Talk Elections

Examples of these sacred texts would obviously include the Bible, Quran, Torah, and so on... Also, by "speak" to you, I obviously mean if you felt some religious feeling or felt moved by them.

Personally, I have only read some of the Bible and some of the Quran. While I found them fascinating from a philosophical and historical perspective, there was nothing in those texts that "spoke" to me or moved me in any way. I can appreciate some of the beauty in their message and especially how revolutionary they were for their times, but they caused absolutely no religious/spiritual feeling in me. Honestly, I have never had that and largely believe it is solely a particular psychological experience with no greater explanation or meaning. But, obviously, I could be wrong.

Yes.

Tao Te Ching (a few times).
Bhagavad Gita.

Have started the Qur'an.

Currently doing the New Testament.

I've read every book of the bible at one point or another, but there are several that I haven't read in a long time. As far as being "spoken to", well, with stuff that has a clear commandment or moral message  to it, I've definitely felt like god is teaching me something. But with stuff that's more history-oriented and either has commands that aren't for us or no commands at all (Genesis, Deuteronomy, Acts), no, I don't feel "spoken to", but that doesn't mean we shouldn't read that stuff. The more Christians know about the bible, the better.

As for other religious texts - No.

No, but I want to change that soon.

Which religious text(s) are you wanting to read? Are you trying to become more religious or just satiate curiosity?


What makes you believe that it is "God" speaking to you? How do you draw a distinction between something that is moving because it's beautiful/inspiring and something that moves you due to the divine?


What are some of the key insights you've gathered from those texts? Did you feel you were being "spoken to" from more than one of them?

I read the Bible in its entirety during my sophomore and junior years of high school.  Certainly it spoke to me.

It's been some time since I studied Scripture at length, though.

It wouldn't make sense for me not to start with the Bible. It's the single most influential work of the culture I grew up into, and as such it's already shaped my thinking to a considerable extent. I'd like to broaden my scope to other faiths later, but there is only right place to start.

As for why, I'm not entirely sure how I'd put it myself. "Satiate curiosity" sounds a bit shallow, but I can't honestly say I'm becoming religious in any sense of the word. Mainly, I'm looking for guides to help me think deeper about a number of issues, especially regarding morality. I've gotten a lot of fascinating insights from studying secular moral philosophy, but there's something about it that I've found missing - I'm not quite sure what.

I think I know what you mean. It's almost like there's only so far you can go with secular philosophy, yet a part of you demands more because it doesn't feel like that's all there is to this world or philosophy. At the same time, you can't logically or emotionally make (or necessarily want to make) that leap to religiosity/god. That's my current conundrum as well :/

The Christian and Jewish Bibles, and the Quran.

Yes, all three of them "spoke" to me.

No, they're long. :)

To which religious faith do you adhere if the sacred text of those three all "spoke" to you? Why did you settle upon your current faith instead of a different one?

I adhere to Christianity because I was raised a Christian in a Christian country: it's the only faith I understand "from the inside", so I'll never be forced to wonder if my background keeps me from being fully integrated into my religion. Similarly, if I had been raised a Jew, I would be Jewish, and if I had been raised in Islam, I would be a Muslim (the same goes for Hinduism, Buddhism, and so on and so forth). With that said, I think that a lot can be learned from studying the texts of other religions: as an outsider looking in, certain things are bound to strike you as novel, and if you investigate those lines as far as they will take you, you will earn a new - perhaps purer - perspective on your own faith. And that can only be a good thing.

I've read the New Testament in its entirety, but I don't think I've finished Numbers or 2nd Chronicles in the Old Testament.

Not all of them.  The Dao De Jing is quite short, tho it isn't by any means the entirety of the Daoist canon.

Glad I'm not the only one in this situation. It's pretty awkward (especially when I try to explain it to non-religious people who don't have this issue), but I definitely feel like I'm making some progress.

I tried going the religious route before, but I felt nothing. It was all academic and going through the motions. That's why I ask questions in the religion & philosophy subforum more than make comments; I'm searching for something, yet I have no solid grasp of what it is.

