Is religion evolving?

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

By this I mean are human's concepts of God and relationships to others changing?

I think an argument can be made that these concepts have, indeed, changed over time. Think of the ancient religions of the Middle East that were multi-theistic; they faded from history to be replaced by monotheistic religions. Some monotheistic religions have even diminished in numbers--Zoroastrianism is an example. Even within the large religions today you can trace an evolution of thought over time--the Gnostics and their mystical take on Christianity was, by and large, supplanted by the Catholic and the Orthodox churches. The Jewish religion went from worship at a central temple to worship in the home and synagog.

Can the argument be made that religion in general is still undergoing change? That religions are exploring and discarding old God concepts for new ones?

I am interested in your answers. Thank you.

[Warpy]

1. Of course it is. It changes with the human race's conditions

and imperils itself when it tries to be some sort of universal constant (which it always seems to try to do).

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

4. Would you say that it can, at times, imperil everyone?

I'm thinking of the rise of fundamentalism here, the "my way or else" attitude you find across many religions. These appear to be fear based, because the people realize things are changing and they don't want to change. But I'm thinking that these people really don't have a choice--things are changing in the world whether they like it or not. Pir-o-Murshid Hazrat Inayat Khan once said, "Shatter your ideals on the rock of Truth". By this he meant that no one could truly know and understand That which is everything--we can only come up with concepts. But comes a time in life when things happen to shatter your concepts. I would say that we, as a planet, are at one of those times. How the fundamentalists react--and how the rest of us react--that could well be what allows the planet to continue or see humanity destroyed.

[sinkingfeeling]

2. I believe that the mainline churches have evolved over time. Just look at how some have changed

their stances on women in the church/family/submissive role or slavery. The only ones that don't evolve are those sects that are fundamentalist. The very definition is that they refuse to consider 'new' knowledge.

[Wildewolfe]

5. Even fundamentalism

is a process of evolution in action.

The current brand started mainly in the 19th century and what we have today probably wouldn't be recognized by those that started it.

The injection of politics into the fundamentalist movement caused massive change into it during the late 70s through to the current and it's causing a pendulum shift in some attitudes within those movements now.

The thing to remember about what we all call "fundamentalists" here as a label is there is nothing fundamental about them. It's mostly as invented as some new age groups are. That doesn't necessarily make them invalid, but claims of legitimacy stretching back centuries are ummm... lacking.

Modern fundamentalism started with the revival tent and gained traction with the televangalist. It's been mutating ever since. The last 8 years have thrown a good portion of them into moral chaos and more change for them is likely and to be welcomed for the most part as they wake up to social consciousness.

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

7. Very good point

Do you see modern fundamentalism as taking over various religions or becoming extinct?

[Wildewolfe]

14. It will never likely become extinct

but it will likely revert back to it's sideshow revivalist nature down the road. You can only eat so much cotton candy before it makes you sick.

[JerseygirlCT]

11. Absolutely. And good point! nt

[KurtNYC]

13. I think modern fundamentalism can be traced back to the 3rd century

when it was recognized as a very intolerant force within a relatively tolerant Roman society. Some have argued that it was persecuted and repressed for this reason.

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

20. I hadn't heard of that before,

but it does make sense that an intolerant group would be persecuted. Interesting that, when they rose to power, they wiped out Mithraism to the point that we don't know much about it and find very few artifacts from that religion.

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

6. Yes, I've seen the evolution in my lifetime

I've seen a coming together of people from many different spiritual traditions to look for similarities rather than differences--and they find them in the teachings of how to live one's life. What I see in the fundamentalists is a blindness towards the words of tolerance that have been taught and can be found in the various holy books.

[JerseygirlCT]

10. Grow or die... nt

[T Wolf]

3. As humans ourselves evolve, religion will disappear. The breakdown of the bicameral mind has

enabled "some" of us to recognize that those voices that early humans were hearing were not the voice of god, or gods, but only the separate halves of our brain communicating with each other.

Unfortunately, many humans still believe that those voices were divine.

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

8. Let me understand you

You are talking of revelations to various saints and prophets when you talk of voices?

Those revelations did, indeed, form certain God concepts believed by many.

But what of those who see God as everything? As a life force, One that wishes only to experience everything? This is another God concept, and one that has been around in mystical circles since the Upanishads.

[kimmerspixelated]

16. Interesting.

The Bicameral mind. I've been reading a lot of quantum /soul/zero field type books and I haven't come across that term yet. Do you have a resource or book to rec.?

[T Wolf]

29. Here it is...

The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind by Julian Jaynes.

It basically says that in early humans, the two halves of the brain were not connected (bicameral). When signals went from one side to the other, "we" interpreted that to be the voices of "others" which, in some cases, was "heard" as the word of god(s).

As we evolved, the two haves became more connected, leading to a different way of thinking (consciousness).

The natural conclusion is that as our species evolves, we will drop these misconceptions developed in less-developed times (the same as losing unneeded physical vestiges of earlier humans like body-covering hair).

Do we now not think that people who "hear voices" are insane - except if it is couched in religious terms?

So, we have the physical characteristic (unicameral mind) now but the historic creation called religion still holds us in thrall - not because it is valid biologically, but because we have created institutions that have been so central to our existence.

