Does Man need for religion?

Religion and Secularism
1

Man cannot, under any circumstances, live without religion.

Just as man is social by nature and cannot live alone and be isolated from society, he is also innately devout and cannot live properly without religion. Religiousness is a natural instinct in man.

The clearest proof of this is that man flees to Allah Almighty when facing difficulties and hard times. Allah says: }And when they embark on a ship, they invoke Allâh, making their Faith pure for Him only, but when He brings them safely to land, behold, they give a share of their worship to others{<small>(Al-’Ankabût: 65)</small>

Man has two powers: the power of knowledge, and that of will; and the more effort he exerts to achieve them, the closer he becomes to reaching the goal he desires. Such is the case with happiness. As for the first, i.e. the strength of knowledge; the highness of his degree of servitude to Allah, as well as the degree of his status, his happiness in this world, not to mention the Afterlife, all depend on the extent he knows Allah, His names and attributes, what he should and should not do, and his behavior and the personal code of ethics he adopts. This is also affected by whether he takes the path of those who are close to Allah and the lofty path of those who tread the route that leads to Allah, and if he possesses knowledge of the human soul with its diseases and impurities, and knows how to overcome them, its enemies and all that comes between it and its Lord. One needs to know how to lift the soul high and purify it with godly ethics in a manner that elevates it to the level of exalted souls, makes it attain a firmness of purpose and keeps it away from nonsensical materialistic issues and the filth of desires and suspicions. The more one does this the higher ones level of worship and ones place (with Allah) will be, even the level of his happiness in this life, and of course his final position in the Afterlife, will be higher.

Moreover, this power of knowledge is the benefactor and the provider of willpower, surrounding him with guidance, as well as making him steadfastness and righteousness. Allah says: }O you who believe! Answer Allâh (by obeying Him) and (His) Messenger when he (pbuh) calls you to that which will give you life.{<small>(Al-Anfâl:24)</small>

source: Why do we need religion in our life? – Path to Happiness

2

If you have a question, I could engage with that. This is a statement. It’s a circular argument too.

3
Man cannot, under any circumstances, live without religion. Just as man is social by nature and cannot live alone and be isolated from society, he is also innately devout and cannot live properly without religion. Religiousness is a natural instinct in man. The clearest proof of this is that man flees to Allah Almighty when facing difficulties and hard times.
Well I don't flee to Allah when I have difficulties. I used to pray when I was a lot younger, but then I noticed that Allah was not helping me any. Prayer is nothing but a means of focusing your mind on what's bothering you. If it helps you to do this, wonderful. But not all of us need to do this.
4

Bart Campolo talks about prayer in latest podcast (he’s a humanist chaplain). He fumbles around a bit but lands on this idea that you can’t do everything, so sometimes you just meditate on it. You may not accomplish anything in the moment, but it keeps it front and center, so if you do see something you can do, you will. They bring up a Jewish proverb:

“You are not obligated to complete the work, but neither are you free to desist from it.”

This is a discussion item, not a command. For me, it includes the right to change the nature of the work. This is not about building a Temple, or working in a factory, it’s about the work of human progress. There is no blueprint. It requires the input of everyone.

 

5

A lot depends on how you define religion.

Humanism can be defined as a religion.

Man has no need for theistic religion.

6

You have made the assumption that god exists and must be worshipped. That does not answer the question as to whether man needs religion.

7

I hadn’t read “islamkingdom_english” before and truth be told, it reminded me of an old joke -

“A woman needs a man, like a fish needs a bicycle!”

Although seriously, here again, “religion” must be defined, if the author wants to be taken seriously.

Man needs a set of beliefs to live by, okay - but does that mean only an ‘organized religion’ will do? I don’t think so, hell I authored a little “religion” of my own, but I appreciate it’s my story and not “God’s” - too bad other religious authors don’t have that sort of humility, that is knowing we are not the center of the universe, even if it might feel that way.

8

Oh boy a walk with the dog leaves one with too much time to think.

