{"id":301,"date":"2009-08-13T08:02:20","date_gmt":"2009-08-13T15:02:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.northernway.org\/weblog\/?p=301"},"modified":"2013-03-18T01:42:38","modified_gmt":"2013-03-18T05:42:38","slug":"five-things-religion-haters-should-know","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.northernway.org\/weblog\/?p=301","title":{"rendered":"Five Things Religion-Haters Should Know"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the article below, I liked the “Buddhism is the highest form of Christianity” joke.\u00c2\u00a0 Hee hee. And I am glad the author says “sick<\/em> religion is dehumanizing”, not healthy religion. \u00c2\u00a0Not all religion should be thrown out with the bath water. I inserted little comments as I read along, mostly because the author kept messing up his own article (in my opinion!) with his personal bias by allowing politics to constantly intrude into his arguments and conclusions.<\/p>\n

See the end of the article for more comments from yours truly and also for +Christian-Thomas’ sapient comment…<\/p>\n

————<\/p>\n

DEAR GOD… FIVE THINGS RELIGION-HATERS SHOULD KNOW<\/p>\n

By Stuart Davis
\nstuartdavis.com
\nAugust 9, 2009<\/p>\n

http:\/\/www.stuartdavis.com\/blog\/dear-god-five-things-religion-haters-should-know<\/p>\n

I just finished reading God is not Great<\/em> by Christopher Hitchens. He’s given\u00c2\u00a0us another powerful work in the vein of Sam Harris (The End of Faith),\u00c2\u00a0Richard Dawkins (The God Delusion), and Bill Maher (Religulous). Team\u00c2\u00a0Rationality is ushering in a long-overdue examination of religion in the\u00c2\u00a0modern world. They make a strong case that religion is sick and\u00c2\u00a0dehumanizing. I would say more specifically, sick religion is dehumanizing.<\/p>\n

And we do have a global pandemic of sick religion: billions of believers\u00c2\u00a0stuck in low levels of consciousness, riddled with pathologies — called\u00c2\u00a0Samsara where I’m from.<\/p>\n

However, reading these best-sellers has inspired me to make a wish-list.<\/p>\n

Here are five things rational religion-haters should know:<\/p>\n

1. There are levels of religion.<\/p>\n

I keep noticing that what many rational types detest is not religion per se,\u00c2\u00a0but its least-evolved expressions. Over and over I hear atheists say\u00c2\u00a0“religion” when they are actually describing low levels of religion. That\u00c2\u00a0confusion is not helping. Eliminating religion will not eliminate low levels\u00c2\u00a0of development. And that’s the real threat to humanity: Low levels of\u00c2\u00a0development in high positions of power. Saying “Religion” is the problem\u00c2\u00a0doesn’t mean anything. What level of Religion is being referred to? For\u00c2\u00a0example, here are five distinct levels of religious expression, from lowest\u00c2\u00a0to highest:<\/p>\n

Magical-Animistic<\/strong>: Recently in Tanzania, religious figures have murdered\u00c2\u00a0over fifty innocent human beings because they happened to be albino. The\u00c2\u00a0victims are killed so that their organs can be used in religious rituals\u00c2\u00a0that are supposed to create wealth. That’s one of the things we get from a\u00c2\u00a0Magical mode of religion. Blood sacrifice.<\/p>\n

Mythic<\/strong>: After the massacre of 3,000 Americans on 9\/11, Pat Robertson and\u00c2\u00a0Jerry Falwell claimed it was god taking revenge on our society for\u00c2\u00a0homosexuality and abortion. Mythic religion is that old-school religion of\u00c2\u00a0supra-natural allegory. Virgin births, raising the dead, walking on water,\u00c2\u00a0and the rapture. Except mythic believers don’t consider their stories to be\u00c2\u00a0metaphoric symbols, they regard them as literal and real. Mythic religion\u00c2\u00a0guided George Bush through eight years as President of the United States, [Katia inserts: so you say, but you have no evidence for this rather snobbish claim. Perhaps POLITICS guided him. Or power-lust? Or whatever…but religion? If so, seems to me he would have been obsessed with sending missionaries and trying to convert people to Christianity. We can’t read minds. It is arrogant in the extreme to announce one knows another person’s inner spiritual life, to claim exact knowledge of what level of religion intimately guided that human being for eight years. Pat Robertson’s and Falwell’s remarks are clear evidence they were at this level — at least at the moment in time when they made their god-is-punishing-us remarks. But to judge eight years of someone’s spiritual life without any evidence of mythical Christian mindset (sick or healthy) seems unduly biased.]<\/p>\n

…coincidentally also guided the terrorists to commit mass murder.<\/p>\n

[I agree with you there. That is a single provable event. They left letters saying their mythic level of religion did indeed guide them to commit that repulsive crime against innocent humans.]<\/p>\n

