Religion IS crazy!

Hmm....


Religion to Disappear By 2041 Claims New Study

Author and noted biopsychologist Nigel Barber has completed a new study that shows Atheism is most prevalent in developed countries, and, according to his projections, religion will completely disappear by 2041. His findings are discussed in his new book “Why Atheism Will Replace Religion.” A new study that clarifies his earlier research will be published in August. His findings focus on studying trends within countries around the world and the fact that “Atheists are heavily concentrated in economically developed countries”-

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In my new study of 137 countries (1), I also found that atheism increases for countries with a well-developed welfare state (as indexed by high taxation rates). Moreover, countries with a more equal distribution of income had more atheists. My study improved on earlier research by taking account of whether a country is mostly Moslem (where atheism is criminalized) or formerly Communist (where religion was suppressed) and accounted for three-quarters of country differences in atheism.

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http://guardianlv.com/2013/07/religion-to-disappear-by-2041-claims-new-study/

DB008 said:

Religion to Disappear By 2041 Claims New Study

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Interesting. I know very few atheists and find most people identify as agnostic / don't-give-a-**** as opposed to atheist. Pity you have to buy the book to get his stats.

I can see the old monotheistic religions dying off by mid century, except in 3rd World nations where they will continue to thrive. Non dualist religions are (imo) true religions because they match up perfectly with modern science. Here's a taste. The author is Nisagardatta. When you read it, understand that this is not just nice-sounding poetry, but literal explanation from someone who has lived it.



The source of consciousness cannot be an object in consciousness.

To know the source is to be the source.

Realization is in discovering the source and abiding there.

You know yourself only through the senses and the mind.

Whatever you think you are you take it to be true-imagining yourself perceivable.

I see as you see, hear as you hear.

All this I perceive quite clearly, but I am not in it.

I feel myself as floating over it, aloof and detached.

There is also the awareness of it all and a sense of immense distance as if the body and the mind and all that happens to them were somewhere far out on the horizon.

I am like a cinema screen-clear and empty.

The pictures pass over it and disappear, leaving it as clear and empty as before. In no way is the screen affected by the pictures, nor are the pictures affected by the screen.

The screen intercepts and reflects the pictures. These are lumps of destiny, but not my destiny; the destinies of the people on the screen.

The character will become a person when he begins to shape his life instead of accepting it as it comes-identifying himself with it.

To myself I am neither perceivable nor conceivable; there is nothing I can point out and say “this I am”.

Only the onlooker is real, call him Self or Atman.

It is enough to shift attention from the screen onto oneself to break the spell.

It is enough to shift attention to the Self and keep it there.

To know the picture as the play of light on the screen gives freedom from the idea that the picture is real.

This is all imagination. In the light of consciousness all sorts of things happen and one need not give special importance to any.

The world just sprouts into being out of nothing and returns to nothing.

In reality I only look. Whatever is done is done on the stage. Joy and sorrow, life and death, they are real to the man in bondage; to me they are all in the show, as unreal as the show itself.

I see only consciousness, and know everything to be but consciousness, as you know the pictures on the cinema screen to be but light.

Movement is illusory. What moves is the film-which is the mind.

Bodily existence is but-a movement in consciousness.

I am not my body. I am the witness only.

The very purpose of creation is the fulfillment of desire. Things happen by their own nature. From my point of view everything happens by itself, quite spontaneously. I do nothing. I just see them happen.

The person is never the subject. You can see a person but you are not a person.

The difference between the person and the witness is as between not knowing and knowing oneself.

Mere knowledge is not enough; the knower must be known.

Without knowledge of the knower there can be no peace.

I know myself as I am in reality.

I am neither the body nor the mind. I am beyond all these.

You are accustomed to deal with things, physical and mental.

I am not a thing, nor are you. We are neither matter nor energy, neither body nor mind.

Once you have a glimpse of your own being you will not find me difficult to understand.

You must gain your own experience.

We believe so many things on hearsay. We never cared to verify.

You are confused because you believe you are in the world, not the world in you.

You see yourself in the world, while I see the world in myself.

To you, you get born and die, while to me, the world appears and disappears.

There is nothing wrong with the senses, it is your imagination that misleads you.

There is a deep contradiction in your attitude which you do not see.

In ignorance the seer becomes the seen and in wisdom he is the seeing.

When you refuse to open your eyes, what can you be shown?

Investigate your world, apply your mind to it, examine it critically, scrutinize every idea about it.

To question-is the essence of revolt. Without revolt there can be no freedom.

The way to truth lies through the destruction of the false.

