My Issue With God Isn't That He Doesn't Exist, But...

My issue with religion isn't in the basic ideology of religion. The rational attacks athiesm lobs against it seem to miss the point, in terms of whether or not God exists. (The same could be said for religious scholars that have constructed some very elegant, completely pointless proofs for the existence of God.)

Religion is at its core a metaphysical, ontological belief that there is an interconnection between things. (See the etymology - Religio, Religare, etc.) From the Immanence of Myth text, "Just through looking at the etymology of the word, we can see this. “Religion” comes from the Latin religiō, religiōn-, perhaps from religāre, “to tie fast.” Note that the meaning of this word is fundamentally the same as the meaning of the Sanskrit word Yoga, literally “union, yoking,” or “to join.” In both cases it is an attempt at joining the reference, which the religion refers to but cannot in itself embody, the social body, and the individual. “Sutra” also come from the root from which we get the word “suture,” to bind or tie together. So it may seem strange to work our way into a discussion of sacred art through religion, but it is through that avenue that it can be best understood, if “religion” is stripped of baggage. Perhaps if we simply think of it as a means of bringing the sacred into our consideration of the profane, this baggage can naturally fall away."

Religion attempts to put us in a psychological relationship with the whole of being. That which it represents is not human, and cannot make commandments; it is simply a matter of orientation rooted in belief. It is hard to deny this, although we needn't assume as Plotinus did that All is One: systems can be intelocked in a variety of ways, and yet remain distinct in others, even if there is not clear division point from one to the other but rather a series of continuums, and semi-permiable membranes.

(Okay, Plotinus actually said "The One is all things, and yet no one of all. The One is all, because all things co-exist in It." Which actually expresses my point without really articulating it. Gnosticism tends to emphasize the universal at the expense of the particular. A better choice than the opposite, but still deceptive.)

My issue with religion is that the vast majority of them are far too socially conservative, they too typically serve as a series of cultural breaks, a normalizing force against progress and the natural "order" of chaos, and I simply can't get behind that. Even ideologies that you think would express themselves progressively and as a sort of universal solvent against normalization and restriction, quite simply don't. Take Goddess worship in Hinduism. They can worship Devi in one form or another and yet own their wives, and exist within an ideological map that is inherently patriarchal, both in regard to perspective of the material and social.

That's probably the first level that Dionysus spoke to me on. I want to see Goddess worship that tears the roof off the house, and celebrations that blot out the rational mind. Clinging does nothing but turn celebration to madness, as with Agave in The Bacchae, "... transformed— an abomination, something to fill all people's hearts with horror, with disgust— the mother who slaughtered her only son, who tore him apart, ripping out the heart from the child who filled her own heart with joy— all to honour this god Dionysus."

I worship in my way, through acts, without believing in the absolutely reality of anything signified.