Folks,
I think religion topics as such are prohibited by the board owner. The OP is really about the popular beliefs among people in the DR. I admittedly allowed myself to wander off by answering on an off-topic tangent. Didn't really mean to turn this debate from sociological to philosophical. But its there now, so let me try again to clarify my opinions. No one has to agree and I am not selling ideas, just stating them. OK?
As far as we can tell, no culture on the history of the earth, has been exempt from myths and rituals. In every continent you will find very old traditions which are culture-bound, thus highly accepted, but may appear as abnormal to people from other cultures. Silly rituals, scary rituals, criminal rituals. They are all rituals. Some less harmful than others.
People educated under the tenets of the Western tradition have slowly been shedding off most of the more obvious elements of magical explanations from our religions. Its like when we were kids, we may have thought Santa Claus was like very cool and indeed from the freaking North Pole and all that. More precise and efficient that FedEx or UPS. But little elfs helped him, so that's why. Right? Well the same culture taught you later that, well, that whole deal was just a make-you-feel-good kind of "white lie". Just like adults adapt to that concept once "reality" and maturity set-in, the well-fed and well instructed modernizing humans anywhere will likewise eventually shed off the rituo-mystical from their cultural beliefs systems. My opinion. I don't KNOW this. OK?
I DO know that most spriritual people are not religious automatons with robotic, knee-jerk answers that paraphrase ancient texts. But many do, and that's quite a concern if we wish this species to endure and prosper.
Neither religion nor science are truly "objective" or absolute. We can't know that. We are humbled by the absence of good answers by either discipline.
We do know that there are things that will always be open to interpretation and we just must accept how others choose to view any issue, whether about the existence of God or any other culture-bound tenets. But (and with me, there is always a but) there are, IMO, universal standards of moral rectitude that derive from our biology and extend into every culture. This creates a clear common context that may apply to everyone.
The specific concepts that may be culturally acceptable as either scientific or faith-based are BTW always changing/evolving, just like all the other creatures on Earth do, just like the planet's climate does, just like the cosmos itself, just like our childhood beliefs in fairies turn into some other, less fantastic legends.
The Aztecs, for example, were quite an accomplished people in agriculture, hydraulics, and other technologies that they mastered, but their religion was still using human sacrifices only 500 years ago. It made all the sense in the world to them and they did not see it as sinful, quite on the contrary they thought they were being observant of God's will. We sort of agree by now, universally, that such practices, religious or otherwise are not acceptable in any culture. That's a great religion only if you weren't elegible for being the sacrificial lamb.
The very Christian, Bible-toting Nazis, killed people by the millions in gas chambers and other concentration camp horrors. The very holy church of the Vatican has been sinfully involved in horrible violations of human rights. When people think that they really know something that cannot be cognitively validated, watch out. The next logical step is that they will try to make you bend to their way of seeing things. It when the very ignorant combine to follow the very arrogant that individuals and societies form a strong sense of moral infallibility which in turn allows the perfect environment for grooming suicidal bombers, ecclessiastical child abusers, genocidal theocracies, holy inquisitions and intifadas, Puritanical witch hunters, fanatical book-burners, etc. Verbatim interpretations of ANY scriptures make me highly suspicious of people affected by intellectual laziness or deprivation, maybe even lack of moral self-sufficiency and extreme comformity.
