Jesus is my friend to the max!

I suppose the one example that springs immediately to mind is the Religious Society of Friends, a.k.a. the Quakers. They profess to be completely non-heirarchical, don't have "priests" or "ministers" or what have you. Neither do they have a body of doctrine that members have to agree with. At a Quaker meeting, everyone sits in silence until someone feels "moved by the Spirit" to say something. The others sit in silence & don't "respond" as such, just wait until the next person feels similarly moved. Sometimes no-one says anything at all.

But...... of course, some people are more likely to say something than others, e.g. people who are eloquent or confident. And this tends to be marked by class. Not to say that there aren't eloquent or confident working class people, obviously, (before you get on my case), but you know what I mean.

Interesting question, though.

Doesn't make you sound retarded at all, mate. The answer to that is "Yes & no."

Because they don't have a body of doctrine, it's entirely up to the individual Quaker what part Jesus (or the Bible) plays in their personal spirituality. Some of them don't even believe in a personal God* -- instead, they talk about the "Inner Light," which is something that everyone has or has access to.

And no, I'm not a Quaker out to sign you all up .

(Using "personal God" to mean "a god who is a person," rather than in the "personal to me" sense)

Re "personal God".

What I'm saying is that not all Quakers believe in a God who is a person (with intentions, will, superpowers etc ). Instead, they believe in an "inner light," or "that of God which is in all of us."

In other words, the relationship between a Quaker & their God/Inner Light/whatever is non-heirarchical. I think.

I think you have to look at the reasons for religion. Not in terms of its organisation and agenda, but why people believe in god in the first place? I think god plays both a practical and a philosophical purpose.

In practical terms, god is an escape. It offers people an alternative view to the world. For those who have nothing, or for those who have devastatingly boring lives, the belief in this all loving, all powerful being gives them meaning. Giving their lives over to god, in return for a reward when they die, eases the pain of day-to-day living.

It's an illusion that makes us happy. Believe in god and he will give you hope, believe in god and he will give you happiness, believe in god and he will deliver you unto the kingdom of heaven. Fuck all the shit in your life, if you believe in god, you're sorted!

Hopefully, life in an anarchist society will negate the need for god. Solidarity, co-operation and economic, social and political freedom will create a "happy" life. With an existence that you can experience, rather than survive, the need for god reduces. Once people have faith in humanity, the faith in god becomes obsolete...almost.

Unfortunately god plays a philosophical role also. Human beings, so infatuated with understanding our "reason", that our oversize-brains seem to scurry around looking for definition. Unhappy with the simple facts of existence and death, we have to justify them in some way. God does, and most likely will continue to be that definition and reason. Even in an anarchist society.

If a group of people wanted to form an organisation that believed in this god and paid homage to it, or whatever, how could we stop them? Provided it did not encroach on the freedom of others, but then that becomes uneasy to define.

Do we define the spreading of an idea that a super being created us as an encroachment of freedom? I would personally, but then I’m an atheist and I see god for the hallucination it is.

For me, the concept of god creating the universe from heaven is as ridiculous as the concept that 5 inch trolls control the earths wind-patterns from my arse. People will be able to think what they like, but equally, I will be able to belittle them for it

well obviously it would, in fact i'm sure all forms of beleif will carry on in an anarchist society, in fact i'd also sperately say that the established churches will also still exist, tho no doubt they will probabaly slowly mould to fit the new society and economic structure, as beleifs always do to an extent. I mean say the church of england, no doubt it would cease to exist as a national organisation, you wouldn't have bishops and similar structures, but local churches, local priests and the small local congregations would still be there, and so those churches would probably adapt to fit in better within the new society in some way or other as a minority, which is what regular worhsippers are and do in the UK today.

I somehow doubt anarchist society will negate the need for ''god'' or other forms of beleif in ideas beyond current scientific understanding. In fact I bloody hope it doesn't, i like romanticism in healthy doses, plus the idea of death scares the living crap out of me, personally i quite like to delude myself with the idea of some sort of afterlife. In fact i tend to think anyone that thinks that beleif in god will suddenly cease in an anarchist society is probably some sort of idealist nutjob.

Beleif in some sort of god probably is escapism, so is a large % of life, certainly from one point of view smoking or drinking is hardly much different to beleif in god in a lot of respects, and perosnally i think its a buit dangerous and reductionist to go around claiming what is ''escapism'' and what isn't. Its pretty much the same as the idiots who think theres a s trict dividing line bwetween conumer goods and non-consumer goods. In an anarchist society quality of life will be much better, but it will not turn us into happy hippies that dance around a fucking tree all day, life will still have its depressing sides.

And i thought i was supposed to be the reductionist one here, dearie me i suppose now you're going to tell me that non-scientifically verified beleif is all purely forced on us by bourgeois ideology are you Not a very marxist point of view, sounds liek you've been reading too much of that stirner and bakunin to me.

As it happens i don't beleive in a creator-god type figure at all, i'm fully aware thats quite a loopy concept and illogical to boot, i have absolutely no clue whethers theres an afterlife or not, but i find it comforting to think there is one, because contemplating death isn't very pleasant. I don't really liek to think that one second i'll be fully concious and next minute 'zap' i'm out of existence. Personally i quite like the fairytale ending even if its probably a load of cobblers. It'd save you having to worry about death much and all those irritatingly pretentious philosophical questions, which'd makes this life a more relaxed experience, and when it comes down to it deluding yourself is what lifes generally all about, in this case i just wish i was better at it.