This guy’s moniker “islam…” was running through my mind. While I don’t subscribe to America’s passionate hatred for Islam, I am appalled by the religion’s practices: “honor” killing of your own sisters??? F you all.

Then I think of the endless hours on their rugs, praying to god, as though the god that made this universe would demand such a thing. The “Thing” being endless worship and adulation, as if god couldn’t see through our facades. It got me to thinking the Islamic God seems like a spitting image of Trump - demanding total adulation, even if he can’t get through the day without lying, while physical facts mean nothing, or that he’s a vehicle of hatred and misunderstanding between people, the ME FIRST mental, full blown. Oblivious to all outside his immediate desires and grasp.

If a real God be out there, one should bet that it cares about substance, rather than repetitive cheap words and daydreaming, seems to me any real god would be utterly appalled at our various self-glorifying religions.

 

9

Yes evolutionarily speaking it does seem that religion is necessary, despite no evidence for a personal god.

Atheists are at a disadvantage here.

10

LoisL, hope you are fine today. Islam king is correct in that Allah is about knowledge. Jesus said that just having knowledge is not enough and that knowledge has to be used with wisdom. In the beginning the word god meant knowledge. We do need religion. Reason is greed. Religion is about controlling greed in a caste system. And greed has shown its ugly head in today’s political process. Every time the caste system and greed comes around, we have problems. We are to be equal by law. Are you equal to Hilary?

King talks about the afterlife. But it is not really a big topic for Allah. Allah talks about greed and the break down of the caste system. John’s NT is all about greed. Jesus in the Knowledge religion was more into the caste system and greed being controlled by wisdom than knowledge controlled by the church.

Of the 13 religions Jesus is in. 5 of those religions are atheists’ religions. Thomas Jefferson want America to use an atheist religion.

You are correct when you say a lot depends on how you define religion. History shows that civilizations do better with religions. China is an atheistic government but does not fight religion, it works with religions and tries to control the religions.

Point being. Man needs religion. If no atheistic religions are around, then a good theistic religion is better than none. Russia did not understand this and look at Russia today. It is more Christian than the USA. China Christian religion has grown to 240M. The Atheists are losing ground big time right now.

The Democrats today are pushing the caste system and greed. And that is not good at all for atheism.

11

Hi cc, the Islam King put a lot go good points down. Of course, his point he was after was “being happy” and the religions path to happiness. He brought out the points of Knowledge and Happiness. And you worked it around to Trump. Let’s look at some facts. Islam is a newer religion evolving from works of Jesus and Ra.

The Ra religion is one of the longest running religions known in history. So, what was this god Ra? Ra did not judge you for heaven. He did not do miracles. What he did do was give you knowledge and happiness. The Egyptian pharaoh job was to go up and down the Nile from temple to temple and make sure the earth was in balance. He also gave you knowledge and at night time, fought off evil. He knew the earth was in balance when the people were happy. If the people were unhappy at an area a temple controlled. Then the pharaoh would redistribute the land and wealth of that area.

Even though the pharaoh was a god. The Egyptians had no trouble making Alexander the Great a pharaoh. So, one would have to think that the Egyptians knew the religion was a method of governing the civilization.

Hold on we are getting to the point I am trying to make to you. The pharaoh had to re-balance the earth about once every 15 to 20 years. Or once a generation. In thousands of years in using the balancing system. The governing Temples you think would learn that greed would end up getting their wealth redistributed. But, greed itself does not use logic. Greed makes the masses suffer and unhappy.

The Greeks, Jesus and Mohammed understood this greed problem in governing the people. As time passed governments used religions to control the greed factor. A problem arose when the religions themselves became greedy. As the Islam King is pointing out that Mohammed used Jesus’s method of the power of knowledge going to man at a time when the Christian Church was trying to control knowledge the way Ra did. The difference is, Ra was not greedy and gave knowledge to the people, and the Christian Church was greedy and wanted to keep and control knowledge.

In the history of mankind, greed has always been a problem. Socialism has never worked and never will do to the greed factor.

The point being. The way you talk about our president, I think you got a little bit of the greed bug. The democratic party is being overtaken by greed and moving towards a socialist government.

