I hear people saying that religion is outdated, and others that religion is not valid unless it comes from historical evidence about what people believed hundreds of years ago. I think these two statements by different groups of people are directly matched to each other. You could argue this happens because the ways of life are different than the people who lived around those times, but this does not always seem to be a problem since many spiritual systems from Africa are still practiced in traditional ways from 10,000 years ago. The ways of life of people who worshiped certain gods influenced practices such as Hinduism or Norse Paganism, but the gods are still active and people still experience their presence.
The reason people think that religion is outdated or no longer applicable is because a lot of groups reject personal experience and want people to believe only what someone wrote down hundreds of years ago. If you’re not the person writing it down, why would you even care? People do not historically believe the same exact thing down to the letter as modern religious institutions want, that thinking comes from the Christian church when they wanted to prevent their movement from splitting from itself. The faith of people tends to vary by regions of a country, city, rural, and are generally extremely varied in folk practices. Modern religious practices reject anything that is not already documented, so spirituality is separated from religion. What we consider religion now, is just an artifact of what spiritual people were doing in the time their prophet was alive. Now people are doing astral projection and making things happen who are technically atheists. You can pray and adopt the spiritual practices of whatever faith, but those are like technologies, and more advanced and effective methods can be found over time.
The reason everyone thinks religion is dated, is because they reject the spiritual beliefs and practices of people that are actually alive now.
It's a shame it's been abused. It's what the world needs now.
Growing up as Christian I was never shown the spiritual side. I only found that when trying to make sense of why my life didn't make sense.
As a kid I was always freaked/creeped out by church. As I got older I started to realize it's the community that most people go to church for. But when I would go to church it was like my family was faking everything. And I felt the same about many other families that went.
It's wild...but it took me till I was about 25-28 to feel what love actually was... And that was from using mushrooms. Like even though my family told me they loved me, their actions didn't always show it and their religious beliefs and politics certainly didn't. I just always felt alone and separated from my family because I didn't want to be a fake person. For them maybe it was their real persona... But for me it was a hard lie that ruined my growth as a child and throughout my adolescents and young adult life. I'm still broken from it. That's why religion is a touchy subject for me. I wouldn't wish my life on anyone and what sucks is that a lot of people have and have had it a lot harder than me.
I see religion and spirituality as a governing system. I see organized religion as a control mechanism for society but lacking spirituality. I also feel like you cannot have a government and religions under the same roof. I feel like they naturally try to cancel each other out.
Spirituality is honing on yourself and abilities? Manifesting through thought to bring better days. Basically prayer... But when I grew up prayer meant talking to God like a person. I guess faith was still their though... But the way I saw organized religion made me lose faith.
This all led me to trusting chaos as God. And having faith that order always comes from chaos eventually.
But everything's a mess today... I don't know what to think.
These are just my uneducated thoughts from thinking to much...Idk if I even believe just wrote... I was going to delete it... But idk I'll leave it up for now.
Thank you for sharing. I think this comment is good and it does fit into this community as a spiritual community so I hope you decide to keep it up.
Mushrooms are very powerful spiritual substances despite how the modern world wants us to view them. The mushroom god is considered a guide and traditional indigenous people of South America used them primarily until people started going there to try them and they started being used as recreational substances in the west. Despite this, I find they open a person's mind regardless.