What "God" Do You Worship?

[bushidomartialarts]

can i change my answer to Thor?

they had real gods in the old days. real gods, with real hammers that put the real smackdown on the badguys.

if a bunch of romans nailed thor to something, do you think he would've come back and forgiven them? i think not. he woulda come back and opened up a thundergod-sized can of mjolnir whoopass.



(of course, the mythological precedents in old norse and greek mythology for the christ legend is a discussion for another time)

 

[Carol]

Some people worship another person as God. This is quite common in the guru system of India. I’ve never been able to understand that. I share so many of the spiritual beliefs of Hinduism. I believe in reincarnation, and I find much inspiration in the ancient Vedic literature, yet I’ve never been able to appreciate worshipping the guru as God. There are just too many cheaters who set themselves up as gurus. It is dangerous to acknowledge divinity in someone else without seeing divinity in yourself. Too many people are running around looking for false Gods to worship. Even with as much beauty as I find in the traditional spirituality of India, I continue to be dismayed by the insistence of gurus that they be worshipped.

Elder,

With a bowed head and folded hand I would like to kindly make a request. What you are speaking of is indiginous to India and can be found in India, but there are more faiths indiginous to India than just Hinduism. As such, a description like "the guru system of India" is inaccurate.

The Sikh faith also was bourne of India. There was one Guruship that encompassed 10 consecutive teachers, the 10 Sikh Gurus. These Gurus were not gods, never claimed to be, never asked anyone to worship them, and didn't set out "found" a religion.

April 13th is coming up...Baisakhi Day. On Baisakhi Day, 1699 the 10th Guru announced that his students would be called "Sikhs" (meaning student, or disciple of God), he transferred his guruship to Sri Guru Granth Sahib jee (Sikh scriptures), and so remains the Sikh faith to today. The Sikh faith is strongly monotheistic and strictly forbids any form of worship to anything except the Almighty God.

There is fraud in every path of worship. Humans are infallible, and many are seduced by power, money or both. Even in Sikhism there are those that proclaim themselves to be a Saint of some sort, and there are many gullible Sikhs wrongly break their focus away from God and turn to the human for some sort of shortcut to a personal goal.

The reason why I am saying is simply because the statements that you are using are a too pandemic...I do not believe that you intended to be offensive. Sikhism is the 5th largest religion in the world...but it remains a faith that is not well known in the west.

Respectfully,
Carol Kaur

 

[Makalakumu]

He woulda come back and opened up a thundergod-sized can of mjolnir whoopass.

:viking3: :rofl: :viking2: :rofl: :viking1: :rofl:

He'd bust out a can of mjolnir Ragnorok!

 

[Xue Sheng]

Some people worship another person as God. This is quite common in the guru system of India. I’ve never been able to understand that. I share so many of the spiritual beliefs of Hinduism. I believe in reincarnation, and I find much inspiration in the ancient Vedic literature, yet I’ve never been able to appreciate worshipping the guru as God. There are just too many cheaters who set themselves up as gurus. It is dangerous to acknowledge divinity in someone else without seeing divinity in yourself. Too many people are running around looking for false Gods to worship. Even with as much beauty as I find in the traditional spirituality of India, I continue to be dismayed by the insistence of gurus that they be worshipped.

The Religions of India

Hinduism developed roughly about 5000 years ago.
Buddhism and Jainism developed around 500BC
Sikhism appeared in the 15th century.

India Today

HINDUISM - about 82%
ISLAM - about 12%
CHRISTIANITY - about 2.5%
SIKHISM - about 2%
BUDDHISM - about 0.7%
JAINISM - about 0.5%
ZOROASTRIANISM - about 0.01%
JUDAISM - about 0.0005%

guru:
Hinduism & Tibetan Buddhism. A personal spiritual teacher.
A teacher and guide in spiritual and philosophical matters.
A trusted counselor and adviser; a mentor.

