You're doing it wrong!
Oct. 3rd, 2008 04:57 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sobriqueSo how do you tell the religions of the world that they've got it all wrong?
Here is the problem - a religion is a structure built by men. It's using 'access to divinity' as a basis for assertion of power. The clergy are no more holy than you are. Or anyone else for that matter. They have no special insight in to the mind of God.
Perhaps they're better educated than average - less the case now, but certainly in the past this was so - and thus worth listing to for the sake of their knowledge and wisdom. But the whole thing built on the false pretence that God cares about your individual destiny.
We have this conceit, humankind, that God loves us. That the world is ordered, and layed out with a plan, and God orchestrates it all. And conceit it is - there is nothing in the way of proof that this is the case.
It's based on this assumption of control. That the universe itself is controlled and orchestrated. This I believe, is grounded in the fact that we're all ... well, a bit unprepared for the concept that there might be nothing else. That this might be our only shot at existance, and there really is no one holding our hand.
But it's not. The Universe is more a work of art, than a planned mechanism. Complicated and intricate, with much beauty at all scales, from the intergalactic, down to the fantasically fascinating interactions at the subatomic scale. This work of art unfolds, evolves and shifts. Maybe it's for a reason, but ... art has no need for a purposes - that it exists is enough.
So for all your prayers, remember this. A prayer doesn't change anything. There is no one listening, no one caring about how sad you are. A prayer is meditation. It's focussing _your_ mind on the things at hand - what is important, what is not. And that's good. Just don't go thinking there's any intervention coming, because there isn't.
There is something that set the Universe in motion. There's something that gives us all the ability to think for ourselves. There's something that set in motion the seeds of life itself. Now stop being sheep, and use that gift. Choose to be yourself, not part of the flock.
Here is the problem - a religion is a structure built by men. It's using 'access to divinity' as a basis for assertion of power. The clergy are no more holy than you are. Or anyone else for that matter. They have no special insight in to the mind of God.
Perhaps they're better educated than average - less the case now, but certainly in the past this was so - and thus worth listing to for the sake of their knowledge and wisdom. But the whole thing built on the false pretence that God cares about your individual destiny.
We have this conceit, humankind, that God loves us. That the world is ordered, and layed out with a plan, and God orchestrates it all. And conceit it is - there is nothing in the way of proof that this is the case.
It's based on this assumption of control. That the universe itself is controlled and orchestrated. This I believe, is grounded in the fact that we're all ... well, a bit unprepared for the concept that there might be nothing else. That this might be our only shot at existance, and there really is no one holding our hand.
But it's not. The Universe is more a work of art, than a planned mechanism. Complicated and intricate, with much beauty at all scales, from the intergalactic, down to the fantasically fascinating interactions at the subatomic scale. This work of art unfolds, evolves and shifts. Maybe it's for a reason, but ... art has no need for a purposes - that it exists is enough.
So for all your prayers, remember this. A prayer doesn't change anything. There is no one listening, no one caring about how sad you are. A prayer is meditation. It's focussing _your_ mind on the things at hand - what is important, what is not. And that's good. Just don't go thinking there's any intervention coming, because there isn't.
There is something that set the Universe in motion. There's something that gives us all the ability to think for ourselves. There's something that set in motion the seeds of life itself. Now stop being sheep, and use that gift. Choose to be yourself, not part of the flock.
