Squeers,

Thank you for your exposition. You have a knack for clarifying points that are hard to explain.

OUG,

Interesting point - let's take your mental picture of Mary, Mother of Jesus...just to toss an idea into the ring.

In one respect she is an archetypal symbol of "mother and nurture" - or as a sign one might relate it distinctly to her being the mother of Jesus.
However, if we look at the word "Mary", we will associate it with whatever each of us subjectively relates it to. So it might be the mother of Jesus or it might be your auntie or your best friend. The signification of the word "Mary" is unstable. The signification of the mental picture of Mary, the mother of Jesus is also unstable if you are not familiar with the Christian narrative.
Your cognition and application of either the word or the mental image is entirely dependent on the catalogue of cultural text (your software) in your mind - it is impossible to operate beyond its constraints.

Here's an exercise - try and imagine "another colour" - one that is not a combination of all those available on the spectrum. You will be able to imagine the "concept" of another colour, but you won't be able to form a mental picture of it.

Dear Suze,

Thanks for your response to my question. Emile Durkheim was one of the first sociologist to study religion in a systematic way. His study, "The Elementary Forms of Religious Life," was first published in 1912 and has since become a classic. Many of Durkheim's contemporaries saw religion as nothing more than a primitive relic that would disappear in the more sophisticated modern world. It hasn't. Perhaps the answer is that religion has a vital function in maintaining the social system as a whole. Or perhaps, although, "the old gods are growing old or are already dead, the others are not yet born." For many years it was widely felt that as science progressively provided rational explanations for the mysteries of the universe, religion would have less and less of a role to play and would eventually disappear, unmasked as nothing more than superstition. But there are still gaps in our understanding that science can never fill. On the ultimately important questions - of the meaning and purpose of life and the nature of morality - science is utterly silent and, by its very natire, always will be. Few people of modern societies would utterly deny the possibility of some higher power in the universe, some supernatural, transcendental realm that lies beyond the coundaries of ordinary experience, and in this fundamental sense religion is probably here to stay.

cont'd...

cont'd ...

Dear Suze,

Religion functions as a form of social "cement." It united the believers by regularly bringing them together to enact various rituals, and by providing them with a shared values and beliefs that bind them into a community. An outstanding example of this function is the way the Jewish people, scattered for centuries across various cultures, have maintained their identity and cohesion simply through their religious commitment. Of course the question can be asked that although a society requires some shared set of beliefs to ensure its cohesion do these beliefs have to be religious? Many other belief systems have been suggested as functional equivalents of religion, including humanism. These and other belief systems fulfill the functions of religion so well that they can actually be regarded as "religions." The essential difference between such belief systems and religions is, that though the former serve some of the same functions as religion, they are not oriented toward the supernatural.

it pains me what we have done
to the image[symbol]..of mary

to suggest that she is the mother of god
egsemplifies..how symbols lead us astray

not many have heard of pope joan
the only femail pope ever[and even better the only sitting pope to ever have given birth...]..and yes it was a boy..

[it is her image..with her son..
that has im many places subverted mary]
and also she is the source of the traditional ritual

where each contestant...for popehood..
must sit 'exposed'..on 'the chair'..[with a hole in the seat]..
from which the authenticity of the 'tackle'..is accertained..by feel as well as the angle of the dangle..

our his-story is replete..with ritual
even in jesus time...rite was held ABOUVE god

its an acromoney...[an athema?]..
that the very messenger sent to correct it
has now become the biggest division..in uniting the children of good back to god..

[to wit the most holy christs..'church'..
is as devided as the rest of the 'other' belief syastems]..

[religions]..who hold their creed...as absolute/sacred
who hold their rituals..as being sacred/sacrosanct
missing the very teachings jesus revealed as being errant[in error]

take the ritual of feeding the 4/5000
note the seating order[oppisite each other]
watching each other with creed filled judgmental eyes

each knowing the SACRED rite of the handwashing ritual
was essential..to be called holy..to be called to that 'clean place'

of course each ate...'as much as they desired'
because none desired to eat...WITH DIRTY HANDS*

recall the dirty handwash/jars..of canna
and again with the shewbread/priests

but i have tried so many times..
to explain the real meaning
of what..*he DID..

