What religion/non-religion are you a member of and Why?

[Agathon]

And don't laugh. I had a friend who was like that. Trouble is that he took after me more than I him.

That's not funny, it's sad. You are evil!!!

[Ben Kenobi]

John Mcleod:

Point taken. However, the people that wrote the gospels didn't know Jesus, they were writing what had been transmitted through the ages.

Who do you believe wrote the Gospels? They are attributed by the church fathers to Matthew, Mark, Luke and John early in the second and third centuries.

Most historians date their composition to the latter half of the first century AA anywhere from 55-65 AD for the Synoptics to 75-90 for John.

This is not centuries down the road. Centuries later, you have all the church fathers who quote freely from scripture, as would be consistent with an early composition, soon after the death of Christ.

So the concept of hell didn't even get in the gospel until the second book, a revision of the first, was written? If the belief of Hell was so paramount, 'Mark' would've written a lot more about it.

Why do you believe Markan priority? Just because one is first, does not mean the others are less valid. This is just one of many parts of the Gospels that refer to Hell, and the one that I chose to cite here.

If you want, I can go through a more detailed list, but I thought such reference would be sufficient.

Why do I not believe him when the Bible says he is God? Because a) I don't even know if that is exactly what he said,

Fair enough. Is it more probable to believe that the Gospels are what Christ said, or more probable that what you believe is what Christ said?

That is my question. If the Gospels were written by contemporaries of Christ, as I contend, then I think you are left with a strong argument that the Gospels, are in fact, an accurate testimony as to the teachings of Christ.

Secondly, you seem to accept the Gospels as authoritative on some things, and not on others. What is your justification for this discrimination between each Gospel? Why favour one over the other, or earlier parts of one over later in the same?

b) even he did say it, I don't believe him. Mohammed said that God spoke to him in his dreams and that the Koran is the ultimate word of God. Joseph Smith said that God spoke to him too, and that's where we get the Book of Mormon. And in fact, before Jesus, there was another man that claimed to be the Messiah. So how do I know that Jesus is right and all of the other religions are wrong?

Very good question! Why should you believe Christ when he says, before Abraham was, I am? The Jews didn't! The wanted to stone him, to crucify him. This is why one must assess Christ's claim of divinity upon the falsifiable account in the Gospels of Christ's death and resurrection.

Moslems do not consider Mohammed to be God. They actively prosecute those they feel falter to the sin of shirk, by placing others on par with Allah. Mohammed did not claim to be Allah, but rather, his prophet.

Christ did not claim to be a prophet either, he claimed to be God. Therefore, he is either more of a lunatic than any of these other, more rational religions, or he is right, and superior to all the others.

I don't agree with everything that Jesus said. I don't believe that he is God. But just because I disagree with one of his beliefs doesn't mean I should throw out all of his teachings together.

Why not? The man claims to be God! He is obviously insane and unstable. Why accept one of his teachings, only to reject the others? It makes no sense.

I think a lot of his teachings are great. The ones that I agree with, I say "Hey, he's right." The one's that I don't agree with, I either say "Hey, I think that is wrong because..." or if the teachings seems to contradict his more important overall message, I say "Hey, that doesn't seem to be part of his overall message."

Again, you agree with Christ, when he agrees with you, and disagree with Christ, when he disagrees with you. Why do you need him for anything, if all the teachings you agree with are already yours?

I think I'm not explaining myself clear enough. I don't meditate in order for this energy to divinely intervene on my behalf. I don't believe that it will do this. I meditate just for the sake of connecting with this force.

How can you connect with an impersonal force? One cannot 'connect' in any meaningful sense with the force of gravity, or with win, or with the electrostatic force. The forces act on you, regardless of your desires.

Well from what I have been taught, prayer and meditation seem to be too different things (yet similar). Prayer is talking to God, meditation seems to be a different process. Successful meditation is sometimes described as 'the absence of thought.' It is consciousness on a different level. The Hindus believe that there are three parts to the mind. There is the conscience, the sub-conscience, and on a greater level than that there is the inner self. The goal of meditation is to reach this state and connect to the inner self. But I guess I am wrong in separating prayer and meditation. They are simply two different methods for the same thing.

Meditation is the method, it helps you to enter into deeper prayer with God, by removing distractions.

I'm looking for my first chance to really do this in a Monastery at the end of the month! To see how they pray has always been a source of interest to me.

I don't have much understanding of prayer, but it is something I am gradually starting to see.

The hunter-gatherers did believe in God. They believed that the elements and nature were God.

