on the nature of happiness
– Are you a Christian? – I’m a culture-Christian. – What do you mean by that? – Well, if you ask me whether I believe, accept, and follow what the different Christian churches teach, I am certainly not a Christian. But if you are asking me whether I internalize and follow the most fundamental principles of the Judeo-Christian civilization, then I am very much Christian. – But that doesn’t mean to be a Christian, does…
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Every religion is characterized by the presence and ultimate influence of the religion’s deity or deities. These deities or gods show different characteristics, depending on the religion’s cultural background. But despite this variety of divine characteristics and religious aspects, one common theme emerges among all religions and all gods: meaning. Even though different gods display different characteristics and do different things, they all provide an ultimate meaning to those who believe in them. Thus, human…
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If I were to ask a representative sample of all peoples of the world about their beliefs concerning the afterworld, they would most likely give me an answer based on their religious convictions. Consequently, if then I were to draw a map of the answers, a fairly clear geographical distribution of otherworldly beliefs would emerge on the paper. Roughly, it would appear that what happens to people after their death depends on where exactly they…
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Some truly believe and are firmly convinced that their religion is the only true religion in the world. Catholics (and Christians in general) are particularly prone to take such approach, and think that Jesus Christ, based on the irrefutable evidence of the Bible, is the only true God who came to the world and revealed his nature to man. There is, however, a question that these people ignore to ask themselves, and that question goes back far before the birth of…
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At the root of human existence there is an underlying desire for community and connection. At the center of all human relationships there is a deep longing for shared meaning and connection, not a desire for self-preservation or material gain. Perhaps the purest manifestation of such inherent human longing is sexuality. Not animal mating, but ideology-laden human-divine sexuality. The ideology behind sexuality is the face of conscious existence and the shine of God. Our yearning for…
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Debate at the university about the existence of God. Two speakers argue against each other’s ideological conviction. (What a shame that any ideological conviction is a personal phenomenon that, due to its exclusively subjective-personal-individual nature – cannot be debated or argued.) And still, one speaker claims that there is no God. The other is sure that there is one. The anti-God speaker is an elegantly sober, level-headed man. The pro-God speaker has the aspect of…
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When I say that the Church is dying, most religious people start fighting against my notion, and begin to prove that their Church is strong and eternal. They seem to defend their Church and religion at all costs, with the same blind irrationality as animals protect their young. Clearly, no rationale, proof, evidence, argumentation, or reasoning can persuade them at all. But why? Would God die if the Church died? Would the end of the…
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Since man is a dynamically evolving, self-seeking existential experience, both his culture and his gods do necessarily change with him. Although in the midst of our vertiginous spiritual human evolution we yearn for at least one stable, static point of reference, and want our gods to be this point of stability, we need to realize that the type of gods that we have been creating and calling upon so far are neither static nor stable. We…
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