Dear Joe,

Thank you for your kind comment.

I take it that you do not mean it literally when you state: "After all, we create god in our own preferred image, how we would like people everywhere to be."

Rather, what we create are useful (or less useful as the case may be) images and concepts of God to suit our limited mental capacity, that in turn can be used in the course of our worship in order to help us refine our character and purify ourselves so we are ready to experience God directly rather than a physical or mental image.

---

Dear Foxy,

<<I don't believe that any of us are really competent to investigate the supernatural or to play umpire between competing beliefs.>>

Deciding which belief is "better" is like deciding which dish is better, which is unnecessary. The menu is there and what remains is a matter of personal taste.

nicknamenick writes: "There have been fascist religious empires in Americas and SE Asia. And Russia-east Europe and China, Vietnam etc have just completed their atheist ideologies of Scientific god-chairmen. A few commos fired in anger , some tortured, starved and lied occasionally and said rude things to religious citizens. But they were devoted to human well-being because their books say so."

I confess I cannot quite grasp the thrust of your argument. Are you implying that atheism and communism are interchangeable words and that one can replace the other in a socio-political context? I'd like to confirm this before engagement. I will record here though that if you are claiming that atheism, through the agency of Pol Pot, Adolph Hitler, Josef Stalin, Mao tze-Tung and Ho Chi Min and a few others, was a major contributor to any conflict during the period in question then you are wrong. Orthodox and other conservative religious authorities clung tenaciously to the power, privilege and influence they enjoyed under the old aristocratic and colonial regimes that were under attack by revolutionary [largely communist] forces. Karl Marx knew such a conflict would arise. When religion became a factor in allegiances and alliances it was inevitable that the revolutionary movements, the leaders and the followers, were branded atheist. Sometimes this worked in favour of the revolutions because of repressive colonial administration by the catholic church in particular in China, Japan, French Indo-China and the Dutch christian church in Indonesia. Vast estates had been bestowed upon these churches by old regimes under seige from their colonial masters to support the spread of christianity. In the rural areas they were not popular, often being even more oppressive in their administration than the old regime provincial governor.

If you would like to make a case for a conflicting view, then I invite you to do so but caution you that I have dealt with this subject many times in the past. I hope though, that we can conduct this debate in a frank and polite manner

Dear david f,

>>I used the word, culture, in the three following sentences:

“Christianity not only was intolerant toward other religions but destroyed classical culture and brought on the Dark Ages.”

“The Renaissance reconnected Europe with its pre-Christian past and culture which Christianity had done its best to eliminate.”

“The greatest anti-cultural force in European history was Christianity.”<<

As I wrote, the first sentence is compatible with the Dawson sentence (without me saying it was right or wrong), so is the second - in both cases, as you confirm, one has the anthropological meaning of culture, “good” or “bad”, in mind. However, the third sentence makes sense only when “anti-cultural” refers to culture in the normative sense, (perhaps with the pre-Christendom - or even post-Christendom - Western culture as THE norm?), since obviously you did not mean that it was anti- the culture of Christendom.

There is a term “inculturation” to distinguih

(a) attempts to impose Christendom on other cultures, hence destroying them (as was done throughout most of missionary activities)
from
(b) attempts to present Christianity as an option “on top of” the other culture, perhaps amending but not destroying it, as a more “fair play” way of spreading the Christian faith.

Of course, you might like neither of them - and it is indeed a question whether Abrahamic religions, and their derivative, atheist (secular) humanism, are all able to engage in a fair play competition of world views.

Dear nicknamenick ,

>> And Russia-east Europe and China, Vietnam etc have just completed their atheist ideologies of Scientific god-chairmen.<<

I do not know what was your personal experience with Communism but I can confirm that during the Stalinist 1950s (in Czecholovakia) we had a compulsory subject called “scientiifc atheism” at school, taught as a replacement of RE before we could grasp the economic theories of Marx and Lenin.

This, of course, does not imply that every form of what is called atheism necessarily agrees with the rest of the the tenets of dialectical materialism or even marx-leninism as such.

Hi Loudmouth
.. fascists love architecture. Not that all amazing architecture is therefore fascist, but it's more than a coincidence.
Yes the megalomania of Angkor resembles the pyramids and had similar motives it seems. Bali also has overwhelmimg gates probably meaning life /death. These are candi bentar , the split gates of temples.

In Java, kuti means Buddhist temple and tanda is the world-order.
The Tamil plural of kuti is kutayo . In south Australia , Kata Thanda is meeting place of bosses , the name of Lake Eyre. It has Kadimarkara , the crocodile monster and tree-trunks and water-spring mounds. This odd grouping matches the makara of Java, monster crocodile, pillars of temple sand water-spouts. ( Ske khadi is ocean so, salt-water crocodile.)
Hence Lake Eyre is a gigantic Buddhist temple, fascist world-order on a huge scale......(just joking..

Hi Nick,

God, you learn so much on OLO, you really do. I blame Wikipedia.

In all of those Hindu and Buddhist kingdoms across South-East Asia, with the tens and hundreds of thousands of temples and pagodas and stupas, a huge class of priests was supported by the product of the labour of millions of people and a bountiful Nature, to which they must have devoted so much fervent prayer.

I wouldn't call any of those systems 'fascist' - like everywhere in the world, they would have been pretty absolutist, but perhaps in those societies, everybody knew their place and did what was decreed by the rulers and priests. And the religious world was shaped in the image of the ruling classes: gods seen to be acting just like rulers, with hordes of angels acting like priests. And you and me out in the heavenly padis.

So how did people - perhaps individually - mentally break away from that tight 'God-says-do-as-you're-told' mind-set and think for themselves, to (as they necessarily had to frame it) communicate with god directly ? And from there, contemplate the possibility that there actually wasn't a god at al: no punisher but also no heaven, no eternal life ?

Cheers,

Joe

Pogo and George
I wrote a special topic for you in General as me and Joe got somefink goin. Hope the lord above OLO will allow it past his rubber stamp with imprimatur.
Loudmouth , Joe , Hi,
I read a book once when Wiki got dull . Negara . C Geertz. Princeton. General presumptions about yeah , old mate king, his crony priests , blah blah, don't do it.That's why I said the fas-ist word. Bali was a government that existed for ritual. The Dutch did a genocide, regicide, sacrocide, and what the tourists pay $ for today in the beautiful , balmy delights is a shadow of the past weird and delightful dreamland. All life was acting out the Hindu harmony of Persian paradise where everyone was in the geometry.
In Java , nagarane gita means countrys song, where Sanskrit nagara meant a city , the temple . Ngurungaeta means the tribal headman of Melbourne. Ngurampaa is the tribal elders campsite as the country reference point in west NSW and Ngarampa means the highest degree in Tantric Buddhism