Elder,

With a bowed head and folded hand I would like to kindly make a request. What you are speaking of is indiginous to India and can be found in India, but there are more faiths indiginous to India than just Hinduism. As such, a description like "the guru system of India" is inaccurate.

The Sikh faith also was bourne of India. There was one Guruship that encompassed 10 consecutive teachers, the 10 Sikh Gurus. These Gurus were not gods, never claimed to be, never asked anyone to worship them, and didn't set out "found" a religion.

April 13th is coming up...Baisakhi Day. On Baisakhi Day, 1699 the 10th Guru announced that his students would be called "Sikhs" (meaning student, or disciple of God), he transferred his guruship to Sri Guru Granth Sahib jee (Sikh scriptures), and so remains the Sikh faith to today. The Sikh faith is strongly monotheistic and strictly forbids any form of worship to anything except the Almighty God.

There is fraud in every path of worship. Humans are infallible, and many are seduced by power, money or both. Even in Sikhism there are those that proclaim themselves to be a Saint of some sort, and there are many gullible Sikhs wrongly break their focus away from God and turn to the human for some sort of shortcut to a personal goal.

The reason why I am saying is simply because the statements that you are using are a too pandemic...I do not believe that you intended to be offensive. Sikhism is the 5th largest religion in the world...but it remains a faith that is not well known in the west.

Respectfully,
Carol Kaur

Thank You for this post, I believe it was necessary and agree whole-heartedly.

 

[elder999]

Elder,
There is fraud in every path of worship. Humans are infallible, and many are seduced by power, money or both. Even in Sikhism there are those that proclaim themselves to be a Saint of some sort, and there are many gullible Sikhs wrongly break their focus away from God and turn to the human for some sort of shortcut to a personal goal.

The reason why I am saying is simply because the statements that you are using are a too pandemic...I do not believe that you intended to be offensive. Sikhism is the 5th largest religion in the world...but it remains a faith that is not well known in the west.

Respectfully,
Carol Kaur

No disrespect was intended, but the behavior I was describing is pandemic-though I'll concede that not all gurus are so affected; I'm more than a little familaiar with Sikh dharma, however, and have nothing but respect for it-I grew up with a Punjabi family named Singh for neighbors in New York, and I even have a little familiarity with gatka, courtesy of Mrs. Singh.

I've also been in New Mexico for some time, and I'm neighbors with the the "Sikh" community in Espanola; while there are many good people who are part of it, and I've even enjoyed attending kirtan with them on a few occasions(Creator blessed me with a marvelous voice), they've displayed the sort of behavior I spoke of when i spoke of guru worship, and the same could be siad for their "guru," before he passed on...

I also said that "I've never been able to understand it," while adding how I've gained much from the spiritual traditions of India.............for all I know (being quite fallible myself) those people are right to worship their guru as God, and I'm missing out on something, but I obviously don't think so...thanks you, though; I appreciate your viewpoint, especially in light of your faith.:asian:

 

[Carol]

Elder,

Thank you so much for writing back Your response is greatly appreciated. How wonderful it is to hear that you have enjoyed your contact with the community in Espanola.

It is not the real Gurus that have caused these problems, and I agree with you that such a problem is pandemic across India, and other nations as well. Such influences have also slipped in to Islam, especially in countries without Shari'a law.

My request is just...to not dilute the word Guru further, as it does have a very important meaning in a religious context...lets call the charlatans what they are: fake gurus.

:asian:

Bowing in humility and respect,
Carol Kaur

 

[ed-swckf]

I believe in me, i am my own god, its me that is the center of my universe, without me i don't exist, i'm omnipitant in my existance. Its due to my actions and reactions that i am on the path i am on, i am almighty and great and better than all other gods, deitys or supreme beings. I am pretty laid back as far as gods go, its an internal worship that never needs to be expressed outwardly although taking pride in myself could be considered an outward self worship and showing self belief too could be considered such. I'm not delusional i just don't see any other believable god that can do for me what i can do for me.

