Out of body religious experiences

[John56{vg}]

I don't agree at all. I think and believe that the "organised" part of "organised religion" is what's good about religion. It gives people structure, traditions and rules to organise their life around. We all need them and we all need to be part of a greater whole.

Organizing Religion into political (The pope, Divine Right of Kings, the Ayatollahs, etc) forces gives one man or a group of men the right to tell me what I must believe and not allowing me to believe what I want to. If you have one man or woman believing that I must kill you because you don't belive what I do, mean you have 1 or 2 fanatics. But one or woamn telling me to believe that thing, means I have a whole society telling me that you are an enemy fornot believing what I do.

Organizing religion is what has set religion against science. Again, if I am one person I have the right to look at evolution as a gift from my God. But if I am told by one stupid individual who wants power that It is a sin to believe in something that has so much proof behind it, then I have organized stupidity into science.

So I disagree totally that organization has made religion into a force for good, quite the contrary.

I think you're wrong here to. I've recently read up a lot about atheism in USA and I haven't seen any examples of fundamentalist atheism anywhere. Apart from crater-faced 17 year olds who are against everything.

Dawkins is just as much a fundamentalist (and to me, just as much an idiot) as Pat Robertson or that Falwell was. He is fanatical about claiming that there is no God, as those claiming there is only one way to look at God.

O'Hare was the same way. Wanting to make atheism as much a State sponsored "religion" as the fundamentalistic CHristians want to make born-again CHristianity. And they are again, people who want to make their way the only way.

If I am allowed to look at the evidence, look at what we have learned and filter it through my own experiences I can have a view that fits for me and I can allow for what fits for you. I have the personal belief that God speaks to us in the way we are best able to hear the message (The bible, the Koran, Meditation, Nature, movies, good books). Now that works for me.

It may not work for you, you like a liitle more structure or organization, fine. But that doesn't mean I am wrong, nor does it mean you are wrong. But we both can find the common ground of what we have learned to be true to us and we can be friends.

At least that is what I believe. And you can believe I am wrong, but it does NOT mean that you (and I am talking to all-encompassing you here) can get enough people together to tell me I am wrong and kill me for what I believe.

I've got lots of experiences I can't explain. I like to leave the explaining to people with the education to do it rather than having a go at stupid ass guesswork which isn't ever likely to make any sense. We all know we can't trust out senses, but it's all we've got. Sucks.

Stupid-Ass guesswork (as you call it) is what got us that knowledge in the first place. A lot of our chemical concoctions came from Alchemist trying to turn lead into gold. Boy, that was a stupid-ass theory. But out of it came a lot of great knowledge about chemistry.

Aristotle (Still a very brilliant man) had the stupid-ass belief that maggot spontaneously generated from rotten meat. But he experiementd and came up with a foundation for science and our methods of belief.

So I wouldn't be so quick to eliminate "stupid-ass guess work," It is the foundation for what we have discovered. And do you think we know everything we could possibly know? Certainly not, but we act as if we do. Fundamentalist Christians think we knew everything we needed to know 2000 years ago.

Fundamentalist MUslims believe we knew everything we are allowed to know, what, a thousand some odd years ago. And I think the one of the problems with today's people. A lot of us, and I think our edicational system teaches that we KNOW what is impossible and what is not.

And the great discoveries were made at a time when NOTHING was impossible.

Again, my humble opinion only, but it works for me.

[TomOfSweden]

Organizing Religion into political (The pope, Divine Right of Kings, the Ayatollahs, etc) forces gives one man or a group of men the right to tell me what I must believe and not allowing me to believe what I want to. If you have one man or woman believing that I must kill you because you don't belive what I do, mean you have 1 or 2 fanatics. But one or woamn telling me to believe that thing, means I have a whole society telling me that you are an enemy fornot believing what I do.

Organizing religion is what has set religion against science. Again, if I am one person I have the right to look at evolution as a gift from my God. But if I am told by one stupid individual who wants power that It is a sin to believe in something that has so much proof behind it, then I have organized stupidity into science.

So I disagree totally that organization has made religion into a force for good, quite the contrary.

So by taking a couple of very extreme and abnormal examples of what organised religion can be you discount all of it. I personally think that we have most of our modern world to thank for scientific work made possible by religious institutions. In the olden days having time to do anything but survive was highly unusual.

Dawkins is just as much a fundamentalist (and to me, just as much an idiot) as Pat Robertson or that Falwell was. He is fanatical about claiming that there is no God, as those claiming there is only one way to look at God.

This proves to me that you haven't bothered listening to the man. So there's not much more for me to say. Fundamentalism to me means some sort of faith in spite of evidence.

O'hare I hadn't heard of and couldn't find anything on. Beside these I can't think of a single example of an atheist "fundamentalist".

Stupid-Ass guesswork (as you call it) is what got us that knowledge in the first place. A lot of our chemical concoctions came from Alchemist trying to turn lead into gold. Boy, that was a stupid-ass theory. But out of it came a lot of great knowledge about chemistry.

Either I misread you or you're confusing theory with faith.

It's a big difference going out on a limb if you're a scientist and it's within your field or if you're just a random dude. The last time a person who hadn't dedicated his entire life to science had a major break through was more than a 200 years ago. I can't think of a single specific example actually. The age of the gentleman scientist is definitely over.

The philosopher Thomas Kuhn dedicated his life to exploring this. Worth a read. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Kuhn