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If you remove the dogma - what do you have left of religion, exactly? The two are inseparable.

• pmoriarty 5y ago
  "If you remove the dogma - what do you have left of religion, exactly?" If you'd ever had a mystical experience, you wouldn't need to ask that question. Many have argued that mystical experiences were at the core of every major religion, and it was when people stopped having these experiences that dogma accreted.
  • sweuder 5y ago
    What is a mystical experience then? I would suppose that it went something like: 1. Person sees/experiences something interesting/abnormal/rare 2. Can't figure out how to explain what happened 3. Attributes experience to god/religion Once we started filling in that middle bit there was less around that could only be attributed to religion so it lost a lot of its draw. Now that we are closer to a state where we can attribute most things to nature/science/etc religion does seem to be left with mostly dogma.
  • alexashka 5y ago
    > If you'd ever had a mystical experience, you wouldn't need to ask that question. Please speak for yourself. > Many have argued... Many have argued that slaves are totally fine and that we ought to continue having them. Or that burning witches works. So what? That's not an argument for or against anything - it is at best entertaining trivia to bring up at cocktail hour.
• namlem 5y ago
  That's a very limited view of religion. Think of religions as frameworks for interpreting the world. You don't need dogma to be an effective framework. Plus, not all religions are dogmatic, in fact most aren't. The Abrahamic faiths are the exceptions, not the rule.