Most people seem to be either irreligious and confident/secure in that, or spiritual/religious and confident/secure in that as well. They may have doubts and so on, but generally, they know where they stand. Personally, I don't believe, neither logically nor emotionally, yet some part of me is pulling me towards something unexplainable. Perhaps we are sentimentalists trapped within minds trained for scientific thinking. I have always felt the "identity," poetry, and beauty of religion was far more compelling than religion itself. For example, I love novels with religious inspirations (Les Miserables brings me to tears with its beauty and depth) and religious architecture and art (the Renaissance is the high point of art to me). Not to mention how much I love religious holidays. Yet, I feel I am more of an observor of these things than a full participant.

I can relate to a lot of that. I went through a phase of near-complete disinterest for religion for most of my teenage years (although thankfully I was never antireligious), but since then I've felt my personality change in significant ways. I used to be very introverted and rational, but starting with my year in San Francisco I've started experiencing much more intense emotions, and I've felt an increasing need for social times. Concurrently, I've found it much more urgent to find a meaningful, coherent and unambiguous set of criteria for distinguishing right from wrong, and as I said I couldn't find it in any strand of secular philosophy.

When I did begin to acquaint myself with theological concepts, I could see that they provided exactly what I was lacking. I've even tried to appropriate some of them, and try to use them as building blocs for how I try to think of things. But still, without faith as the cornerstone of all this, it feels forced and shallow - or even like an imposture or a mockery. And I know I don't have faith, and probably never will. It's not even a matter of rational belief - I actually think the existence of God is perfectly plausible, and absolutely compatible with a rational, empirical mindset. I don't know what it's about, but it's probably emotional.

Anyway, I'm still hopeful that I can do something valuable with this yearning, though I'm not yet sure what. We can try figuring it out together.

I've actually been considering trying to see if I could start involving myself with a church. If I do, I want be serious about it, so I first want to think carefully and figure out if it really makes sense.

I've looked up Grace Community Church, and unfortunately it's very far from where I live (remember LA is an immense sprawl), so I don't think I could make that work. I'm thinking of looking first into churches in my neighborhood. Thanks for the suggestion, though, I really appreciate it.

Antonio,

Not to pry, but I am curious how connected you feel; like as part of a community? That is one of the theories I have been considering is that a large part of these desires stems from a sense of atomization or alienation from important social bonds. Like you, I am a (highly) introverted person, so I always felt more comfortable studying religion from a distance (i.e. never immersing myself in a religious community). Based upon my conversations with religious persons, it seems that the communal aspect is one of the most important benefits of religiosity.

Discovering a coherent and fulfilling philosophical system is certainly not an easy task. But, perhaps, like me, you simply live too much in your head and are over-analyzing these things. Maybe you must simply begin to live those theological concepts and incorporate them into your lifestyle. Do not focus on them as abstractions to be pondered, but rather as words of wisdom by which you live. I should practice what I preach...

Btw have you read any of the works of Rumi or The Philokalia? I strongly recommend both of those.

The Philokalia (https://ia802708.us.archive.org/32/items/Philokalia-TheCompleteText/Philokalia-Complete-Text.pdf)

The need to feel connected and part of a community is a big part of what I'm looking for, yeah. It would definitely make sense given how things have been changing for me lately. Although there's also something intimidating about social connectedness and I still have to figure out if it's the right thing for me. I can elaborate by PM if you want.

I haven't come across these works, no. I'd love to look into them when I have some time, though I still need to start with the Bible.

Yes and yes.

I've said before and I'll say again that the best part of the Bible is the streak of books between I Samuel and II Kings. I adore some of the stories in there. Rehoboam being such a monster that Jeroboam leads a successful revolt, only for Jeroboam to resort to idol worship and losing his hand. Hezekiah forced to rip off the doors of the Temple to buy off the Assyrians, left with the horrible moral choice of desecrating the Temple or letting Jerusalem get sacked. Josiah rewriting the entire law code based on the discovery of an old Holy Book and reconsecrating the entire Kingdom of Judah, only for his experiment to be cut off because he fell in battle with Egypt. King Zedekiah forced to watch as all his children were executed, and then getting blinded immediately thereafter so that that act was the final thing he saw. There's drama, war, political intrigue, and a vibrant cast of characters.

