This Blog Is About Religion

Religion always seems to be a topic that riles people up.
As much as I love open forum to discuss and hear multiple viewpoints, it never seems to end up that way, does it? Someone will come in, brandishing their Righteous Fury of Enlightened Wisdom, and somehow the end result is usually name-calling and finger-pointing. So I'd like us all, as a group, to take a deep breath, remind ourselves that this is a post that is absolutely based on my personal opinions, and that there are a million and two differing opinions.
Exhale.
Now, let me give you my personal take on spirituality and religion.

First off, I absolutely make a distinction between religion and spirituality. I do not consider myself religious at all, but I do consider myself spiritual. I totally sound like a hipster-bucket, don't I? Hang in there for me.
For me, religion always seems to get awfully bogged down in semantics. There's entire denominations that have branched off from the same core because of a phrase or chapter or book of the bible alone. There's wars fought over religion. Protests over minor dogmatic differences.
This has never really made any sense to me. It seems to me that these squabbles pull people away from the core values of almost any religion. They turn petty, causing meanness or even cruelty in the name of whatever greater deity is in charge. I generally use the term Sky Daddy, because it makes me giggle, and it's a vague enough term that anyone can substitute their own in it's place. Now, the majority of religions basically tell you to be a good person. That's a cause I can get behind. Don't run around stabbing people, don't make an ass of yourself, use your highly evolved brain to make the best choices you can. In defense of their particular set of rules, however, people will completely disregard everything their Sky Daddy has asked of them, because someone else is Wrong.
I see most religions as multiple sides of a magically poly-sided coin. We have the same general goals, we're all humans, we all bleed red blood (unless you don't, in which case welcome to my blog, other-blooded being!). Our versions of morality are usually quite similar as well. I feel like we could move so far as a unit if we could stop focusing on the phraseology and pay more attention to the deeper meaning.


Bringing me to spirituality. Now, this is a personal definition, but to me, spirituality is simply concerning the spirit. Many use the word soul, some don't, it's all the same general idea. The piece of us that makes us more than the sum of our parts.
We have biological needs to care for our physical selves. Similarly, we have needs for nourishing our mental and spiritual selves. Self-reflection about what we want in life, musing about our place in the scope of the universe, pondering about our purpose in existing. To me, these are spiritual. They concern ourselves and the whole big cloud of energy and matter and weird junk that our reality is made of.
I believe that we have very similar spiritual needs, and that most religions are attempting to address these. We use prayer, or meditation, or whatever it is that you practice, but the end result is generally very much the same. We're integrating ourselves into the whole. We're reminding ourselves that we aren't the center of the universe. We're weighing our own existence, and trying to find understanding and enlightenment.
So maybe, just perhaps, we can all chill out for a while? :p
I shall look forward to interesting and civil discussion on this topic.