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Tom201
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Amsterdam
Dec 2001
time: 05:19
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So? What exactly do you think of?
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Jon Miller
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quote:
Originally posted by Julia
So the question is "what is the best/worst religion?"
I've been doing some reading these past few days that really apply to this topic. In this discussion we've looked at nothing but the differences of various religions. But have you ever looked at their similarities?
The book I'm reading is called "The Story of B" (written by Daniel Quinn) and I would really recommend this to anyone. It is eye-opening at times.
Anyways, in it, the author says that all of our religions are really one. All bring us the same message: salvation. If we repent for our sins, we will be admitted into heaven. If we do not, off to hell we go. Religions tell us that we can save ourselves, but that no one can do it for us.
Funny enough, the first post about Satanism included this statement:
"each person is their own redeemer, fully responsible for the direction of their own life. "
Sound familiar? Only YOU can save yourself, no one else can.
Now I'm not sure if I'm really explaining this well, but the point is that one religion isn't really worse than any other. They are all, more or less, alike. If you want a clearer explanation, I think you'd need to read the book. It is really quite interesting.
Anyways... those are my thoughts 
Julia |
ummm
most of Christianity says that only God can save us, we can do nothing
many early religions had nothing to do with 'saving' also
Jon Miller
Jon Miller
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Jon Miller
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quote:
Originally posted by MrFun
Each person's life is different from the next person.
A person who chooses a religion based on positive affirmation of humanity that best fits with their life, their values, and their experiences, is the right religion for them. Whether that be Christianity, Islam, or some other religion.
Fundamentally, all religions based on positive affirmation of humanity are equal IMO. They can all do as well as any religion -- the question is, which one do you choose for yourself?? |
I can see saying that many religions have aspects of the truth
but how can all be equal when they counter each other on the most important things
Jon Miller
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Rex Little
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I don't know enough about Hinduism, Islam or Buddhism to evaluate them. Of those I do know something about, Catholicism is probably the one I'd have the hardest time practicing, followed closely by Orthodox Judaism.
The Mormon religion is majorly weird in its beliefs, but the Mormons I've known personally have been really excellent friends and neighbors. If I were moving to a new area and learned that one particular neighborhood had a lot of Mormons, I'd start looking for a house there first.
Scientology is arguably a cult/scam rather than a religion.
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Sikander
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Boulder, Colorado, United Snakes of America
Jan 2000
time: 22:19
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quote:
Originally posted by Jon Miller
I can see saying that many religions have aspects of the truth
but how can all be equal when they counter each other on the most important things
Jon Miller |
By all being wrong perhaps?
I agree with Mr. Fun here. The problem with religion is that it dominates the practice of spirituality. This is a shame for several reasons, the most important for our purposes here is that most of the popular religions are at best wrong, and at worst deceitful regarding the entire nature of the spiritual excercize.
For instance most of the powerhouse religions which dominate the globe teach that there is a supreme being which created you, and you are like a pet, living and breathing at the whim of this deity. It needs nothing from you, and your only hope to avoid being sent back into the void (or worse!) is to attempt to please this deity by acting in certain prescribed ways. This is the grandest scam ever foisted upon humanity.
The reality is that every extra-planar entity who hovers about us craves something from us. There are those simple and stupid creatures that prey on fear (aka Demons), and like ticks blow up in size when they are fed by some unfortunate ignorant person. Other beings crave love, devotion, you name it. The bottom line is that they need our life energy whether it is stolen, given freely or swindled from us. In the best situations the relationship is symbiotic, and in the worst purely exploitive. If you worship one of the big modern monotheistic religions you have all the fairness one would expect in buying in a monopolized market. And the grander the religion the greater the opportunity to be swindled a bit by your fellow man as well.
Of course you can skip the middlemen entirely and simply act as your own broker, which allows you to pick and choose the sorts of influences you prefer in your spiritual life. This is socially uncomfortable in most societies, and even in the most free and primitive societies tends to be the perview of the Shaman. Nonetheless it is a viable alternative to first handing your power over to your human interlocators, and from there having the exchange routed automatically to whatever Deity happens to be popular with your parents.
