Guest guest Posted February 26, 1999 Report Share Posted February 26, 1999 -- [ From: Janice Young * EMC.Ver #2.5.3 ] -- Ben, I haven't studied in depth other religions, but for my own knowledge to get at least a comparison of their basic beliefs, I read 'The World's Religions' by Huston . It's an excellent book. He writes about the origins and history and then gives an overall view of the positive aspects of each religion. His point is not to argue the darker sides of each religion although he acknowledges that they exist. It's just not his main focus in this particular book of his. I'm getting more and more lost as to the meaning of spirituality in and out of AA. I think it's one of those buzzwords of the day that is overused and misused. Jan --------------------- Another interesting experience - [and there's much talk of religion in AA - quite odd, since AA " has nothing to do with religion " ). One well -spoken AA member (he has an AA speaker tape business, and has probably been the person putting on the Atlanta AA Men's Workshop for the last 15 or 20 years or so) was discussion leader in a meeting, and he was talking about AA being 'spiritual, not religious', yet how it doesn't conflict with any religion, in fact [here's another saying I heard often in AA] " All religions say the same thing. " To further illustrate this, he went on to say " Just as Christians turn their wills and lives over to Jesus Christ, Zen Bhuddists turn their wills and lives over to Bhuuda, and Muslims turn their wills and lives over to Mohammed. " I knew virtually nothing about Muslim, but I had a vague idea about Zen, and this 'turning one's will and life over to Bhuuda' didn't quite jibe with what little I thought I knew. This got me reading a little bit about other religions, and sure enough, many Eastern 'belief systems' don't really have a god or gods, and tend to promote self-direction. I still don't know a lot about different religions, but I'm under the impression that these 'Eastern though systems' are called religions partly because they are the closest equivalent things in Eastern society to the Western Christian and Jewish traditions. The next illogical step is to assume that since an Eastern 'religion' is called religion, it must have a god to whom one submits one's will. With my spotty knowledge of religion, much of the last paragraph may be wrong, but I doubt I'm nearly as wrong as the guy I quote above. ----- ------------------------------------------------------------------------ ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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