To destroy the false you must question your most inveterate beliefs. Of these the idea that you are the body is the worst.

It is the clinging to the false that makes the truth so difficult to see.

You progress by rejection.

Everything must be scrutinized and the unnecessary ruthlessly destroyed.

There cannot be too much destruction. For in reality nothing is of value.

See your world as it is, not as you imagine it to be.

See the person you imagine yourself to be as a part of the world you perceive within your mind and look at the mind from the outside, for you are not the mind.

The world you can perceive is a very small world-entirely private.

Take it to be a dream and be done with it.

What begins and ends is mere appearance. The world can be said to appear but not to be.

Nothing perceivable is real.

Reality is essentially alone. To know that nothing is, is true knowledge.

The world lasts for a moment. It is your memory that makes you think that the world continues.

Memory creates the illusion of continuity.

I see the world as it is, a momentary appearance in consciousness.

The totality of all mental projections is the Great Illusion.

When I look beyond the mind I see the witness.

Beyond the witness is infinite emptiness and silence.

For the path of return naughting oneself is necessary.

My stand I take where nothing is.

To the mind it is all darkness and silence.

It is deep and dark, mystery beyond mystery.

It is, while all else merely happens.

It is like a bottomless well, whatever falls into it disappears.

Absolute reality imparts reality to whatever comes into being.

You are the source of reality-a dimensionless center of perception that imparts reality to whatever it perceives-a pure witness that watches what is going on and remains unaffected.

It is only imagination and self-identification with the imagined that encloses and converts the inner watcher into a person.

The person is merely the result of a misunderstanding. In reality there is no such thing.

Feelings, thoughts and actions race before the watcher in endless succession.

In reality there is no person, only the watcher identifying itself.

Self-identifications are patently false and the cause of bondage.

Liberation is never of the person, it is always from the person.

What is liberation? To know that you are beyond birth and death.

Go beyond, go back to the source, go to the Self that is the same whatever happens. See everything as emanating from the light which is the source of your own being.

By forgetting who you are and imagining yourself a mortal creature you create so much trouble for yourself that you have to wake up, like from a bad dream.

What you call survival is but the survival of a dream.

It is your desire to hold onto it that creates the problem. Let go.

Suffering is due entirely to clinging or resisting; it is a sign of our unwillingness to move on, to flow with life.

Your attachment is your bondage.

There is no such thing as free will. Will is bondage.

Your desires just happen to you along with their fulfillment or non-fulfillment. You can change neither. It all merely happens.

As long as there is the sense of identity with the body, frustration is inevitable. It is because of your illusion that you are the doer.

There is trouble only when you cling to something. When you hold onto nothing, no trouble arises.

Give up all and you gain all.

Then life becomes what it was meant to be: pure radiation from an inexhaustible source.

In that light the world appears dimly like a dream.

In the dream you love some and not others. On waking up you find you are love itself, embracing all.

Personal love-invariably binds; love in freedom is love of all.

The reward of self-knowledge is freedom from the personal self.

Freedom means letting go. Spiritual maturity lies in the readiness to let go of everything.

Discrimination will lead to detachment. You gain nothing. You leave behind what is not your own and find what you have never lost-your own being.

One you realize that there is nothing in this world which you can call your own you look at it from the outside as you look at a play on the stage or a picture on the screen.

When you refuse to play the game you are out of it.

Find the immutable center where all movement takes birth. Be the axis at the center-not whirling at the periphery.

The seeker is he who is in search of himself.

Give up all questions except one: “Who am I?”

The only fact you are sure of is that you are. ‘I am’ is certain. ‘I am this’ is not.

A false question cannot be answered. It can only be seen as false.

The question “Who am I?” has no answer. No experience can answer it.

All I can truly say is ‘I am’.

I am beyond consciousness and therefore in consciousness I cannot say what I am.

There is nothing wrong in the idea of a body-but limiting oneself to one body only is a mistake.

In reality all existence, every form, is my own, within my consciousness.

Destroy the wall that separates, the ‘I-am-the-body-idea’, and the inner and the outer become one.

In reality all is one, the outer being merely a projection of the inner.

This battle is always won, for it is a battle between the true and the false.

It is the witnessing consciousness that makes realization attainable.

The person is in resistance to the very end.

It is the witness that works on the person-on the totality of its illusions.

Abandon all self-identifications.

It is a vicious circle. Only self-realization can break it.

Self-surrender is the surrender of all self-concern. It cannot be done. It happens when you realize your true nature.

Complete self-surrender by itself is liberation.