Rational<\/strong>: Francis Collins, one of the World’s most accomplished Scientists,\u00c2\u00a0calls his faith BioLogos, or theistic evolution. He sees Science, and the\u00c2\u00a0empirical method, as a form of worship. He rejects intelligent design.<\/p>\n

Believe it or not, there are plenty of rational people who believe in a\u00c2\u00a0Divinity of some kind.<\/p>\n

Pluralistic<\/strong>: For a taste of pluralistic Christianity, check out The\u00c2\u00a0Christian Pluralist by William C. Buffie, M.D. and John R. Charles. They even\u00c2\u00a0incorporate psychology in their faith, exploring shadow \/ projection in the\u00c2\u00a0realm of religion. They embrace the Bible “as a story, not a weapon.” Jimmy\u00c2\u00a0Carter has also demonstrated a strong pluralistic Christianity. He even\u00c2\u00a0taught Sunday School in a Southern Baptist church while President. [Southern Baptists are actually more fundamentalist by far than Methodists–George Bush’s church. Not that we know how fundamentalist or evolved either ex-president is\/was because again, we cannot read minds nor souls. \u00c2\u00a0To actually be teaching Southern Baptist Sunday school while president…Now that might indeed imply being guided by fundamentalist Christianity during a presidency. Yet you place Carter at a more spiritually evolved level than Bush and don’t claim he was “guided” during his presidency. It appears you are allowing political bias and\/or spiritual arrogance to creep in to your otherwise good piece.]<\/p>\n

Integrative<\/strong>: In my opinion one of the most spiritually evolved Christians on\u00c2\u00a0the planet, Father Thomas Keating teaches a form of contemplative practice\u00c2\u00a0called Centering Prayer, which he describes as<\/p>\n

“. . . a journey into the unknown. It is a call to follow Jesus out of all\u00c2\u00a0the structures, security blankets, and even spiritual practices that serve\u00c2\u00a0as props. They are all left behind insofar as they are part of the false\u00c2\u00a0self system . . . The false self is an illusion. Humility is the\u00c2\u00a0forgetfulness of self.”<\/p>\n

These are five very distinct levels of the same religion, in this case\u00c2\u00a0Christianity, but it applies to any religion. (I forgot to list the highest\u00c2\u00a0level of Christianity, which is Buddhism. Kidding!). The point is, religion\u00c2\u00a0should not be regarded as horizontal and homogenous. All belief systems\u00c2\u00a0include a vertical chain of development.<\/p>\n

The ‘answer’ to fundamentalism is not to get rid of Religion, but to get\u00c2\u00a0religion to evolve. How can we help Pat Robertson discover his hidden Father\u00c2\u00a0Thomas Keating? Will Francis Collins agree to mentor Sarah Palin? [Maybe you should ask will he mentor YOU. And read Matthew 7:5 http:\/\/bible.cc\/matthew\/7-5.htm ]<\/p>\n

I’m kidding. But I’m not. The answer to low levels of religion is higher levels\u00c2\u00a0of religion. The real work ahead of us is religious development, not just\u00c2\u00a0embarrassing people into forfeiting their belief system (they will just\u00c2\u00a0trade it for an equivalent one anyway). If tomorrow, all the religions in\u00c2\u00a0the World magically vanished, we’d face the same dangers of low levels of\u00c2\u00a0consciousness in high positions of power.<\/p>\n

2. There are healthy and pathological versions of every level.<\/p>\n

A religious person can be healthy or sick at any stage of development. The\u00c2\u00a0answer to sick religion is healthy religion. While Pat Robertson told us\u00c2\u00a09\/11 was God’s revenge for homosexuality [sick], millions of other Christians — at\u00c2\u00a0the same mythic developmental level [but healthy] — were organizing their communities to\u00c2\u00a0offer help and healing. Because that is what healthy mythic Christians do\u00c2\u00a0(and they do it better than just about anybody). For every sick\u00c2\u00a0fundamentalist there are many healthy believers contributing to society in a\u00c2\u00a0positive way.<\/p>\n

3. The more people evolve, the less religious (fundamentalist) they are.<\/p>\n

One definition of ‘religion’ is a partition between the saved and the\u00c2\u00a0damned, a boundary that separates ‘us’ and ‘them’. When people grow, they\u00c2\u00a0include more and exclude less. As we live into higher development levels,\u00c2\u00a0our circle gets bigger. Evolving means a bigger experience of ‘We’. Also\u00c2\u00a0known as Love \ud83d\ude09 As the self evolves, it recognizes more people (and\u00c2\u00a0plants, and animals, and things) as part of its own identity. That’s why\u00c2\u00a0development creates security for everyone, it transforms ‘them’ into ‘us’.<\/p>\n