I don't really see myself as a god but i simply do not believe in god, i believe in control and coercion and peoples need or want to believe but ultimately i don't feel that need to believe in some god created in mans image as a vessel to embody the unknown.

 

[Ray]

...i'm omnipitant in my existance.

Ominpotent? maybe. good speller? Maybe not.

 

[Lisa]

Ominpotent? maybe. good speller? Maybe not.

Omnipotent? maybe. good speller? Maybe not.

 

[heretic888]

While I'm not sure I "worship" anything in the traditional sense....

I consider myself something along the lines of a postmodern neo-perennialist or nondual panentheist. If that makes any sense.

That being said, and while Michael may not like this, I think elder999 has a point when he says that "everybody has a god". In particular, I am reminded of psychologist James Fowler's Faith-Development Theory (FTD):

http://www.martialtalk.com/forum/showthread.php?t=30751

I would like to re-post something I wrote on that thread, as I believe it pertains to this discussion:

James Fowler gives a very good description of the distinction between "faith", "religion", and "beliefs" in Religion and the Clinical Practice of Psychology (ed. Edward Shafranske, 1996, pp. 168-169):

"Faith-development theory and research have focused on a multidimensional construct for faith that sees it as foundation to social relations, to personal identity, and to the making of personal and cultural meanings (Fowler, 1980, 1981, 1986, 1987, 1989, 1991). My claim is that faith is a generic feature of human beings. To make this claim credible, I must take some care to distinguish faith from two related patterns of human action that are often treated as synonymous with faith; belief and religion. Belief, in the modern period, has come increasingly mean the giving of intellectual assent to propositional statements that codify the doctrines or ideological claims of a particular tradition or group. Although belief may be an aspect of a person's or a group's faith, it is only a part. Faith includes unconscious dynamics as well as conscious awareness. It includes deep-seated emotional dimensions as well as cognitive operations and content. Faith is both more personal and more existentially defining than belief, understood in this modern sense.

Religion, as distinguished from faith, may be thought of as a cumulative tradition composed from the myriad beliefs and practices that have expressed and formed the faith of individuals in the past and present. The components of a cumulative tradition can include art and architecture; symbols, rituals, narrative, and myth; scriptures, doctrines, ethical teachings, and music; practices of justice and mercy; and much more. Elements from a cumulative tradition can be the souce of awakening and forming for the faith consciousness of individuals in the present. A current generation's drawing on and being formed by elements from a cumulative tradition make for a reciprocity of mutual vitalization and commitment. In the long evolution of humankind, the tie between faith and religion has generally been inextricable. It is only in the modern period, where many people have separated themselves from religious communities and religious faith, that religious faith needs to be distinguished from faith in a more generic and universal sense.

Faith, understood in this more inclusive sense, may be characterized as an integral, centering process, underlying the formation of the beliefs, values, and meanings, that (a) gives coherence and direction to people's lives; (b) links them in shared trusts and loyalties with others; (c) grounds their personal stances and communal loyalties in a sense of relatedness to a larger frame of reference; and (d) enables them to face and deal with the limit conditions of human life, relying on that which has the quality of ultimacy in their lives.

The foregoing characterization of faith is meant to be as formal as possible. It aims to include descriptions of religious faith as well as the explicit faith orientations of individuals and groups who can be described as secular or eclectic in their belief and value orientations. The non-content-specific characterizations of faith correlates with the formal intent of the descriptions of the stages of faith. The stages aim to describe patterned operations of knowing and valuing that underlie consciousness. The varying stages of faith can be differentiated in relation to the degrees of complexity, of comprehensiveness, of internal differentiation, and of moral inclusiveness that their operations of knowing and valuing manifest. In continuity with the constructive developmental tradition, faith stages are held to be invariant, sequential, and hierarchical."

Laterz.