Abandon the idea of a separate ‘I’. By focusing the mind on ‘I am’, on the sense of being, ‘I am so-and-so’ dissolves; ‘I am a witness only’ remains and that too submerges in ‘I am all’.

Then the all becomes the One and the One-yourself.

Realize that you are dreaming a dream you call the world.

Look at the dream as a dream. When you see your dream as dream you wake up.

When you have seen the dream as a dream you have done all that needs be done.

The dreamer is one. I am beyond all dreams. I am the light in which all dreams appear and disappear.

I've read a lot of that stuff. Some truths behind it which can be powerful.

What I mainly disagree with is that there is no good or bad, and that it's only a label we place on it.

My experience of the world disagrees with this. I believe that there are objective morals and that the rape and murder of an innocent child is bad or wrong in an absolute sense rather than 'just being what it is'

Proponents of this say we are to practice love. So despite no good or bad, as they claim, they are labeling love as good. If there is no good or bad then it makes no difference at all what we do. So they say there is no labeling or categorizing as good but anyone can see its apparent that there is.

Some good beliefs in here but the above contradiction is obvious. Most of the teachings are good but the above sort of inconsistency in logic which is glaringly exposed.

Oh my
You are exercising freewill.
This simply will not do!

pavilion103 said:

What I mainly disagree with is that there is no good or bad, and that it's only a label we place on it.

My experience of the world disagrees with this. I believe that there are objective morals and that the rape and murder of an innocent child is bad or wrong in an absolute sense rather than 'just being what it is'

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And what of our old favourite Abe and Isaac? The objective moral being killing (BAD)...(ones own son, VERY BAD) yet with the label being good because he was willing to do it for the lord.

Maybe I should just buy into the idea that there is no good or bad and then I can stop using a stop-loss for my trading. It won't be bad trading and when my account balance declines that won't be bad either. I can't lose (oh wait it's not bad to lose anyway :S)

My new thread "Pav's dart-board trading system" will be a phenomenon!!

boofis said:

And what of our old favourite Abe and Isaac? The objective moral being killing (BAD)...(ones own son, VERY BAD) yet with the label being good because he was willing to do it for the lord.

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Um. We are discussing non-duality at the moment.

It got really hot in the kitchen and you jumped straight out!

The thing that pisses me off the most about forums and most discussions about most areas of life. When someone comes under fire, rather than addressing the specific point they deflect.

pavilion103 said:

Um. We are discussing non-duality at the moment.

It got really hot in the kitchen and you jumped straight out!

The thing that pisses me off the most about forums and most discussions about most areas of life. When someone comes under fire, rather than addressing the specific point they deflect.

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What on earth did I deflect?
You made a statement ...

My experience of the world disagrees with this. I believe that there are objective morals and that the rape and murder of an innocent child is bad or wrong in an absolute sense rather than 'just being what it is'

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.... I made a response in relation to your belief of objective morality, and referred directly to the book you require for objectivity, pointing out the seemingly blatant contradiction...

The kitchen temp is fine here

I was curious as to why you didn't respond to my comments on non-duality but rather jumped straight to another belief system.

What are your thoughts on my non-duality contradiction assessment?

pavilion103 said:

The thing that pisses me off the most about forums and most discussions about most areas of life. When someone comes under fire, rather than addressing the specific point they deflect.

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Have you just had an epiphany? You have demonstrated the art of deflection and misdirection in this thread many times with respect to avoiding questions around the absurdities of Christian mythology by attacking evolution and the science around it instead as though it's equivalent to an atheist religion. Practice what you preach.

pavilion103 said:

I was curious as to why you didn't respond to my comments on non-duality but rather jumped straight to another belief system.

What are your thoughts on my non-duality contradiction assessment?

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Ah! Fair enough, like you I also don't buy into their conclusion of 'love'.

I have addressed many questions directly thrown at me in this thread.

This is why I stay away. I shouldn't have got sucked in to posting again in here.

In person this would be a good, interesting chat. On here its a bunch if mumbo jumbo going all over the place.

Nothing to do with whatever I believe but when I come into a thread of people who have no consistent application of historical evidence and no understanding of what scientific evidence even is(observable and repeatable) there really is little point.

A forum is probably the worst place to try and dissect the deeper issues.

pavilion103 said:

I've read a lot of that stuff. Some truths behind it which can be powerful.

What I mainly disagree with is that there is no good or bad, and that it's only a label we place on it.

My experience of the world disagrees with this. I believe that there are objective morals and that the rape and murder of an innocent child is bad or wrong in an absolute sense rather than 'just being what it is'

Proponents of this say we are to practice love. So despite no good or bad, as they claim, they are labeling love as good. If there is no good or bad then it makes no difference at all what we do. So they say there is no labeling or categorizing as good but anyone can see its apparent that there is.

