Musings on Religions

Well, I know a little about Buddhism and to be ordained you have to shave your head because it is seen as a way of showing you don't care how you look (non attachment is a big concept in buddhism).  Not as big a deal for men anymore but still a big deal for women!  But that is only for ordination.  

Actually, in Buddhism discipleship the head is shaved to show a separation from the material world and to show humility to your master and the temple. 

Well, I've read about other sects of Buddhism, but my direct experience is with Ch'an Buddhism and Shaolin Buddhist warrior monks (the kung fu monks).  Your "master" or "Sifu" or "teacher", it's all the same thing and the head shaving is symbolic in a discipleship ceremony or Baai Si (hope that't the right spelling, can't remember), which can happen at different levels, such as first becoming a disciple (deeper commitment than just a student) or ordination (where you get your "generation name" from your teacher and are recognized as a master in your own right).  Not only are you adopting the belief but making a commitment to your teacher and the "home" temple.

covering ones head was quite common all over the world and still is - even outside religious customs seeing anyone outside without a something on their head before 1950 was extremely rare.

do include traditional native feather head gear in that category remind

Remind said

uh we are 50 years beyond the 1950's

 That's exactly my point  - customs and rituals change with time - what once was a normal and all encompassing ritual - wearing a hat- is vanished and no one cares

I kind of doubt shaven-headed Buddhists are attempting to "divide and conquer". 

I can understand your point of view if applied to strictures on what people are allowed to wear or not wear or how they manage their hair.  When it's freedom of choice and about self-identity, then it's really none of my business.

From a personal perspective, my example of academic robes could be taken as classist symbols, but it isn't necessarily so.  I grew up working class and I was the first person in my family to go to university.  When my day came, I wore that robe, dammit.  I earned it.  3 generations of effort went into me getting there and that symbolic act was as much for my grandfather as it was for me.  In reality, it was just a black cape and a scarf, but that day it meant something.  Sure, I could have had the degree without doing the ceremonial part and it wouldn't have made a whit of difference to the knowledge I'd gained, but sometimes a rite of passage needs to be celebrated with a symbolic gesture.

My original point, anyway, was that not all symbolic gestures are necessarily religious.  Academia was just the first to pop into my head.  There are others.  People exchange rings in civil marriage ceremonies, heck, they even go for the big white dress.  That'd be another one, not classist in the least.  I also fail to see how either of these examples are "divisive".

How was my choice to celebrate an achievement either religious or controlling?  How was it in any way at the expense of someone else?  How does someone wearing a cross necklace or a headscarf or shaving their head as a symbolic acknowledgement of who they are damage you in any way?

 I could understand your taking offense if I was advocating swanning about in academic robes as a matter of course in any situation, but in the specific instance I was talking about, ie: a convocation ceremony, I have to say I'm nonplussed by your reaction.

 If being egalitarian means not being allowed to take pride in your accomplishments, slap that classist label on me now and be done with it.  But for the record, I think that's utter bullshit.

ETA:  I see you ignored my other examples...

I think the more insecure a military feels, the bigger the hats on the officers.   

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Just as I am not much into "cultural" dressing customs either. Though it could also be because I am definitly anti-religions. And this is not to be confused with spiritual beliefs.

Yes, you are clearly post-culture in your thought, your dress and you religion.

This thread went exactly where i thought that it would go. We have some people believing that they have transcended culture all together, the required white-washed Buddhist fetishism and the ignorant assessment of the other. This is post-modern Eurocentricity at it's finest!

Michelle wrote:

I don't think God cares about stuff like how you dress and whatever, if there is a God, which I highly doubt there is anyhow.

There probably is a God. So start worrying, and quit enjoying life so much.

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I don't think God cares about stuff like how you dress and whatever, if there is a God, which I highly doubt there is anyhow.

 Yes, the "God" that you have been taught about probably doesn't exist. Therefore we can universally declare that all "cultural" dress is probably not important.

 Threads like this are a great example of why babble, the NDP and other self-described progressive organizations are dominated by white, hypermaterialist, hyper-rational, Eurocentric people. Carry on with your ignorant circle jerk.

Hey Le T there are exceptions to that rule; I'm glad you're here

Come on Remind don't you know live and let live isn't good enough - you must support all some cultural rituals - just cause or you're a white, blah, blah, blah ...

As an atheist who leans toward a positivist materialist position, I see the sort of outward expression of religious faith and affiliation to be very human.  The only example I would take issue with is female circumcision, which is likely more a local cultural phenomenon of disputed history.  Anyway, there lies thread drift.

