ok
1. Yes the three religions are similar in text, the Koran, the old testiment of the Bible and the, Torah, are all similar. But then again they are all also totally different. (I hope you kno the diff by now) The bloodshed is caused when men bend the word of God to their liking. The Torah originally said "go out and kill people, call it a holy war and you're going straight to heaven," no Muhamad said that to gain followers, and thus he became head of the Islamic nation. Again the pope bendt the words of God to inflict fear into the commonfolk by saying you're going to hell if you're not Catholic. Thus it is by MAN's word that the bloodshed has come about.

2. The day of rest first came into play in the 10 commandments. The Jewish nation beleived that the sabbath day was set aside for God, and God alone. Then along came Jesus and said that the day was set aside for God AND men. But probably the reason for each sabbath being on a differnt date is from calenders. Diff calenders for diff reagions back in the ancient days...

3. Heaven and Hell aren't of this universe, they are on two different planes of exhistance. Just as we are in one, Heaven and hell are in their own also.

hope that helped...

If anyone's ever read up on religion, you'll realize that since the beginning, religion has been its own form of government. Taxes, leaders, wars, corruption...defeat.

You all need to Hear George carlin's views on this

Yes, I believe in a God... I can not tell you that it is male/female, black/white, or any other charecteristics. I am very pious, and hold stong beliefs within my church.

But, this past year I have had a lot to try and figure out. Why do things happen? Why does it happen at a specific instant? Why me, or why you? Throughout the past 13 months, I have become terminaly ill, been in a horrific automobile accident, and found my true love. I have had to deal with such thoughts as why me, and why now? If there is a God, what was the purpose of choosing me? However, through my religion I did find that people do care about me no matter what happens. My church family has been incredible to me over the past months, and I see that as God's way of saying to me that I can overcome anything.

... just a random blurb, from my overstuffed mind ...

Man twisted religion to his own uses, such at Government. Religion by itself has no political stances

I belive in God, but I have no religion.

My thoughts on religion is that man created it as a means of comfort - there's probably some kind of Fruedian term for it. We're a social animal, and it's my belief that the fear of being alone scares us to death. We need something to comfort us, whether it's a loved one, a community, or the belief in a supreme being.

If you look beyond western culture, the only thing constant about religion is that it exists. The Native Americans have their animalistic gods... Hinduism and(?) Buddhism have their cycles of birth and rebirths... Chinese culture has its blend it Confucianism and Daoism.... every culture has or has had its own unique beliefs. One can't help but wonder what is the 'correct' religion, if any. Did Ghandi go to hell because he didn't believe in Jesus? Are we all about to be smitten by lightning bolts hurled from Mount Olympus?

The primary reason I don't believe in religion is because the roots of every major religion can be traced back to the culture and tradition of its origional people. All it takes is a few charismatic leaders to tie it together into formal doctrine. If, say, the Christian God exists, why did he let so many thousands of years go by letting people believe in 'heathen' gods like Ra, Zeus, or Jupiter? You can't possibly tell me that just because he was pissed off at two people for eating some fruit, he let millions of people go to hell for believing something they had no alternative to believe in. The fact of the matter is that society controls what you believe in. If the Christian God is the one true god, how was Joeus Doeius, your average law-abiding Athenian, ever expected to know the truth?

Religion is just a means of identifying oneself as part of a community. It's disgusting what can be done with this power, though...

More people have died in the name of (a) g/God(s) throughout the history of the world than any other reason.

Then there's the whole just-look-up-at-the-sky argument. A while ago, I found this fascinating article about a deep-space photo that summed things up pretty well...
300,000 stars - who knows how many like our own sun? Thousands of faint galaxies - just like our Milky Way. All this in the area of a grain of sand held at arms length. How many grains of sand held at arms length does it take to fill up the entire nighttime sky? It doesn't take much effort to realize that our entire lives - the people we meet, the places we see, the memories we keep - everything we know is not even a blink of the eye in the long run.

I think it's our universal fear that everything we've ever expierienced means nothing that we've created religion as a way to deal with death. Personally, that's the reason why I want to try to change the world. I believe it was in Lord of the Rings when one of the characters was talking to Treebeard... Treebeard said that compared to Ents, Humans live such short lives. Yet what they do in that period of time is so much. I think it's the fear of passing into time, unremembered, that drives so many of us.

This thought just occured to me: Faith is the willingness to believe something which cannot be proven, hence, atheists have faith in the thought that there is no God.

If a religion is based on faith, or if a person has faith in God, then one should acknowledge that there cannot be a way to prove that said religion is correct, or that God exists.


More reading (Please note the following: I didn't write any of the content from these links. I take no responsibility for hurt feelings, insulted intelligences, offended vocabularies, or out-of-style hairdos. I won't respond to flames, either.):

• Your radical ideas about religion as a mechanism of social control have already occurred to others
• I Figured Out Faith
• Boy, I was sure lucky to be born into the one true faith!
• Religion is a crutch for weak people
• Atheism is a crutch for weak people
• An Atheist's Defense of Christianity

So SuperDanman you can look up at the billions of stars n' such in the sky and say that it was created by randomally appearing matter?

And God was always there and his presence was known at the time of the other greek and roman "gods" And science has proven this. From the whole thing about chariots at the bottom of the red sea to large ammounts of sulfer and ash where sodom and gomorrah used to be standing. He was always there. And society doesn't control what you beleive in. There's a thing called choice and you use that power to choose what you want to beleive. If society controled what you beleived in then we'd all be the same, just like communism.

And as i posted above, (which no one obviously reads before they post) People didn't die in the name of religion, they died in the name of the person who used religion to their benifit. Was muhammad just a lowly prophet? No he was the POLITICAL leader of the islamic nation. And most ppl in politics have power and are always wanting more. So Muhammad tossed in "go out and kill people, call it a holy war and you're going straight to heaven" Bam more power, for him. Same thing with the crucades, the pope wants more power, so he calles it a holy war so he isn't blamed with genocide. Men being tempted by power and defiling religion.

But, if religion is supposed to be a unifying force, why does it, directly or indirectly, kill more people than any other reason?

What you are saying, is that religion is a tool to be used for power. That fits with my personal theories on religion, but it doesn't go at all with what you're trying to say, I think.

Religion, from what I can tell, is supposed to bring peace. To paraphrase from some religious book (I have no idea where it came from, and I'm too lazy to go and hunt down my Siddur), "Nations shall not lift up sword against nation, and they shall experience war no more." That is said almost every time I'm at a service at my temple, be Rosh Hashanah, or a Friday night service that my parents ask me to come to. To me, that means that religion, or at least Judaism (I can't say for anything else, I don't really know), was created to bring people together, teach them morals, and attempt to make peace.

Seeing how Christianity and Islam both come from Judaism, I'm going to assume they have the same basic goals, but I can't be certain.

I just don't see how religion can be both a tool used by man, but also the grand unifying thing for the Earth. It just doesn't work out, at least how I see it.

It is supposto be a tool for men to learn about God, but men MISUSE religion. It's like over the counter medicine, use it properly, it helps you out, but you can misuse it and have deadly resluts.

why is it necessary for men to learn about god, if its god that men created?

To better understand what you beleive in.

Going of you logic then
Why does man need to learn about science since science created man? (going of evolution was correct)

I've read this...and all I can say is wow...
Blacknight...you are making this thread controversial.

ChiefDelphi isn't the place for religion, in my view.

I said at the beginning this would be contrivertial, and those who don't want in then don't join. But frankly i c this post as a way to see other ppl's veiwpoints about creation n' such...