right among the thousands of others that got it wrong? Not very likely at all. It's far more likely that your religion is just one among all the other mythologies that men have created thruout history, and that you only believe in it so strongly because you have been culturally brainwashed to believe in it from childhood. This is quite aside from the issue of there actually being a transcendental reality out there or not. Religion is all just programming, and one cannot even approach an authentic exploration of the transcendental, if it exists at all, till one has deprogrammed oneself from that religion.
     
    Last edited: Jun 8, 2014
  9. Yazata Valued Senior Member

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    I like syncretism.

    It's probably easier for polytheists than for monotheists. If people think that there are lots of gods and heavenly powers, then it's no problem at all when they encounter strangers with different deities. Just more gods, precisely what a polytheist would expect. Polytheism tends to be tolerant by its nature. The ancient Romans liked to think that many of the other ethnic groups in their empire really worshipped the same gods they did, except with different names and traditional rituals specific to different localities. It even made sense, since many cultures had gods and goddesses associated with the same things, like fertility, agriculture, war, and so on.

    Today, in our modern world, the one religious tradition that best preserves this ancient polytheism in my opinion is Hinduism. Hinduism has become increasingly monotheist over the centuries (perhaps due to Islamic and then Christian influences) but that happened so late that the countless older gods of Hindu polytheism were too entrenched and beloved to just sweep away. (Get rid of elephant-headed Ganesh? Never!) So a common idea in India is that the one God (Vishnu? Shiva? Krishna? An impersonal Brahman? they can't even agree on that) manifests in countless different forms and aspects, according to circumstance. So the old polytheism still exists, it's just absorbed into an expansive and tolerant monotheism where everything is believed to be an aspect of a single underlying reality, whatever name it's given.

    So Hinduism just shrugs and absorbs its rivals into itself, deciding for example that both the Buddha and Jesus must just be more avatars of the godhead.
     
  10. StrangerInAStrangeLand SubQuantum Mechanic Valued Senior Member

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    Atheism being true means there are people who do not believe in any god(s).
     
  11. Balerion Banned Banned

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    Nobody says all religion is a scam. Though some are (think of the ones created solely for the purposes of financial gain, such as Mormonism and Scientology, the former being created by an actual scam artist) and even the ones born of genuine superstition have been used for those purposes. Particularly the ones which make threats of punishment and promises of reward for certain behaviors.

    It's the only rational position. Sure, you can be an agnostic, but not on the question of Zeus, Yahweh, Bal, or any of the gods in the known pantheons. On the larger question, everyone in agnostic, but that's not what anyone's really asking, is it?

    If you're going to redefine terms, then you better at least define what you mean by "norm," because UFO sightings can be of airplanes, blimps, jets, balloons, or any number of everyday, mundane things. As for ancient astronauts, just stop. There's no such thing.
     
  12. Yazata Valued Senior Member

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    No.

    I'm an atheist regarding the traditional personalized gods (Yahweh, Allah, Shiva...) but I'm more of a straight agnostic regarding the philosophical-style ultimate questions (first-cause, sustainer of being...) and the existence of transcendent realities in general.

    I'm inclined to think that religions, particularly those of the personified-deity sort, arise as kind of an unintended consequence of some of our human psychological traits, in particular our evolutionary optimization to interact with other human beings. We just naturally project a 'theory of mind' into our experience of other people and interpret their behavior as meaningful and intentional. Given our natural tendency to do that, prehistoric people might have thought of things like storms in the same way, as meaningful intentional actions of unseen but extraordinarily powerful actors possessing psychologies like our own.

    Assuming for the sake of argument that there are transcendent depths to being itself that human beings can somehow intuit on occasion, then I see no reason to assume that those intuitions are somehow limited to one tradition alone.
     
  13. Yazata Valued Senior Member

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    Yeah, that's always struck me too.

    Christians often stoutly oppose atheism, denouncing it in no uncertain terms. But as soon as the topic of conversation turns to the deities of different religions, our Christian can suddenly become as denunciatory and even as ostensibly rationalistic as the stoutest atheist. It's all idolatry, that's what it is! The bogosity of these beliefs should be obvious to any intelligent person!

    So with many of the exclusive monotheists, we find that they are atheists themselves, when it comes to any kind of religious expression different than their own.

    Keeping that consistent isn't going to be an easy task.
     
  14. kx000 Valued Senior Member

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    There is one all moral God, so there should be one all moral peaceful religion.
     
  15. Yazata Valued Senior Member

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    I agree with you pretty emphatically about that.

    We periodically see people expressing the opinion that religion is all a giant conspiracy by the priests to control the people. But as you say, that theory isn't credible.

    Religion is about as close to a human cultural universal as there is, apart from use of spoken language perhaps. No matter what obscure tribal group in the back-of-beyond that we are talking about, it soon becomes apparent that they possess what can described as religious beliefs and practices. The idea that some evil conspiracy possesses that kind of scope and universal wordwide reach is simply unbelievable.

    Religion needs to be explained, but conspiracy theories aren't the best way to do it.

    Of course. Atheism's ultimate truth or falsity isn't dependent on a conspiracy theory. It's dependent on the actual existence or non-existence of the religious deities that the atheists think don't exist.
     
  16. matthew809 Registered Senior Member

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    Why does that have to be solely an atheist perspective? If there is a God, isn't it just as likely that He would have created religion to control the population? Why do we assume that God would be truthful about scripture, or that truthfulness is even holy. I think it's more likely that God is the ultimate source of BS. After all, our senses lie to us every day... and God created our senses. We know the world to be full of illusion, but isn't it the illusion which gives us purpose to our lives?

    I believe:

    Religion is most likely a scam from God, full of partial truths to make it believable..... kind of like science. This holy scam pervades every aspect of our existence, not just religion. The fact is that the world is one big illusion, and it's the scams that give it meaning and keep it going. The ultimate truth about the universe is meant to be hidden from us at the moment.... after all, that's what we signed up for.
     
  17. kx000 Valued Senior Member

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    God relays on perfection, and moral truth is certainly called on for perfection.
     
  18. matthew809 Registered Senior Member

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    Unless He was lying about that whole "perfection" thing. That would explain a lot.
     
  19. kx000 Valued Senior Member

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    No he needs to be perfect or he isn't god like, period.
     
  20. paradisease Registered Member

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    I am not redefining terms. I am going by the etymology of what paranormal means, just like atheists would go by the etymology of what atheism means. That said, I will expand on my definition. Some would consider for instance seeing a movie star an experience beyond the norm, so it in order for it to constitute as paranormal it would also have to go against conventional science to explain, leaving room for the possibility that in the future it could one day be understood scientifically.
     
  21. Hapsburg Hellenistic polytheist Valued Senior Member

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    I believe in my own religion, which is a syncretic mix of Greek, Celtic, and Modern practices and beliefs. But I would still classify my practices within the broader phenomenon of Hellenic religion and Neopaganism. So in a way I consider myself to be practising several different religions; just simultaneously or at least in parallel.
     
  22. Raithere plagued by infinities Valued Senior Member

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    I followed that line of thought for a while myself. But there is a simpler explanation, the common factor is humanity.
     

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