I am of the opinion that people are to a greater or lesser degree psychologically disposed toward being religious, and this is not of itself necessarily a bad thing or a good thing, just what is.  Some religions may very well become repressive and socially maladaptive, and lots of non-religious people outwardly observe due to the pressure of thier culture.

As far as public observances and customs referred to in the OP go (with some exceptions), I see them, at thier best, as comfort giving tangible expressions of something which is important and sustaining to the individual, and an aid in maintaining a positive sense of group affiliation.  Obviously religion can be co-opted as a form of social control.  Hell, just look around you.  But I don't disrespect peoples observances which they find significant, as long as they don't pressure me to join in.

I agree with scientists who say that religion is as old as the hills. It's something that seems to transcend geographical boundaries. I agree that religion is a partly due to man's desire to know andunderstand. At one time religion was science and vice versa.  Most every culture around the world has a creation myth and make a connection between man and the stars. Around the world we've built monuments to "gods" that came to earth and taught man the art of argriculture and of civilized ways that were passed down from generation to generation after the gods left earth, apparently to tend to more important matters in heaven. Certain pyramidal designs were built in to them can be seen in some of the still standing monuments in countries ranging from ancient Egypt, Sumeria, and China to Mexico, Bolivia, and Peru and interesting tourists from all over the world still. It must have been discomforting in ancient times to know that there were all-knowing gods who criss crossed the stars, sometimes warring with each other and didnt necessarily always have good intentions toward man.

Sure thing, oldgoat. But I distinctly remember some of my older relatives using the phrase "old as the hills" at verious times or another. I'm pretty sure they had no idea what precambrian or archaean meant, or any real idea as to approximately how long ago the hills were actually formed.

Otoh, not all hills were formed by plate tectonics over very long periods of time. Some of the hills in Ontario were created by glacial activity - eskers and moraines hundreds of feet high and were formed maybe 10K to 30,000 years ago. And there are several creation stories around the world which mention a great flood in the beginning or at some point in a new beginning as part of the mythos.

Timebandit wrote:

So if you could just let me know how that bit wasn't meant personally, I'd really appreciate it.

I see now how you could see it that way, but seriously, I was not meaning it that way.

The occupiers of Canada, our grandparents, great parents, and all the rest of the greats in grandparents, struggled to make what they believed would make their children's lives better. This was viewed to be "education".

Education was seen as being "better" than farming, or fishing, let's say.  Many in the early years of Canada went for "trade" skills. So then we have blue collar education, where blue collar workers struggled to send their children to white collar education, to make their lives "better" than that of their parents.

Thus arose a conceptual framwork of "better off than".  Instead of the realization that all career/work/life skills are equal, and perhaps the argument can be made that farmers and  most all blue collar workers are more essential to society than some other "white collar" jobs.  Yes education is essential, but IMV it should not denote "worth". If it does then society is broken.

I was not singling you out, merely using your quoted life as an example, of most all of ours and how our self worth is tied to education, and/or achievements that are perceived to denote us as "more than".

Simplistically put, IMV, they neglected to fight for what they were worth and instead thought that making their children first "blue collar" and then "white collar"  would make the extended family "worth" more. And  thus their children would be "better than" they were.

___________________________________________________________ "watching the tide roll away"

Tarkovsky wrote:

covering ones head was quite common all over the world and still is - even outside religious customs seeing anyone outside without a something on their head before 1950 was extremely rare.

I'm not sure where the covering of heads began. I think covering one's head is for special religious ceremonies(Jewish) and especially for the devout religionists ie monks, high priests etc. I was thinking that if the various mythological gods were from the heavens, their divine immune systems, and strictly theoretically speaking of course, may not have been as robust as those of their earthly flock. Today we might build on the myth that animal, and maybe even human sacrifices were burnt/cooked and left on high altars for a particular god to consume some time after the ritual was finished and general viscinity emptied of not-so cleanly worshippers so as to mimimize possible transfer of germs and whatnot to the god or whomever or even vice versa. The ritual tends to follow some precise instruction or another. What I find striking is that some of the creation narrative regardless of continent will sometimes bypass the possibility of air flight and gods originating in another part of this world entirely. Those creation narratives tend to skip the Wright Bros discovery by centuries and millenia into the future altogether in favour of the interstellar or other worldly.

 But I think modern science carries more weight in influencing very many people today. Scientists have come a long way in understanding much since just the materialist view of things post Newtonian view of things. Einstein, Bohr and some other scientists in the first half of the last century have revealed the tail of what is a metaphorical lion mostly hidden by bushes. Theyre almost certain it's a lion, because they can see the back end and tail of the thing. They know now that atomic structures are more than meets the eye, and that a more basic element of matter exists in the universe, quantum fields. But scientists in this field of study are still searching for a theory that explains the universe and laws that rule it. And they tend to ask the same basic questions.