4. At its higher levels, Religion resonates with science and rationality.<\/p>\n

That’s because at its higher levels, religion becomes spiritual. I define\u00c2\u00a0religion as a belief system used to interpret Reality. I define spirituality\u00c2\u00a0as the direct experience of Reality. No beliefs are required for spiritual\u00c2\u00a0practice. (In Zen there is a saying: All beliefs are false.) Spiritual\u00c2\u00a0experience can often undo religious belief. Religion provides filters, and\u00c2\u00a0depends upon intermediaries and externally located salvation. Spirituality\u00c2\u00a0removes (or improves) filters through direct access to our intrinsic nature.<\/p>\n

Spiritual practices are empirical in this sense: You want to know something\u00c2\u00a0(like, what is Reality) so you conduct an experiment. For instance, you may\u00c2\u00a0spend a few decades making your Subject an Object of awareness. You share\u00c2\u00a0your data (gathered through direct experience) to a group of qualified peers\u00c2\u00a0who have repeated that same experiment for centuries. They verify or falsify\u00c2\u00a0your findings, and you proceed with further experimentation. You don’t have\u00c2\u00a0to ‘believe’ anything about it, before, during, or after. In this way, the\u00c2\u00a0contemplative traditions have evolved over millennia. They are in harmony\u00c2\u00a0with rationality and science, and generally welcome any methodology that\u00c2\u00a0might increase our knowledge of the visible and invisible Kosmos.<\/p>\n

5. Everybody starts at the bottom.<\/p>\n

Even if everyone in the World became Mensa-level enlightened today, every\u00c2\u00a0baby born tomorrow would have to begin at square one, and develop the old\u00c2\u00a0fashioned way. So far, we haven’t figured out a way to skip developmental\u00c2\u00a0levels. However, we move through them faster than we used to. For instance,<\/p>\n

John Ashcroft may be a poster child for the low-level of Mythic religion,\u00c2\u00a0but a mere 100,000 years ago there WAS NO Mythic level of religion. It\u00c2\u00a0hadn’t even emerged yet. Even 3,000 years ago, George Bush Jr. would have\u00c2\u00a0been one of the most evolved people on the planet. Not so much now.<\/p>\n

[There you go again messing up an otherwise good article and causing us to question YOUR level of development because you can’t resist getting in petty jibes, and are bringing politics and sarcasm into the topic at hand].<\/p>\n

Now Mythic Religion is like, totally a crappy low level of consciousness, and\u00c2\u00a0most nine year olds or U.S. Presidents have access to it, thanks to\u00c2\u00a0recapitulation. Recapitulation? When we’re born, we basically get a free\u00c2\u00a0pass to evolve up to the prevailing center of consciousness in the\u00c2\u00a0population. The level of consciousness we are immersed in (in the family we\u00c2\u00a0are born into, in the culture we live in, etc) exerts a developmental\u00c2\u00a0gravity. And that gravity pulls us up to it. But, when you try to evolve\u00c2\u00a0beyond it, to higher altitudes of consciousness, then that same center of\u00c2\u00a0gravity drags you back down to it. If you are below it, it lifts you up.<\/p>\n

Rise above, it will try to pull you back down.<\/p>\n

That’s why Mythic religious peeps are freaking out. Their World (view) is\u00c2\u00a0vanishing like millions of species God gave them Reign over [And in the Islamic worldview it’s even worse: they believe strongly that God gave them “reign” over all females of the human species].<\/p>\n

Eventually (if they don’t destroy humanity first, with their lust for an apocalypse),\u00c2\u00a0mythic religion will become about as important to future generations as\u00c2\u00a0magic is to us. Magic should be used in Harry Potter movies, not for the\u00c2\u00a0religious murder of Tanzanian Albinos. Mythic religion should be a history\u00c2\u00a0lesson, not the guiding belief of a U.S. President. [He isn’t in office anymore, can you get over it?]<\/p>\n

That’s why Bill Maher’s movie Religulous is funny: It’s pointing out the fact that there are a LOT\u00c2\u00a0of people living with a World View that went out of style in 1637 (thanks,\u00c2\u00a0Descartes!). Bill Maher is hilariously pointing out the fact that religion\u00c2\u00a0is literally retarded, because it is developmentally arrested. I mean, it\u00c2\u00a0would be hilarious, if it weren’t so appallingly true. Evidence indicates\u00c2\u00a070% of the world is at a Mythic (or lower) level of development. And they\u00c2\u00a0are religious!<\/p>\n

If we get these five simple points into the debate about religion, I think\u00c2\u00a0it would help eliminate some confusion.<\/p>\n

