Wednesday 12 May 2021

Is your religion really Sheilaism?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sheilaism

Sheilaism is a shorthand term for an individual's system of religious belief which co-opts strands of multiple religions chosen by the individual usually without much theological consideration.

The term derives from a woman named Sheila Larson, who is following her own "little voice" in a faith she calls "Sheilaism"

What some people insist is their "religion" cannot be a religion if no one else shares their beliefs. However, because their beliefs are sacred to them alone, they will keep insisting that their personal beliefs are a "religion".

Category errors are commonly made by uneducated people careless with their words more moved by their emotions than their reason.

What is the harm of this? 

I knew someone who insists he enters "the kingdom of heaven" as often as he perhaps enters his shed and someone who says she "reasons" with God. But you only reason with a child with the intention of teaching it reason, do you not? 

Is there any harm in these beliefs?  

Sheila "has a code of ethics, but it's no longer connected to a sacred text or an observing deity. It's personal – and unpublished. Sheila abides by Sheilaism. Sheilaism is good for Sheila, but it doesn't build community. Nobody but Sheila knows what are the codes of Sheilaism. Often Sheila doesn't know herself until something 'doesn't feel right'."

Sheilaism is in fact a form of self-absorption but continues to demand that our institutions dramatically change to accept us as we want to be.

Radically individualistic religion like "Sheilaism" may seem very different from organised religion, but they both emphasise personal religious experience (spirituality). 

Spirituality is the good feeling we get when we think we are following the rules correctly, but if we are only following our own rules, this means we can always change them.  

The principle of Parliamentary Sovereignty - the idea that a nation should have the right to repeal or pass any law - is really a national manifestation of this tendency.  

This sounds reasonable enough. Obviously, if the decision to change a rule made sense, then it would be a good thing, but what if a bad rule replaced a good one? 

Having desecrated the institutions of marriage and the family, the Western political establishment is now peopled by the incompetent and corrupt who make ever more decisions that are bad for the nation and produce ever more corrupt and incompetent politicians to steer the ship of state.  

Is this capable of being corrected?  

Only if there is a responsible adult who is competent, influential and honorable with access to other moral and rational influential people prepared to to have a dialogue and speak truth to power, and there is serious doubt as to whether such people still exist.

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