 

[celtic_crippler]

Watch "What the Bleep do We Know?"
Just a suggestion. =)

 

[elder999]

Watch "What the Bleep do We Know?"
Just a suggestion. =)

Don't get me started-that movie was good at provoking conversation, but full of ridiculously bad science and metaphysical gobbledy-gook.

 

[heretic888]

Don't get me started-that movie was good at provoking conversation, but full of ridiculously bad science and metaphysical gobbledy-gook.

While I have not seen the film in question, it has been my personal experience that movies or documentaries that presume to depict history, philosophy, and/or science almost always (if not always) do a terrible job of doing so.

Just my opinion, mind you.

Laterz.

 

[ed-swckf]

Ominpotent? maybe. good speller? Maybe not.

Omnipotent? maybe. good speller? Maybe not.

Hahaha, pointing out a spelling mistake can't backfire much worse than spelling it wrong yourself.

However as god i can't be wrong so its obvious you've all been spelling it incorrectly!!

 

[Ray]

Hahaha, pointing out a spelling mistake can't backfire much worse than spelling it wrong yourself.

However as god i can't be wrong so its obvious you've all been spelling it incorrectly!!

I sent Lisa some rep points a couple days ago for catching my mis-spelling.

But that still doesn't make you a god.

 

[heretic888]

But that still doesn't make you a god.

Eh, it depends on your definition of the word.

 

[qizmoduis]

Eh, it depends on your definition of the word.

You know, you can redefine words as much as you want to mean almost anything. But at some point, you have to have a conversation. It certainly complicates things immensely if you've basically invented your own language without telling those you're conversing with.

That's the main reason why I objected so fiercely to Elder999's earlier post on everyone worshipping a god. Sure, if you use alternate definitions, then it's certainly true that everyone worships (if worship == respect) a god (if god == object of worship), but such word-jockeying adds nothing to a conversation and serves only to confuse matters, as the listeners will rarely assume a usage other than the common one unless the context is glaringly obvious Alos, and I'm pretty sure it wasn't true in Elder999's case, but in the vast majority of cases I've encountered, such definition replacement is often done disingenuously as well.

Depending on your definition of 'disingenuously' of course.

Or 'definition'. Or 'replacement'. Or ...

 

[heretic888]

You know, you can redefine words as much as you want to mean almost anything. But at some point, you have to have a conversation. It certainly complicates things immensely if you've basically invented your own language without telling those you're conversing with.

Bingo.

That's whole point of such little quibbles. Unless the participants in a discussion clarify from the onset the context that they are speaking from, then confusion and miscommunication will be the inevitable result. This is one of the enduring truths of postmodern philosophy: all truth is contextually-bound --- in other words, contextualism.

That brings up another truth of the postmodern movement (which in its own way is beginning to wind down). Namely, contrary to what passes for "common sense" these days, reality is not just pregiven (a fallacy known as the Myth of the Given); in many significant ways, reality is constructed --- it is as much an interpretation as it is an observation. In other words, constructivism. This is why, contrary to the arguments of physicalists and materialists, the subjective is not secondary to nor derivative from the objective. They are co-substantial and mutually arising.

So, in our own little ways, we do at least in part construct much of the language, rhetoric, lingo, and terminology that we use to communicate with others. That is why communication is a two-way street, it involves actual dialogue. The point it so try to actually understand the perspective, the schema, the context, the construction, the interpretation that the other person is coming from --- not just impose yours onto them.

The phrase "common sense", by the way, is a perfect example of exactly what I'm trying to talk about here. It means different things to different people, so unless you clarify what your "common sense" is, you are liable to be misinterpeted by others.

I hope I made myself clear here. Of course, it does depend (in part) on your definition of "clear".

Laterz.

 

[Ray]

Eh, it depends on your definition of the word.

Cool, that makes me right, right? or maybe not?

 

[heretic888]

Cool, that makes me right, right? or maybe not?

It depends.