12

“Of the 13 religions Jesus is in. 5 of those religions are atheists’ religions.”

Could you name those 5?

“Ra was not greedy and gave knowledge to the people”

Like what?

“Socialism has never worked and never will do to the greed factor.”

So, Medcaid and Social Security in the US are not working? Single payer health care in industrialized democracies around the world is not working? Tax supported military, should we get rid of that? Without snowplows, most businesses in the Midwest would have been shut down for the last couple weeks. Without fire departments, large parts of California would be nothing but ash right now.

I don’t think you know what you mean by that word.

13

I beg your pardon Mike, I “worked it around to Trump.”

You make me laugh. I’m way late to that party!

Sarah Sanders tells Christian Broadcasting Network: God wanted Trump to be president

By Michelle Boorstein - Religion reporter
January 30, 2019

White House press secretary Sarah Sanders told a Christian television station Wednesday that God “wanted Donald Trump to become president” so he could support “a lot of the things that people of faith really care about.”

“Does it kind of blow your mind that someone like Donald Trump, who is sitting in the Oval Office, I know you can list the accomplishments, but at the same time just from a spiritual perspective there are a lot of Christians who believe that for such a time as this --” said David Brody of CBN, trailing off, according to the transcript.

Sanders replied: “I think God calls all of us to fill different roles at different times, and I think that he wanted Donald Trump to become president and that’s why he’s there. And I think he has done a tremendous job in supporting a lot of the things that people of faith really care about.”

The interview, which was to air later Wednesday, was on CBN’s show “Faith Nation.”

Much of CBN’s audience is composed of white evangelicals, Trump’s most fervent supporters. In a new Washington Post-ABC poll, Republicans and white evangelical Protestants were the only segments of the U.S. population in which a majority said they would “definitely” support the president in 2020. Fifty-six percent of all Americans said they would definitely not support Trump if he were the GOP nominee again, the poll found. …


America has a serious faith-based delusion* problem – and Trump has become exhibit one.

  • That is thinking physical laws don’t apply to them, and convincing themselves that lying about physical reality is God’s Command.
14

 

Mike Yohe wrote:

In the history of mankind, greed has always been a problem. Socialism has never worked and never will do to the greed factor.

——-

Socialism works in many places in the world—democratic, socialism, that is. Socialist programs work in many countries that do not have socialist governments, including the United States, Canada, and most of Europe. Maybe you can name a country that has NO socialist programs.

Do you actually know the definition of Socialism?

Capitalist greed is what has never worked. Capitalism was born of greed and it’s what keeps it operating.

The only way capitalism can survive is within a mixed economy. It requires social programs to make up for the great harm capitalism always does to the majority of any population. It’s what has kept the US economy from completely self-destructing (though just barely). The US doesn’t have nearly enough social programs to temper the destructive aspects of pure capitalism adequately, which is why so many more people suffer under capitalism than under anynother economic structure.

In my opinion, all societies need a mixed economy— capitalism to drive the economy and social programs to soften the blows of capitalistic greed. Nothing else would work so well, but capitalist greed needs a strong check on it.

 

15

My son wrote this in response to Sara Sanders’ ridiculous claim.

 

If God wanted Trump to be president, then

He must have wanted Obama to win two terms as preodnt and for Trump to lose the popular vote in 2016.

God doesn’t want a wall, or there would be one.

God wanted the Democrats to flip the house.

God also wants Mueller to investigate the president.

Not to mention God wanting all those people in Trump’s cabinet to resign or be asked to leave.

God must have wanted Trump’s advisors and lawyers to be arrested and charged with crimes and some to testify against him.

It may be that the only reason God wanted Trump to be president was so he could be impeached, removed and thrown in jail.

God works in mysterious ways.

He is a good a righteous god.

 

16

Lois,

If the government is democratic then the programs are democratic programs. You can define them as “Socialism”, but a duck is still a duck. The Romans baked free bread for the public because of a shortage of firewood. That did not make Rome a socialist government. If you label systems of government by programs like schooling. Then all nations are socialist.

