Now I feel that I am, but because my concept of religion has changed, not my own beliefs.
I have recently joined this forum and found it to be a place of great diversity and open-mindedness.
So I would like to ask all Christians, Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus, Pagans, Satanists and Confucians: do you think I belong to your religion?
If not, what belief should I accept or release in order to be considered to belong to your religion?
In general, do you think that your faith is exclusive or that it is compatible with one or more others?
So here are my beliefs:
I believe that every human is a some kind of prophet and hears the voice of God in his head.
I believe that different people can hear voices with opposite meanings and therefore fight each other and still both do God's will.
Even inside one's own head one hears contradictory voices and desires yet all of those come from God.
Good and evil are relative and both come from God. I believe that William Blake was the prophet who understood these things most clearly:
Like Blake, I am a proponent of Romanticism, which is not a religion but a kind of philosophy.William Blake wrote: All Bibles or sacred codes have been the causes of the following Errors.
1. That Man has two real existing principles Viz: a Body & a Soul.
2. That Energy, call'd Evil, is alone from the Body, & that Reason, call'd Good, is alone from the Soul.
3. That God will torment Man in Eternity for following his Energies.
But the following Contraries to these are True
1. Man has no Body distinct from his Soul for that call'd Body is a portion of Soul discern'd by the five Senses, the chief inlets of Soul in this age.
2. Energy is the only life and is from the Body and Reason is the bound or outward circumference of Energy.
3. Energy is Eternal Delight.
Although I am a scientist and use my reason every day, I value emotion over reason in the same way that I value my mind over my right hand: reason is merely a tool, a means to an end, while emotions are ends in themselves.
I believe that humans are not solitary but social and that they cannot have a meaningful life without interactions with other humans.
Having said that, I reject any religious law or dogma, or any religious authority of one human over another. Every human must follow his own conscience only or choose to follow another's, but out of choice, not out of law.
Like Blake, I consider myself a very unorthodox Christian. I accept Jesus as the Son of God and as a path to salvation but I do not believe that he was made of divinity, rather that he received some spark that brought him uniquely in contact with or merged with God.
I am therefore open to the suggestion that Son of God must be taken metaphorically, as the Muslims claim. I accept Mohammed as a prophet so I endorse the Shahada but I would not limit the number of prophets to the prophets described in the Bible, the Qu'ran or any other holy book.
I do accept the Bible and the Qu'ran and others as holy books and as the word of God, but I would not restrict the word of God to these books nor do I feel bound by them, since the word of God need not be self-consistent and the voice of God in your conscience is the highest authority.
I support the Hindu and Pagan idea of many gods which all represent aspects of God and of Nature, and I do not object against their worship.
I consider these gods to be on par with the angels and saints worshipped as relics and icons by many Christians.
I can even support the idea that in some sense, every human is a god and an aspect of God.
I believe that gods, saints and angels, Christian, Hindu, Germanic, Celtic or otherwise, can be said to represent Jungian archetypes in the collective human consciousness as well as different paths that can be taken in life.
I believe that time and the self are illusions. Therefore, I reject the concept of an afterlife, believing that Heaven, Hell and reincarnation are all metaphors for what happens when time and self become meaningless.
I recognize that the Dharmic religions (Hinduism and Buddhism) provide the clearest insight on these illusions, but I am not convinced that their methods for breaking these illusions are a good thing, since I love human life as it is.
My favorite metaphor for what happens at my death is that I travel back in time and reincarnate at random as either myself or as someone else, which is the perfect metaphor since this reincarnation is already happening right now.
Sorry for the long post. Religion is a personal thing and I wanted to be precise. So please proclaim me a believer, unbeliever or heretic, and describe how you define them.
