one-god.net

Religion

This website will be concerned with religions and the One God that is worshipped by them,

it shall present ideas that there is only one God, and it is the same God that all of these religions worship.

With Love and Wisdom, the Truth of Reality will prevail.  Written by Lance Volk, a contributor of Quora

One God & Religion

Most of the world has a belief in something, mostly spiritually, all of the worlds religions have one major flaw in common with each other and they also have truth and or wisdom that is the redeeming factor that allows humanity to follow them,

these Religions are based on what the specific scriptures say which they are based, and the one thing that they all have in common is that they are all written by Man.

It is true that some of these men have been prophets, prophets that have had some enlightened guidance that gave them the ability to express such wisdom and profound truths,

some of these prophets did not even transcribe their own scriptures, they were actually written down by other men,

and this is not to mention the scriptures that have been changed by the specific governments that happened to be in power at the time, which also needed to express their beliefs.

This supreme Entity that has enlightened these Prophets over the ages is one and the same,

no matter what name someone wants to call this God is of no real importance, the important part is that this omnipresent, omnipotent and omniscient power is one and the same in all religions, it can even be thought of as all-pervading energy with intelligence as in the Tao,

this intelligence has seen to the task of informing all of the occupants of the world of its existence through the use of Prophets and enlightened individuals,

this word that has been spread for millennia and has been from many cultures of many languages of many parts of the world,

all of these cultures seem to have been given a different part of the puzzle as which would help to explain why these beliefs seem to differ so much,

but just this is not the only reason why there are such great differences,

of course, each country and each Religion seems to want to be the One Truth in all of this,

they are discounting the fact that this all-pervading intelligence is the perfection that encompasses all that is,

all that has been manifested was done so out of the LOVE for all that there is, there are no exclusions, or omissions, which would indicate a mistake,

and that could not possibly BE for PERFECTION, what single Religion or Race or culture could be so arrogant as to think that they are the only true children of God?

It sure seems to put a limitation on an all-knowing entity, it seems like the ultimate oxymoron,

this all-encompassing force doesn't make mistakes and all of its creations are included in the word that is being spread,

this great all-pervading power that has created the universe and all that is in it, has also seen to giving all of mankind FREE WILL,

this is a great thing, but it has also been one of the factors that have colored our scriptures with unnecessary Maya and dogma that has plagued humanity.

Due to the duality of mankind, there is a monkey wrench in the works so to say, that has colored the world's scriptures to add fear, superstition, hate, and evil among other less than wholesome emotions, beliefs and attitudes,

these prophets and enlightened individuals were given the wisdom and truth,

but have added their own mortal two cents by exercising their FREE WILL and coloring these true facts with the dogma of their era, to cause people to be fearful if they were not to heed these wise words.

This so-called EVIL and superstition has created Devils and Hells that are not at all necessary,

the evil and Devils are products of our own duality, they are a potential part of us if we allow them to exist,

they are of the false personality that is not spiritual, but based on material aspirations,

the visceral parts of us that depend on the senses for their existence,

if you think on it at all you will realize that all of the good in life is spiritual and all of the bad is based on material wants,

if you take the seven deadly sins and weigh them against the 7 virtues you will see that they can be separated as if they are from different personalities.

If there had to be an analogy for hell, it would have to be how the bad karma that was accumulated in a certain life would have to be paid for or atoned for in another life which could be considered hell.

Until this duality is dealt with, mankind will continue to reincarnate until it is learned that the Free Will we are given is to be used and controlled for good,

as long as our Free Will is not used to deny anyone else s Free Will or to do evil, That will be a large step in the right direction,

and when mankind realizes that all of these God-given religions have been given to all of humanity to share with each other as so we may learn and to see this all-knowing power's BIG picture meant for all of us to unite and be enlightened.

If you think that God created only one religion and forgot about the rest of the world,

get over yourself, Humility is a virtue.

I think that another problem with religion is that these so-called believers are lacking the true conviction of their faiths,

they are not giving this supreme, all-knowing, all-pervading power enough credit,

they seem to have limited beliefs in the capabilities of their supreme maker of all that exists and will exist.

Besides creating our earth and everyone on it, our solar system, our galaxy and the uncountable billions of galaxies in our visible universe,

this supreme entity or force wants ALL of us to know of its existence,

why else would it create and enlighten all of the individuals from history in various parts of the globe like Buddha, Zoroaster, Lao Tze, Jesus, Mohammad and every other named and unnamed author of every scripture in existence,

how could it even be considered that IT would miss or discount or deny any individual on the entire planet,

especially if they were all created in the image of this most powerful omnipotent force that has ever been or will be?

