Thoughts on what is sacred

rugadd wrote: Maybe the act of defaming your "sacred" altar is "sacred" to the defamer.

The very first wedding I performed was that of a very close friend, who shares a spiritual mindset with me, who travels in my spiritual circles, and who has a completely different religion than my own. He wanted me to perform the ceremony in a way that I "felt most comfortable", and since the wedding would be seen to outsiders as a simple costume wedding and not the sacred affair it meant to those of us participating in it, that really meant anything was on the table.

I hand-crafted an artifact from my faith--one of the very, very few that is ultra-sacred and untouchable--as part of my attire, and one day on a visit to see how things were coming, before I could stop him, he did what we usually do to one another's precious objects: he blessed it.

So, he inadvertantly desecrated an object most holy to me. And, to restore it to sanctified status in my eyes, I had to desecrate his blessing on it. It was not an unemotional situation, but we're friends, so he and I had a frank discussion about it, and we came to an agreement that in the future, we'd ask first.

Khaos wrote:

I guess maybe holding every individual thing sacred could be difficult, but holding concepts sacred could work. Holding nature sacred would allow a person to be concerned with preservation and conservation while still allowing for nature to do it's thing.

Does it have to be held sacred to be concerned about it?.

No. A person can be concerned with something without holding it sacred. I was just (poorly) continuing Gisteron's example of the starving cheetah and the innocent gazelle.

If the survival of the starving cheetah is as sacred as the survival of the innocent gazelle, both your action and your inaction will have you violate one of the things you hold sacred.

A tangential example would be that many religious people believe atheists cannot be moral, or more to the point, that morals only exist within a religious construct.

Personally I believe that morality and religion do not need to be intertwined. A religious person frequently gets their sense of morality from their religion, but it is possible for a person who doesn't have a religion to still have morals just like a person in a religion may have morals that differ from or aren't mentioned in their religion.

It(nature) will do its thing regardless of how you value it

I guess me saying 'allow' was incorrect. I meant something more along the lines of 'notice without concern.' Still using Gisteron's example. If we hold nature sacred vs. holding the individual animals involved sacred then the cheetah eating the gazelle is part of nature and is therefore not a bad thing.

Khaos wrote: It(nature) will do its thing regardless of how you value it.

Not if we keep passing laws requiring warning labels.

LOL nice...unless human kind's laws are "natural" in the same sense that humankind is.

steamboat28 wrote:

Khaos wrote: It(nature) will do its thing regardless of how you value it.

Not if we keep passing laws requiring warning labels.

Nope, it will still do what it does.

If we hold nature sacred vs. holding the individual animals involved sacred then the cheetah eating the gazelle is part of nature and is therefore not a bad thing

If you hold "nature" as sacred or not, does not make it anymore or less bad if a cheetah eats the gazelle.

So then, given that,what is the value of holding nature as sacred?

I think if one were to focus their "sacred" intake/output to something it would have the same effect as focusing on a single skill instead of many. Suppose "trees" are sacred to one. Then they go out, learn a bunch about trees and act to protect and proliferate them. If "kindness" is sacred then one may spend tons of time meditating and going out of one's way to help people. Its hard style versus light. Our hard style is our "skill" and our soft style is our way of dealing with the world around us. Perhaps "sacred" is the hard style of one's personal spirituality.

One might say "I don't need to hold it sacred to do that." Of course not, but cultivating an emotional investment helps with motivation and focus. If one is looking to take every advantage they can, that is.

Sure, but I do not think cultivating an emotional investment translates to considering something sacred.

I suppose I see things in terms of respect.

I respect nature, and I respect the fact that its health is important to my health within nature.

I have a dog, I have cultivated an emotional investment, but I do not hold the dog as sacred.

So hard or soft, I only see the methodology of sacredness, if indeed you are connecting it to some sort of religion or spirituality.

Without that connection, I do not see sacredness being important.

Well, sacredness would be the most intense emotional investment you can make(barring perhaps love, but that is a different discussion). That intensity would translate to how much focus and motivation you have for a particular pursuit. That would make holding something sacred incredibly valuable.