Jediism and/as a religion

if i understand this correctly then what im hearing is that at the heart of it the split happened because some people wanted jedi to be a religion in and of itself and others wanted to keep the religion that they had and still be counted as jedi?

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an aside to jestor
obviously ive only been posting here for short time but in that time youre one who has earned my respect for consistently being respectful AND insightful which i know from very personal experience are character traits which do not always exist in conjunction to each other and without which each is made the lesser


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<---is still the king of the run on sentence = grammar be dammed!
(if spelling is considered an element of grammar then that was my first ever grammar joke
for those who dont see it; beavers make dams)

Thanks OB1...

People love their definitions, my buddy Steamboat and I have a friendly (heated? Lol) discussion on words meaning things...

And, they do, of course..

Less important is the definition of each word, than the overall point someone is trying to make...

Sometimes it feel like someone has to say "I am going to sit on sand, by the ocean, under an umbrellas, with my wife and son and eat food"..

Before "I'm going to a picnic at the beach with the family" can be accepted... lol...

Then they'll ask what kinda sandwiches...

Ooo, ooo... Reminds me of a story....

According to the early scriptures, the Buddha himself never directly answered questions put to him about the origin of the universe. In a famous simile, the Buddha referred to the person who asks such questions as a man wounded by a poisoned arrow. Instead of letting the surgeon pull the arrow out, the injured man insists first on discovering the caste, name, and clan of the man who shot the arrow; whether he is dark, brown, or fair; whether he lives in a village, town, or city; whether the bow used was a longbow or a crossbow; whether the bowstring was fiber, reed, hemp, sinew, or bark; whether the arrow shaft was of wild or cultivated wood; and so forth.

Dalia Lama, The Universe in an Atom

Jestor wrote: ...my buddy Steamboat and I have a friendly (heated? Lol) discussion on words meaning things...

Words mean things. And canonical Jediism (from the movies and comics and novels) is panentheistic. :whistle:

i dig it
i enjoy steamboats posting too and I've taken both sides of that topic at different times


when "listening" the only aim should be to understand what the other person is really saying
this means we have to be able to drop our particular idiosyncrasies of speech and contextual usage; in other words we must not get hung up on the words which people use because we all have our own individual way of speaking andthat is something that will never change
so to be a good communicator you have to accept that the majority of people in the world are just not going to use words well and many of those that do will have developed a very individualized methodology for doing it)

so the skill to develop is to glean the message the speaker intends regardless of how they say it

conversely;
words do have specific meanings, and if you want to be an effective communicator it is your responsibility to use your words thoughtfully and as precisely as possible. most especially we tailor our words to our audience as best as we are able, and while some audiences do not demand an especially precise use of words it is equally relevant that some audiences do not demand an especially precise use of thought either

in any event the first priority of a communicator is to understand and the second is to be understood and as a general rule the closer we get to doing both the less we have to worry about being right
but above all the important thing is that we enjoy ourselves so if thats what this is really about then you guys have fun

Just a question on "Jedi atheism."

I think that sometimes it is necessary to make a distinction between "atheist" and "non-theist." Granted, when taken at face-value, they are pretty much synonymous, but in the way that they are used, I have always understood atheism to mean "I do not believe in a God, higher power, afterlife, or anything of a supernatural nature," whereas non-theism can describe many people who are devoutly religious, such as Buddhists or followers of certain schools of Hinduism.

That of course means that an "atheist" in the common meaning of the word would be described as a "Jedi realist" (though many, if not most Jedi Realists are not atheists), whereas a non-theist could practice Jediism as a religion/spirituality, or as a complement to the one that they already practice, or synthesize the two. That's the conclusion I have come to, anyway. Feel free to tell me if I am speaking in error.

Speaking as an atheist, the word in my view and in that of many of the subset of my fellow atheists who do concern themselves with the subject of religion, non-theist and atheist mean quite exactly the same. Atheism in our meaning is a position on one and only one question, namely whether we believe there is a god in some of the traditional definitions. An atheist is not necessarily an irreligious person, and not necessarily a skeptic either. In fact, if I had to guess, I'd reckon most atheists are neither.

Of course, those who tend to speak out a lot tend to also collectively stand for or against a number of other things, like the promotion of education or church-state separation, if we try to not make this any more political. Indeed, it is those things they speak out about, really, because speaking out about how you don't believe something really isn't making much of a relevant statement. But even among the prominent ones most would, if prompted, still emphasize that the only thing common to them all is their non-belief in deities and everything beyond that is something else.

I hope that answers your question.

Gisteron wrote: Speaking as an atheist, the word in my view and in that of many of the subset of my fellow atheists who do concern themselves with the subject of religion, non-theist and atheist mean quite exactly the same. Atheism in our meaning is a position on one and only one question, namely whether we believe there is a god in some of the traditional definitions. An atheist is not necessarily an irreligious person, and not necessarily a skeptic either. In fact, if I had to guess, I'd reckon most atheists are neither.

Of course, those who tend to speak out a lot tend to also collectively stand for or against a number of other things, like the promotion of education or church-state separation, if we try to not make this any more political. Indeed, it is those things they speak out about, really, because speaking out about how you don't believe something really isn't making much of a relevant statement. But even among the prominent ones most would, if prompted, still emphasize that the only thing common to them all is their non-belief in deities and everything beyond that is something else.

I hope that answers your question.

So in your view, atheism could describe a religious Buddhist who believes in reincarnation, afterlife, karma, dharma, meditation, prayer, and so on?

Yes, absolutely. So long as he does not believe in a god, he is, by definition, an atheist, whatever else he happens to believe or not believe besides that. Theism and atheism address only one question. Everything else is something else.

Gisteron wrote: Yes, absolutely. So long as he does not believe in a god, he is, by definition, an atheist, whatever else he happens to believe or not believe besides that. Theism and atheism address only one question. Everything else is something else.

I guess my way of looking at things is due to my environment. In the West (or at least North America), "atheist" usually goes hand in hand with "materialist," "secular," "skeptic," and so on.

I agree with you, though.