I read all of Revelations once, and maybe one or two other books of the Bible, but never something that would encompass the canon of my, or anyone else's, religion (though I read many picture Bibles as a child). 

I think that reading an entire book of the Bible (not hard to do - there are some really short ones) counts as reading an entire religious text, so my answer is yes.

The Book of Mormon is 531 pages, so yes, I have.

Don't forget the Doctrine and Covenants and Pearl of Great Price! Those are another couple hundred pages.

Some years ago now I read about 8 different bibles and holy books from various religions and they left me cold due to their lack of moral teaching or even worse showing how immoral some of their tenets were. Near the end of my reading and research I came across Gnostic Christianity and soon afterward I was rewarded with my apotheosis.

You will not find God in a book but you might follow the path that one of the Jesus' taught, the more esoteric mystical Jesus, and I would advise it because the church never will as it frees your mind from an idol worshiping religion and mind set to that of a perpetual seeker after the best God you can possibly create for yourself.

This following is how you can find your God.

Matthew 6:22 The light of the body is the eye: if therefore thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light.

John 14:23 Jesus answered and said unto him, If a man love me, he will keep my words: and my Father will love him, and we will come unto him, and make our abode with him.

Romans 8:29 For whom he did foreknow, he also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brethren.

Regards
DL





 

Reading of the Eastern wisdom promoting religions I can understand.

I cannot understand, unless it is just for straight knowledge, why anyone would want to read about Christianity or Islam.

Both Christianity and Islam have basically developed into intolerant, homophobic and misogynous religions. Both religions have grown themselves by the sword instead of good deeds.

Jesus said we would know his people by their works and deeds. That means Jesus would not recognize Christians and Muslims as his people, and neither do I.

Read those religions if you want to improve them or change them to a more civilized form but I would not suggest you join either.

Let your morals guide you and I am sure you wont.

Regards
DL

Are you sure you want to read

I agree with your last as the more Christians learn of their genocidal son murdering God, the better.

That teaches them that they should be looking for a moral God and reject the Christianity's satanic God.

Count the kills that God and Satan are said to have done in that myth.

God does not look good.

Regards
DL

If you want to be a slave to God, then the idol worshiping religions like Christianity and Islam are there for you.

If you, like the esoteric mystical Jesus, want to make God serve you the way he should, then I recommend the Gnostic Christian Library.

Most think we weak people should bew serving the powerful Gods on offer but consider that in your family, you follow natural law where the strong serve the weak.

If God cannot follow natural law then he is not worthy of us who have to do so.

Regards
DL

What did it tell you?

Was it showing a loving God or did you notice how that loving God did a lot of innocent baby and children killing?

Regards
DL

Nice. Morality should be what the Gods are judged on. Not the gifts that are promised by lying priests, preachers and imams.

I try to speak to moral issues with theists and it is like pulling teeth because they cannot argue intelligently for the morality of their Gods and always try to deflect to useless topics like the reality of their God that they cannot prove or argue for.

Do not take my word for this. Try any O.P. that deals with moral issues that paints God as immoral, like the 6 day torture of King David's baby, before finally killing it, that God killed all because he was angry with the King.

Job is also a good one and shows how Christians have developed a double moral standard where they forgive their God for doing what they condemn men for doing.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6mJCCARjyNM

Regards
DL

Did you rate them by your moral standards?

Regards
DL

New Testament and the Bhagavad Gita

What do you think of Jesus and his no divorce policy and his substitutionary punishment policies?

Did you also note that there seemed to be more than one Jesus type in the N.T.

