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I’ve been musing on a similar concept, using Music as the subject of choice. Jazz Fusion (or Fusion in general) draws from all branches of musical genres, blending, oscillating, and exploring entire new terrains in the realm of Music. There’s also a certain mysticism within Music that every individual perceives and engages with differently, whether passive (listening) or active (participating/channeling/creating) and that allows for an infinite learning experience, much like Life itself, which I might define as the penultimate quest of spirituality.

This is all a little more esoteric than your tech analogy, and has it’s own limitations such as the semantics of genre itself, along with the unique perception component.

However I think there may be another downside worth mentioning, as I believe there will be inherent risk of lost nuance and/or misinterpretation in the wisdom that is being incorporated. Reconstruction of one’s fundamental belief can be a risky operation, and I contend it often takes meaningful life experiences in order to truly incorporate (or amend) new belief systems.

That said, this was a great piece :) its been on my mind since reading it late last night

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Thanks! I like your analogy as well.

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This is quite profound.

It put something into perspective for me, namely on the idea of agnosticism. As I was reading I paused to think about how the illogical parts of adhering to a religion in todays tech savvy world influences some who are not ready to give up on the concept of God entirely. Perhaps they may be “porting” through atheism or using the certain “rationalistic” arguments of atheistic beliefs through their own religions.

I have friends who consider themselves Atheist Jews, for example - and that is partially done in honor of the recognition of the culture ingrained within. I for one, and for a long time, considered myself an Agnostic Muslim, because so much of not believing in God makes sense. I have Christian friends who feel the same.

Through your model, I can see not only religions influencing others, but also the lack of religion influencing them as well. And perhaps the other way around.

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Thank you, Salma. And yes! Agnosticism and atheism can be (and often are) ported into religious identities, including the examples you name.

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