Still a church?

Yabuturtle wrote: I always thought a religion was just a spiritual philosophy. A way of living involving spiritual practice, whether it involves a deity or not, as obviously there are non-theistic religions out there. What is the Church of the Sword's philosophy of life? Do they just play with swords or actually partake in spiritual practice? Otherwise it seems more like a practice than a religion. It would be like saying Alchemy is a religion.

I agree, but for conversations sake it might depend on how one defines spiritual?

I guess some view the spirit as being contained as part of the self within the self which can be uplifted by exercise and positive thinking for example as a state of mind, and some view it as connected outwards to other selfs in different ways which requires additional social and community interaction or manifestation of wisdom to reveal its nature more accurately as a state of nature. Probably lots of different views on it.

A religion and thus a church sort of ends up IMO revolving around whether some supernatural/metaphysical elements exists, and these do exist in Buddhism, Hinduism etc. Not necessarily a deity when I say supernatural or metaphysical. Ours would be the Force I guess. Of course we could say supernatural/metaphysical things in religions are just metaphors, but I don't think that would change the distinction from practise to religion, instead just change the nature of the supernature from ethereal/spiritual to subconscious!?! Either way I think Jedi is a practise based philosophy of spirituality at its heart which might mean practise based activities might be spiritual philosophies at their hearts
:lol:

imo religion is whatever one belives to be true about life and the universe and their place within and relationship to it

does this church of the sword offer answers to these questions?
i dont know
from what i remember of the article, what they do is play fight with toys and demand the right to "defend their opinions"
which i think is kind of stupid actually - much healthier to be willing to change opinions as often and easily as changing socks by basing ones opinion on the evidence

that being said, theyre only PRETENDING to hack each other into bits over their opions, which makes them far more benign than some other "religious" people that i could mention lol

im not sure that tax breaks fpor churches is appropriate in our era

or that it was ever really appropriate to be honest - at least not after a certain amount of revenue is generated

Sory to chime in to late on this one... this is, to me not a religious thing at all... are you ready??? It's a some one ain't paying their bills or keeping proper notations or just good old fashioned some one didn't either know because yes no matter which way you cut it they are a church...a church who got recognition because now some one wants money or didn't know how to run the "money" side.

So many great people preach, teach, travel,speak and due to bad moneys... yup the ministry stops. May this be a lesson to us all... keep good clear track. Thank you so much to our Council for having the ability to not only help us on our paths of life but also for them to have a mind to be savy and mindful about things like this!! A THOUSAND Thank yous!!!

Do they have practices? I am not familiar with their teachings or philosophy.