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27.9%ANMag Issue 27 Personal Maintenance
Religion
By Saad Manasterli, Staff Writer
Fairfax, Virginia – Religion is a system of symbols, myths, doctrines, ethics, and rituals for the expression of ultimate relevance. Religion can only be understood within the context of the people who are surrounded by and live it, just as any word, whose meaning all depends on its place in a sentence and the inclusion of the emphasis.
To better understand religion, one should rid oneself of any personal belief as to not be biased towards comprehending the faith on which one desires to seek or even to fulfill our human curiosity. Religion can't be understood through the practice of science, for religion and science are based on two different levels of human understanding, yet inadvertently, both seek the truth in their own unique ways.
Science is objective and subject to the boundaries of the scientific method of observing, theorizing and testing for solid proof, which can ultimately be changed because of new facts and discoveries. On the other hand religion is subjective or better put, personal and individualistically tailored, and because it is the core of what we as beings have faith in, it unconsciously dictates our actions. That being said, it would take more than a scientifically objective test to sway people away from what they believe.
Our values are the core of who we are as individuals, whereas our shell is what seeks the truth of how things came to pass, and why we exist, because all that we want is to know why we exist.
Values are dictatorial, while validity is descriptive. Utilitarian relevance involves instrumental values. Ulterior relevance involves irrational actions inducing the inhibition of other better or more important values. Basically religion is the herald of a way of life.
Symbols are intended to lift us and present us with a foundation of certain religious dimensions. A myth is an anecdote that invokes values, and is true regardless of the physical evidence. A myth can be both history and just another story, but again it all goes back to the values of the individual seeker. Rituals are based on the specified religion, time, faith, culture, tribe, and country. The repetition of said rituals, become repeated so often that most the mythological and symbolic inference get lost, and in all actuality it becomes a parade of some sort, like Christmas is just a time to get gifts, and be with the family, and not about the Pagan-Christian syncretism. Ethics is what normally ties the two and makes to maintain the ritualistic authenticity. Ethics is also completely based on the core of the individual value, so as we learn that everything has a high reliance on whom we are as individuals, because religion is just a reflection of the people of the past, present and the future. All or most of the religious “-isms” believe in the same but different Deities, all are based on the above discussed issues, of culture, which in turn becomes tradition and so on.
Though religion is a means to becoming better beings, it seems that as eras go by, power, greed, and personal ideals become pushed onto others, for example Theocracy, Pro-religious, Anti-religious, and more. Although religion is a personal matter it seems that the true meaning of being a true being becomes lost in the translations of the many religious doctrines. Then when we fail to follow our core, individuals appoint another individual to tell them what to believe in.
As I have touched upon before, the use of religion as a tool of any kind to achieve anything not related to person enlightenment, it is just an excuse to push another’s belief. It was my understanding that it was our individual beliefs, values, which are the makeup of our core, are what make us who we are. The core is what pushes us to take religious classes to broaden our horizons and improve our understanding of others, without the recruitment of another individual trying to make a carbon copy of them.