This arrogance of humanities Religions may prove to be the downfall of our species and even our planet.

It seems to be plain common sense, that every belief of every country has been touched by this all-pervading power or force,

if all of us were to make the effort to attempt to combine our spiritual fragments,

to try to bridge the language barrier of the world's beliefs and join together and compare notes with a logical amount of discrimination aimed at our various scriptures,

we can remove the waste of war and the fear generated by our unfounded Maya and destructional dogma.

This spiritual process seems to incorporate (The wisdom of the crowd Principle) where when the beliefs of many are combined and averaged out, a conglomeration of "truth" as it is is revealed to incorporate a bit of all of the beliefs,

if for simplicities sake we take the top 13 to 15 religions and non- religions of the world, which is about 95% of humanity,

you will find by keeping only the best parts, that is the parts that do not en-sight fear or involve the seven deadly sins or break any of the commandments,

while using a realistic amount of discrimination at the same time, a logical result can be achieved,

which not only would explain some of the discrepancies of the various scriptures, but also explain a viable procession to reality.

To be perfectly fair to all beliefs and non-beliefs,

if for instance, you were to take a smaller religion, such as Scientology and try to find an original important factor that is not necessarily recognized in another religion,

even though the number of believers, kind of vacillate up and down around 25,000 people,

there is a valuable process of auditing which has valuable benefits towards revealing the spirituality in people otherwise hidden,

this avenue taken to stimulate the spiritual side of a personality is very valuable in all belief systems,

and then there are religions such as Juche which has 19 million people, this may be a bit more difficult as this religion is not considered religious by many,

and more economic, and more than that, it is of mostly a specific country (North Korea),

be that as it may, there is a base belief that all nations should be treated as equals, which is a truly fair reasoning and many ideas are taken from Confucius,

which is considered a wise man throughout many cultures.

So Jainism has a basic respect for all living things and Zoroastrianism has great respect for the earth, almost the first ecological based religion,

Baha'i has started to get the right idea by combining religions,

but they have stopped short by not including all religions or beliefs and have denied the complete participation of women in all areas of this belief system and their prophet base should be enlarged to also accept Krishna, Zoroaster, Lao Tzu, and quite a few others if there is a true intention to bring the world together.

A non-religion that seems to have an interesting approach is the Rosicrucian's, they are close to Buddhism,

but they add an air of mysticism and practice to use these Cosmic powers that we have been given for good and with good intentions, they are careful to avoid mentioning God,

which allows people of specific churches or faiths to be able to be members.

Unfortunately, with all of our scriptures and Religions, we have out of control emotions to match,

people only believe in Free Will if it's their own, you can believe what you want as long as it's what I believe.

If one day, Humanity will accept that everyone has a right to believe as they wish and we will embrace our differences to the extent that not just tolerance will be a common day experience,

but we will all learn the Truth of reality, that we are all part of one, that we are all truly our Fathers children and we ALL have eternal life and always have,

when we all start to practice some discrimination in our scriptures and reason of our own accords that every word that we read is not the word of God,

and reason for our selves that all of the good is true and all of the bad is a fabrication of man's false personality, done to color our scriptures with fear and superstition,

when we are able to filter the dogma from gospel, the Maya from the truth, we will truly be on our way to bliss,

all we have to do is SEEK and we shall find, ASK and we shall receive.

All of our wonderful scriptures have wonderful stories to explain to us right from wrong, by giving examples of situations that may have happened,

it really doesn't matter if these situations that are being explained really happened or not,

they are written for us to ponder and reason to activate our moral compass,

the violence, death, revenge, and punishments are not intended to be acted out by us, they are examples that we are supposed to use to learn from our mistakes.

Maybe WE have Grown past Religion

With the world in such great strife, the so-called Holy wars against whoever doesn't believe the way we do, It may be time to embrace something different, possibly a universal ideal that we can all agree on that will end all of the hate and greed, something like Love?

Or at least we can distill our beliefs by filtering out some if not most of the dogma. We may not be able to grow past religion, but we can certainly become more tolerant of other religions,

we can all still practice our free will as long as we allow others to practice their free will, if we insist on keeping our dogma, we can at least let our perspective deities condemn the infidels or non-believers instead of taking the matters into our own hands.

There are still beliefs that have refused to embrace the dogmas of religion for the most part, they are of Gnostic origin, the hermetic teachings are still believed to be mostly pseudo-scientific even though as time and technology progresses,

aspects of this belief system are being proven scientifically on a somewhat regular basis, just as in every religion, these ideas have been transcribed by man with man's superstition and dogmas of the era's having their input,

even to it's seemingly lesser degree, our discrimination and intuitions will help sift through this valuable information to add our probable beliefs.

