I find religion to be a funny thing ...
Tell someone that you hear a voice in your head and you'll be in a mental asylumn faster than you can say "Whoopsie daisy" . Now sugar coat it a bit and say how god inspired you and spoke to you through a burning pillar of fire in the desert and voile .. instant prophet.
Tell someone about a story of someone who can skip over water and jumps from tree to tree and kills entire armies by himself and people will probably think that it was either methaphor, exaggeration or just simple work of fiction but tell them about someone who parted the ocean to escape a persuing force of enemies and you have a "miracle".
Tell someone that carbon dating proves that the world is 4.5 billion years old and religious fanatics will tell you that no the scientist are wrong and that their religion proves that the world is X thousand years old only. When you point out that dinosaur fossils disprove that , do they relent ? NO , they actually claim that god created the world with fossils in it . (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_Henry_Gosse) In other words, God create fossilized dinosaur bones. It seems weird that god would do something like that .. if god wanted to mask his presence from us humans what are all the religious texts and prophets for ? This totally mysitifies me .. as do other questions like the entire Adam and his navel issue .. (http://www.freedomsring.org/belly.html)
Weird
Of course I am not religion bashing .. I mean religion is all good and pure right ? Oh wait, I forgot .. there are religions which tells you it's ok to have a 9 year old kid as your wife (seems pretty wrong to me) and there are religion that tells you that your sins can be pardoned if you pay money to certain religious organisations.
What about the religions that are totally dead wrong ? Like that one that claims that the world is is on a giant platter on the back of elephants which are standing on top of a giant tortoise. Or that the sun is a giant chariot with a god who circles the world.
Given to an unbiased person who grew up isolated from concepts of religion , religious text with events of people walking on water, splitting oceans and such won't be too different from stories of Hercules fighting the Hydra or lightning being Thor's hammer or the entire brothers Grimm stories and other legends. How would you differentiate religion from pure fiction ?
We humans are blessed with an overactive imagination, children tend to see the bogeyman in their closets or monsters under our beds. We remember things selectively and in a biased way. Hallucinations , dementia and multiple personalities happens .. do we believe in what individuals with afflictions say ? Ever had a creepy feeling in a dark ? Afraid of something lurking in the shadows ... Ever had a dream that you believed was real ? That is how good your mind is at making up stuff from nothing.
But what about miracles you say ? David Copperfield and David Blaine are good at doing magic tricks which seems to defy explanations . Does this make them prophets ? It they start a religion should we accept their miracles as proof and believe everything they say ? Would you dedicate your heart, soul and life to them .. ignoring attempts by other people who try to explain the phenomenons scientifically and rationally ? If you follow the models of most major religions today , the answer would be a resounding YES ! The devotees would use big words like FAITH and BELIEF and claim that everyone is making up facts to lead you away from the TRUTH and the DEVIL is making them do it .. the poor misguided souls condemnned to hell , when will they learn that the miracles of David Blaine are real .
I am not trying to vilify religion but it really irks me when people do dumb things like kill people because they are of a certain religion or hate people because they are born of a certain race. They are willing to do anything in the name of religion without having any doubts if it is the right thing because to doubt is a sin .. because there is no need for proof , faith conquers all. If science figures out something that is contradictory with religion then science must be wrong. Their argument is that science doesn't know what it is talking about .. Einstein said nothing can travel faster than the speed of light, how fast to the speed of light has he gone ? Has anyone seen an electron ? So science is no different than religion right ? Both relies on faith ...
Not true. Science does require you to believe in certain concepts but the difference is that when a better answer is obtained science takes it into account and changes. When Einstein fixed Newton's theories on gravity no scientists went around burning Einstein's books and asking people to 'keep the faith' .. nope science considered the new alternative and adaped it. There is a difference between faith and blind faith.
I believe that Jesus Christ is real , I think of him as an admirable historical figure. His principle of offering the other cheek, to love thy enemy and how he was resolute in his beliefs is truely admirable. His Sermon on The Mount moved me and the events in Garden of Gethsemane touched something deep within me. But I don't think he was God or God's son , I believe that he is mortal like other great figures in history like Gandhi. But if I do find hard proof that he really is God then I awould be inclined to believe. There are many religions in the world and all claim to be the only true one , so by logic all of them cannot be true. So what moves the religious person to chose one over the others ? Think about it before claiming that religion X is the one true religion and the others are wrong .. cause that is what every religion says.
Right, the point that I am trying to make here is . KEEP AN OPEN MIND ! Do things that are good because it is the right thing, not just because religion asks you to do it. If you feel like doing a good deed, do it because you empathize not cause you are saving up on your 'GOING TO HEAVEN' fund ! Be yourself . Don't hate cause of some ancient feud. Yes the Jews of that time crucified Christ but the Jews of today are their ancestors not the same bunch of guys that killed him. If you are Jew and you believe that you are the chosen race and are special and that other people are just goyims / lesser races .. think again .. some dead people writing some age old document shouldn't make you think lesser of other people . If you are a Jehovah's Witness and refuse to donate blood to save people, how are you different from the Jewish priest who refused to aid the wounded traveller in the parable of the Good Samaritan. If you are a Buddhist and you refuse to eat meat because you don't want to cause harm then I salute you. Not everything in religion is bad. Take the good and throw away the negative. Take your religion with a pinch of salt. |
At 12:48 AM,
God has a sick sense of humor, don't you know? Well, sick by human standards anyway. You can never argue with the 'God can do no wrong because he ain't man', line.
At 1:07 AM,
hear hear ...
At 9:39 AM,
Well written Warlock, me shares thy sentiments. Its a pity thatmost people don't think this way and the ones that do usually keep silent out of fear. God does indeed have a sick sense of humor for he created me, gave me free will to do what I want, then dictated that there is only one right way to live life and I'm screwed if I pursue any other path. Well.....that's what the religious type would have me believe anyway.