Religions are fairy tales for adults. Should we encourage them to grow up?

Religions are fairy tales for adults. Should we encourage them to grow up?

My mind set is close to Daniel Dennett as far as what religious people / theist should become after they grow up.

Personally, I like a lot of the social functions and appeasement of our need for fellowship, hivishness and tribalism offered by religious institutions.



So I do not want to kill all religions but just encourage them to be more moral, tolerant and give equality to women and gays.

Having said the above, People and recent trends to read scriptures literally have cause many to forget that religions were invented as theatre and myth and were never meant to be read or taken literally. They were designed to seek God, not to find one.

http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/03132009/watch.html

Rabbi Hillel, the older contemporary of Jesus, said that when asked to sum up the whole of Jewish teaching, while he stood on one leg, said, "The Golden Rule. That which is hateful to you, do not do to your neighbor. That is the Torah. And everything else is only commentary. Now, go and study it."

Please listen as to what is said about literal reading.
"Origen, the great second or third century Greek commentator on the Bible said that it is absolutely impossible to take these texts literally. You simply cannot do so. And he said, "God has put these sort of conundrums and paradoxes in so that we are forced to seek a deeper meaning."

As you can see from the following, religions and temples have always been about entertainment and fellowship.



If Christianity and Islam could return to the old way of seeking God instead of idol worshiping false Gods, perhaps jihadists and other fundamental believers might chill and get along the way they have at some points in our past history.

Religions are fairy tales for adults. If this is a truth, we should encourage Christianity and Islam as well as all other religions to grow up and return to their better past of seeking God instead of idol worshiping Yahweh and Allah. Both of them are mythical and manmade Gods.

To just leave Christians and Muslim idol worshipers to continue as is means that we may never rid ourselves of their institutionalized homophobia and misogyny. The kind and moral thing to do is to try to correct our immoral religious friends to recognize their myths as fairy tales for adults. Do you agree?

Regards
DL

 

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Nope. That's a pompous and arrogant position.

 

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Many religious teachings found in scripture were meant to be taken literally.

 

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Fairy tales are children stories that often contain moral messages. The fairy tale is like the shell of easter egg. It is simple and easy to remember. As you get older, you crack open the egg and look at the inner yoke of meaning. This is quite brilliant in terms of packing dense ideas that can stay in memory.

Say all books were burnt so centuries of analysis were gone. The fairly tale will remain in memory and would still have the yoke inside to be derived again by the next generation.

 

Nice position you have of letting the gullible stay gullible.

Find some adjectives for yourself as you are not worth the time it would take me.

Regards
DL

 

Sure, especially those passages that encourage homophobia and misogyny.

Regards
DL

 

I agree when people know it is a myth and look for the deeper meaning.

With Christianity and Islam, they do not know they are myths and never glean the deeper meanings and perhaps that is why they are homophobic and misogynous and do not get past the shell.

Regards
DL

 

If you want an argument with someone you have to be convincing.

Individuals will create their own fairy tales.

 

Even the deeper meanings tend to suck.

 

Religions are long standing traditions that first appeared in ancient history. The ancients did not have modern science and/or trillions of dollars in social programs to prop things up, to create illusions of equality. They had to existed under spartan conditions that were closer to natural, than to the modern welfare state. In their state of desolate heritages, things were easier to compare and certain things were closest to natural selection.

For example, say there was no law that allowed quotas in hiring. This is what the ancients faced. Rather, all opportunity had to be done the same way animals do this; competition. Say there were no social programs to prop up unwed mothers with children. In ancient times, such women had to manage just like a mother bear or deer in the woods. There is a certain natural pecking order that forms in nature. We can create an artificial situation, but this requires adding resources and laws that nature does not provide. This is artificial selection.

If you look at sexual reassignment, this is only possible because of science. It is not possible in nature for humans to morph into another sex, in response to their imagination. This is no different from me thinking I should have wings and I should be able to fly, which is not the cause and effect of my body. If science could add wings, we might be able to create the illusion of natural; done with mirrors. If take away cheating natural with artificial means, my thinking I am a bird in a man's body, would remain a dissociated state of mind and body, that will not be selected by nature. This may be selected by culture since it means $$$.

Religion is not about adding wings to make all appear equal in their imagination. It allows nature to decide over many generations with natural trends appearing.

 

I am not convinced.

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Regards
DL

 

Then you have missed the deeper meaning.

Regards
DL

 

Thanks for this.

Regards
DL

 

People believe in God. They believe in atheism. They believe in the democrats, the republicans, the moderates or the extremists. They believe in the Atkins diet, or the watermelon diet, or a balanced diet. Are all of them gullible?

Good! If you think I'm not worth your time, I am doing something right.

 

How many of those believe in talking animals and water walking men?

Regards
DL

 

And I could lecture Calculus to a slime mold.

 

Good job.

Regards
DL

 

Well, Magical Realist believes in ghosts, UFO's and Bigfoot (thus talking animals.) But not God. Is he "gullible" in your book? Or do you "approve" of those particular supernatural entities?

 

4. Elisha and the Two Bears (2 Kings 2:23-25)

23 Then he went up from there to Bethel; and as he was going up by the way, young lads came out from the city and mocked him and said to him, “Go up, you baldhead; go up, you baldhead!” 24 When he looked behind him and saw them, he cursed them in the name of the LORD. Then two female bears came out of the woods and tore up forty-two lads of their number. 25 And he went from there to Mount Carmel, and from there he returned to Samaria.

What's the deeper meaning?

 

I do not believe in any supernatural entities or powers.

I am a free thinker with an open mind but I do not let any old issues fall into belief without something to back it up.

For instance, many think telepathy is real. I am in that camp as I have what I needed to believe in it. Two anecdotal experience and a victim. I say victim as she described it as an assault.

I see that as natural and not supernatural as I cannot do the supernatural.

Regards
DL