* * * * * * * *<\/p>\n

Katia wishes to add:\u00c2\u00a0 And if you read Eckhart Tolle’s A New Earth: Awakening to your Life’s Purpose it would eliminate even more of that confusion.<\/p>\n

Seriously, A New Earth is one of the most life-changing books I have ever read. I am currently working on memorizing its table of contents, just like people memorize the Bible’s “layout”, so that I can find passages more easily. If you still haven’t read it, email me and I will send you a copy. I have extras laying around and I believe it should be in every motel room’s bedside drawer… \u00c2\u00a0A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose original non-Oprah hardback version at Amazon<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The author of this article, Stuart Davis, is a primary disciple of Ken Wilber. I have read Wilber extensively and like his teachings very much. \u00c2\u00a0Wilber is very much in harmony with Eckhart Tolle. But his student Stuart Davis has a tendency toward dragging politics into spirituality (yikes!) and making smug assessments as to what level specific humans (i.e. Bush, Palin, etc.) are in their spiritual development.<\/p>\n

He also tends to assume the lower levels are “bad” and the higher levels are “good” as evidenced in this particular article when he calls the mythic level “crappy”. What he fails to realize even while admitting that everybody goes thru all these levels is that there is no good or bad and we shouldn’t say to a kid or a teen during their mythic phase that they are at a “crappy lower” level. Again, smug. No more than we say a child who can’t yet do times tables but is learning to add and subtract, is at a crappy level. I mean, really. It is vital and healthy to work up thru the levels, that’s why they call it spiritual evolution. The lower levels are required, so let us not judge each other for spending time in them just as we are or did. The only thing that becomes “crappy” is the behavior of the person if they are expressing an UNHEALTHY version of any particular level, be it magical, mythical, rational, pluralistic etc. \u00c2\u00a0Ken Wilber himself says that it’s better to be a healthy lower level than an unhealthy higher level. So the behavior of an unhealthy pluralist is less crappy than a healthy mythical levelist (fundamentalist). Davis even points out how the healthy mythical levelists are the best charity organizers, donators in the world. Yet he doesn’t make clear their behavior is only “sick” or their level “crappy” when they deliberately harm others. Leave ’em alone, they’re evolving up the spiral (of Spiral Dynamics) at their own pace. Sheesh to calling their level crappy, since we know what word crappy is a euphemism for. Not to mention you run the risk of falling into the good-or-bad labeling habit: evaluating everything that comes across your desk as either “good” or “bad”, seeing everything as either black or white, sweet-to-me or crappy-to-me. \u00c2\u00a0This polarized mindset is characteristic of the very mythical level you are criticizing! Tolle teaches three ways to react to everything that comes across our desk: with acceptance (never resistance nor judgement as “bad”), enjoyment or enthusiasm. He calls these the 3 Modalities of Awakened Doing and they are described in the final chapter of A New Earth<\/a>.<\/p>\n

I sometimes sense almost a holier-than-thou mindset\u00c2\u00a0when reading Stuart Davis. Still, his re-cap of the Spiral Dynamics levels of religion teaching and Wilber’s interpretation thereof, is nicely described in this article — and his hypothesis is spot-on. Yes, please let those religion-haters take note! So overall I enjoyed this article, Dear God…Five Things Religion-Haters Should Know<\/em>, and wanted to pass it on. \u00c2\u00a0Hope I didn’t ruin it with all my interrupting comments. <grin><\/p>\n

* * * * * * * *<\/p>\n

Gnostic Bishop Christian-Thomas writes:<\/p>\n

Dear +Katia:<\/p>\n

Perhaps I’m biased, but I believe that Judaeo-Christian Gnosticism is the highest developed and evolved expression of both orthodox Judaism and fundamentalist Christianity.\u00c2\u00a0 Too bad that most commentators, such as this one, did not cite Gnosticism, in his fascinating hypotheses.<\/p>\n

Peace,<\/p>\n

+Christian-Thomas<\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the article below, I liked the “Buddhism is the highest form of Christianity” joke.\u00c2\u00a0 Hee hee. And I am glad the author says “sick religion is dehumanizing”, not healthy religion. \u00c2\u00a0Not all religion should be thrown out with the bath water. I inserted little comments as I read along, mostly because the author kept … Continue reading Five Things Religion-Haters Should Know<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40,129,128],"tags":[268,186,188,187],"class_list":["post-301","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-eckhart-tolle","category-politics","category-religion","tag-eckhart-tolle","tag-ken-wilber","tag-spiral-dynamics","tag-stuart-davis"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.northernway.org\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/301","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.northernway.org\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.northernway.org\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernway.org\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernway.org\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=301"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernway.org\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/301\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":304,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernway.org\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/301\/revisions\/304"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.northernway.org\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=301"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernway.org\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=301"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernway.org\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=301"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}