ThetaOrionis01 Posted August 14, 2003 Share Posted August 14, 2003 I think Racius has a very good point - it's easier to believe yourself the creation of a benign deity, than an accident of evolution ... :lol: Flying Fox, please correct me if I'm misinterpreting your posts, but you seem to indicate that you prefer people to think about what they believe in rather than follow any one faith blindly? If that is what you are saying, I agree with you. Unfortunately, it seems to me that thinking about your beliefs, and questioning the tenets of your faith is not encouraged by the major religions - the opposite rather. Independent thought was usually punishable by death - decried as heresy or blasphemy. I think that unless you think and question, though, you make yourself vulnerable to manipulation. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FlyingFox Posted August 14, 2003 Share Posted August 14, 2003 Flying Fox, please correct me if I'm misinterpreting your posts, but you seem to indicate that you prefer people to think about what they believe in rather than follow any one faith blindly? If that is what you are saying, I agree with you. Unfortunately, it seems to me that thinking about your beliefs, and questioning the tenets of your faith is not encouraged by the major religions - the opposite rather. Independent thought was usually punishable by death - decried as heresy or blasphemy. I think that unless you think and question, though, you make yourself vulnerable to manipulation. Yes, Theta, I believe people should think about their faith and find something that they believe in themselves, not something they are told to believe in... if they do not believe in it. Though religious teaching is a good guide for one's faith, one must "customize," if you will, a faith so that they truly relate to it in their own personal life. Although in the past, so-called heretics have been punished for their questioning of faith, in today's society this is not true (and it has been an espeially great leap for Christianity). One can believe whatever one wants to believe. One can believe that a giant monkey holds up the world and if you do something bad it eats you up and spits you into an endless void, without the drastic reprocussions it would have had a few centuries earlier. Though there may be some family/social issues with on believing in the aforementioned faith... :D ----------- Son: Mom, Dad. I'm renouncing my faith. Mom: Well, would you like to talk about it? Dad: Yes, son. Do you plan on becoming Muslim, or Buddhist or atheist or something? Son: No. I believe that a giant monkey holds up the world and if you do something bad it eats you up and spits you into an endless void! <Mom and Dad look at each other> <Mom starts to cry> Dad: Well, that's nice son.... :P Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
miltonic Posted August 16, 2003 Share Posted August 16, 2003 Funny stuff Fox! Dad: It makes me proud (cough) son to see you making your own path...(whimper) Questioning your Faith will either solidify your beliefs if there is fundamental evidence to support it, or it will destroy your faith if there is not enough evidence to support. Why believe in something that lacks evidence to support itself? Here are some good questions to ask: 1. Who wrote the Bible and when? 2. What religions existed before Christianity, for example in 6500 B.C. in Babylon? 3. Why are so many 'stories' in the Christian Bible mentioned in older religious texts, except with different people and different names? For example, the Mayan Bible talks about the Parting of the Red Sea, which the Mayans escaped through because they were being persecuted by another race. Strange that Moses and the Isrealites went through the same thing on the other side of the world. Perhaps neither the Mayans or the Isrealites never experieinced this, and the story originates from a much older religion. 4. Why do the Egyptians talk of Virishnu, their Savior of Man who was born of a virgin birth, had 12 disciples, was sacrificed on a cross between two thieves, and was ressurected 3 days later so closely resemble the life of Jesus? Oh, and Virishnu was worshipped 1800 B.C. 1800 years before Jesus was ever heard of? Why also did the Romans worship the Savior of Man known as Mithra, 500 B.C, who also shared the exact same background. Mithra was known to have 3 wise men bring him gifts of gold, frankinscense and myrrh. Hmm, didn't this happen exclusively to Jesus? How come this is known in the Roman Bible 500 B.C. then? Kinda makes you think huh? If it doesn't, it should. It really, really should. Go out and do a little research on history and religion and start putting the puzzle together. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Switch Posted August 16, 2003 Share Posted August 16, 2003 wow... that IS odd i must say... but not if:is there any evidence that these writings were found BEFORE the date of the birth of jesus? or any other sort of evidence that thats what they believed back then? cos if the stuff was made up before the birth of jesus then that might bring up some questions. but if it wasnt or there is no evidence to support it, then no. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FlyingFox Posted August 16, 2003 Share Posted August 16, 2003 There are soooooooo many similarities of religions throughout the world, and one need only to merely study the three major Indo-Eurpoean religions (Greek, Norse, Hindu) to realize this to a great extent. If one takes the Jungian approach (Carl Jung was a psychologist, a student of Freud), Man is "programmed" with the archetypes of religious thought (the hero, villain, female figure, etc.). This means that Man all around the world developed different religions at different times, but which are extraordinarily similar to one another. The other approach is that Man created religion at the dawn of Man (When? none can truthfully say), and that all religions developed from one set of stories devised by this one group of people. It is all but impossible to prove of disprove either theory. Just a remark... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
thanateros Posted August 16, 2003 Share Posted August 16, 2003 people say that because i don't belong to any religious denomination that i'm not a religious/ spiritual person at all. truth is i believe that organized religion, time and time again falls flat on its face in one way or another (not naming specifics as to offend anyone). though i do believe God exists, in many forms and at different times but all forms seek to maintain an ultimate unversial balance with one another. if anything i consider myself unitarian unversialist since the doctrine is judeo-christian reform that seeks to celebrate all religions and gathering knowledge of them to understand how humans are connected through their beliefs. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Walrus Posted August 17, 2003 Share Posted August 17, 2003 raelians just camed back on meeting in ljubljana. they say theat aliens created us and their tehnology they use is more advance and is still advancing. they clone humans and are trying to make mortals imortal. what do you think of theat Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wesaynothin Posted August 17, 2003 Share Posted August 17, 2003 Technically Jewish, but I believe my own type of fate (nothing like predetermination) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Walrus Posted August 17, 2003 Share Posted August 17, 2003 read somewhere theat minds work seperatly from brains and was also said this may be a proof of a soul Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
miltonic Posted August 19, 2003 Share Posted August 19, 2003 is there any evidence that these writings were found BEFORE the date of the birth of jesus? or any other sort of evidence that thats what they believed back then? There is a great amount of evidence, it can be accurately shown that these religions have texts behind them that date before our AD calender. There have been a large amount of religious texts that have been unearthed in Ancient Babylon, 6500 B.C. These texts contain many of the stories that most worldwide religions include, except with different names and places in a lot of examples. Scientists and Historians conclude that the majority of the world's population was centralized around Babylon roughly 6500 B.C. As people began to spread throught the globe over the next thousands of years, they took those religions with them. After time, that religion changed so it would still relate with those individuals. A good ananlogy of this is the phone game. You tell someone a secret, they tell someone else, and by the time it gets back to you, the secret can be very different, with some similarity to the original secret. People change stories so that they relate to themselves, as they do with religion. This can explain why all religions in the world have very similar stories with different names, because thay all date back to an older religion. Nearly every religion talks about 'the flood'. There is no evidence of a worlwide flood ever occuring, however there is significant evidence showing that a massive flood occurred near Babylon around 6500 B.C. If most of the world's population lived near Babylon at that time, then most of the worlds' population would have experienced this flood. As people traveled away from Babylon, they would carry that flood story with them. Eventually it would become a 'world wide' flood because those people have taken that story and experience with them. Thousands of years later, those people still have the story, but have not lived it themselves, and the story changes so that they can relate to it. The Mayans have the flood story, as well as the majority of Native American races within their religion, as well as nearly all other religions in the world. I'm not saying this is fact, I have not found however sufficient evidence suggesting another explanation. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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