In my opinion all religions are correct to the extent that I believe them when they say that there is a God / Spirit with whom one can interact. Obviously I don't believe the monotheistic religions are being truthful when they posit the existence of their god only, though I'm sure most of their followers actually believe this to be true. I find a lot of value in more primitive religions because they are IMO a lot closer to the truth and a lot less demanding / threatening than more modern religions. The criticism of Hinduism is especially unwarranted. It may well be / have been festooned with the human created baggage of Aryan racial superiority, but it never claimed that it is the sole true faith, or that it's gods were not also limited in their powers and bound as surely to their path as humans are to their own. It never started a war out of religious intolerance, though it has gone to war to protect itself from being destroyed like most of the rest of the world's religions at the hands of monotheistic cults.
As for the poll, I vote for the three Abrahamic religions, Christianity, Islam and Juddism. While each of them in it's own way has made a positive contribution to either the world or at least it's own adherents, all three have one after the other unleashed a wave of destruction that has swept most of the world's religions into the dustbin of history to the extent that a working knowledge of the spiritual nature of the universe is itself endangered. If you press me, I'll have to name Islam as the worst because it's adherents are in terrible condition, and that condition is worsening relative to the rest of the world, a trend that started at the end of Colonialism and seems to be accellerating.
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Caligastia
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Every couple thousand years or so God sends a revelation of himself to man to help us advance our concept of truth. The amount of truth in any religion is directly proportional to how much of the revelation is incorporated.
Christianity is the religion that has based itself the most around the teachings of Jesus who was a revelation of God to man. This is why I say that Christianity is the best of the worlds religions even though I am not a christian myself.
quote:
THE EVOLUTIONARY NATURE OF RELIGION
The evolution of religion has been traced from early fear and ghosts down through many successive stages of development, including those efforts first to coerce and then to cajole the spirits. Tribal fetishes grew into totems and tribal gods; magic formulas became modern prayers. Circumcision, at first a sacrifice, became a hygienic procedure.
Religion progressed from nature worship up through ghost worship to fetishism throughout the savage childhood of the races. With the dawn of civilization the human race espoused the more mystic and symbolic beliefs, while now, with approaching maturity, mankind is ripening for the appreciation of real religion, even a beginning of the revelation of truth itself.
Religion arises as a biologic reaction of mind to spiritual beliefs and the environment; it is the last thing to perish or change in a race. Religion is society's adjustment, in any age, to that which is mysterious. As a social institution it embraces rites, symbols, cults, scriptures, altars, shrines, and temples. Holy water, relics, fetishes, charms, vestments, bells, drums, and priesthoods are common to all religions. And it is impossible entirely to divorce purely evolved religion from either magic or sorcery.
Mystery and power have always stimulated religious feelings and fears, while emotion has ever functioned as a powerful conditioning factor in their development. Fear has always been the basic religious stimulus. Fear fashions the gods of evolutionary religion and motivates the religious ritual of the primitive believers. As civilization advances, fear becomes modified by reverence, admiration, respect, and sympathy and is then further conditioned by remorse and repentance.
One Asiatic people taught that "God is a great fear"; that is the outgrowth of purely evolutionary religion. Jesus, the revelation of the highest type of religious living, proclaimed that "God is love."
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Caligastia
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quote:
Originally posted by Akka le Vil
Coran was based not only on Jesus' teachings, but on Mohammed's teachings, whose speech was supposed to be the True Speech of God. Then it's even more of a revelation. |
True, the Koran has definitely been influenced by Jesus' teachings. Not as much as christianity though.
Mohammed was not a revelation of God to man, so I would term his contribution to the Koran as "evolutionary" as opposed to "revelatory". He was a great religious leader though.
quote:
Mohammed founded a religion which was superior to many of the creeds of his time. His was a protest against the social demands of the faiths of foreigners and against the incoherence of the religious life of his own people.
Islam is the religio-cultural connective of North Africa, the Levant, and southeastern Asia. It was Jewish theology in connection with the later Christian teachings that made Islam monotheistic. The followers of Mohammed stumbled at the advanced teachings of the Trinity; they could not comprehend the doctrine of three divine personalities and one Deity. It is always difficult to induce evolutionary minds suddenly to accept advanced revealed truth. Man is an evolutionary creature and in the main must get his religion by evolutionary techniques. |
quote:
Originally posted by Akka le Vil
The amount of truth in any religion is the one you find in it. There is no "better" religion, though there is a hell lot of "worse" (if you get my idea).
And you're perhaps saying you're not christian, but I strongly feel a bias about christianity in your speaking. |
To me, saying that christianity is the best of the world's organised religions is not a huge compliment when you consider how spiritually backwards this planet is.
quote:
Christianity is threatened by slow death from formalism, overorganization, intellectualism, and other nonspiritual trends. The modern Christian church is not such a brotherhood of dynamic believers as Jesus commissioned continuously to effect the spiritual transformation of successive generations of mankind.