Anyway revol you beleive in love don't you? And probably the wide range of ridiculous romanticist ideas attatched to that that we all like to delude ourselves with. (Plus you're an anarchist, and if that isn't a fair amount of self delusion i don't know what is )

Anyway, perhaps you could enlighten me as to what knowledge you have of what happens to our consciousness on point of death, i'm sure a lot of people would be very interested to know...

What's so scary about death?

We will see.

The difference being, my pint exists. God doesn’t. I suppose its all up to the individual. I'm quite content with my death, and it will be no big surprise when it happens.

I think it's important for human beings to concentrate on experiencing their existence rather than on what will happen when they no longer exist. It's time consuming and allot less fun.

God is an escape? But an escape to where?

And god is not an answer.

evidence?

When i mean a creator i don't mean a sentient benevolent ''god'' as in judeo-christian mythology, which can of course be refuted logically, however you can't really prove that a non-sentient unexplainable force existsmor doesn't exist can you. You cannot currently disprove irrationality, and quite posiibly will never be able to.

The point is i don't know, and neither do you, surely we are both speaking unscientifically and without evidence.

To summarise, I just randomly pinched myself, why did i do that? what scientifically explainable reason would i have to do what is ostensibly an irrational act?

Good point actually. The idea that "there's someone out there for me" is no less nutty than "there's a god who'll give me 72 virgins in heaven" or whatever it is.

There may well be lots of questions and phenomena that will never be explained, and you know what, that's actually ok for me.

Simply becuase I cannot explain a phenomenon (eg love and other human emotions), or it hasn't been explained by someone, or indeed may never be explained, I'm not about to go entertaining notions of the immaterial in the absence of any current material evidence. Sometimes we don't know the answers. What's wrong with that? I'm not about to go attributing phenomena to the divine, supernatural or immaterial. I'll just accept that I don't know. I can live with that.

Fair enough but disliking one particular strain of materialism is hardly a basis for willingness to accept immaterial explanations for anything.

Of course I can't disprove something of which there's zero evidence for it's existence. I can't disprove a negative. I can't disprove the existence of flying pigs. I'll take the absence of any evidence to suggest otherwise as enough.

I'm curious as to why you may accept the possibility of an afterlife anyway - what lead you to that? What has happened in your life, what have you read, what in any of your experiences has ever suggested to you that anything happens after you die other than rotting in the ground like evertything else that dies?

Do you think dogs,cats,snails have an afterlife?

Don't worry revol, he doesn't BELIEVE it, he jsut developed it as a defence against my bourgeois athiesm.

Bollocks it is, you think a thousand idiots with crap hair, fake NHS glasses and an acoustic could make a pretty lucrative career on something that threadbare, dull and kinda utilitarian?? It's all about shite like fate and destiny and stars shining in the sky and whatever other bollocks you PM Suicide Girl punks while accusing me of only being into grebo girls.

Jesus, fucking emo kids and their cult of love. Learn to masturbate you freaks.

so the billions of people who fairly harmlessly think there might be an afterlife are just stupid are they? hmm sounds like the typically arrogant tone of the petit bourgeois philosopher to me . Jesus its as bad as straight edge kids going around saying people who drink to ease their problems are ''stupid''. It really is the most appalling moralist nonsense and you should know better.

So you would argue that love is 100% rational? Sounds like a rather pointless assumption there.

I think you'll find that in scientific method, you can't 'prove' anything, i mean do you go around trying to find a 100% always appliable concrete formula for dialectical method? No because there are probably infinite variables. You can define something beyond reasonable doubt, but you can't prove it.

In short, again we see a bit too much hegel, and not enough marx.

I'd think you were most likely a crackpot, afterall i don't even claim to know if there si something beyond this life or not, let alone have some lunatic idea that i know exactly what it might be like.

I mean be honest can you say with 100% certainty that there is nothing beyond this life? If you can i don't think you're really using a very scientific form of reasoning are you.

1. millions of people believe that god exists and intervenes and that if you pray to him (sic) he can do stuff, does that make it true?

2. You obviously don't have a fucking baldy what your talking about when you say "too much Hegel not enough Marx."

3. if there is an afterlife where your being lives does that mena the mind somehow transcends the material? Now who is being the hegelian fucktard!

4. I never said love was rational, all i said was that it is a term applied to a wide range of actually experiance emotions, is love irrational in that it makes us feel all kinds of wierd shit and do all sorts of things we would normally hold as nuts? yes! Does love imply a separation between mind and matter? No!

5. Of course i can't be certain of anything that is completely outside our grasp, by definition an after life is beyond space, time and our material realm, but what i would question is the idea that there is actually something outside of it and more importantly somewhere outside of it that we somehow magically go to when we die.

6. You do accept that the mind is material? if so then who does our mind somehow transcend material death and enter some sort of afterlife?

7. In order to believe that the mind can live on after death you must accept the a form of dualism, something that puts you at odds with Marx, whom you seem to think you have grasped so well.

8. marx dismissed bourgeois athiests because they were only interested in disproving the existance of a non being, marx took Feurebachs materialism and applied it to the state, showing it to be the religion of civil society, the state was to civil society what heaven was to theology, a place that claimed to transcend the brutality and egoism of everyday and rule in the interests of all. If you had read any early marx espeically "a critique of hegels philosophy of the right" you would know this. Marx was by no means criticising the bourgeois athiests because they weren't agnositc.