But they made them into persons, did they not, gods of each element?

Actually, the hunter-gatherers didn't view God as a person. That belief didn't come along until later. The hunter-gatherers worshipped nature, so God came in many different forms. he wasn't a person. And they didn't really talk to him either. They made sacrifices and asked him to help them, but it wasn't prayer as we know it.

So how do you know all this? Which book have you taken this from?

Yes, the Hindus do. But they see God in a different way than westerners. I'm not Hindu. The Hindu belief in God is in between my belief of God and the western belief of God, my belief is just more similar to the Hindu belief.

I don't know much about them either. They seem to have a pantheon but not pantheism.

I know, and it really pisses me off. As Emerson once wrote, "To be great is to be misunderstood." Just like all great thinkers, Buddha was misunderstood and instead of a reformer became viewed as a God. This happened because people just couldn't understand such radical thought and they screwed it up. The same thing happened to Jesus.

Buddha did not claim to be God. Christ did. There is a difference between the two claims.

Well, both religions are man-made. All religion is man-made. Religion is a method of worship and beliefs. The reason why I think your image of God is man-made? Because it views God as man. This is because man made up this belief, not God.

That's not quite right. Do Christians say that God is only man? They believe him to be transcendent, eternal and omnipotent. How could such being bear the same substance as man?

Because it wouldn't make sense for God to appear as a man. Why would he be a man? Why would he be one particular organism? What separates man from the rest of the world? Why would God be a man? Because man made the image of God, that is why.

Okay.

Hold on. Too many questions.

1. Why would he be a man?

This is a really good question. Why of all things, would he choose to become a man? To suffer as we do? To endure the fragility of flesh? Because God loves us. He loves us so much that in order to save us, he chose to bear the cost for our sin. It also affirms the value of the life we have been given from God, in that we are made in his image.

2. Why would he be one particular organism?

Why would he choose to come to earth as Jesus of Nazareth? Why would he choose to be born of Mary?

It was foretold long ago, that the Messiah would be born in Nazareth. By the prophets of God, the laid out their prophecy as to the coming of Christ. To fulfill their words, Christ came down in the mission already assigned to him by God.

3. What separates man from the rest of the world?

God has given men a special task of stewardship over the earth.

I wasn't clear what I meant by lifestyle. I didn't mean God never told people to change their ways. What I meant was that God would tell the people to live again within the ecosystem instead of trying to control it. If God would've told people this, the earth wouldn't have been destroyed.

If you read Genesis, it says that man has stewardship over the Earth. Would a good steward destroy the environment around him? Yet, we are to use our control in a responsible manner. The option we are not given is to relinquish control, and to reliquish our responsibility as stewards.

No, I just think that a) he was like Buddha and didn't claim to be God or b) he did claim to be God, but he's wrong. It is not that it is convenient, just a lot of the stuff about Jesus' teachings that I disagree with don't fit into his overall message.

So who's fault is that? Maybe that's because 'his overall message' is what you believe he should be saying.

I know this is hard. Everybody struggles with this. The reason why some parts stick out to us as wrong, is not because they are wrong, but rather, we have our own blindspots.

I look at a passage, like the one where the disciples are tossed in a tempest, and afraid of the ship tipping, and then Christ rebukes the disciples for their lack of faith! Is that not overly harsh?

And as for him being God or not, I think that maybe it was part of his teaching, that he was God. But I just think that part he got wrong.

It fits. It gives the Jews their justification for wanting to stone him, even as he strides triumphantly into Jerusalem.

Like Pilate, 'what is this madness?'

No. I said "Treat others as you would like to be treated." Help is under this category. If another person is in need, and if you were in his situation and would like to be treated with help, than treat that person with help. The idea of helping other fits in well and is encouraged by the golden rule.

Good. Does Buddha say this?

That was my fault. I should've explained what I was alluding to. One of the Hindu teachings that I agree with is that there are three levels of happiness. That is where I got that from. Success is the second level.

What are the other two?

But Jesus didn't say that you would go to a place like Gehenna. He just said you will go to Gehenna. It wasn't metaphorical. Gehenna wasn't the symbol for hell. Jesus just said that you'd go to the actual place Gehenna, but not in the sense of being damned eternally.

Hell isn't metaphorical. You are begging the question. You have already made up your mind that of course, Hell must be metaphorical, so when Christ talks of Gehenna as a real place, he cannot be talking about Hell.