[not what man/men..say
about..the thing*s..he REPORTEDLY said]

imagry is as danger/filled..as ritual
in that if filterd..by a faulty filter/measure

gives vile fruits..not good fruit..
yet if we filter out all the bad
and focus only on the good...we by loving/serving/leading..
to the good sooner..re-connect with the ultimate good..[god]

however we might percieve him..[to be]
hold fast..to that known known..god is

*GOOD*
ie grace/love mercy
charity/life...
*GOD*

*[its all good*][god]

if you learn to ignore..the wrong
by not judging it...Neither good..NOR bad*

Dear OUG,

The religious convictions that anyone holds are influenced by the historical and social context in which that person happens to live.
Someone born in ancient Rome would probably have believed that Jupiter is father of the gods; at any rate, he or she would certainly not have been a Southern Baptist or a Hindu. Similarly, if your parents are Catholic, you are probably Catholic; if they are Mormon, you too are probably Mormon. We are not the passive prisoners of our upbringing, of course, but even people who decide to convert from one religion to another almost inevitably select their new faith from the unique range of options that their particular culture happens to offer at a particular point in its history.

The fact that a religious doctrine is culturally learned does not necessarily put its "truth" in question. What this cultural variation does mean is that there are a large number of religions, many of whose members are convinced that theirs is the one true faith. Religions reflect the cultural concerns of the socieites in which they arise. War-prone societies tend to have gods of war. Agricultural societies, gods of fertility. Societies that accord much greater power and prestige to men likewise tend to have male gods and religions dominated by male officials. It's therefore not surprising that priests, rabbis, and other clergy have been exclusively male in the past, or that this situation is gradually changing as gender roles become more flexible in other areas of society. Another example is that most Western Christians, being white, tend to think of both God and Jesus and his mother Mary as white. The idea of a black God is almost unimaginable to them and portraits of Jesus and Mary frequently present them as blond Caucasians rather than as people with Semitic features they no doubt were. In many African churches, on the other hand, statues and portraits of Jesus and his mother show them with dark negroid features.

Lexi,

I think your last is very well and fairly put, and I expect we can all agree on it.
The actual religious/spiritual/transcendental experience remains the true mystery, and one which I do not “bah humbug”, or dismiss in general as self-deception. I don't think there's any doubt that a great deal of mystical experience is one kind of fancy or another, but I'm persuaded that some such experience is genuine and outside the symbolic order; undefinable, or unsignifiable, but experiential nonetheless. Indeed we need not struggle too much with this apparent human capacity for mystical experience, we need go no further than our infatuation with meaning. Did anyone listen to last week's Science Show?
http://www.abc.net.au/cgi-bin/common/player_launch.pl?s=rn/scienceshow&d=rn/scienceshow/audio&r=ssw-2011-07-09.ram&w=ssw-2011-07-09.asx&t=Saturday 09 July 2011&p=1
Richard Dawkins (the second speaker) avers with breathtaking éclat that no less than the “riddle of life” was solved in 1859, by Darwin, and at one point talks about our "illusion of meaning".
Without having any “beliefs” as to whence our fascination for meaning springs, I cannot dismiss its diverse manifestations in the world as the elaboratations of the same universal illusion, and I consider Dawkins small, indeed mean-minded to do so himself. The fact that Man is so hopelessly addicted to his/her “illusions”, of spirituality, beauty, love, angst, “meaning”, in a word, and regardless of cultural context, tells me the “stimulus” is real, however it is bastardised. Even the belief that a capacity for meaning has obstinately “evolved” in an apparently meaningless universe, is stupendously meaningful! And who knows where that evolution might, or “has” ended? We base our beliefs and disbeliefs on a ridiculously tiny and problematic perspective.
It’s worth noting too that Derrida does not throw out the “meaningfulness” of our “illusion” in the process of deconstructing its elaborate linguistic trappings. Derrida was an agnostic and so am I.