Popular self-development guru Steve Pavlina rants against organized religion.
"... when you donate to a major religion, you support its expansion, which means you’re facilitating the enslavement of your fellow humans."
Wow. Bitter much? :-)
I'm with him so far that those with muscles in the mind can possibly make more spiritual progress outside an organized religion, but to cast the religions as the Villain is no better than doing the same thing to "terrorists" or governments or people of another race or culture. It's all the same trap. The problem is not "out there". Villains belong in pulp fiction, not in the mind of a serious seeker.
Spirituality of any kind cannot give real insight anyway, but this guy needs to get his facts straight. What he says about the origin of the rule about priestly celibacy is just plain wrong. He is right about at least one thing, which is that if you want to donate money to a charity, give it to one that is going to put your money to good use helping people.
ReplyDelete"What he says about the origin of the rule about priestly celibacy is just plain wrong."
ReplyDeleteThe reason he gives for it is surely speculation, but so far I know it's true that it was never bible mandated, but invented by a pope in the seven-hundreds.
I think it was under Gregory VII in the 11th century that this was brought in, but not because of any problem of inheritance.
ReplyDeleteI noticed another error myself, though - he talks about the Earth being 10,000 years old. Fundamentalists believe that it is in fact 6,000 years old. Ridiculous, of course, but that's the number they came up with. Ussher's chronology. There may be some groups who go with 10,000.
Anyway this guy's ramblings are the kind that give the non-believer a bad name.
I do agree that giving money to a church is a bad idea because even if you say what it should be used for they can use it for whatever they want.
What's interesting is that he put a satirical slant on this article. It's not something I ever expected to see from him. It seems like it's designed more to rattle cages than anything else. It's not, "religion is the villain" so much as, "if you want to make progress, what the hell are you doing sitting in a pew?"
ReplyDeleteReligion is one of those topics where you're not going to budge anyone from their position with a passionate, well reasoned argument, and you're going to offend somebody regardless. May as well have a little fun with it. ;)
"There may be some groups who go with 10,000."
There are groups that go with 10,000. It's pretty arbitrary. Obviously they're closer to being religious moderates but in a lot of cases their actual beliefs don't differ that much from fundamentalists.
So if they believe in 20,000 years, they are *really* moderate?
ReplyDelete"So if they believe in 20,000 years, they are *really* moderate?"
ReplyDeleteHaha, I wouldn't think so. The really moderate people, or the religious left, are the ones who think the earth is billions of years old and that Genesis is a symbolic story as opposed to a literal one.
Of course anyone that isn't bent on converting the world to their particular brand of religion falls into the moderate category. What separates fundamentalists from non-fundamentalists is largely the emphasis, or lack thereof, that each group places on ideas like heaven and hell.
Haha, it seems that stories about catholic priests are nothing new: I am just watching "Airplane II", and there's a priest reading a magazine called "Alter Boy", turning the mag on its side to look at a centerfold.
ReplyDeleteOh, for those who may not know it: "Airplane II" is nearly 30 years old.
ReplyDeleteOn that note, Stephen Lynch singing "Priest":
ReplyDeletehttp://youtube.com/watch?v=ARAwp-lvI6c
Looks like I picked the wrong day to give up sniffing glue!
ReplyDeleteThat's from the original, though. Great flick. I haven't seen the second one in a long time but it's almost as good.
"I just wanted to tell both of you that we are all counting on you." They ripped that for the Family Guy star wars flick.
ReplyDeleteWell, after all, organized religion DOES serve as a mind control tool. Wow, there's someone who believes that the Earth (the planet) is as young as ten thousand years? That person must be from some other planet, since we were ALL taught in school that dinosaurs roamed the Earth (the planet) about 65 million years ago.
ReplyDeleteJoe Dick - try Gorilla Glue - it expands and hardens as it dries.
Steve Pavlina wrote: "... when you donate to a major religion, you support its expansion, which means you’re facilitating the enslavement of your fellow humans."
ReplyDeleteTo which Eolake commented: "... but to cast the religions as the Villain ..."
Rather than villanizing per se, I interpret Pavlina's essay as just trying to say (in no uncertain terms) that organized religion is not good for you, you'd better stay out.
However, the "facilitating the enslavement of your fellow humans" part is philosophically interesting. If you give money (or attention) to the church, it grows (in your personal reality, at least), making them more able to enslave others (in your personal reality, at least).
Now, despite this, i.e. regardless of how much you help the church, your fellow humans can always choose to completely ignore the church, making it non-existent to them. We all have free will and create our experience through our choices.
And yet, still, in your reality, if you help the church, you will undeniably note that because of your efforts, the church is able to convert more people.
So, when giving money to the church, are you "facilitating the enslavement of your fellow humans" or not? Or, more to the point, are you affecting other people's lives?
If you answer yes, it means you believe in the idea of victimhood, and that we do not have total control of our life experience.
If you answer no, then it follows that all forms of 'trying to protect our fellow humans' is just as pointless. And we could do away with, for example, the Police Force and Food and Drug Administration.
I can believe in total responsibility because I believe the universe is a projection of the Mind. But you don't seem all that spiritual, so how do you explain it?
ReplyDeleteI am firmly in the total responsibility 'bandwagon'. Reading The Nature of Personal Reality in September, 2000, is what finally shifted me to this path of thinking (rather than just toying with the idea, as I'd done up to that point). And since then, after personal experimentation and studying the subject from different angles, I've only become more convinced.
ReplyDeleteMy point with the above comment, however, was not to try to resolve anything. But rather to dig out the core issue regarding that Pavlina quote -- i.e. what the fallacy is, if there is one.
"we were ALL taught in school that dinosaurs roamed the Earth (the planet) about 65 million years ago."
ReplyDeleteWishful thinking!
I for one had to learn it from my own curiosity and voracious reading, school wasn't much interested in teaching us about biology in general.
And at least, I didn't go to school in the bible belt, where they'll hang you to the evolution tree by your suspenders if you so much as seem to be contradicting Genesis with all this mad talk about dinosaurs and all species not being created in a single week 6.000 years ago. Including the Leviathan, the Unicorn, and birds like the bat.
Just reading the "His Dark Materials" trilogy by Pullman. Much clearer view of religion-as-authority-figure, and a lot less rancor since it's a narrative rather than an instructional exhortation.
ReplyDeleteBut similar nonetheless.