Religion; the forbiden subject

A brief personal history: I was baptized at two or three into the Lutheran church along with a younger cousin. I remember the church and I have fond memories of the building, sad to see it come down. It would have made an interesting house. I remember being in the basement with the other kids from time to time. I know I wasn't a regular and I have one memory of the chapel itself, and a woman with long jet-black hair and long blood red fingernails. Once my sister was confirmed we stopped going. Years latter I learned the reason was that our grandmother wanted at least one of us confirmed in the church. Latter when I started to give religion thought I shared my brother-in-laws opinion, more agnostic. Religion is bad, the source of a lot of evil etc. Only the weak need religion. A few months after I graduated from high school I ran into a friend from a different school. He had disappeared the last month or so of the school year. Turns out he went through drug rehab and found religion. The change was good to see, so remarkable that I didn't recognize him. He seemed happier and at peace. Religion isn't all-bad then.


Joseph Campbell: I don't know the first time I had seen him on TV, but latter his views really made me think about religion, history, beliefs, love... So what is religion? A belief system that can form the basis of a personal ethic, a base for making difficult decisions, a sort of behavioral shorthand, something that can provide comfort when life happens. It is so hard to put into wards what religion is because so often it transcends words or even thought. "That which can not be known" I think a true religious experience is rare, and many people who claim to have experienced have mistaken something else for it. I'm not going to get into why a religious experience is important here. Thats for a different posting, maybe tied to "thoughts on technology"

How do we get there? A prophet is someone who can show the way to a religious experience, but it is not the only way. There are many paths from Judea, Christianity, Wicca, Shamanism to Hinduism. A person should be free to choose the path that works best for them. The problem for the prophet (and the hero) is the loss of the message. Because the religion is transcendent of thought, it can only be expressed in metaphors. A recurring problem that has been the bane of all religions is the confusion of metaphors and the literal taking of the metaphors. I think this is because for most people they want the easy route to the transcendent, and cannot understand it is just metaphor. They get stuck in the tangled knots of metaphor and can't move onto their own experience. I feel that those are the people who are so far into a system that they are more likely to become fanatics and do evil. They will also be less likely to experience the transcendent, the harder they try the more elusive it becomes. Religion is to be taken at a distance, with a knowledge of other religions. If you know of other paths you should be less likely to become stuck on metaphors. I keep telling myself that I should learn more about other faiths, hint hint hint. Study them all and you can see the message that appears in all religions, that is the path. Take those leasons and apply them to whatever faith works for you. Maybe then we can get a better understanding of the metaphors that religion is full of. So what path seems to work for me? I would have to say Shamanism. I think its safe to say Lutheran didn't fit. I view the other Christian religions as being essentially the same. A tangled knot of ideas that would take a lifetime to sort out and untangle. I've tried Wicca and found it very appealing, but not quite. I still have an affinity for Wicca and I do enjoy taking part in ritual, hint hint hint. Religion is no longer a bad thing, when used in moderation and administered according to the patients particular needs. There is more that can be said I'm sure but I've ranted on long enough. I've also completed my technology blog.