we must begin by believing the holy men
who wrote the holy texts..we good..and true

thus the severe insult of him saying
its not my time...[fed them from your filthy unholy handwash jars]for all i care

he said its not what a man puts in
bvut that which issues forth from him[that makes him unclean]

""Rituals like these serve to bring people together,
to remind them of their common membership;""

""to reaffirm their traditional MATERIAL values;""

""to maintain prohibitions and taboos;""

to be the expert
its about absolute control
in this life [plus the next]

TILL WE WANT to be free
we will be bound...by falicies[ritual]

its role SHOULD be.."to offer comfort in times of crisis;
and in general to help transmit the cultural heritage from one generation to the next.""

also important is keping the family together
by believing the same truths/lies as true
[so they end up in the 'same' heaven or ]hell']

rituals are important
but not more important than..the message
or the messenger...or god..the topic of the message

other system's
serve the same functions....

espiri de core
or the party line
or the news paper

anything that requires followers and leaders
[masters and slaves]..dupers and duped

but man wasnt meant to be duped alone
we only dupe ourselves

if it sounds too clever by half
it likely is

but its important to live being the love
to forgive others..as we would hope to be forgiven..for our own foolishness

were all doiing the best we can with what we got
simply loving is fool proof..those who hate god...hate love
[rather simply...love to hate...who dares tell them to love is wrong]

they are still loving
thats the first step

Yuyutsu:

<Asceticism does not happen overnight. We need to begin where we are and yes, we need to perform our duties in this world and we won't get closer to God by neglecting our responsibilities. Yet if we are wise, we would lean towards gradually minimizing our worldly duties rather than endlessly taking up new ones>

When I say "the material should take priority over the mystical, whereas to prefer the latter over the former (excluding genuine asceticism) is either the indulgence of privilege, conceit, neglect of responsibility, or combinations thereof".
what I mean is, humans necessarily prioritise material needs, otherwise we wouldn't survive. To pay disproportionate attention to the mystical is the "indulgence of privilege", of catered lives, because our circumstances in the West are generally accommodating. For those whose material needs are harder to secure, mysticism and naval-gazing generally are exorbitant. Indeed, among less secure cultures, whose denizens live more hand to mouth, religion and mysticism is inseparable from materialism. Conversely, in the West we may indulge our vanity and make a fetish of whatever mysticism appeals, while we take our material provisions for granted. Can you see how comparatively unreal religious indulgence in the West is, unbalanced as it is by the material complement that partners mysticism to form the union of experience from which religion derives? Religion in the privileged West, for people divorced from nature, is just another form of consumption, of cultural capital--for the "well-rounded" individual who must incorporate spirituality to be wholly admirable. This is a shocking charge that most such "devout" individuals shall recoil from aghast, but true nonetheless, and verifiable if they are capable of just a little reflexivity. A little religion may be good for the soul, but to overindulge and fancy oneself wise or pious, or worse, to despise the material (an ascetic dandy rather than genuine) is to delude oneself, at worst to neglect a material reality that cannot be take for granted.

One other point, Yuyutsu and OUG, or whoever claims to "know"; how is it that you have such assured knowledge of God and his universe?

Dear Squeers,

There is nothing wrong in being blessed by being born into, or by otherwise attaining, favourable circumstances. If anything, it would be wrong to waste God's gifts by spending one's life in the pursuit of material vanities. One should also not take those gifts for granted, but thank God every moment for what we have.

Certainly it is wrong to boast what we are not and to gain social advantages thereby, but what's wrong with saying: "By God's grace I am now wiser than I was a year ago, I am more pious than I was then and somewhat less materialistic than I was last year"?

"How is it that you have such assured knowledge of God and his universe?"

My knowledge of the universe is actually quite limited.

As for God, it is a combination of my own direct experiences, the use of logic, and reading and reflecting on scriptures.

Dear Squeers,

Have you ever been to any poor countries? We were in Mexico quite a few years ago - in the poorest of villages - I was amazed to see the most beautiful churches with the most ornate altars in the middle of nowhere. At the time I couldn't help thinking - that the ornamentation on one of those altars would pay to irrigate the entire village. To me it seemed like such a waste at that time. Today, I'm not sure whether I would look at things in the same way. Also, talking to the villagers, I gained a different insight into their way of thinking, and the tremendous sense of pride that they took in their churches. It somehow made their life bearable. And I couldn't argue with that. Sometimes one has to think from a different mind-set,
and try to see things from the others point of view, not just our own.

On the subject of unity between the spiritual and the material realms, this passage by Prince Charles in his book "Harmony" examines a break in thought that occurred around the thirteenth century.

"....Aquinas operated within a traditional view of the universe. If you were to read his work you would find something he calls the "Eternal Law". What he means is that this is the law that exists in the mind of God. Aquinas saw no separation between creation and God and he taught that we should experience the world very much from the inside out. In other words, the prevailing attitude, certainly as Aquinas began his studies, was that the Creator was not separate from His Creation. Instead, divinity was considered to be innate in the world and in us....Bearing all this in mind, then, what I found particularly intriguing....was what appeared to have happened to that prevailing mood of thought during the thirteenth century. For a variety of complicated theological and political reasons, a different definition of God began to emerge. Slowly but surely God began to be defined as something that lay outside of creation and was separate from Nature and, as that happened, so Nature itself came to be seen more and more as an unpredictable force....Clearly this was a highly significant shift in the collective perception of Western thought. In time it framed the outlook that allowed science to make its clean break from religion and forge ahead towards modernity. It effectively shattered the organic unity of reality...."

Yuyutsu:

"There is nothing wrong in being blessed by being born into, or by otherwise attaining, favourable circumstances. If anything, it would be wrong to waste God's gifts by spending one's life in the pursuit of material vanities. One should also not take those gifts for granted, but thank God every moment for what we have".

in our system, "God's gifts" is an anachronism, and our material security is born of various deliberate and unconscionable practices. God's gifts, on one side, are funded by his miserliness on the other. He takes from the poor to give to the rich. Those "gifts" do not fall from heaven, but are squeezed and abstracted on Earth. If ever there was an instance of, albeit time-honoured, specious reasoning, it's the equating of "God's gifts" with materialism.

Lexi:
"Have you ever been to any poor countries?"

yes I have, many years ago, I saw the detritus of apartheid South Africa, for instance, and a few other places, but my experience is minimal.

But I don't understand your point.. Your story about the Mexican village bears out exactly what I was saying.
Perhaps you don't understand my point..

"Sometimes one has to think from a different mind-set,
and try to see things from the others point of view, not just our own".

This is good advice, in fact it's been my constant refrain on OLO.

Is it not curious the way the pro side of this debate conduces so comfortably with the prevailing distribution of God's one-sided largess.