Although it may be an impossibility to dispose of Religion all together, a better alternative would be to take only the good from all of the religions and use those as a base for a belief system that can be civil at a worldwide scale,

this is already happening, you may notice that when you search on the internet about different aspects of a particular religion, certain keywords are common to more than one religion,

and you are led to something that you did not expect, deep down you know this is not a mistake, God or the Tao has made this natural flow of knowledge specifically in this way as to bring us all together,

just compare how many faiths practice the 7 virtues and then take notice of how many practice the 7 deadly sins,

you will ultimately notice that people are mostly making decisions in God's name and not the other way.

By now it must start to become obvious that religion needs to cooperate, it shouldn't be considered a competition, rather it should be a public education where no religion is excluded.

The secret passages shouldn't need to be decoded, the women and bisexual or transsexual or whatever lifestyle shouldn't be excluded, the apparent strict rules, shouldn't be so strict,

the exclusions of race, creed, sex, social status and heredity should be always included, the myopic views of the devout should be replaced by the universal ideas of the all,

and freedom of choice should surpass all else, only then will religion have any true worth.

All of this confusion about religion makes it seem that there would be many more Atheists out there than there really are,

Positivism is a scientific take on religion that is seemingly way too material, positivists will look at all supernatural phenomena in sort of pure scientific way where if something cannot be explained scientifically, it just didn't happen in the first place,

any so-called miracles have to be witnessed by scientists and thoroughly tested and retested before any conclusions could possibly be made, this is all well and fine,

but the miracles are a function of faith most of the time and the scientific process cannot be viable in a situation where a person with a possible soul is a part of the experiment,

the scientific process works well when it comes to Material things that can be perceived by the senses but cannot be used on the unperceivable or unmanifested that has no way of accounting for something that can not be proven as of yet.

Instead of this competition among beliefs, tolerance should be developed. If religion is not going to accept any other views or ideas about beliefs other than their own, at least a live and let live attitude must be maintained to keep the peace in the world.

I don't know about you, but I have my own views about reality and don't pay much attention to other views, This should be the worst-case scenario on our planet,

instead of the holy wars and terrorism, we should have discussions instead of arguments about our faiths, if we have any competition, it should be about how loving and compassionate and charitable our religions are.

How can this be so horribly hard to do? Why not show an interest in other religions and compare the similarities between them instead of the differences.

Religion, God's gift to humanity to give us a chance to know our reality of existence, we have been here before, civilization is not new to this planet, even though through our arrogance we believe that humanity's civilized existence is only a few thousand years old,

we have been taught that 10,000 years ago we were nothing more than primitive tribes, yet these ancient cities that are being found in the bottoms of our oceans must be prior to our ice age, and I suspect that humanity has known of God many times,

being fought over and forgotten and abused and corrupted where God's children have proven to be oblivious to the truth of their existence and have continued a reverence of their material goods and forsaken God and all of God's creation has been abused and harvested and polluted to the extent where it seems to be most prudent to send an asteroid or comet fragment to its creation and start anew.

Now the race is on between Religion and science, this race is only beginning, only the last 300 years or so, humanity has been searching for a replacement for God,

their accumulated theories about how nature works have been compelling, we have dissected nature and have figured how it works, or so we think,

religion has always been around, ever since that first person had a dream or vision directing them to a reason for their existence, and in a rudimentary sense science has been around also,

planting a seed and seeing that it grows, knocking two rocks together to see a spark that burns the skin,

but religion is a matter of believing what someone tells you or what you have dreamed or had in a vision, where science is more material and observational, that mostly can be exhibited by experiment,

religion is mostly a matter of faith, and unfortunately, science is working towards "theories" and base these theories on their best guesses and refer to them as facts, I guess that they also have their own type of Faith.

Is humanity just fooling itself? Do we really believe what is in our scriptures or do we just look for any reason to have wars and terror and conflict,

the equation of civilized life consists of just one word, Love, love harbors trust, charity, tolerance, kindness, sympathy and all of the good that life has to offer,

why is it so easy for us to go off when it comes to a religious difference of opinion? If all of the fanatics out there tempered their beliefs with unconditional love, violence would cease and then we all could finally begin to talk about our differences,

even the smallest insignificant things like small differences in wording in our scriptures, the relentless hounding of passages that are this, or aren't that, seems to be an adequate enough reason for us to argue,

but the entire picture is being missed, even spiritually minded prophets that have had divine guidance are still human and still have dual personalities just like everyone else in the world,

the main object of their inspiration has been ignored in many cases in order for slight imperfections to be spotlighted as proof of falsity, we need to pay attention and let Gods light illuminate what is important and stop fighting over what isn't.

