I found somebody's answer to the question 'Is religious education important for your child?'.
I don't know exactly for whose child religious education is supposed to be important.
Still, eventually I checked out the original post that said:
When humans are close to their Lord and carry out all norms in religion, everything will become easier to carry out in daily life.
I have no idea what being 'close to their Lord' means, or why carrying out all norms in religion is supposed to be important, or why it is supposed to make things easier, or even which religion, so I would probably not be able to answer this question at all.
Still, I found out that somebody attempted to answer (my emphasis added):
The answer from my part is a strong NO.
I would say that teach them rather to believe in themselves. Teach them to act based on reality rather than based on writings.
All religious books are piles of myths written by people lived many centuries ago. Those scriptures don’t seem to fit 21st century, which is obvious. We need brand new values that fit the current world. It is high time we must get rid of glitches from the past.
Religious education emphasize on the ancient knowledge and old values. I agree with the fact that most of it is comprehensible and hold true to this date. But to get to know about humane values, religion is not necessary.
I've been trying to see whether there have been any religious books written in 21st century, to prove my point.
There have been many: Some books about Wicca, some about Thelema, a 21st century edition of 'The Urantia Book', some about New Age, you name it.
Still, as the comment said, these books do often refer to myths from other centuries.
Is it a bad thing, though? The very mathematics used today is largely based on Euclidean geometry, which was also constructed centuries ago by people who had different values. Being ancient doesn't make something invalid.
I answered in this comment by saying:
This is so stupid! Check out Gerald Gardner's Book of Shadows. This book was not written centuries ago. Why do you assume that all religious books were written by people who lived centuries ago? You are such a moron. You litter Steemit with nonsense.
The author replied (full comment below):
Bible and Quran were written in 20th century? I'm talking about the so called holy books and the religions where there is a presence of God.
Fuck the God.
And I respect your opinion and happy to give my 100% upvote to your comment. Thanks for stopping by.
'Fuck the God'? What is it supposed to mean? According to research that is already centuries old we are all God!
I think that in Sikhism actually all people are collectively one Waheguruji, and in Buddhism and in New Age people have to realize some Buddha nature (or Christ consciousness) to integrate that fact.
(Not that fucking God is anything wrong in Sikhism, according to Guru Granth Sahib and this article).
The author of the comments quoted above apparently does not understand that religion has actually progressed in the last two thousands years.
Alternative to religion or more of the same?
I have watched this video.
In the video Neil deGrasse Tyson tells some irrelevant and incorrect information about space, and is apparently worshipped as God by the audience.
The Earth is obviously not a sphere floating pointlessly thru space. There has never been any unedited video showing the start of a rocket from the ground all the way to the alleged orbit. There has never been any serious study measuring the alleged curvature of the Earth in a hundred (or even five) different places. There has been some attempt to measure it, made by Discovery Channel, but to my knowledge this experiment has not beet peer reviewed, nor reproduced by professional scientists, so who cares? (There has even been an attempt to debunk it). Before professional scientists can prove that they are able to seriously measure the alleged curvature of the Earth in more than one location, I will never take space science seriously.
What is the point of the entire Neil's lecture anyway? You can't use a black hole to build a computer or a house. The entire space science is unproductive!
Most religions I've encountered have been actually bad
Still, the religions I've been to usually have had very little utility.
Just like the space science I ridicule above, which is purported to supersede religion and solve more problems.
Religion may produce a community kitchen, yet religious life is often nothing more than trying to outperform other devotees in imitating some ideal lifestyle as imagined by a deified guru.
Community of practice
I am beginning to wonder whether communities of practice can supersede religion.
Religions do not always engage in any particular craft. What if the central part of religion was the craft?
I run a temple in my home, which deals predominantly with software development and taking care of pet mice.
I write Android software, and my girlfriend tests it for me. They in turn feed the mice, and I do it too when my girlfriend is not at home, I also clean their cages.
Doing practical stuff became the central part of my religion.
I cannot really tell whether I believe in God or in myself and if it makes a difference, yet I do on daily basis work on my intuition or just divinate form i-ching to help me get by. (Yet all spiritual practice must eventually have some utility, like understanding what the obstacles are to finding a job, how to be an efficient programmer, or how to learn how to communicate.
(I specifically hate the Golden Rule, I don't think it's a good religious principle, and I wrote a separate article about it).
Community in general
I am trying to find out what makes a good community. How to maintain a proper balance between doing an actual work (like taking care of the mice) and team building exercises (like holding a council circle) and documentation (running this blog).
I am sad seeing that some people apparently haven't noticed that religions have progressed since Quran was written. Even Islam has progressed, and in a branch of it Muhammad was themselves superseded.
Any progress at all?
Yet I think that science is, in a way, still at the time religion was at the time of Muhammad and their magical flight.
Otherwise how can you explain this video in which Chris Hadfield 'learned' by going temporarily blind in space. (They didn't really go blind, they just cried and had the tears to be removed by a friend with a tissue, something you can see demonstrated in another Chris' video).
First of all, nobody can prove that Chris went to space. If Chris wanted to prove that, all they had to do was to attach a camera to the rocket and produce an unedited video showing takeoff of the rocket from the ground all the way until it allegedly found itself in the orbit.
Secondly, what Chris learned from it, according to Chris' TED presentation?
Short answer: to get out of your comfort zone.
Still, Chris doesn't just plainly state that. Instead, they literally encourage the audience to hurt spiders. (At one moment in the presentation Chris even threatens the audience with letting go a real spider between the chairs.
Chris' alleged space travel is unproven and the lessons Chris learned from it are absurd and just hurtful.
The speaker was so adamant in the talk about encouraging the audience to hurt and maybe even kill spiders that I flagged the video as animal abuse.
What authority does unproven travel to heaven in one's physical body give them to teach others absurd and counterproductive spiritual lessons?
If one hates religion for conveying pointless spiritual teachings based on unproven mythological narratives, one should doubly hate space science, for it has the same flaws.
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