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http://www.upworthy.com/best-explanation-of-religion-i-have-ever-heard-and-im-practically-an-atheist
Dear every religious person: Listen to this. This guy is a bishop, and he's better at explaining organized religion as separate from the godhead than almost anyone I have ever heard. Dear every nonreligious person: You will be nodding vigorously and appreciating people like this man so much you'll wish every religious person was like him.
This is why I'm pagan. This is why I have no religion. The godhead - a single god, many gods, a source of energy, the higher self, nature, the universe, however you want to identify with it - has nothing to do with praise, fear, love, hate, organization, community, or what each person does in life. It just exists. It hangs around in its own dimension, formless, genderless, minding its own business, occasionally feeding off the soma of belief from living beings who find it pretty and comforting. It lets those beings shape it into whatever form they can recognize most. And since it is so pretty and comforting, people look to it and embrace it. If it makes them feel good, hooray! But to invent controlling concepts like Heaven and Hell just to scare people into running like children to your arms - born again, as it were, as this man says - is not a good way to explain your belief systems.
I'll say it again, but I believe Neil Gaiman did it best with "American Gods" - the idea that all gods are a sort of Mobius strip, circling back to creating themselves out of the minds of humans until they become real incarnations and sustain themselves on human worship... Except I like to think they originate in dimensions both outside our worlds and within our minds. Not quite panentheism... more like the universe being our own selves.
See? I'm so eclectic I don't want anyone else to "convert" to my belief system. I don't even know how to explain it. This is what happens when I'm raised by an atheist and agnostic both with very open minds.
Dear every religious person: Listen to this. This guy is a bishop, and he's better at explaining organized religion as separate from the godhead than almost anyone I have ever heard. Dear every nonreligious person: You will be nodding vigorously and appreciating people like this man so much you'll wish every religious person was like him.
This is why I'm pagan. This is why I have no religion. The godhead - a single god, many gods, a source of energy, the higher self, nature, the universe, however you want to identify with it - has nothing to do with praise, fear, love, hate, organization, community, or what each person does in life. It just exists. It hangs around in its own dimension, formless, genderless, minding its own business, occasionally feeding off the soma of belief from living beings who find it pretty and comforting. It lets those beings shape it into whatever form they can recognize most. And since it is so pretty and comforting, people look to it and embrace it. If it makes them feel good, hooray! But to invent controlling concepts like Heaven and Hell just to scare people into running like children to your arms - born again, as it were, as this man says - is not a good way to explain your belief systems.
I'll say it again, but I believe Neil Gaiman did it best with "American Gods" - the idea that all gods are a sort of Mobius strip, circling back to creating themselves out of the minds of humans until they become real incarnations and sustain themselves on human worship... Except I like to think they originate in dimensions both outside our worlds and within our minds. Not quite panentheism... more like the universe being our own selves.
See? I'm so eclectic I don't want anyone else to "convert" to my belief system. I don't even know how to explain it. This is what happens when I'm raised by an atheist and agnostic both with very open minds.