There are some people that have no need for religion, they have a good moral compass and have no immediate need for this type of spiritual guidance,

they know right from wrong and are not torn between beliefs, their passion for specific God's rules do not concern them, life is not a mystery, at least the physical aspect of it anyways,

they are not necessarily scientifically oriented, the spiritual aspect is not of great importance to them, eventually, they may have some questions that logic and common sense is not able to answer,

then they may investigate other views of reality.

This is the best that humanity could possibly hope for in these times, not being influenced by any of the mainstream religions leaves them free to live their lives in peace, their high morals cannot be argued with and only admired,

only when they may become concerned with death and what happens when their life has finished is when the searching for answers begins,

if all of humanity could be of this mind, it would be such a pleasure to explore these questions together anew.

Let there be Light

In the beginning, there was the word and the word was God, and God said, Let there be light, and God saw it was good and was pleased,

this metaphorical light was knowledge, this word was the beginning of the manifestation of All That Is, it was the reasoning for that God is, and that all that was to proceed was from God,

this enlightenment was the Love and wisdom of God, this truth is what was to be realized by all from then on, soon thereafter, the hierarchy, the suns or should I say stars were created as beacons of Gods existence,

these fragments of God proceeded to create planets about them as the subordinates or subjects to Gods kingdom.

Our religions these days are preoccupied with fighting and keeping their secrets instead of enlightenment of all others, they cannot agree on a point of focus when it comes to God,

they have fragmented God into so many different concepts that are surrounded by their superstitions that it is extremely hard to follow any "One" belief system, we all need to sit down together and talk.

What is the Meaning of Life?

You do not need to be religious to see the light, you only need to have some basic common sense to see how the world is evolving and realize what humanity's priorities are to see where the light is and isn't,

free will is the biggest part of this equation, the realization of our actions making our reality is not always seen,

fate and destiny are also a part of this equation, keeping someone from expressing their free will tip the balances of fate and destiny,

someone using their free will to rob others of their free will have sealed their own fate and their destiny will follow accordingly,

simple logic will dictate this, whether there is a belief in karma or not, cause and effect is not only a religious principle, but it is a scientific fact,

exercising a little wisdom by a live and let live attitude is a basic start to seeing the light and enabling others to do the same.

All religion is supposed to be enlightening, this enlightenment is supposed to be shared with others,

we all should be helping each other when it comes to enlightening information, the truth in scriptures is for everyone to know,

different scriptures have different information, no matter how old and archaic some religions may be, they have at least some important information to convey even though it may have been wrapped up in the superstition and dogma of the times,

the religions of now are strict and guarded, the views of these religions are narrow and myopic, if the wisdom was gathered from all of the religions, we would have something worth worshiping,

to be content with the same age-old views is and has been stagnant for centuries, lose the superstition, and embracing love is the first step in putting the spiritual back into religion.

Does Religion Matter?

Religion is supposed to be spiritual guidance to allow civilization to function within moral norms of society, it was never intended to have us warring over differences in our scriptures,

we have failed to take into consideration that these enlightened prophets that have brought all of this wisdom to us also have dual personalities same as everyone else and have used their Free Will to color their divinely delivered inspirations to conform to their societies beliefs at the time,

Sacrifice and Prayer

humanities run amok emotions have gotten the better of them, and instead of using their free will to discern the divine truths from their scriptures and exercising their spiritual intuitions,

they have taken the low, material, sense-driven roads to protect their selfish religious beliefs as they believe have been presented to only their people, If you remove all of the fear, dogma, and superstition there is some meaningful stuff left,

this is true of all of the religious scriptures of all faiths, tolerance is the key that will unlock the shackles of hate and allow all of us to accept other views of God or the Tao or even no religious views,

we do not have to be religious to get along but due to the diversity of mankind, having choices of what to believe is a very good thing, especially if it enables all of us to get along.

Can I Know God Personally?

This is a question that could be very difficult to answer, your vision of what God actually is can be very subjective and is probably different for every person on the planet,

a personal relationship with God can be accomplished if you are willing to make the required adjustments in your life, the degrees of communication are dependent totally on you,

since we all have a fragment of God in each of us, it is not out of the question to have a personal relationship, as God is the biggest, greatest most powerful all-knowing entity that has created all that is,

it would stand to reason that each individual would perceive any sort of communication with God in a different way, knowing God is knowing all creation, you can know God in nature and in everyone you meet,

by showing an interest and exhibiting some appreciation and gratitude will let God know that you wish to become closer, by turning from some of your material desires and making a shift towards spiritual goals will improve your chances of knowing God,

as for going for a walk through the park with God or a day at the beach or even a Date of sorts, it may not be as you may have envisioned it being, because God is everywhere and God is always with you,

when you make a specific effort to know God better and possibly sacrifice some of your material sense-driven ideals, you may be surprised by how God's presence is presented to you.

