nature and religion

[Guest guest]

says: >>As always, the interesting question which few wish to forthrightly address is this: is God entirely a psychological-experiential-human artificedphenomena?<< --God is several things on several levels. The "highest" level is nature's programming for our survival, which includes the ability to form a tightly-bonded mass to address common threats. On that level, humanity is a family, headed either by an invisible parent figure or by an abstraction like the Tao, seen more as an energy flow than a personification. The question is whether we can form a global mass, united by the common threats of nuclear proliferation, global warming, genocide and disease. Then there is the level of dogma, the passing of tribal codes from one generation to the next. Ritual and authoritarian hierarchies dominate. Whenever the tribal code is promoting the tribe's extinction, someone appears who represents

nature's survival code, overriding the limiting tribal code through whatever channels are available. Today's dogmatic Christians and Muslims are anti-life, resisting in their children the impulse toward life. Therefore the children of Christians and Muslims will have to wrestle with visions and heresies that don't conform to the orthodoxy they've been raised with. The tribal code, based on male dominance and the emasculation of females, is challenged by a more organic code associated with freer sexuality and decentralization of power. There is no absolute, language-based hierarchy in nature, and groups that cling to power through language and dogmatism will find their own children turning against their way of life. Nature prevails, because the same genetic programming that taught us hierarchy and territorial defense was generated to give life, not extinction. It would be "unnatural" (although possibly allowable by nature) for the instincts which kept our ancestors alive to

destroy everything they passed down. At best, it would be a cosmic joke or a warning to alien civilizations. At worst, it would be the loss of everything that has meaning to human existence, and the loss of a generation with great talent and promise, and all possible generations after. C. Lockharthttp://www.soulaquarium.netYahoo! Messenger: grailsnailBlog: http://shallowreflections.blogspot.com/"The most dangerous things in the world are immense accumulations of human beings who are manipulated by only a few heads." -- Carl Jung"If you can't be a good example, then you'll just have to be a horrible warning." -- Aird“To retain contact with the oppressors neither condones their actions, nor weakens support for and commitment to the oppressed. To work for liberation of the oppressed can be helped by communicating with the oppressors, and

may free the oppressors from the degradation by which they are trapped. It cannot be realized unless there is contact with them.” Adam Curle, Quaker international mediator

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