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Old 2008-04-05, 02:45   Link #798
Anh_Minh
I disagree with you all.
 
 
Join Date: Dec 2005
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Originally Posted by Ledgem View Post
If the purpose of religion is to introduce God, it's doing a fine job I think. I've stated before that I don't believe that religion expects to be able to explain God entirely, but if that were its true purpose, then I agree with you - it's doing a pretty poor job. But again, would you prefer to have no mention of God? A lot of warfare and persecution might have been avoided, but presuming that God really does exist, and God is somewhat like how the texts describe... wouldn't you want to know about it?
But if all we can know for certain is that, according to texts, God exists, don't you think there's a lot of bloat to religious doctrines?

Is he nice, is he cruel, does he sometimes walk the Earth, does he listen to prayers? What are the limits of his powers, of his knowledge? As far as I see, we don't know and we can't know. Every pronouncement on it will be met with a "we're merely humans. We can't hope to understand. It needs to be interpreted carefully", lest it contradict what we know of the here and now.

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There are a lot of ways I could answer that.

1) Assuming God does exist, you support these things because these are trying to teach God. If God is the creator of everything then God is almost like a parent to everything. You respect and obey your parents, don't you? (At least to a certain degree) So you respect and obey God. You do what God tells you, and you give money to support endeavors that support God here on Earth.
Which brings us back to "Why should we think they know what they are talking about?" Maybe every time we worship him, we piss God off a little more. Who knows?

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2) Whether God exists or not, nobody is really deserving of money. People spend money to support what's important to them. Why do we continue to fund cancer research even though many scientists have failed to find a cure? We want that cure, that's why. So you fund your religious centers to support the continued thought ("research" if you want to use the analogous term) of that flavor of religion.
Research produces visible results, though. We understand cancer now better than we did 20 years ago. Do we understand God better now than we did 2000 years ago? We don't know, and we can't know.

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Would you prefer that these religious centers completely close up shop because they don't have all the answers? That religion disappear from the world? Again, in some ways that might be nice, but if God really does exist then that'd be a rather frustrating outcome.
Frustrating for whom? I don't advocate closing religious centers, as such. People can do what they want. I just don't see what they bring to the table in terms of knowing God. Only more uncheckable guesses.

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Anything is possible - maybe it is the LoTR of that time. I've heard of a lot of evidence cited that would show that the events detailed weren't fictional, but rather historical. God could have been a fictional addition, of course. I'm not ruling anything out.

The other reason why they're special is based on an assumption we have to make: that people back then weren't any more gullible than they are now (not that it means much; people are pretty darn gullible these days too), and the fact that the Bible has been passed on for generations means that there was something worthwhile in it. This leads to my next response:


Let's compare Greek or Roman mythology with the Bible. I'd imagine that some people still believe in, say, the ancient Greek gods, but they must be an extremely slim minority. Why didn't the Bible drift away as well? It wasn't that Christianity edged out the Greek/Roman beliefs. If I remember correctly the beliefs in these entities were fading well before Christianity became popular, to the point where people viewed the Greek gods as stories more than anything.

I believe that Norse mythology had a similar fate, as did Egyptian religion, and there are likely others. As far as I know these beliefs weren't discarded in favor of others, they simply fell out of favor with the population. What kept the beliefs of the Bible going for so long? The reason could lend credibility to what's written in the Bible, depending on what you think.

How do you choose which religion to follow? Well, I don't know - I suppose that according to human psychology you go with what you feel would contribute more to making your life better. This part of the process isn't rational. We can't know which religion is right, or which one knows that they're talking about. Most people probably get the main idea, decide whether it makes sense to them or not, and then go with it. It's been said before and I think we all know it, but religion is faith-based for this reason.

I did have another thought to add as well. I ignored religions that were cast aside in favor of other religions (Christianity, mostly) but why is it that Judaism, Christianity, and Islam - three religions that are derived from the same God - are the majority religions? Why is it that despite being so old and even competing with one another, these three have remained throughout time and even become the most widely practiced? Christianity aside, Judaism and Islam didn't really recruit aggressively to their faith, so we can't say that it was because they were just aggressive about getting into people's minds. There are a lot of potential reasons and I don't mean to say that this proves that their beliefs are real while all others are false (after all, Hinduism still exists as well), but it's yet another thing to consider.
Well, I think religion used to be a good glue for society. And maybe we haven't outgrown it yet, either. So, no I wouldn't say it's completely worthless. And maybe some religions are better than others. Fulfill that part of us that craves for such things better, even if we must be irrational about it.

But in the knowing God department, if all we've got is faith, I don't see how the faith of one man, here and now, is worth less than the faith of thousands centuries ago.
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