By knowing God personally, you may have expectations that could disappoint you according to your beliefs, this is not to say that something may be presented to you that has a very personal flavor of sorts; that may speak to you personally, where your expectations have been met to some degree,

things like this have been the experience of individuals like Swedenborg, where he was shown things that were in line with his belief system, this is a non-typical experience but also can happen to anyone who is of the mind that needs this sort of experience,

it will be exclusively customized to each individual beliefs to varying degrees, a broader experience should be pursued in order to appreciate God in all of its creation, by being able to see God in all that you perceive is getting closer to the scope of God,

when you are able to have a love for everything unconditionally you have entered further into Gods realm than most, unconditional love is a tall order for anyone, it has no material aspirations and is close to purely spiritual as you can get, nevertheless, it would be a divine view of life that would no doubt bring you closer to God.

Is Religion Good?

Religion is supposed to be good,

it is supposed to teach us all how to get along together in a civilized manner,

unfortunately, Religion has gotten a bad rep because of the wars and fighting over everyone's personal opinions of what religion represents,

Religion is not supposed to be a competition, it is supposed to be a gathering of wisdom to make the residents of the earth tolerant of others views of what religion represents,

this "my God is better than your God" and the Tao is better than God or there is no God or there is no soul,

are not supposed to be arguments but are supposed to all be valid points of view to be considered and respected,

Can Religions Coexist?

the glue that binds all of these religions should be unconditional love, and possibly everyone will investigate all of these differences and similarities together and realize that all religion comes from the same source and there is an agenda in mind for enlightenment for everyone interested.

Is Religion Good? It can be if we let it, if we keep open minds and realize that superstition, fear, and hate should never be a part of any religion and the core of all religions should be peace and practiced as such,

then we have a chance to prove that religion truly is good.

Only God Forgives

If you have been tormented by your actions throughout your life and have come to the conclusion that only God forgives,

you have been torturing yourself unduly because if you are waiting for a sign that you have been forgiven for some heinous acts committed earlier in your life, you may be waiting for a long time,

in the first place, the forgiving will have to start with you forgiving yourself and this will have to be preceded with a total change of your lifestyle that use to include such questionable actions,

a sort of repentance is in order, once you fully grasp the errors of your ways and forgive yourself, then the higher powers that be will determine if you are now sincere in your actions,

it is not so difficult to change your ways for the better, it is the sticking to it that is a challenge, you may think that you have been judged for your previous actions and you are just waiting for your sentence but it is much better than that,

you may have done some bad or questionable things in your life, but that has only created an imbalance in the cosmic affairs of your life, though that imbalance may have affected others, you can still turn it around to make your life better,

things like Karma and cause and effect can follow you through lifetimes if they are not resolved and balanced out, God has given you free will to do as you please and it is up to you to do the right thing,

some scriptures have given us commandments and have outlined what are sins and what are virtues in order that we can be better people and not acquire any more Karma and even maybe turn the tables back around to put us up high in the virtue column for this life,

Fear of Death

it is all up to us, and we decide to dig our own grave or pull our selves out of the pit of despair, we will be doing it all of our own accords,

If you believe that only God forgives you will have to first realize that we have all been created in Gods image and all have a piece of God inside of us (our soul),

we can fix what we screw up even if it takes a few lifetimes, this is what God wants to see, the cosmic rules of life are in effect for all of us on our planet and it is up to each of us to get it right and to first, forgive ourselves before we can proceed.

Do I Need Religion?

This can be a complex question if you don't really know what religion really is, religion can be a double-edged sword if you don't know how to use it,

all of spiritual guidance is always of the greatest importance and some of the stories in the scriptures are important as they give examples of how lives can be lived,

but when it comes to the fear and dogma that are commonly expressed in many scriptures, it is these that are more harmful than no religion at all,

faith based on unconditional love is a good starting point of any religion, the prejudice and hate and fear along with the superstition are best forgotten as they have no worth other than anguish and despair,

the beliefs in unconditional love and charity along with tolerance of other peoples beliefs are the staple of any good religion, using your free will to allow others to practice their free will can be very satisfying,

Truth About Reincarnation

some religions would have you believe that God cares about "things", this is false, God has created all that is, so for what reason would God care about money and riches? God cares about all of us,

it may at times seem to be a tough-love but it gets the point across especially if you have some idea about reality, religion has some enlightened ideas that are worth considering and it also contains a large amount of filler that mans dualistic nature has seen fit to include,

being able to tell what our materialistic sides have written as opposed to what our spiritualistic sides have written is what it all boils down to,

this alone is the greatest differentiation that has to be recognized in order for religion to be of any worth in anyone's life.