But, as John Lennon said - "Imagine no religion." Hopefully, we get there before we destroy ourselves.

[kimmerspixelated]

31. Thanks!

Very interesting.

[JerseygirlCT]

9. Always, I think

As is our collective search for truth and meaning, and for believers, how we perceive divinity.

I'd like to think that overall, we're evolving in a positive way. I guess history, some long time from now, might have to be the judge of that though!

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

21. I hope you are right

about evolving in a positive way.

[ngant17]

12. Of course religion is evolving

Human thought has always evolved ideas and beliefs ever since the brain was big enough to entertain thinking.

It's clear to me that all sources of monotheistic religions are psychologically rooted in ancient sun worship. We deceive ourselves into believing that a "God" exists, when we are really subconsciously addressing the fact that it is the "Sun" which 'exists' and it is the Sun which is the source of all life on this planet.

"...the Christian religion is a parody on the worship of the Sun, in which they put a man whom they call Christ, in the place of the Sun, and pay him the same adoration which was originally paid to the Sun." --- Thomas Paine

"Existence determines consciousness" - Karl Marx

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

22. That would go along with Akenaten's concept

of the Aten (the sun disk) being the only God--many think that the monotheistic religions that followed got their concept from him and the mystery schools that came from that time. Could you say, then, that what people who have this God concept are really worshiping is life itself?

[ngant17]

25. I think it has more to do with an understanding of astrophysics

For example, the Gaea Hypothesis speculates that the Earth as a whole is a living, sentient organism. If Gaia is a living organism, can be also apply the same logic to the Sun? Could it also be a biologically-living organism?

The Hungarian astrophysicist Grandpierre has postulated that the Sun is a lifelike system, as he notes in a recent monograph:

The idea that a galaxy is a self-organized system - more an ecology than a nonliving clump of stars and gas - has become common among astronomers and physicists who study galaxies (Smolin, 1997). Some regards galaxies as literally alive: "I have argued that our Galaxy is alive - literally alive, in the full biological meaning of the term…The striking feature of the way in which spiral galaxies maintain a steady state, far from equilibrium…it has been produced by a process of evolution and competition." (Gribbin, 1993)

I suppose we need to understand life on the cosmic level before we can have any real idea of what "god" is.

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

27. Interesting

being more of an historian than a scientist, I didn't know about all this, but it does make sense. The mystics see everything as God, and as God is life, so everything is alive. Thanks for this new perspective.

[cyborg_jim]

32. Which would make life nothing special at all

[MedleyMisty]

24. Huh - I don't believe in a god

but when talking on another forum about my personal point and meaning to life, the first thing that came to mind is "There's the sun, which is nice and warm and throws beautiful orange light on the tops of trees in the late afternoon."

[KurtNYC]

15. Spirituality is evolving; religion is a business

Religion seeks to sell access to God and a kind of 'real estate' in the afterlife (eg "heaven").

One of the main reasons that MS religion in the US is so obsessed with hmnosexuality is because it makes money for them. Hate and fear = dollars in the cash register. Disgusting.

Christ delivered a simple message, eg. that all humans should love each other. And that hasn't happened yet because religions have perverted that message for money.

The real evolution today is being done in the realm of spirituality, not in legacy religions.

[kimmerspixelated]

17. Agreed. The evolution

really exists in more folks gaining true consciousness. That's what our evolution is about in the first place. It's fascinating it's actually begining to happen on a larger scale.

[KurtNYC]

19. the world is so much smaller now and

there are fewer place for ignorance to hide.

[Silent3]

30. Evolution isn't "about" anything except survival.

Evolution doesn't have goals. If we as a species collectively make a decision that "true consciousness" (whatever the hell that is) is a worthy goal, we can organize culturally to head toward that goal, but that isn't any kind of evolution.

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

23. An interesting take on what is going on

Of course to go along with the selling, there would be middle men (priests, etc) without whom you couldn't claim your reward.

That is why mystical schools that stress the individual's connection with God are often considered a threat by the religious hierarchy.

[Silent3]

18. Religion is a great example of memetic evolution

To evolve, of course, does not necessarily mean to improve in the sense of growing closer to any particular truth, or to get better at making human lives better. Religion "improves" in a memetic sense by maximizing the number of followers who will follow and propagate the religion.

The evolution of religion is very much like the evolution of a disease or a parasitic infection, or, when it's more benign, like the evolution of a symbiotic organism.

I should elaborate more about what I mean, but I have to get going now.

[jody]

26. IMO yes and offer the Roman Catholic Church's evolving position on evolution. Pope's have

spent two millenniums learning how to survive and they will be the bellwether for whatever forms of religion capture major shares of religious adherents in the 22nd century.

[Occam Bandage]

28. Certainly. All the evidence one would need is in the modern fundamentalisms,

which bear little resemblance to even the pre-1970s fundamentalisms before them. Religions are living, breathing memetic constructs, and they are just as subject to random mutation and natural selection as literally living things are.

[Name removed]

33. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Meshuga]

34. Some evolve and some don't

Some change as they become more enlightened and others resist change. Some change just to adapt in order to survive. Others naturally evolve and change their values as society evolves. Whether the change is for the better or not really depends on the goals of the particular sect.