I understand the Christian belief on consciousness. I'm just not sure if I believe it. And yeah, maybe it would be better (of course only for those who are good and go to heaven, whatever the criterion is) for the Christian belief to exist. That won't make me believe in it though. But of course becoming one with the universe might not be as bad as it's cracked up to be. Maybe it is heaven and is just as good.

Much of Christianity only makes sense, if our reward is in eternity with God. To suffer as we do, only to lose ourselves in the end, seems to me far more bleaker.

I still don't see how damning people makes things better. That is why I don't believe in Hell. It just doesn't really make anything better.

Isn't that the purpose of Heaven? To make things better?

Why must Hell serve the same purpose for the damned?

And as for not being in the presence of God being the ultimate suffering, what about aetheists? They don't believe that God is in their lives, yet I know some aetheists that aren't suffering.

Yes, the universal lament. The wicked prosper, and increaseth, while the virtuous suffer.

If our reward is to be heaven, we must anticipate that we will be tested to see if our hearts are true.

Why shouldn't the wicked prosper! Let them! Their time shall pass away, like the grass in the field.

You will probably respond by saying, "Even if they don't think God is in their lives, he is in their lives." But how? How is he in everyone's life?

He is with them, though not in them. He is in their life, in the sense that a friend is in yours. He walks along with you, even if you don't see him, even if you tell him to scram, he will not forsake you.

According to (your) the Christian beliefs, God said we were up to ourselves until Jesus comes again. That there would be no more divine intervention.

That's not what he said at all.

John 14:25-8

"All this I have spoken while still with you. But the Counselor, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you all things and will remind you of everything I have said to you. Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid.

"You heard me say, 'I am going away and I am coming back to you.' If you loved me, you would be glad that I am going to the Father, for the Father is greater than I."

So according to Christian belief, God isn't in our lives.

Christ promises that even though he is in heaven, God will still be with us.

That is why Hell wouldn't be different than living here. But then again, what if here is Hell? What if this is Hell and we just don't know about it?

In Hell, you could not kill yourself. Here you can.

[Ben Kenobi]

That's not funny, it's sad. You are evil!!!

I wasn't even a Christian then.

[johncmcleod]

It is too late, I'll write a response tomorrow.

[Sikander]

I tend to believe that there is some reality in every religion. It is the belief or the spiritual connection that makes it real rather than a reality which is experienced causing the feeling of connection. This is why our idea of God(s) is so connected to our ideas about ourselves throughout the ages, and why completely rational people have such varying experiences which they completely believe to be real.

My best guess is that sprituality is a feedback loop which may be completely a function of the brain / body, but may in fact be an energy which reaches out into the planar space which we generally don't experience directly (ie something other than time, or the three physical dimensions which we constantly experience). This energy is reflected back with or without the existence of beings outside our perceived planes of existence, and our brains being limited in their experience to the planes with which we are familiar interpret this reflected energy in a way that makes some sort of sense to us.

[MikeH]

I'm a non practicing agnostic.

[Spiffor]

Originally posted by BlackCat
I hope that you mean - "there are religious persons and they react due to this" and not "because some people beliefs in the supernatural then we have to take the supernatural seriosly" ?

Almost. That would rather be: "there are religious people and I must adapt due to this", and not "because some people beliefs in the supernatural then we have to take the supernatural seriosly".

There is no reason to take the supranational seriously. There is a reason to take the human behaviours coming from those beliefs seriously, however. The fact that there are believers, the fact that there are organized religions, is very true and our world has seen it clearly.

[Sikander]

Originally posted by Spiffor

There is no reason to take the supranational seriously.

Damn straight. Real Americans have no belief in the the supranational at all.

[Blake]

There is no need to take seriousness seriously.

[Agathon]

Religion just proves that some people will believe anything. I reckon that the Chinese are right to stamp on those Falun Gong weirdos.

If only Canada had such an enlightened government.

[C0ckney]

Originally posted by Agathon
Religion just proves that some people will believe anything. I reckon that the Chinese are right to stamp on those Falun Gong weirdos.

If only Canada had such an enlightened government.

i am without words

i'm anglican, was never overly religious, but some events in my life have convinced me that someone up there is looking out for me

[Robert]

I'm a christian.
I read the bible, and see, it's true.

Genesis teaches us that the basic-problem with humanity is that men wants to be like god, deciding themselves what is good and what is evil.
But mankind isn't capable on seperating good from evil, eventhough it has the power to do so.
We're not made to be gods, we're made to be human. If humans try to be god, they break.
I believe we are (I am) broken and beyond repair by myself.

