Religion
 

I have had many' a discussion about religion with fellow teammates and friends, and decided to turn to Chiefdelphi and ask: what do you think of Religion???
My views and that of my friends comes to the point that reliogion is like a telemarkerter, its really skeptically, and a lot of strings attached. We also said that it was the core of a lot of the worlds problems. It only comes into play when you die, or accept that your death is coming, because you dont know what is in the afterlife. I have turned to you because i want to see if you provide a scientific outlook, a biblical outlook, or whatever. when you awnser, put your religion in too, i want to see how religiously diverse first is!!
Thanks!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Shrey
920
Hindu

First, this should be in the chit-chat forums.

Second, this has been touched before on the forums, and if I remember right, it got ugly.

If it turns into a 'my religion is better.. ' type thread, I'll probably end up closing it.

I feel this topic is a bit too heavy for this message board....I think this is going to easily offend ppl...just a warning...I might be wrong

I'm a Catholic and am pretty open minded and even I am a little offended by your interpretation of Religion...also religion should almost never ( I say almost cuz I certainly don't claim to be an expert on religion, knowing every religion out there) just come into play as you die, it should be perhaps the most major part of your life.

Again, though, I think if you talk about this kind of stuff you will find a lot of close minded people...be warned

Re: Religion
 

I think that's a loaded question that most people aren't capable of handling, in my opinion, maturely.

I think that it's unsafe to assume that the FIRST community is entirely scientifically minded.

I think it's a gross oversimplification of a complex global climate to single out *any* one cause, crusade, change or movement as the cause of *most* anything. It's also a sure-fire way of getting yourself into a whole heap of trouble.

Faith is more complex than most of us can really grasp, I suspect. I have faith, but I also have a healthy dose of skepticism, optimism, and hope. I don't feel that I could adequately put my entire world view into writing.

So, please, if and when people choose to respond, consider that, no matter how strongly you may disagree with their views, it's not outside the realm of possibility that *you* are misinterpreting, or otherwise assigning unseen bias, to their words.

Thanks.

Have a nice day.

yeah. What /\hesaid

Some misinterpretation of both my and your thoughts
 

First, I don't want anyone to be offended by my thoughts, i had just posted to see what other people think of religion and stuff, im not sure what i think of it fully, i know i am very skeptical, but i still pray when i feel the need, i believe in times that there is a greater being and then i also question that thought. Also, im not looking for a especially scientific biased opinion, im looking for what everyone thinks of religion and of their own religion. I dont want this to get ugly, i want more of a gathering of thoughts of religion, a discussion, not a fight. I really hope i dont offend anyone or anything and its cool if you dont want to post or remove this post, and i messed up by putting it in the general forum.

shrey

No doubt some people are going to bring in (or atleast think about) 9/11 - hey, it's pop culture now. Some of you also might hate Muslims because of 9/11, or think bad of Islam. At the very least, you know someone like that, or you've heard someone say, "I hate Muslims" in some variation or another.

To those poeple I say this: learn a bit <censor block>ing tolerance. Yeah, so jihad is a belief of Islam, but does that mean all Muslims are dying to strap a bomb to themselves and blow themselves up? NO! I've talked to Muslims - a lot believe that Bin Laden's jihad is bs. I'm no expert on Islam, but I've been told that to make a jihad, you have to formally declare your intentions. Anyways, I really hate talking about pop-culture and suddenly being a bandwagon patriot, so I'll leave it at this:

I can't stop you from hating a race or an ethnicity, but if you want to hate them, don't do it because of the actions of a select handful of individuals. After all, a few good Christians did a bit of Jewish genocide in a little thing called the Inquisition a while back - does that mean all Christians want to eliminate Jews, or does it mean the fundamentalists in charge at the time wanted to eliminate the Jews?

PM or AIM me (PhyrosFire) if you want to discuss this further. It's only going to get ugly on here.

A Few Points
 

Before I make some comments you should know what my beliefs are.

I am a Christian. I have studied several religions ( I hope to study others in the future) and in my opinion Christianity is the one that has the most credible foundation in truth. I believe the early history and scriptures of Christianity make it extremely unlikely that it is a fabrication and therefore its claims about the nature of God and man are true. Was I raised in Christianity? Yes. Is it possible I have not given other religions (including atheism) a fair examination? Yes, it is possible, but I am trying to fair and honest in consideration of other religions. The bottom line is, I want the truth. Can I ever know for sure what the truth is about religion? Perhaps after I am deceased, perhaps not, in the mean time I'm going to keep trying.

Some comments:

Shrey, have people done terrible things in the name of religion? Yes, but you need to keep things in perspective. If you just want to compare the numbers, it wouldn't surprise me if you found that atheist dictators in the 20th century have killed more people (millions) that all the "Christian" persecutions in the last 2000 years. If men professing religion are dangerous, men who answer to no God are far more dangerous. There are many reasons people harm others, religious belief is only one of many. Some people have killed others for food, does that mean we all stop eating?

Dan, glad to hear you don't lump all muslims together. I hope you don't lump all fundamentalists (of any religion) together as well. A fundamentalism is a person who believes that the core tennants and original teachings of religion should be strictly adhered to. Unfortunately we've come to use the word to mean people that hate everybody else and advocate violence. The fact is, if more Christians had been fundamentalists and adhered to the original teachings of their religion, there would have been no inquisition or crusades because conversion by the sword or killing people with other beliefs is not part of the original teachings or early history of Christianity.

As an aside, the inquisition was not a conflict between Catholics and Jews, it was largely a conflict between different groups within the Catholic church.

Sorry to hear you hate being a patriot, that's kind of sad actually. There are very few other countries where we could feel comfortable having this conversation.