Does Religion affect Morality?

Religion does not have to affect morality but it most definitely has proven to do so for the better and unfortunately for the worse,

when religion is practiced and given free rein over your emotions before you understand where these beliefs have actually come from, there is a path that can be taken that is not always the best to pursue,

believing that your religion is the best and only way to go through life is your choice taken by the use of your free will, but persecuting others and trying to force them to live as you do is a bad choice and is not a good moral decision,

if in all of your religious efforts you practice tolerance as the most important aspect of your beliefs, the rest of your religious experiences will be fruitful,

some of the scriptures speak of smiting unbelievers and have much fear and superstition driving their beliefs, this also must be recognized for what it is,

religions are based on what divinely inspired men have been shown which is usually succinct and not very wordy but man with his free will has a material based ego that needs to have its input and this is what has contaminated many of our scriptures,

it has caused wars and slaughter on a global scale and it needs to come under our conscience control by not letting our egos and emotions run our lives,

we know what is right, greed and power are not spiritually based ideas and have no place in a civilized world,

allowing others to practice their free will should be the base of all religions and as long as their free will does not interfere with other's free will things should go well.

A big problem with intolerance is that people have their beliefs and cannot understand why others do not believe as they do,

their ego's are not willing to accept anyone else's beliefs because they are not their own,

they believe this gives them the right to do things in God's name because they are doing God's work,

they do not believe that commandments apply to them and the end justifies the means,

their beliefs have been warped to their own myopic views, and emotions have taken power over their lives,

the strictness of rules that they have decided to enforce have removed any sort of tolerance from their beliefs,

Can Someone believe in God and still be a Taoist?

I like to keep an open mind but taking the position of judge, jury and executioner is going much too far and leaves very little room for redemption,

dying for your cause is usually the end result that is achieved while taking as many infidel unbelievers with them as possible,

when religion is taken as the tool that it was intended, morality should follow in an orderly manner,

get some beliefs and leave your emotions out of it, let others believe as they may and live and let live,

have some civilized discussions about your beliefs and practice the virtues instead of the sins and morality will be the result.

Is Spirituality a Religion?

These days, spirituality is the new age belief that is composed of many views and ideas of how you can become closer to the universal consciousness, in a way it can be considered a sort of religion except it is not quite so organized and uniform where everyone is able to understand what everyone else is doing,

there are some common beliefs that are adhered to that bring an air of consistency to spirituality in general, while there are some seemingly esoteric offshoot beliefs that make it fairly specialized,

there is no set, agreed upon scriptures that are followed and it seems to follow information that comes from many sources, in a way, it takes many beliefs from many religions and incorporates them into a basic understanding of spiritualism,

of course it is amplified by countless other ideas that expand its bounds beyond a total understanding of its possible limitations, it is in a sense limitless in its possibilities which is what makes it attractive to some and obscure to others,

it gives each individual the opportunity to customize their own individual beliefs, for those that wish to have a belief or beliefs of their own that do not include organized gatherings or any sort of fear or superstitious beliefs,

spirituality can fill the ticket nicely, it can basically be a cut and paste of beliefs that you are comfortable in adhering to, as for it being considered a religion, this is all up to you and where you wish to go with it,

you might find others that will agree that these particular beliefs are good enough to be adhered to and you all may gather to discuss how to organize them to the benefit of others, or you may just want to keep them basically to yourself for personal, private use to expand upon as you wish and modify as needed,

the greatest aspect of spirituality is that it is not or should not be something that is driven by obsession, it is and has taken the best that religions have to offer and has included it without the addition of superstition and fear,

it is always on the look out for positive ideas that bring us all closer together, it is basically about peace and does not make judgements about others and what they may believe, it perceives all of us as a part of "the one" with our own unique ways of getting there.

What Religions have no God?

We have to be perfectly fair and politically correct here and assign each belief or non belief a label and call it "Religion",

Buddhists for example have no God and Buddhism is recognized as a legitimate religion, so Atheism, which also has no belief in a God should also be considered a Religion,

Atheists have beliefs, though they may not include deities, they are just as valid as any other belief, a belief in self can be as important as any belief in God, actually, even more so,

if you cannot believe in yourself, how can the expectation of a belief in God do any better for you?

How Can Religion Help Me?