That's the base-believe of christianity. And I can see it all around me. People who claim that they want to do that what they think it is good. And they reject that what they think it's even. And the fight over it, since they can't agree with each other. And we're incapable of fixing things. Millenia have passed, civilization has entered, but still people rape other people, murder other people, wars are fought, millions are being killed by genocide.

There's no feed needed to see that.

I need faith to believe that the only one who can fix us did fix us. He become one of us and lived for us how we should live. And he died for us to take the blame for our mistakes.

People blame God for the hell here on earth.
Well, if He is to blame or not doesn't matter, since he took the blame, and died for it.

All religions believe we have to score during this life, living as good as possible, to earn heaven.
That's bs. No-man is good. And most men would have done like hitler, in hitler circumstances.
Why would God punish people for breaking laws they didn't knew?

God doesn't want us to earn heaven by keeping his laws. He wants us to admit that we are broken, and beyond repair by ourselves, and ask him to repair us, which means in the end that we accept God to be God, and take our place as humans again.

And in the afterlife things will be perfect, because God is God and we are human.
That's why people who are not christians can't enter. Not because God is cruel, but because allowing god-wannabe-humans to enter would mean that the afterlife would be corrupted again like our current life has been corrupted.

that's why
And, and first of course because I have experienced his love in my life, and I have seen his hand in (my) history.

[alva]

People blame God for the hell here on earth.
Well, if He is to blame or not doesn't matter, since he took the blame, and died for it.

As opposed to:

If something good happens, we have god to thank for it.
If - however - something bad happens is man's doing.

But mankind isn't capable on seperating good from evil, eventhough it has the power to do so.

Yes we are, it's just **** difficult to stay on your standard while trying to make a better world.
If we 'elimate' evil quickly ( not that can be done, but..) we would have to lower ourselves to their standard.
By that, the 'good' side would have lost.

millions are being killed by genocide.

Yeah, and many of them in the name of god. ( Even if he was not a god, he was worshipped as one )

I need faith to believe that the only one who can fix us did fix us. He become one of us and lived for us how we should live. And he died for us to take the blame for our mistakes.

Who's sins? I not young but not that old either.
Anyway, who askd him to do so??

[Dr Strangelove]

I'm an Episcopalian because I want to be. The Church helped me hang on during some very difficult spots in my life. Without it I very likely would have sunk a long time ago.

[Robert]

Alva: As opposed to:

If something good happens, we have god to thank for it.
If - however - something bad happens is man's doing.

That's not a good answer indeed. That's why I don't give that as an answerl.

Yes we are, it's just **** difficult to stay on your standard while trying to make a better world.

What would a better world be like?
Would there be drugs? If so, in what way?
Would there be prostitution? If so, in what way?
Would there be violent games and movies? If so, in what way?
How can we solve the problems in Africa? How can we feed everyone?
Can we live without murder? Would the murdering problem be solved if all murderers would be gone?

Just some simple questions about the perfect world you think we can create.

If we 'elimate' evil quickly ( not that can be done, but..) we would have to lower ourselves to their standard.

So, you say that *if* we could eliminate evil in a good way, things would be fixed? So there's no evil in you?
You have never harmed anyone as a person?

People wonder, why does God not end evil altogether...
The answer is that if God would eliminate evil, he must eliminate those who do evil as well.

Pherhaps you don't believe that evil comes from ourselves, that it's not within you.
So, where does it come from? Why are people murdered? Murdered most oftenly by people we never expected it from.
Why have you harmed people? Why did I? Why did we do it sometimes when we knew we were harming people?

CS: millions are being killed by genocide.

Alva: Yeah, and many of them in the name of god.

Unfortunately, yes that's true.
Christians or believeres are no better people.
I am as broken as you are, well, I believe I am.
Christians are as broken as non-christians, and they make the same mistakes. Any christian who claims to be a saint is a liar.

People have been killed in the name of God.
But Stalin and Mao didn't need a God to kill though.
We kill because we are broken, and we come with excuses for our behavior. Mao did and christians do as well.

Who's sins? I not young but not that old either.

I don't get the 2nd part of your line.
I believe he died for the sins of everybody.
That is, being 'repaired' is offered to everyone. The question is: do you want to be repaired.
And the question behind that is: do you admit and accept that you are broken?

You cannot be repaired if you believe you're perfect.
And you cannot enter the perfect place if you're not perfect yourself.

Anyway, who askd him to do so??

Nobody, he did it, to fix his creation.
And now he offers it to everyone. If you don't want it, you don't have to take it.