Capitalism is not greed. So, I think we found the base for discussion. I don’t know how you can look at socialists’ nations like Venezuela and not see greed too? From my research, what I am understanding is that religion was started not for heaven, after-life or gods. It was started to control the human nature of greed. Common factor of all major religion that we know some thing about is the control of some sort of knowledge. And one of the major common factors the control of knowledge has been used for is the control of greed.

That was Jesus’ great concept. God is in all of us. In other words, if the knowledge is in the people, then the people can control greed by a properly functioning and structured government. Instead of religious leaders and kings who all eventually succumb to greed.

Greek had set most of the system up. The Hellenistic Jews were controlling the people using a religious atheistic system that did not recognize a deity god except for the creation. Then the deity left and was never to return. What they got from that deity was a set of laws. And Jesus was setting up a system to keep any greed from changing those laws.

We can follow those laws which started in pre-history and as religions evolved, governments seem to have better luck by using god’s laws. The biggest obstacles for any government was always controlling greed.

God’s laws and Jesus’s system of government is really what our founding fathers used to create America. Today there are around seventy countries using a system based upon America.

History gives us two government systems that have work well at controlling greed. The Egyptian system that took the wealth from the greedy temples and gave it to the members of the temple. This was based upon the people’s happiness and love as a scale to measure greed. The other system is reincarnation. You worked your way up the caste system and levels of heaven in your next life if you were good. Or down the caste system if you were bad or greedy.

These systems seem to have been well understood by people right up till the eighteen hundred. Religion was on a down cycle until the mid-eighteen hundreds and when religion picked up again it rewrote peoples understanding of history and left out many basic concepts.

The common factor of these three systems is that they are based upon the “word”. Which is knowledge. God’s laws can also be called the laws of knowledge. The idea is we pass our knowledge to the next generation and hopefully they will have a better life and keep passing the knowledge to the next generation.

What we want is the system of knowledge that controls greed. Is that a capitalist or Socialist system? The two systems that have worked the best for mankind have been systems that could keep greed under control. And they were capitalist systems. Don’t believe everything you read in the bible. Jesus was rich. Jefferson, Adam and Franklin were rich.

I have not reached the point or had the need to research the socialist system. Right now, my understanding is that the system always has ended up under the control of greedy leaders. Just like the kings and religious ruling systems. Socialism is a new concept. The oldest socialist county is only about my age. And it is China. China management is socialism, but its economy has changed to the capitalist system. More time is needed to prove a socialist system works and will continual working for centuries.

I have seen small towns ruined by minimum wage. I have seen men give up trying to raise a family and not being able to keep up with the standard income of people on welfare. In socialist countries that seem to be working, birth rates are extremely low. Does that mean that the government is not a place people want to raise a family?

As far as your statement that capitalist greed needs a strong check on it. I agree. And draining the swamp is the first step. The next step would be to make people responsible. To many companies are nothing more than a sheet of paper. We need to make the management and stockholders countable for the actions of the corporations.

Sorry if I type a few mistakes. I caught the bug and feel like I’ve been hit by a fast train.

17

Lausten,

“Socialism has never worked and never will do to the greed factor.”

That statement was meant as the Socialism system of government. I am sure you have heard that socialism is just a step to communism. Once the greedy leaders get control, they must move to communism to keep control. It will be interesting to see how socialism is going to work in the EU.

Five atheism religions. Hindu, Gautama Buddhist, Jain, Confucian, Taoist.

I don’t have the data available right now for the five atheist religions that used Jesus. I did the research a few years back. I will get that for you. I remember a Buddha religion was one and a couple more religions in the East. Knowledge and The Learned were two more. The Hellenistic Jews were a follower, but I did not count. Several Gnostic sects like the Manichaeism. Scientology if I remember correctly was one.

Traditional Christianity, Arianism, Baha’i Faith, Buddhism, Christian Science, Christadelphians, Gnosticism, Hinduism, Islam, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Mormonism (LDS), Theosophy, Unitarian Universalism are some of the religions that use Jesus.