One is though to be rather wimpy. That would be the Rome invented one. Another is an esoteric mystic type that places man above God. There is also the angry Jesus who flips tables and uses the Jews to help him with his suicide. We know that one for the last super when his diciples encouraged Judas by not even trying to stop him as Jesus planned when offering Judas the sop, which is more or less a bribe, to turn Jesus over.

Many do not separate the Jesus' but the divisions are rather clear.

Regards
DL

A Y Y L M A O
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I really don't think they are. I always found this assumption sort of odd that, to be convincing, a historical Jesus model has to be simple enough that He'd be criticized as flat and one-note if He were a fictional character.

Morality is for philosophers: I read religious texts for their poetical value.

My assumption is more learned than your assumption. :-)

Regards
DL

And here I thought morality was for everyone. Oh well.

Regards
DL

There's a time and a place for morality, and it's not when you're reading a religious text. The reason is that morality is an abstraction, an inference, a conjecture, and is thus, like a demiurge, capable of error. By contrast, religion speaks of life directly, in the same way that poetry speaks of life directly, which is why both poetry and religion (properly so-called) are irrefutable.

I do not see a text that begins with a talking serpent and ends with a seven headed monster as speaking to life, as those fictional characters have none.

Myths have lessons we can use in life but they do not represent life.

Mother Goose is a children's myth, and quite useful, but it also does not represent life.

Regards
DL

I'm genuinely sorry to hear you say that.

Nice argument to show why. Oh wait. Not.

What do you have against Mother Goose?

Regards
DL

I'm sorry to hear that you'd rather enslave yourself to your emanations, than open your mind to life's eternal possibilities.

Pffft.

The same garbage as your other post.

Take your swollen head and go away.

Regards
DL

How can the Bible not speak to you? The distinctly human greed, rage, jealousy, vanity, arrogance, foolhardy shortsightedness, and inner turmoil of its characters rings very true to human experience. Eli is a jerk who accuses a woman pouring her soul out in prayer of being a drunk vagrant and raises two jackass sons who steal from the treasury and whore around...and they're the High Priests of Israel..but then Eli's sons die in battle and Eli dies of shock and grief upon hearing the news.

Supreme clergy can be greedy, corrupt assholes, but their position won't save them in the end. The deep flaws of Eli and co. do a great job of stting up the righteous-to-a- fault Samuel as a foil.

The bible does speak to many but they mostly end in ignoring what the Bible really shows.

This link shows the proper conclusion lo what theists should see but many ignore it and end in adoring a genocidal son murdering Yahweh.

https://vimeo.com/7038401

Regards
DL

Greatest I am, serious question: Why do you feel the need to be such an insulting, abrasive asshole to everyone? Is this how the vaunted superior morality of ~Gnostic Christianity~ leads one to behave?

Regards
NT

I do not feel that need.

I give what is deserved.

Regards
DL

I just don't get how someone can dislike a book with such fantastic stories. Who can forget Gideon, the least son of the least family of the least tribe of Israel, being the one to drive off the Philistines? Who can forget Joshua's spies in Jericho, in danger of certain death upon discovery, surviving only because a common prostitute named Rahab hid and sheltered them, only for Rahab and her family alone to be exempted from the general slaughter of the people of Jericho after the battle? Who can forget Korah rebelling against Moses, arguing that Moses didn't have a better theological justification for rule than anyone else in the tribes, only for Moses to have God literally open the ground beneath Korah and his followers and drop them straight into Hell? The stories are fantastic and vivid and compelling.

Indeed, but are they moral enough to have adherents to the bible and Christianity ablre to build an worthy ideology around?

Seems these intelligent and moral Jews did/do not think so.

 https://vimeo.com/7038401

Regards
DL

These figures aren't supposed to be moral paragons. Look at David, whom the Bible flat-out claims is a "Man after God's own heart." David is a monstrous war criminal with a con artist's heart. That is irrelevant to his status as God's favorite person in the Old Testament. Why? Because David was a heroic figure, a conquering hero, and a man of unshaking faith even when God afflicts him (having his father-in-law go mad and try to murder him, having his first son die stillborn, etc.). The biggest mistake people make when they read the Bible is acting like these people are somehow supposed to be role models. They aren't trying to set a moral example for us.

