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If you were to choose a religion

#1
Bowser Offline
If you had an urge to search for your spirituality, which path would you choose?
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#2
Ben the Donkey Offline
As much as I hate to say it, it would be Islam. 
With my limited knowledge, I'd be a Sunni. With more knowledge, I'd progress to Shi'ite once (if) I found a rabbi (poor choice of words?).
From there, I'd probably become a radical, in thought... although the term "radical" in Islam doesn't really carry the same connotations it does according to our understanding. Back to Sunni I go. 
Islam, in the end, gives more options than most other religions I know of. 

This is all hypothetical, of course. I don't believe in a goddamned thing (lie), and the moment I was forced or coerced into believing anything, I'd be an outlaw.

I also don't really feel guilty if I step on a cockroach, or blaspheme in any other way.  

Which is why I love being a westerner.
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#3
Bowser Offline
(Aug 25, 2016 05:49 PM)Ben the Donkey Wrote: Islam, in the end, gives more options than most other religions I know of. 

Explain. I would think that Western Christianity to be far more diverse than Islam. There's a Christian marketplace in the West, offering an abundance of choices from which to choose.
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#4
elte Offline
(Aug 25, 2016 05:31 PM)Bowser Wrote: If you had an urge to search for your spirituality, which path would you choose?

I would like to choose a religion that was really passed down and still actively supported by a super good and capable, and especially kind and compassionate toward everyone, supernatural being.
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#5
scheherazade Offline
(Aug 25, 2016 05:31 PM)Bowser Wrote: If you had an urge to search for your spirituality, which path would you choose?

I find that by defining myself as a pagan druid, those who subscribe to other religions tend to cease their clamor for me to convert.
Perhaps they opine that human sacrifice is still involved, though that teaching was largely spread by those who sought to discredit
the followers of the ways of nature.


[Image: Paganism-paganism-25917855-1400-1100.jpg]
[Image: Paganism-paganism-25917855-1400-1100.jpg]

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#6
Magical Realist Offline
I would choose some form of mystical gnosticism. I have always leaned toward this idea of humans and animals having the spark of divinity inside them while battling a universe ruled by dark forces. It's Star Wars. It's LOTR. It's Truman finding the door in the sky in the Truman Show. It's the ecstatic anarchy of enlightenment in the midst of an illusory and tyrannical Matrix.


[Image: gnostic.jpg]
[Image: gnostic.jpg]

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#7
Brick  Secular Sanity Offline
Are there any religions that support polyandry?  Big Grin


Please flush after each use and for god's sake, please put the seat down.
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#8
scheherazade Offline
(Aug 28, 2016 11:46 PM)Secular Sanity Wrote: Are there any religions that support polyandry?  Big Grin


Please flush after each use and for god's sake, please put the seat down.

Polyandry is more of a regional phenomenon and religion is usually silent or prohibitive on the topic. However, I did come across the following:

Quote:There is at least one reference to polyandry in the ancient Hindu epic, Mahabharata. Draupadi marries the five Pandava brothers. This ancient text remains largely neutral to concept of polyandry, accepting this as her way of life.


http://psychology.wikia.com/wiki/Polyandry
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#9
C C Offline
(Aug 25, 2016 05:31 PM)Bowser Wrote: If you had an urge to search for your spirituality, which path would you choose?


While I have feelings and emotional experiences associated with this or that, I guess I lack any particular formal choice lurking in the background for spirituality when defined as: "Spirituality refers to certain kinds of activity through which a person seeks meaning, especially a 'search for the sacred'. It may also refer to personal growth, blissful experience, or an encounter with one's own 'inner dimension.'"

When it comes to speculative recreation, though, I've got perhaps four metaphysical views that intermittently compete with each other for personal attention.

One is just a classic, boring, anti-panpsychic monism: That there is an eternal, fundamental generic identity which underlies everything else. But is rather useless to me since I (or my information structure) wouldn't survive dissolving back into it or transiting through it as a nexus to yet another temporary life. The primal identity would likely be minus intellect / awareness -- would not manifest phenomenally via its mere existence. Thereby that utter absence of everything is among the reasons why my own memories, personhood template, and continuity of awareness would not survive returning to it or through it.

Another is that each relationally inter-dependent entity of nature carries its own primal and immutable identity "behind" its appearances (which is not affected by those outer relationships). IOW, a thing has an absolute "side" to its be-ing which is the counterpart of its mutable, contingent "side". The latter changes as the consequence of its relations to other entities (is spatial, can be measured, has location, is material due to that). While the former arguably consists of unchanging principles (is non-spatial, size-less, without location, is immaterial) which serves as the perpetual anchor and determiner of which kind of observable existence the thing has on the "world of bodies" slash natural side.

A third is classic four dimensionalism or a spin-off of such: That there's no actual flow to time, only the cognitive discrimination of one's life into discrete events that are oriented sequence-wise toward "the future" (because that's the "direction" in which language or concept mediated consciousness makes sense to itself). Thus one would never truly come into being and out of being in that extra dimensional block-cosmos.

A variation of the above is that every supposed moment or change in time is actually a parallel universe (or slightly altered version of the last cosmos), which is part of a path through a stratified field of countless world-states that is either chosen by my cognitive process or which the latter is indigenous to. In terms of "where its avatar body or whatever" must next find itself among the optional world-states" in order to remain alive or functioning via whatever ontological substrate (biological, technological, etc) is available there for its avatar's subsistence. This would eventually mean gradually migrating acutely "sideways" to the history adhered to by the current cosmos until a long-term path / series of parallel worlds sharing the same history is arrived at again where the avatar exists in a stable way for a significant duration. Memory is revised along the way of that steep "sideways" transition as the brain or robot AI organ in whatever type body I've got in each parallel cosmos changes in its stored and structural patterns. By the time I (as a cognitive process) finally arrived at another stable and longer-life path for the future, I would have completely forgotten about the starting reality in which I was 95 years old and had just died an instant before on the deathbed.
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#10
Yazata Offline
(Aug 25, 2016 05:31 PM)Bowser Wrote: If you had an urge to search for your spirituality, which path would you choose?

I already have that urge.

My path is kind of individual to me.

To the extent that I'm influenced by any existing religious tradition, it's definitely Theravada Buddhism, the Buddhism of the Pali canon.
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