I think Emerson had it right when it came to spirituality

[Quixote1818]

"Why should not we have a poetry and philosophy of insight and not of tradition, and a religion by revelation to us, and not the history of theirs?" Ralph Waldo Emerson

Those transcendentalists were by far the most Christ like people you could find at the time. Fighting for womens rights and against slavery. They were in touch with a more Romantic way of thinking. It was less rational than what emerged during the Enlightenment and more intuitive, more in touch with the senses.

Emerson and others also began to take a look at the scriptures of non-Western cultures, which had only recently become available for publication in the West. They began to read Hindu and Buddhist scriptures and evaluate them against their own assumptions of spiritual truth. They found it hard to believe that a loving God would have left so much of humanity in the dark about Religious Truth. With this they felt that these non-Western religions must contain spiritual truth as well. They felt that if an idea agreed with an individual’s intuition of Truth then it must be Truth.

It seems Transcendentalism went a step beyond what the Enlightenment had discovered going from purely rational thought to a more experiential, intuitive, beyond rational perspective toward religion. Certainly one of the more tolerant and modern belief systems to ever evolve.

[ladjf]

1. Someday, science will be able to correctly diagnose that

religion is psychiatric disease that can often be fatal,not only for the patient, but for others who are in association, as is happening now in the U.S. as well as other parts of the world. It effectively renders the brain incapable of being able to make judgments are are in the best interest of survival.

[indigobusiness]

2. Survival is temporary.

There are legitimate avenues of thought addressing issues which are not.

[ladjf]

5. Would you please expand your statement. I don't know what

you are saying. You are certainly correct to say the "survival is temporary". But, the human race is on the verge of becoming the all time record holders for the shortest survival of any species. That's a record I'd prefer that we not achieve.

[indigobusiness]

6. Homo sapiens sapiens has outlived countless species,

but that is a different issue entirely.

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

3. religion by revelation

sounds like basic mysticism to me.

[supernova]

4. I love Emerson

:D

Thanks for sharing him.

Heh. From Spiritual Laws:

We are full of mechanical actions. We must needs intermeddle, and have things in our own way, until the sacrifices and virtues of society are odious. Love should make joy; but our benevolence is unhappy. Our Sunday-schools, and churches, and pauper-societies are yokes to the neck. We pain ourselves to please nobody. There are natural ways of arriving at the same ends at which these aim, but do not arrive. Why should all virtue work in one and the same way? Why should all give dollars? It is very inconvenient to us country folk, and we do not think any good will come of it. We have not dollars; merchants have; let them give them. Farmers will give corn; poets will sing; women will sew; laborers will lend a hand; the children will bring flowers. And why drag this dead weight of a Sunday-school over the whole Christendom? It is natural and beautiful that childhood should inquire, and maturity should teach; but it is time enough to answer questions when they are asked. Do not shut up the young people against their will in a pew, and force the children to ask them questions for an hour against their will.

http://www.emersoncentral.com/spirituallaws.htm