If the universe and earth had to be this one way, then why is it so suitable for human life? Or, if the earth and all there is did not have to be this one way or set of ways, then what makes this way so suitable for human life? And they tend to fall into two schools of thought:  multiple universes, or a universe by design of some sort. I think modern science, however, is at least a century, and maybe a millenia from developing the kind of energy source needed to power the atomic colliders required to prove their theories of everything. For now the theory of everything remains a mystery. Perhaps it's time for religion and science to converge, once again. The truth is out there

I think that myths were certainly generated by events and things which ancient people either witnessed or felt a need to explain long after the fact, like creation myths. Certainly none of our ancestors lived in those days that the planet was cooling off and volcanos erupting everywhere etc. But ancient people found a way around the time barrier. They wove mythological threads together to explain what must have seemed to them like pretty awe inspiring things, like who was the first of us, and how was the earth formed. They even made up wild stories about beings who came from the stars and passed on creation stories to their ancestors. And some of the stories were as fantastic and imaginative as modern science fiction.

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“It has been estimated that there are between 1 billion and 30 billion planets in our galaxy, and about 100 billion galaxies in the universe. Knocking a few noughts off for reasons of ordinary prudence, a billion billion is a conservative estimate of the number of available planets in the universe. Now, suppose the origin of life, the spontaneous arising of something equivalent to DNA, really was a staggeringly improbable event. Suppose it was so improbable as to occur on only one in a billion planets. [...] Even with such absurdly looking odds, life will still have arisen on a billion planets - of which Earth, of course, is one.”

"The God Delusion" by Prof. Richard Dawkins

Le T wrote:

Quote:

I don't think God cares about stuff like how you dress and whatever, if there is a God, which I highly doubt there is anyhow.

 Yes, the "God" that you have been taught about probably doesn't exist. Therefore we can universally declare that all "cultural" dress is probably not important.

...

Carry on with your ignorant circle jerk.

Um, excuse me, but what the fuck?  Did I say ANYWHERE that "all 'cultural' dress is probably not important"?  No, I didn't.  Maybe if you spent more time READING instead of attacking, you'd be able to see that.  And maybe if you're not interested in this "ignorant circle jerk" you could just ignore it instead of trying, from the second post in, to stifle everyone else's discussion.

I say this as a participant and not as a moderator, by the way.

I apologize if what I have said sounds Eurocentric, Le T. I actually dont think we were trying to be Eurocentric snobs, but I guess it's possible. I must confess to not knowing a lot about indigenous cultures of this hemisphere as well as the rest of the world. I dont know a lot about my own Euro-Nordic ancestors, except that they werent very civilized or very friendly toward their Eur-Asian neighbors for the longest time.

If you have to be taught about these different gods then I have the feeling they dont exist. A powerful being as we'll call them would/should have the power to show you factually that it exists. Well that aint happenin no matter what the weak minded say. 2009 and we still have lambs that believe in god. My god. And we wonder why the world is so f'd up. I know blah blah blah

remind wrote:

People created "myths" for what they did not understand, and we call it their "religion".

KenS wrote:

"People created 'theories' for what they did not understand, and we call it their 'science'.

Le T wrote:

Like I said in my previous posts, people are happy to create the category of "religion" and then put everything in it except what they do. Then "religion" is kicked at as "superstitious" or myths that developed in the absence of so-called scientific knowledge. What people refuse to acknowledge is that they are participating in the worn out patterns of Eurocentric thought: only the tradition of the Enlightenment provides true knowledge, all other knowledge is superstitious or non-scientific.

This has been a pretty interesting discussion, I have to say I totally agree with KenS and Le T that us secular westerners have created two different categories for "things people believe to be true;" if the people are secular westerners we call the things they believe to be true "science," and thats the good stuff that everyone should accept, if they aren't, we call the things they believe in "religion" and thats the bad stuff that no one in their right-mind would believe. As KenS mentioned earlier both "religion" and "science" are comprised of theories backed up by a way-of-knowing; Le T is correct that the superiority of one way-of-knowing (scientific) is not a fact but a bias, a bias deriving from a secular western eurocentric position. I think this lasting bias in favor of the western scientific "way-of-knowing" is a real shortcoming amongst an otherwise very open-minded crowd...

PS: It always amazes me when people like dr anonymous look at the world and see in it no evidence of the divine, Earth must be a very gloomy place when looked at that way.