Outdated?
 

Are religion and spirituality outdated? Is there anything that can be done if it is outdated? What do you think will happen in the future with religions? What would be the fate of religion and faith? And yes I know that there are plenty of religions and pretty diverse, but I also think that they sort of converge to the same Creator, the older the more authentic. Is religion just to manipulate people to keep them sane or to start conflicts?

I saw that France is the most non-religious country in the world, even their President Macron is a self-declared atheist and he is fine with his people to be like that, he sort of encourage them to be atheists and non believers (people without faith).

I'm personally spiritual but I prefer to coat my spirituality with Christianity so I can be affiliated with more people and can be easier to grasp for others.

Seems that as we go into the future, and as time passes the number of religious people is exponentially decreasing since we have technology, science seems to be contradicting religion, faith and God is not showing up, more and more people go into the other camp of non believers with no faith (including non believing in spirituality) and tend to become arrogant. Doesen't that affect their spiritual path?

Many have faith, they have chosen to believe something or another but package deal faith (religion, with priests dictating what you should believe in and how you express it) no longer cuts it. Faith ¬= religion.

It's difficult to avoid faith in something. Even the atheist has faith in there not being a god...even though something, somehow, put everything here in which we can trust but is beyond human comprehension.

Problem is, religion has never delivered. It's USP is hope. Most people lead work-a-day lives - work: life-frittering, soul destroying coming with diversionary tactics to keep their minds of the huge waste, but were conned by priests into believing it's good for the soul. It guarantees you credits to get into heaven...if you're good which means if you do what the priest says. People are finding better things to believe. Unique answers that they can develop as they go. Perhaps the agnostic is in the best position.
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Everyone holds some belief...including the belief that they are not certain.

Science absolutely performs the function of religion. So does economy. So does technology. These are all still things we define and "create", in accordance with our beliefs & our limitations.

As opposed to all things that may lie beyond that scope.

Peace & blessings :hug3:
7L

A most interesting question, of course this depends on the POV. For teachers never, for the masses we feel many ideas taught are. I've noticed many followers have different ideas, in private views and thoughts from what teachers teach (in public). Followers I think tend to acknowledge and see teaching outdated whereas teachers won't. I definitely have ideas contrary to teachings as I imagine many do. Teachers of course will say I am wrong.

Disbelieving = believing

JL

It's been said that every religion was right for that culture at that time, if that's true then what does that tell us about today's culture? That it doesn't need religion? Very often religion has had a specific role to play within a culture and today that role is eroding fast.

By the way, often people are just people and nobody is above anything, people who believe in Spirituality can be just as arrogant as those that don't. "God made man, man made religion." God didn't make religion nor Spirituality and the mindsets that created religion and Spirituality really haven't changed much.

France spent many years in the grip of the Roman Catholic church and heretics were burned at the stake, often with little or no trial. It's hardly any wonder that Macron encouraged his people to be atheists after so many bloody years. It would be nice to have a debate about the benefits - and there are quite a few - to being atheist but it's a taboo subject on these boards, even in today's tolerant times.

The majority of the wars in history and currently have been caused by religion, so to the general populace religion can be seen as another reason to create conflict.

Science doesn't contradict religion - it's the other way around. Throughout history many of the world's leading scientists have been religious or Spiritual, but how many religious/Spiritual leaders have been scientific? Often Spirituality adopts words or phrases from other fields with no real understanding of what it means, then changes the definitions to suit personal agendas.

If Jung's definitions of the word 'ego' or 'Shadow Self' or Freud's definitions of the 'id', the 'ego' and the 'superego' were better understood better then not only would this particular topic be better understood, so would the frameworks on which Spirituality is built. Come to think of it, if people used 'kamma-vipaka' instead of 'karma' there would be more understanding and self-awareness.

According to the Hindu Samadhi, religion, Spirituality and beliefs are a 'product' of Maya or the false or conditioned self. Tolle also says that beliefs and Spiritual knowledge are space consciousness, a lower-level form-based consciousness. What's to be done with that information?

Your perceptions are defined by your definitions in short, and when you define what is Spiritual you also define what is not Spiritual. Your personal perceptions that Spirituality is outdated are your comparisons against your definitions. But Spirituality will tell you that everything is an expression of Source.

There are usually two definitions of atheism, 1) a lack of belief in god(s), usually referring to personal deities, 2) a lack of belief in spirituality and the afterlife..

I think you'll find many people here who could be classified as atheists if we go by the first definition, but few people if we use the second definition..

Which one do you think is a taboo subject on these boards? Would love to hear your thoughts on it..

I think ''tolerance'' in our time usually means ''..allowing others to believe or do what they want provided they don't bother me with it..''
As a quick example, ''acceptance'' of homosexuality or transgenderism usually works on that premise. Of course it's just a refusal of conversation, which leads to a very narrow view on ''tolerance''. This attitude is more likely to bring more segregation and bottling things up..

The same could perhaps be said of atheism. People ''accept'' that others are atheist, but does that lead to an acceptance of potential conversation..? :smile:

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I would predict that religion will always be around. Christianity is dying off in the West, but Islam is taking off in the East. It seems that religion takes hold wherever there is social inequality. Once a society reaches a certain point of general satisfaction with their material existence, religion becomes less useful.

Leave the religious conflicts and war alone. People will always look for conflicts is in the human nature, look at the LGBTQ conflicts. Diversity in religion as well, seem to have a lot of gods but they converge and point out to the same creator (God, Allah, Shiva are all the same God with different interpretation). The religion is just a pretext to start these, aside from that conflicts I don't believe that religion did any harm, and as the others have commented it comes down to the POV of each person. Most conflicts were started by abrahamic religions. Take Cambodia for example, an undeveloped country with 97% Budhhists they seem to live peacefully with faith, same with Philippines but they are mostly Roman-Catholic. Now take France, developed country most without faith. Take In general seems to be outdated and fade away, I wonder what will happen in the future. I see religion keeps people united in communities unless they don't start conflicts and also helps with optimism, faith and passing of the dead