Opening Religions — Meaningfully
Opening religions – this is, the Open Religion endeavor – should lead to more deeper meaningfulness — certainly not less.
Organized religions typically provide deep meaningfulness through storytelling.
That is their main strength and also their main problem — not in the storytelling itself but through the frequently mistaken unification of the story and reality. This way, they attain deep meaningfulness easily while it jeopardizes their ability to attain it in a direct way. In other words, organized religions are frequently hijacked by their own stories. Then, with societal evolutions, they risk losing their relevance in due time. The most compelling stories survive longer, not the most veridical or science-resistant ones.
In their closedness and self-protection, such religions may even thwart scientific progress for a while, yet with increasing difficulty in the long term. Science is like a never-ending drill, and knowing that a story is rationally incorrect makes it untrue, no matter how one tries to frame it.
Most unfortunately, when eventually losing the stories, people may be left with nothing religiously meaningful, making them vulnerable to any absurd alternative.
Can we get to deep meaningfulness directly?
Or must we necessarily use surface-level storytelling in a way that almost certainly leads to hijacking the storyteller and his audience?
Is surface-level untruth necessary to come to a deeper truth?
Open Religion can and must be meaningful.
This meaning must be brought in a direct manner. All must be Open as much as possible. This is, of course, a never-ending endeavor, as is trying not to fall into a new imaginary story.
For instance, storytelling is OK, but it has to be clear that it is ‘just’ a story with, hopefully, a profound meaning. Religious stories can be great ― as stories without the need to rationalize them. Their strength lies in their symbolism, which can be as important, of course, as anything, pointing to symbolic reality.
Science at least has openness as its goal and should, therefore, not be discarded without profoundly serious argumentation.
Deep meaning IS religiosity.
It is what people have always sought in their search for God, for instance — God as the bringer of deep meaning.
Somehow, finding deep meaning in oneself has repeatedly been too challenging for many. Therefore, something Big and outside was sought. It had to be Big because what it was supposed to bring was seen as important.
It was, and it still is to the core.
A future without deep meaning – without ‘religiosity’ – is inhumane.
Therefore, people need to Believe in their Selves.
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