(12-09-2023, 08:02 PM)Snarl Wrote: ...
Religion is made up by men. Therefore it is flawed. If God wanted us to have religion he'd have damn sure given it to us. I _know_ this. Still I don't go poking church-going folk in the eye with a sharp stick.
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I personally believe that ALL religions in the modern world, and probably all of them in the past, are/were just a made-up set of rituals, made up by Some Guy , as a means of covering the fact that folks are just too lazy, and in some cases downright incapable, of making any actual meaningful connection with their god(s). So, they can participate in a set of rituals and claim to have a "personal relationship" with their god(s). However, personal participation in what amounts to a mere party is NOT the same thing as personally connecting with A God. No more so than personally attending an inaugural ball gives one 24/7 carte blanche with a president.
The rituals are just feel-good substitutes for that personal connection that most folks will never know. They stop at the rituals thinking that is enough. It's not, no more than playing a first-person shooter video game puts one in an actual war getting shot at by actual bullets.
Now they stop at ritual and "religion" because they believe that is enough, when it's actually a side-track leading them away from their god(s). Some do it out of laziness, others do it out of a fear of the potential for actually meeting their god(s), and yet others do it because it is all they can or ever WILL do - it's all they are capable of, because their god(s) want nothing to do with them - it takes two to make a "relationship",and if their god)s) want nothing to do with them, their efforts are doomed before they even begin. "Religion" is just a mask to cover those deficiencies.
It happily also has the side effect or bonus of granting way too much political/social power over the followers to the Some Guy who invented the rituals in the first place. He or she becomes "da man!" in the hierarchy of the religion, able to hand down edicts from on high to the adherents... edicts that come from himself rather than any God whom he has never met, either.
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I place Satanists in the same camp with Wiccans, Odinists, and Most modern Christian denominations like Catholics and Lutherans, etc - having all of the trappings of spirituality, with none of the power of it. All any of them really have is a set of rituals, most of the ones mentioned being based on medieval concepts of a reality that has become no clearer to them in the intervening centuries.
Take Wiccans as an example - modern Wicca has no bearing on ancient wiccans. It was entirely made up by Gerald Gardner in the 20th century, and based upon medieval concepts of what a "witch" actually was, after the Catholic Church had already seized on wiccans as "the enemy" (because every movement has to have at least one "enemy"), and conformed the perceptions of the masses to the ideas of what something has to be to be in opposition to their own church. That concept of stirring cauldrons, calling on the devil, the "osculare infame", chanting "boil, boil, trouble and toil" is not from the original - it had to invoke Satan, and all the other ritual trappings, to demonstrate opposition to the Catholic Church.
Likewise for Satanism - it was conflated with witchcraft in medieval times for the same reasons, and modern conceptions of Satanism stem from those medieval concepts. Satanism is, and has always been since it's medieval inception, just a means of opposing Catholicism, a tantrum thrown by immature folks against a perceived threat to themselves. Modern Satansim was invented by Anton LaVey, and based upon the medieval concepts of Satanism which were controlled by the Catholic Church in order to present an "enemy" to church-goers of the day, to strengthen the grip of the Church over them, it's strangle-hold on them.
Kinda funny when you think of it - Satanists are actually STILL being controlled and defined by their own "enemies". They can't have it any other way - they cannot shake the controlling yoke of Catholicism or indeed Christianity in general so long as they continue to just be a movement to counter it. They are then being forced to "kick against the goad" of Christianity, because without that, they dwindle to nothingness. They are entirely reactive rather than proactive, and that gives their enemies control over them.
As the Bible says, these modern religions "have the form of godliness but deny the power thereof". The only real power any of them have is what human-power they are able to generate. That amounts to how far they can stretch their arms and swing their sacrifice knives. They neither know their god(s) nor do their god(s) know them... and that applies to most Christians as well.
Pity, that.
For the record, I think that the Levites, and Leviticus/ Deuteronomy in general, are the first attempts at "religion" and ritual documented in the Christian's own books, designed to lead them astray from any possibility of a meeting with their God. If one reads Genesis thoroughly and critically, he will find no such mechanisms to prevent a meeting with God. "Walking with God" had no religion until Moses and Levi forced one on it.
"Enoch walked with God, and then was not, for God took him" doesn't carry the same ritual force as "Enoch wasn't allowed to eat shellfish any more, lest God smite him, because Levi said so, and Levi has a direct ritual hotline to God.."
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