James Jones
Engineer/Coach
Team 180 SPAM

jamesjones -

you must remember, in the 20th century there were a LOT more people than the past 2000 years, and there have been many more weapons of mass destucution. the nuclear bomb, gas chambers, etc, to name a few. before, all we had was a club, then maybe a sharpened club which we called a sword. even when we invented guns, it still only had limited killing powers. so, not to get off topic, but just like you adjust money for inflation, you must take the amount of people and the different weapons that they used when comparing who killed who, or why someone killed so many people.

I am fully willing to discuss this, but i don't think this is the place for it because things said on these boards are too easily misunderstood. However i would love to discuss this further. (see my sig for how to contact me)

The events that lead up to my religious beliefs (or lack there of) are numerous and circumstantial. I am still questioning whether or not I do believe in a superior being, but that’s not a question that I dwell on. I am part of no religion, and I am proud to say that. I may understand that there could probably be something that controls this world, but I don’t bother thinking about it or praying to IT.

I was raised a Roman Catholic and believed in everything that they taught me when I was younger. When I was 11 I started believing in science more than religion… and the fact that so many people in the world had so many different religions, and that each religious group thought that THEY were right, didn’t make sense to me. How could everyone be right if his or her beliefs are so different? So I just plain stopped believing. I still got confirmed three years later, but I used confirmation class more as an opportunity to learn about SOMEBODY ELSE’S culture and how the general population of my area may think of things.

One thing that came from this lack of religion in me… was a lack of religious pride. I notice that some people (NOT EVERYBODY), from whatever religion they are in, will argue non-stop with ANYBODY about why their religion is right and why others are wrong. Everybody knows that the holocaust, wars, battles, arguments, even petty conversations are started because of religious pride and persecution. I would NEVER try to convince to somebody that my beliefs are correct. All I ask is for other people to please NOT sit me down and try to convince me otherwise.

Because of this lack of religious pride in me… I have respect for everybody. I do not attach stereotypes to certain people of a religion, or vice-versa. I simply do not care. I’ll only judge on personality and character. If it so happens that the person does mention of what religion they are... I’d step back and say, (funny/not seriously) “why do I care?”

So to put it frankly… I disagree with religion because it makes some people go against the very morals that the religion thinks it is enforcing. It’s moral to respect everybody’s beliefs… but religious pride gets in the way. It is moral to respect life… but terrorists groups, who think that they are pushing their religion in a good way, kill people. It is moral to provide good care to children, but some (who are called ‘good people’) focus so much on their own little family that they shun all others away. Religion causes confusion, and in my opinion… the world would be better without it.

I think I'll believe it when i see it, right now, in my eye. . . .it's a waste of time. I was a Christian and I guess I still am, but my family is Heaten, we never attend church, although I am babptized, I have never gone to sunday school or conformation classes.

this made me think of a book i read a long time ago. i belive it's called The Engines of God, but i'm not exactly sure.

the basic idea was that humanity had finally achieved space travel. so, they've gone to the edge of the arm fo the milky way (the arm we're in). they discover a few planets. one was an advanced civilization, but the planet was destroyed, and the orbiting space station appeared to have commited suicde. the other planets were all primative. so, as the story goes on, the realize that anything with rectangular shapes (say a skyscrapper) was destroyed. so, eventually you find out that these cloud things came from outside the galaxy, and traveling at like the speed of light, went through and destroyed anything 'unnatural' or, anything with straight lines, sharp edges, etc. on a planet surface. they discover that way back when, a first wave of these cloud things came and wreaked havoc on earth, and that's how religion was formed. it was an interesting book, and if you like to debate about religion at all, it's an different twist on all the other ideas.

another interesting idea (only works for judiasm/christianity and maybe islam) is that the bible/torah/quran (i can't spell it, sorry), is just a collection of stories, similar to aesop's fables, just stories to tell us how we should act. my rabbi gave a sermon on that once, it was different, and it's definitly more believeable then the world being created in a week, or any other way a religion states the creation of the world.

another thing is, i think religions came up to define the unnatural, anything that couldn't be explained by humans. so, the wind, way back when, was a strange and unusual thing. nothing made the air move, so it was attributed to a god. rain, sun, night, etc, everything that you could show with your own two hands was said to be done by a god of somesorts. now that humanity has discovered the 'real' causes of wind, night, rain, etc., religion is in a unique spot. you can either go and say well, there is still a god (or many gods), but they don't control thigns like rain and wind, or you could say there is no god(s), or you could become a hermit, and believe as the 'ancients' did.

the topic of religion is a very broad one, and not something that is easily discussed through an online forum, or even online. sorry to anyone who thinks i'm being offensive, i just can't really show what i feel through a website. really needs to be a person to person debate... :/

I definately don't think the chief delphi forum is a place to bring up 'religion', heck I got in enough trouble for not liking tethers:eek:

Anyways I agree with Erin on most of her points, mostly because the more religions you learn about the more you see that each one believes it and only it is the true one, while others may contain partial truths only one is true.

Whoose?

My family is Roman Catholic. I will be confirmed as a Roman Catholic in two years... but I don't really agree with everything that Catholicism teaches. One of my biggest problems with the relgion is, if you are a Catholic you are supposed to "make" people believe what you believe. I think religion is a very private thing. I'm all for explaining my beliefs to someone if they ask me about it. But other than that, I don't think people should go around saying "Hey you! Believe in my religion because I said so! I'm right and you're wrong!" I don't go around forcing my beliefs on other people, and I expect the same respect from them. I guess you would say I'm just Christian. I don't believe in one pacticular sect of Christianity... there's something I disagree with from every religion.

- Katie