Karl your text sounds good for a title song! :):) .. yes indeed ... where are the angels ? a good question .... but whether we can see them or not, or indeed exist, I like the concept of their possible existence because it is not a negative thought ... on the contrary it is associated with goodness as I see it... in a certain way there is a beauty in such ..... thought ....
I just spent an hour answering you and it disappeared when I posted. UGH!
In short:
Angels are agents or messengers of God. They live in the spirit world (which is on this earth).
How did the idea of religion start though? It has been around for as long as human civilization existed. Religion is fine, it exists because human beings need to believe in something, that's fine, as long as humans are sensible with their beliefs and rituals. Can't really blame religion for our troubles, we have always been the ones who screwed things up. With or without religion, humans will screw things up anyway.
... yes indeed... HUMANS ..... now I begin to understand why so many humans chose pets above fellow human beings as companions ... We are incredible weak in character, incredible selfish, incredible egocentric and incredible over conceited as to think and believe that are we the centre of the universe ... we love worshipping the idea of ourselves being a kind of little GODS who have the right to dictate to others in order to feel ... good and important about ourselves..... how sad and how petty we humans really are...
.....yes but when people totally loose/ignore the sense of responsibility for their own un-spiritual actions because they allow themselves being swallowed by the rules of a faith then .. religion, a mankind's invention, looses its relevance and moral authority in the positive sense .......
... if we are to believe science (strange as it might sound !) ... I hear once a scientist explaining that as a matter of fact we have a part in our brains a section related to the 'phenomenon ' of spirituality ... a part of the brain that is strongly related to such feelings or believes and it all manifests in a precise section of the brain as proven by all the participants when he was conducting his experiments ... it seems that everything to do/ related with a religious experience, etc happened there ... his personal thought was..... ' Spirituality or lets say God is actually imbedded or integrated even in our physiological make up since the beginning of time ' ... I found that a very interesting and utterly intriguing ..... thought.....
Well that's what happens when an animal becomes able to think about itself, its thoughts, its own existence. We have a sense of wonder. Anyone who contemplates their own existence can't help but to feel 'special'. People interpret this 'specialness' in all sorts of ways.
That is a very objective perspective. The sense of 'self' has caused so much miseries to mankind, it has brought lots of unhappiness, since men need to keep confirming the sense of self and existence, and self value. Of course one can take the religion perspective and think maybe the apple of knowing, beginning of self consciousness, maybe the Bible is correct, maybe, maybe....but then that same sense has brought us great emotions which produced incredible art and culture......maybe, maybe.....
Maybe my sense of 'self' is acting up again....
Henri Rousseau
As far as I see it, I believe that there is nothing wrong with having a faith as long as the message of that faith is to teach/guide people on how to become better human beings, and if humans find solace, inner peace and contributes to the harmony among individuals of different shapes, colours and beliefs .... then I certainly believe that that is good indeed, and yes please anything that contributes to a positive inprovement towards correcting our ever inner destructive nature! .... My only problem with 'spirituality' lies when that message aims at ..... destruction ... subjugation and disharmony by voicing that ' Should you not accept its rules and regulations ...then a fellow human being has the right to act as if he personally was God ... and arbitrarily claims and anoints himself with the right to take a another human being's life or to inflict pain ...
Whatever people may believe or not .. one thing is for sure ... we should always know better and be able to distinguish between what is right or wrong... and that is what differentiates as from the animal kingdom ...
"....we should always know better and be able to distinguish between what is right or wrong...and that is what differentiates us from the animal kingdom..." I don't think we human beings know better than the rest of the animal kingdom, look at the state of this planet now-we have caused nothing but distruction to other spicies, we have no more wisdom than cavemen, we kill fellow human beings in the most vicious, violent, gruesome manners, inflict emotional and physical pain onto others for no good reasons at all.
