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Response to Editorial: Freedom of Religion |
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Written by Myth
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Sunday, 21 December 1997 |
Religion is a flawed institution. It is spirituality institutionalized and filled with traditions and dogma. Religion is cultural. Most religions are old enough whereas they were brought up through one culture. This creates a separation, and a felling of competition. It creates ludicrous ideas like “my interpretation of god/dess is superior to yours, and I have the army to prove this.”
I feel that people demand their own religious superiority because that gives them more “faith” in their own religion. If you can prove your own religion is the biggest and best, then it gives more faith and trust. Then you will feel that by numerical default, you are safe.
Society does make the rules, but it is not nearly that simple. Government makes society. The majority of society appears to be deluded, disillusioned and uninterested. They were raised on television and fast food. I would say that little is sacred, and it doesn't matter as much if all religions are interrelative, to the majority. What seems to matter is that others are like the masses, because the majority does not measure religion by spirituality, but by size and importance of the religion. So we have something totally different masquerading as spirituality.
A government can allow certain people to take peyote, yet not others, because their is no belief in sacred plants, or sacraments. I feel that if you are part of American culture, you are considered part of the American faith, which could be called secular Christianity. The government possibly allow native people this sacrament out of humor. They have humored the natives but are not in any way actually considering the plant spiritual. The majority despises true spirituality, and avoids it avidly. This is accomplished through sensory overwhelmment at all times.
Peyote is not allowed to all because it can be a spiritual undertaking to ingest it. The native peoples are as a whole more comfortable with true spirituality than the average person. This is NOT because of heredity, religion, or color. It is most likely because of their detachment from our society. They have not succumbed to the annihilation of true spirituality, while many of us were raised in pseudo-spiritual religions. This is not an insult to any religion, just to the false sense of faith it has created which, I believe, has brought us to the current situation where what religion you you believe is much less important than the spirituality from which the religion derived in the first place.
Very well, put, Myth. You're preachin to the choir, I think. Thanks for the excellent input!
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