So-called Christianity has become a social and cultural movement as well as a religious belief and practice. The stream of modern Christianity drains many an ancient pagan swamp and many a barbarian morass; many olden cultural watersheds drain into this present-day cultural stream as well as the high Galilean tablelands which are supposed to be its exclusive source. |
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Akron
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This question is as stupid as asking which is the best ethnicity. Every religion has a many sects within it, and there are many philosophies that are parellel among all the major religions. There are many ways to follow each religion, so you can't generalize here.
Also, all religions are corrupted. It's just what happens when a philosophy with such power is controlled by people. People take advantage of religions to achive whatever goal they have. Personally, I believe that spirituality should be a solely individual pursuit.
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loinburger
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Sweet Sauce Jones
Jul 1999
time: 00:19
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quote:
Originally posted by MrFun
I think that the mainstream followers who are not extremists, are not likely to interpret everything in their holy scriptures literally. Thus, they are more likely to pratice their religion for what it was truly meant to be --- a positive affirmation of humanity. |
Or rather, they are more likely to practice their religion for what they want it to be -- a positive affirmation of humanity. Thus all religions are the same in your eyes because you make all religions the same. If two religions disagree on a major point of doctrine ("We say that you should hate the Jews!" "Yes, but we say that you should hate the Hindus even more than you hate the Jews!"), then you simply resolve the conflict by dismissing it ("Oh c'mon, I know that both of your holy books say that you're supposed to hate the Jews and Hindus, but the authors didn't really mean to be taken literally"). Yes, if take any religion, interpret away the beliefs that you don't like, and substitute in beliefs that you do like, then every religion becomes functionally equivalent.
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MrFun
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of Iowa
Nov 2000
time: 23:19
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quote:
Originally posted by loinburger
Or rather, they are more likely to practice their religion for what they want it to be -- a positive affirmation of humanity. Thus all religions are the same in your eyes because you make all religions the same. If two religions disagree on a major point of doctrine ("We say that you should hate the Jews!" "Yes, but we say that you should hate the Hindus even more than you hate the Jews!"), then you simply resolve the conflict by dismissing it ("Oh c'mon, I know that both of your holy books say that you're supposed to hate the Jews and Hindus, but the authors didn't really mean to be taken literally"). Yes, if take any religion, interpret away the beliefs that you don't like, and substitute in beliefs that you do like, then every religion becomes functionally equivalent. |
You cannot just reinterpret parts of holy scripture nilly-willy, or out of whim.
Only after serious spiritual reflection, theological reading and discussion, and so forth, can you then reconsider what some of the parts of holy scriptures really mean. Sometimes, we find that some parts are not meant to apply to our contemporary society anymore --- supporting slavery, for instance.
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Richelieu
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Gatineau
Dec 2001
time: 00:19
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quote:
Originally posted by loinburger
As long as people believe that metaphysical nonsense is a valid reason to start a war, there will be wars. |
Yup. You did me one better there.
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Richelieu
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Gatineau
Dec 2001
time: 00:19
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edit DP.
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Faeelin
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Tau Ceti
Oct 2001
time: 05:19
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Hinduism.
there's an old quote from a British officer in India. A group of Hindu clerics went to protest the fact that England had banned the traditional, religious, etc. past time of suttee.
Suttee is burning widows alive.
The British officer said, "You have a national custom of Suttee. We British also have a national custom. When men take a women and burn her alive, we hang those men. You may follow your national custom; we shall follow ours."
The entire religion was designed when India was conquered by the Aryans, who placed themselves as katryshas as the highest class. The locals became the lower castes, whiel supplicants to the invaders became, over time, brahmin, or priests. Thus, keeping the low low and the high high became a traditional part of India. Untouchables are a great example. If they tried to get a job besides begging, they were killed, beaten, etc.
This is in the 1950's.
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Richelieu
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Gatineau
Dec 2001
time: 00:19
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quote:
Originally posted by SlowwHand
"Nothing can be more absurd than the practice that prevails in our country of men and women not following the same pursuits with all their strengths and with one mind, for thus, the state instead of being whole is reduced to half." |
Translated from Greek to American : That's right. Just support us. All of you. No matter what we do. Baaaaa.
Is this Bush or Rumsfeld speaking here?
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08-05-2002 01:48
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