Quote:
Originally Posted by Malice_Mizer
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That's interesting, because your questions are honestly pretty juvenile. If you believe that people adhere to religious systems and a belief in God simply to comfort themselves and avoid any liability for their own lives, then I don't think you've dug deep enough into the nature of human spirituality. Even the way you frame the questions betrays a shallow attempt at understanding.
For example the problem of pain is explicitly addressed and concretely satisfied in any orthodox Christian theology: God allows evil to exist to bring about a greater good, i.e. we are unable to view the entire "puzzle," and experience only a small piece, our own piece, of creation. Therefore, any judgment you make about the fairness or unfairness of existence is itself unfair, because you have no viewed existence as a completed whole. It's a teleological understanding of existence that is honestly supported now by science (now that science has abandoned the static-universe theory it slavish held onto until 50 years ago), which says that our universe has a beginning and will one day end. Until then-- until you're able to view creation as the mind that conceived it-- any analysis you make is flawed and incomplete.
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you say that asking if religion is followed for the sake of comfort, what is the ultimate goal of being spiritual? that isnt really a question with an objective answer. i wouldnt really say that judeo-christian religions are very spiritual, especially not in comparison with eastern religions.
eastern religions tend to explore spirituality as a means of achieving enlightenment. you are a soul, you have always been, just not always in your current physical form. everything that reality encompasses is bound in some way, thus making everything in it small parts of a whole. if you do good, you'll amass positive energy and go up a rung in the ladder when your physical form dies, being reborn a little bit closer to true enlightenment. or at least you'll have more means of becoming enlightened at your disposal. life and death are like the breath of the universe, theres a balance that is maintained, we're all part of a greater consciousness.
judeo christian religions however, are a bit more linear and black and white (though theyre the most frequently openly interpreted). god said "let there be light". bam. we're here. now that youre here, youve been gifted with free will. what you do with it is your choice, but if you dont do what god wants, he, the unconditionally loving creator, will punish you for ever with physical torture (although some offshoots of the big three have varying amounts of penance; its not always forever). if youre good and dont use the free will god gave you, you'll go to heaven, or some plane of positive energy to put it another way. in heaven, theres no pain, no hunger, everyones always happy you get to see dead loved ones again ect. if youre bad, youre barred from heaven, damned to hell or some negative plane where your only company is some chief embodiment of evil, and all the asshole that have ever existed and died before you.
it seems to me like spirituality doesnt play enough of a roll in christianity to even mention it, hence why i asked what i did.