18

CC

It got me to thinking the Islamic God seems like a spitting image of Trump – demanding total adulation, even if he can’t get through the day without lying, while physical facts mean nothing, or that he’s a vehicle of hatred and misunderstanding between people, the ME FIRST mental, full blown. Oblivious to all outside his immediate desires and grasp.

I beg your pardon Mike, I “worked it around to Trump.”

Yes, I would say so. I really don’t think you know or care that much about the personal aspects of the Islamic God. Which by the way is the same god of the Christians and Jewish religion. And I have never heard you talk that way before about god.

19

what is socialism anyways?

“That was Jesus’ great concept. God is in all of us.” Which is exactly why Jesus isn’t the one and only way to God - God is there already.

FYI regarding our founding fathers:

Nature’s God and the Founding Fathers

Jefferson and Madison led a revolutionary fight for complete separation of church and state. Their reasons probed the basic relation between religion and democracy
E. M. Halliday

“No doubt (preacher) Dr. Abercrombie hoped to achieve the pious triumph of persuading the President to take holy communion at his altar. But, although his message had not passed the presidential ears unheeded, the outcome was disconcerting. Washington never again left the church just before the Lord’s Supper— from that time forward he did not come at all on communion Sundays.” https://www.americanheritage.com/natures-god-and-founding-fathers


There’s also a collection of relevant quotes that a gent put together - unfortunately the reading is difficult because the weird wallpaper the blog uses. Still it’s the quotes that are enlightening.

http://barefootsworld.org/founding.html

To counter such claims of the “Inerrantists”, and in support of the First Article of Amendments to the Constitution for the United States, and the inherent right of all mankind to the freedom of their spiritual convictions, the following quotes of the men most responsible for the founding and establishment of our Nation, the United States of America, are presented for your study and enlightenment. They are not presented as a threat to any persons’ particular spiritual beliefs, but in support and protection of them. It is hoped, however, that each individual will seek within for an honest appraisal of their own motives for so believing, and honestly evaluate their practice of the Truth of their particular religion, their relationship to their Higher Power, with themselves and with their fellowman everywhere in the world.

Benjamin Franklin
Thomas Paine
John Adams
Thomas Jefferson
James Madison
Geo. Washington


_______________________________________

" And I have never heard you talk that way before about god."

Perhaps you should take a moment to read this: “Considering the Missing Key to Stephen Gould’s “Nonoverlapping Magisteria””

https://confrontingsciencecontrarians.blogspot.com/2018/12/the-missing-key-gould.html

here’s the last few paragraphs

The missing key is appreciating the fundamental “Magisteria of Physical Reality,” and recognizing both science and religion are products of the “Magisteria of Our Mindscape.”

Science seeks to objectively learn about our physical world, but we should still recognize all our understanding is embedded within and constrained by our mindscape.

Religion is all about the human mindscape itself, with its wonderful struggles, fears, spiritual undercurrents, needs and stories we create to give our live’s meaning and make it worth living, or at least bearable.

What’s the point?
Religions, God, heaven, hell, political beliefs, even science, they are all products of the human mindscape, generations of imaginings built upon previous generations of imaginings, all the way down.

Here we are, 2018, sober assessment of physical facts is out of fashion and fantasy thinking in the service of ruthless avarice is in.

Now it literally threatening to topple USA’s government Of The People, By The People, and For The People, in favor of a Me First, profits are more important than people, oligarch run machine.

Well, unless an awful lot of sideliners start getting engaged in our democratic process.

All the while the actual physical creation outside of our conceited little minds keeps on unfolding, following well understood geophysical rules regardless.

Ignore at our own peril.


That’s my two cents worth. :- )

20

AS for islam I do fine with it until I think of their proud tradition of Honor Killing their daughters and sisters and then I guess there’s also the images of hundreds of men endlessly prostrating themselves and mumbling sweet meaningless lies of repetition to some absolutist notion that has nothing to do with Nature’s God. Gotta admit that gets to my belly.