(I'm stereotyping to some degree here, but the general point I'm trying to get across is more important than any poor judgments I'm accidentally making. Yeah, that's my lame attempt at a disclaimer so I can get away with spouting off my ignorant perspective.)
In broad terms, I see religions by nature as restrictive, filled with rituals and rules, which are meant to conform personal beliefs into specified, preexisting doctrine. They lack adaptiveness for individual uniquenesses and instead generalize people into a system of standard morals in an effort to harmonize the populous and develop an explicit system of judgment. But at what cost? What happens to those who can't or won't conform? In their attempt to collect what is by nature diverse, they create conflict and outcasts, an inevitable witch hunt.
I see spirituality on the other hand as something much more personal and introspective, an attempt to come to terms with one's own self. A religious person attempts to persuade others to follow what he thinks is right, as if a following can subdue his insecurities, while a truly spiritual person who has found his/her peace has little to say and knows that what is true for him/her may not be for others. Of course there are religious people who are spiritual, but how many? And how many people blindly define themselves by their religion without questioning it or themselves?
We're not taught to think for ourselves in school or even by most of our parents. We're taught to conform, obey, and follow. There's little encouragement for young people to take the journey towards personal enlightenment, instead only a persistent enforcement of rules and restrictions are inflicted. "Don't ask, that's just the way it is." Even the one year I did in a private religious school, we discussed only the world of degraded values and the numerous ways we could stray from the right path but questioning the given moral system itself was blasphemous.
I've had pieces of this discussion with one of my religious friends, whom I do respect and don't mean to harp here on his choice for being religious. He tries to be a good person, follow what he was brought up to consider right, and he is a better person for it. (Especially since he says that if he didn't have God, he wouldn't think he'd be able to stop himself from living more reckless and selfishly.) Once he expressed how he'd rather be in his position than of mine because he couldn't imagine "having to start from scratch," saying that he had too many things in life to worry about already. Is that really the right way to put it? Could we collectively be brought up to look at it otherwise or is this just a choice that only some people want?
What brings me to ramble on about it now is a conversation I had recently with a friend's dad. I can't say how accurate any of the following really is, but he was telling me that in India, where he spent most of his life, there is a much stronger sense of spirituality in people and that it's taught in schools more prominently and objectively. He expressed how rich their history was in spiritual development, and how no spiritual leader means to start a religion but rather it his disciples that come in afterwards and do that. He talked about how the caste system tarnished good intentioned beliefs to wield them as a force for suppression. Then he started to say that in modern India people were frustrated with the thousands of years of religious oppression and fighting, and how there is an increasingly large movement for a more open and personal sense of spirituality instead. He thinks that this movement will spread globally as people tire of all the fighting and conflict between religions and realize that we are all after the same thing. I can't say I share his hopefulness. I think people have an intrinsic desire form groups, which lead so easily competitive urges. But maybe I'm wrong. Maybe it's something we're taught and not in our nature.
In broad terms, I see religions by nature as restrictive, filled with rituals and rules, which are meant to conform personal beliefs into specified, preexisting doctrine. They lack adaptiveness for individual uniquenesses and instead generalize people into a system of standard morals in an effort to harmonize the populous and develop an explicit system of judgment. But at what cost? What happens to those who can't or won't conform? In their attempt to collect what is by nature diverse, they create conflict and outcasts, an inevitable witch hunt.
I see spirituality on the other hand as something much more personal and introspective, an attempt to come to terms with one's own self. A religious person attempts to persuade others to follow what he thinks is right, as if a following can subdue his insecurities, while a truly spiritual person who has found his/her peace has little to say and knows that what is true for him/her may not be for others. Of course there are religious people who are spiritual, but how many? And how many people blindly define themselves by their religion without questioning it or themselves?
We're not taught to think for ourselves in school or even by most of our parents. We're taught to conform, obey, and follow. There's little encouragement for young people to take the journey towards personal enlightenment, instead only a persistent enforcement of rules and restrictions are inflicted. "Don't ask, that's just the way it is." Even the one year I did in a private religious school, we discussed only the world of degraded values and the numerous ways we could stray from the right path but questioning the given moral system itself was blasphemous.
I've had pieces of this discussion with one of my religious friends, whom I do respect and don't mean to harp here on his choice for being religious. He tries to be a good person, follow what he was brought up to consider right, and he is a better person for it. (Especially since he says that if he didn't have God, he wouldn't think he'd be able to stop himself from living more reckless and selfishly.) Once he expressed how he'd rather be in his position than of mine because he couldn't imagine "having to start from scratch," saying that he had too many things in life to worry about already. Is that really the right way to put it? Could we collectively be brought up to look at it otherwise or is this just a choice that only some people want?
What brings me to ramble on about it now is a conversation I had recently with a friend's dad. I can't say how accurate any of the following really is, but he was telling me that in India, where he spent most of his life, there is a much stronger sense of spirituality in people and that it's taught in schools more prominently and objectively. He expressed how rich their history was in spiritual development, and how no spiritual leader means to start a religion but rather it his disciples that come in afterwards and do that. He talked about how the caste system tarnished good intentioned beliefs to wield them as a force for suppression. Then he started to say that in modern India people were frustrated with the thousands of years of religious oppression and fighting, and how there is an increasingly large movement for a more open and personal sense of spirituality instead. He thinks that this movement will spread globally as people tire of all the fighting and conflict between religions and realize that we are all after the same thing. I can't say I share his hopefulness. I think people have an intrinsic desire form groups, which lead so easily competitive urges. But maybe I'm wrong. Maybe it's something we're taught and not in our nature.
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