Some good beliefs in here but the above contradiction is obvious. Most of the teachings are good but the above sort of inconsistency in logic which is glaringly exposed.

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I'm not meaning to be offensive, but you don't get it. Not even close to getting it! You say "some good beliefs here", when the idea is to burn all beliefs... the whole lot has to be destroyed. In particular the belief that you exist as a separate entity called 'pavillion'.

You say "proponents of this say we are to practice love", but the ones that really understand are not fussed about love at all. Love is neither here nor there in comparison to total freedom. Love is just the ego seeking wholeness through another external source, which can only result in continued bondage (samsara).

From the enlightened state, rape and murder are the equivalent of a child's birthday party. It's all one big game. You create good and bad with your mind (as I do, since I am not enlightened either).

In the above excerpt, Nisagardatta says "In reality I only look. Whatever is done is done on the stage. Joy and sorrow, life and death, they are real to the man in bondage; to me they are all in the show, as unreal as the show itself".

You're right I missed the point.

I'm just saying I disagree. I believe that we have been given a conscience and that compassion is an important part of who we are as humans and that we are created with a purpose to love and help those in need (yes we do have needs its not an illusion). Compassion and love are both a very real part of reality (if that makes sense) inherent in us. To ignore these or disconnect from them is to lose touch with reality and go down a dangerous path of 'anything goes'

Not having a go at you either because I don't want to argue but something that is so ironic is that what you are writing in each post is of itself a set of beliefs and thoughts.

One being the belief that I'm wrong and "don't get it"

pavilion103 said:

On here its a bunch if mumbo jumbo going all over the place.

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As stated previously, mumbo jumbo (evidenced again in recent postings here) is a defining characteristic of religious belief.

Nothing to do with whatever I believe but when I come into a thread of people who have no consistent application of historical evidence and no understanding of what scientific evidence even is(observable and repeatable) there really is little point.

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If you truly had a clear understanding of what constitutes evidence yourself then you would have contempt for religious superstition, it's poisonous impact on human society and all the metaphysical nonsense deployed to justify belief in invisible celestial dictators.

FxTrader said:

As stated previously, mumbo jumbo (evidenced again in recent postings here) is a defining characteristic of religious belief.

If you truly had a clear understanding of what constitutes evidence yourself then you would have contempt for religious superstition, it's poisonous impact on human society and all the metaphysical nonsense deployed to justify belief in invisible celestial dictators.

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To a large degree I agree with you. I do have contempt for religious superstition. Christianity and other religions have manipulated people and justified atrocities. These man-made traditions and rules do not sit well with me.

I don't believe in Christianity or put my faith in it. I believe in Christ however, his teachings and the historical evidence to support his resurrection.

So I don't disagree with you on many of your points.

And I won't believe what any man or book says on any topic without investigation and testing for myself.

I view the gospels as an historic document and apply the same historical tests to it as I do every other document in antiquity and then reach a conclusion as to its reliability.

To blindly accept any text is foolish.

pavilion103 said:

Not having a go at you either because I don't want to argue but something that is so ironic is that what you are writing in each post is of itself a set of beliefs and thoughts.

One being the belief that I'm wrong and "don't get it"

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This is where it gets tricky. There's the famous saying: "The finger pointing at the moon is not the moon itself". So if I state something, yes it might be in the form of a belief but it is (hopefully) a useful belief in that it points towards the moon instead of into further confusion. Once the "moon" is pointed out, the idea is that the observer then discards the finger (ie. belief) which is pointing at it. In this way, useful beliefs are those that can serve as a step ladder. At some point you kick the step ladder away, because if you don't it will hinder you. All beliefs have to go, in other words.

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pavilion103 said:

You're right I missed the point.

I'm just saying I disagree. I believe that we have been given a conscience and that compassion is an important part of who we are as humans and that we are created with a purpose to love and help those in need (yes we do have needs its not an illusion). Compassion and love are both a very real part of reality (if that makes sense) inherent in us. To ignore these or disconnect from them is to lose touch with reality and go down a dangerous path of 'anything goes'

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These statements are all true from the egioc state of consciousness, which I also inhabit. But they are not true from the enlightened perspective.

One does in fact need to "lose touch with reality" in order to wake up to what's really True (God in other words). What we think of as reality is apparently just illusion when compared to Truth. This why it's such a dangerous undertaking. Some go mad in the process, or experience what St John of the Cross called "The Dark Night".