EDIT: David is one of only two people in the entirety of the Hebrew Bible given the title "Messiah," or God's Anointed One (along with the pagan king Cyrus). The title that Christians put so much stock in for Jesus was only given to two figures in the entire OT, one of whom was a pagan nonbeliever and the other of whom was David, who is a pretty terrible king from a moral point of view. I'm sure if the authors of the Bible were looking for a moral role model to be called the Anointed of God then Josiah or Hezekiah would be called "Messiah" and not David, but they didn't. It's not David's morality or immorality that is at stake, it's his wild success. Unlike Hezekiah, who gave up the doors of the Temple to the Assyrians, or Josiah, who died in combat with Egypt, David won. David conquered Jerusalem. David defeated the Philistines again and again.

TL;DR on the previous post:

The Bible is not for seven year olds. Its heroes are not necessarily good people or virtuous people and make no pretension to be so. There are murderers, con artists, thieves, adulterers, and liars in the pages of the Bible and it's because these people aren't supposed to be role models, they're complex, flawed characters.

I agree, if I can paraphrase your words, that Christians have decided to adore a God of war instead of a moral God.

It seems they only want the perks that that God will give them, even if he has morals that are more Satan-like than God-like.

Most religions have done the same and that is why, they, as the vast majority for a long time now, have gifted us with about 5,000 years of war.

As this link indicates, War is God.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TIQynsWpBpQ

If religious conflict is something you wish to understand further. This is a decent presentation of it's core.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MDbiqlhAirE

Regards
DL

True, but you forgot the worst offender. The genocidal son murdering God, Yahweh.

Regards
DL

God is not nice, God is not friendly. God is a King. I fail to see how that is a problem with the Bible.

It is not. They just show a tyrannical King. My way or hell is his only option.

Regards
DL

I've read the several versions of the Bible. Once attempted to read The Book of Mormon, but stopped like three pages in for whatever reason.

Options 2 and 3
All of it once
and most of it
(edit.. yes much of scripture speaks to me)

although I have read a little of the first chapter of the Koran..
much of the Bible and much of Swedenborg
I have read a number of books by Swedenborg
I have read all of the Tao de Ching and the Dhammapada

So if there had been an other option I would have picked that. I don't know if I have ever
read any book twice but I have read many books perhaps more than anyone here, because of
my age (62 on Wednesday), although perhaps not, I think of myself as a superhero of book Geeks

I highly recommend these two sites:

https://parliamentofreligions.org/

http://www.sacred-texts.com/

..for those exploring religious pluralism

That being the case you will want to view this brilliant link.

https://tune.pk/video/4468309/south-park-tells-about-the-foundation-of-mormonism-and-joseph-smith

Regards
DL

For intelligent reasons.

Regards
DL

Some of it; yes.

I agree.

It is best to choose a religion without any supernatural beliefs and those are Gnostic Christianity, Karaite Jewry and Buddhism.

Regards
DL

What do you agree with, exactly?

That some, if not most reasons for ignoring Mormonism are intelligent.

Regards
DL

That was not at all what I said. My post was a response to the two questions in the poll, not to your post.

Thanks for clearing that up.

Regards
DL

As an atheist I've fully read the Gita, which is by far my favourite religious text.

I've never read even parts of a religious text.

The Vulgate and The Book of Mormon.

No, I read the first 5 books of the Old Testament about 10 years ago but I haven't gotten back to it since, I should try to read the whole Bible at some point.

Several Chick Tracts.  That's how I know my soul is doomed because I play D&D.

I have never read the Bible in order, but I have read all or almost all of it at some point I think. I think the phrasing is off.
"God speaks to me through the Bible" is the way I would phrase it for myself.

All of it, multiple times.  And the second answer depends on what you mean by "speaking" to me.

I learned pretty much all there is to know in regards to Christianity and more than once do to my upbringing and I can honestly say it's certainly not my cup of tea.