Taoism also has not assigned a name to the power that governs all existence, it is more of a state of being where balance is an object to be maintained,

many of the folk religions such as are in China, worship their ancestors which has a respectful value that is maintained,

nowadays, science has become the new religion of choice for those that need something substantial to believe in,

it depends solely on what the senses have to present for consideration, there are no unproven entities to entice a leap of faith,

only the occasional unproven theory that is sometimes taken as gospel by those that follow that particular train of thought,

what it all boils down to is that there does not really need to be a belief in God in order for civilizations to function,

societies can have morals without having some ultimate entity to answer to,

some African societies worship different aspects of nature, usually because they live mostly by the rules of nature,

it probably is not so important if a particular religion has any sort of God, but if it has some ideals supported by some sort of wisdom it would be of greater importance,

as far as humanity goes, God is a state of mind and all of humanity has a collective state of mind which could be considered a part of the universal consciousness,

the conflict that exists within the beliefs on this planet is really not necessary but exists nonetheless and when it all boils down, it isn't the belief in God that divides us but the lack of tolerance in other people's beliefs,

it probably should not be worried about if there is or is not a God in someone's religion but if there is any wisdom being practiced or even believed in anyone's religion,

God has just been given the honor of being the one that brought wisdom into their specific religions,

and as life goes, wisdom is as wisdom does, God or no God.

Religion

What is religion you may ask? Religion is an apparent way of life for many people, it may include a deity or not,

but it always has some sort of instruction of how you should act in a society and how you should treat others,

the biggest problem with religion is that many of us have taken the beliefs that are in our scriptures and have distorted their true meanings,

there has been the addition of fear and superstition that has the ability to corrupt perfectly good wisdom with a bunch of rules and prejudices,

we have taken some good ideas and added some superfluous rules that are not flexible and that remove the true intents that our religions are meant to convey,

I believe that there is one important factor missing in all Religions, and that is tolerance,

so where is all of this non bending and relentless hate come from that attacks religions that are other than ours? 

This is not necessarily true of all religions but it is true that there is not an overabundance of tolerance either,

a new religion is in the need of making that has tolerance as a mainstay of its beliefs,

it is probably too much to ask to have all of the various religions add some tolerance clause to their scriptures, so it seems that that idea will have to be added by each individual on their own,

religion is not as bad as many people are presenting it to others, with a little discretion and proper use of intuition we all can extract what is of the greatest worth from our religions and with a little insight,

we may take some of the wisdom presented in other religions and make it a part of our own,

wisdom is not the sole property of any single religion just as certain instructions such as "Seek-and-Ye-Shall-Find are meant as a general knowledge when used in the pursuit of knowledge,

we really don't need to create a new religion, we just need to ignore the dogma and fear that is in our own religions,

this is already being done by those that refuse to hate and refuse to fall in with the destructive superstition that peppers our various religions,

so jump on that bandwagon of peace and prove that your religion can coexist with other religions, this has the ability to prove what wisdom we have picked up from being a human.

Can God speak to you?

It should be made perfectly clear that every person on this planet has a different relationship with God,

this goes along with the belief of every individual adding their accumulated knowledge to God's,

if you believe that you have been spoken to by God, there is nobody qualified to determine if it was really God or something else except you,

there may be some clues though, God tends to be virtuous and filled with unconditional love, the selfless wisdom is a dead give away,

if you are being told things to the contrary like depriving others from using their own free will by doing certain things,

this can be an indicator that there is something else going on,

Can Meditation Lead to Enlightenment?

anything that is wanted bad enough has the ability of manifesting,

God may speak to you in a variety of ways, through outright words or in subtle hints,

it can be symbolic or it can be literal and it can be anywhere in between,

also there is the ability to recognize when God is trying to tell you something and there is the ability to be able to tell the difference between God speaking to you and your own soul or higher self,

there may not be an apparent difference because all of the above essentially comes from the same source,

when you begin to hear voices that tell you to do specific things that could possibly get you into trouble or that goes against your own normal better judgement such as breaking commandments,

it is probably time to get a second opinion, possibly from a professional,

but if the voices are suggestions that don't involve others in a detrimental way, it couldn't hurt to give a listen and possibly give it a try,

usually, the worst that could happen is some potentially hard lessons to learn that are usually designed to advance the soul in one way or another,

I personally prefer the subtle hints that allow me to use my intuition to get certain points across,

sometimes, if God is speaking to you it is for some profound reason that means something only to you, and you will be the only one that will benefit.

How does AI benefit society?

