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Originally Posted by Xujhan
What do you mean by spirituality, then?
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I suppose I define spirituality as that which helps me work out the essence of who I am and my place in the wider world, and form a holistic view of that wider world. I'm not saying that's what it is for others necessarily, or that religion alone is the only way to achieve those goals (personally I don't believe that at all) but for me it has been the best way to do so.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Xujhan
Because I get the feeling that this idea is at the heart of the vast difference between your understanding and mine. I understand that your religion is as you say - a guide to living decently, as it were - but I don't agree that that is what religion is to all people. If all were as you I would object much less. You make the point nicely yourself by quoting Leviticus; that is also the book that says the homosexuality is a sin and that menstruating women are unclean. A person like yourself is certainly able to choose the good parts from among the bad, but not all people do. Some people view religion as divine mandate to be followed without question, and some view religious literature as the unadulterated truth. Your religion doesn't conflict with science because you read yours with a much more skeptical eye, take the good messages from it and largely leave the rest behind. A more rigid reading though, as many people give it, produces many conflicts with science, morality, even common sense. Hence the conflict.
Again, this is only a feeling, but I gather that you think of religion largely as the kind you follow, and view the rest as a rare if rather vocal minority. From where I sit, whether they're a minority or not, I think they have far too much power to be left alone. Perhaps that would go some way to explaining the differences in our opinion.
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I think you make a very good point there - and I suppose in a way it's what I was alluding to in my first post about people on both sides of the debate. I find religious people who take the rigid reading you describe above to be just as much of a problem, largely because it seems to at a stroke ignore a considerable amount about how their religion has developed in the first place. On top of that, in my experience of religion only a slim minority seem to take those views and yet they seem to be the ones coming up time and again in the debate, which is something I also find quite frustrating. At the same time, I can fully understand your position of seeing these kinds of people day in, day out and reacting accordingly. So yes, I'd say I agree with you on that.