AI is a useful tool that can do repetitive, complex activities that would take a human a good deal of time to accomplish, and do it much faster with fewer mistakes depending on how it is programmed,

AI can compare things such as photos and sounds at speeds that humans could not even come close to approaching, we already have the benefits of Google translate that enables all of us to converse with each other and read each others literature,

there must be limits realized, an AI is a tool that should be used as such, dependence on it for having great wisdom is problematic, an AI is a product of a companies attempt to make more money,

if it can make our lives easier in the process, that is just a fringe benefit, its creation is primarily for the increase of revenue for the company,

when you ask for a recommendation as for something to buy for a specific purpose, you can rest assured that it will be giving thought to it by paying advertisers when it gives you an answer,

it may excel when you ask for a recommendation of which restaurant to go to based on feed backs given on their respective sites,

it can compile answers based on your needs much faster than you can do for yourself,

but if you are planning to become lazy and rely on AI for giving you shortcuts to life or supplying reliable spiritual advice, this may be a mistake as it can be no more than a compiler or advice giver that is nothing more than a conglomeration of other human's advice,

except it does not have any subjective experience to back up what it says, it is not a sentient being and is not currently living and experiencing a life,

as for making your life easier and giving you some valuable tips, it is a fantastic tool, when it comes to spirituality, it would be best to venture within using meditation before relying on a man made program that has intentions that are virtually unknown to you and only really known by its maker or developer,

an AI can show us the earth, give us driving directions, translate books, give us financial advice, tell us what flights can take us where and generally make our lives a little easier,

anything beyond this is bordering on laziness and we will pay the price for too much indulgence.

How does Jesus compare with other people

There is a growing belief among certain people that there is a valid comparison between Jesus and other powerful and or popular people which seems to bring both under the same light,

you might for a moment remember what Jesus was all about and not about, Jesus knew of the ten commandments and often used them as comparison points when he was expressing his parables,

Jesus was not a rich man and would give anyone that asked the clothes off his back, he had no pride or aspirations when it came to riches that could be found on earth,

he was more interested in what his father had in store in heaven, he was selfless and gave of himself the utmost than anyone could possibly give,

he wasn't a whiner and always turned the other cheek, and he always took the high road in his dealings and in his beliefs, he loved everyone, especially his enemies,

Telling the Truth to Friends

he wasn't about revenge as that was his fathers game, and forgiveness was what he was all about,

how he could possibly compare to any living soul on this planet as it currently stands is a curious delusion that has clearly distorted all that Jesus stands for,

a virtuous man is recognized for his accomplishments not for what he says his accomplishments are,

and what about bearing false witness?, you know this is accounted for outside of the courtroom additionally and not just when you are under oath,

as a matter of fact, the comparisons that are made about Jesus and the one single most powerful person in our free nation is a comparison of virtually opposites,

and this brings to light the apparent test that is being taken by the American people,

a realization will have to be made in order for mass karmic retribution is to be avoided,

if it isn't plainly apparent that Americans are the ones that are on trial here and not just one individual, then those that are involved that insist on following this false profit of sorts shall reap the rewards of what they have sown,

his believers are going to be attracting into their lives what they are telling others that they fear,

and more than that, they shall experience this same trial in their subsequent lives until they make the proper realizations,

it is time to pay attention to what you believe that you actually stand for before you force yourself to live that sort of life.

If Religion Never Existed

     The invention of Religion came as an explanation of the unknown, before religion existed, man worshiped nature and came to wonder where it all came from,

an intelligence was perceived and expounded upon, but now with science providing many of the answers that we seek, it has come to be a deity on its own of sorts that many base their lives upon,

science explains phenomenon that our physical senses present on a daily basis but it fails to teach morality and what may be perceived as right and wrong or good and evil,

besides, science is a fairly new concept that has only existed for a few hundred years, man has had various religions to ponder for thousands of years,

so if religion never existed we would believe as atheists do and rely exclusively on our senses,

what we see and hear would consist of the majority of our beliefs, what we feel, taste and smell would be the only other means that we would use to determine the validity of what we perceive,

to some, religion provides hope and much of our physical/material lives do not provide this, humans like to keep a degree of mysticism in their lives where unexplained miracles are possible especially if they involve a believed religion,

this game that our souls play is intriguing, it takes all that is perceived from our consciousness and tries to explain reality concerning the spiritual realm through a variety of differing ideas,

if religion never existed I fear to say that humanity would have very little imagination and technical progress would be slow and very predictable,

religion expands our horizons and enables us to look beyond our physical senses, it is a shame that much religion has been distorted to include fear and superstition but that is also another challenge for us to face concerning what to believe and for what reasons,

and with the competition between religions more of the sinful desires make their selves known such as pride and greed,

without religion life would be much more predictable but less interesting, religion seems to have added to our emotional biases with faith which seems to carry a power of its own.