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2dbeanbag | 17:55 Thu 02nd Nov 2006 | Religion & Spirituality
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How can people from any religion state that there"HOLY" book is correct and that there religion is true...

so to Christians, muslims will go to hell
to Muslims, christians will go to hell...etc

so what about bhuddists? are they destined to the so called great fires of Hell after preaching peace in our world? and what about the Jews? the Hindu people, the people who still nowadays live in jungles and have ancient traditions?
Is it just to say that they will go to Hell?

What about the people who lived long before islam and christianity, the people who used to worship spirits, who had numerous Gods, like the Romans for example??
Are they now in Hell? or in Heaven? or dead forever with nothing.

I personally think, that religion has always been a method and a tool used for people in need, or people in need of Hope, because noone knows what happens when we die, so there is a market there to capitalise on.

I strongly believe that in someway there is a creator of our world, but for religion, its based on books which has been edited many times over the past centuries, how can we believe in that? how can we believe in findings over the internet? how can we prove our findings? it is indeed impossible....

Could we be the God of this world? did we Create a God for our own benefit because we have become so advanced in our thinking that we need answers to impossible questions?

we can prove that God exists as much as we cannot prove it.
So the true answer to must simply be "I dont know"

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2dbeanbag...what really bugs me about religion is its sheer stupidity.I can understand why people WANT to believe in God or life after death but when there is not one shred of evidence then its time to face reality and dispence with such out dated myths like we dispence with santa claus and the tooth fairy when we start to grow up.I personally believe that having a religious mindset is a dangerous thing. When you are prepared to fly planes into buildings, believing that you will enjoy eternal life , there is something seriously wrong and before I get accused of muslim bashing the christian church is no better and I find it one of the most obnoxious belief systems ever to have blighted the planet with its ridiculous God on a stick and a "holy" ghost that impregnates a woman without her consent.Anyone that has ever read the bible from cover to cover and still believes that it is the word of God needs their head examaning.(what is needed is not the will to believe but the wish to find out...which is the direct opposite--Bertrand Russell)
It's called 'Blind Belief'. Anyone can do it,just hand your brain over to another. Don't forget that, at least the Xtians are honest, they call themselves 'Sheep'.
. . . Sheep? . . . hmmm . . . that reminds me . . .

Is a surprised sheep a scientist?

2dbeanbag, Welcome to answerbank!
You should read The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins.
It really helps to show how religion and the belief in a supreme omnipotent omniscient being is utter and complete nonsense. Admittedly in my case he was preaching to the converted. But it has given me new arguments to use in our office religious debates/arguments.
I've also read many books backing the God hypothesis, intelligent design and so on but I've yet to be even remotely convinced by any of them. It always always ALWAYS ultimately comes to down to blind faith.
Belief in God is like giving up.
I don't know how it works, God must have done it.

How did we get here?

I dunno, must have been God.


But where did God come from?

Oh you can't ask that as God is eternal.


But that doesn't make sense.

Our intelligence is too limited so it never will.


Well if your willing to accept that Gods origin (or lack of it) is too big a concept to understand why not just say the same thing about creation? You don't even need a God then.
No disrespect to any clergy present but have they ever suddenly stopped in the middle of a service and thought, "What am I doing?"
Is there any other job in the world apart from Santa where you can be paid just on a belief system?
Hi 2dbeanbag

I was agreeing with you right up to "I strongly believe in some way there is a creator of our world."

There isn't any evidence of a creator. Unanswered questions in science do not equal god. My bet is that cosmology will continue to advance and improve on ideas of how the universe works and the need for gods will diminish accordingly.

Of course, that is unless the American Taliban get their way and legislate against rational thinking.
Rational and logical thought is the enemy of religion.

Probably why churches like to get 'em young before they can truly think for themselves.

Am I the only one that thinks the indoctrination of children is more than a little dodgy, immoral even?


Hey Dawkins, you're not Richard Dawkins himself are you?
Just wait until they find out they're all in the same melting pot.

Personally I just think religion is retarded, as I could never say, put all my faith, hopes, beliefs and dreams into something no-one has ever seen.

It's like believing in a 7 legged Giraffe who's patches are miracle cures, it's tail lashes out luck and it's neck calms anyone who sees it. But you can't see if because it's highly camouflaged and is orbiting around the Earth. But phoof, if you anger it, it comes down (still camouflaged) on you like a tonne of uhh giraffes and butts you until you die and then you go to a place where there is no letter i and Monopoly is the only game you can play (but there are no Dice, as it cannot be created due to no i's)..... See, retarded.
You are making a large assumption in your Q in that all individual religions assert that theirs is the one true religion. I am a Christian, and I really don�t have the time nor inclination to respond to the opinions above which primarily focus on the negative aspect of religious belief.

As a Christian I believe that everybody has a right to express their own beliefs and find their own true path to their heaven however they so wish. Usually I would expect this through some personal moral code, not religious fundamentalism. You may not believe in my religion, but I have a right to follow it, like a sheep if you insist. But as I respect your right to assert your opinions, then you must accept that a follower of any religion has the right to express theirs. You are mocking my belief but I don�t feel the need to mock yours. Who is the hypocrite?
I agree with previous post by Octavious. The flaw in the question is the assumption that every religion believes theirs to be the only true religeon. I am a Catholic and in the 1960's the Catholic Church abandoned the notion of the Catholic faith being the sole means of salvation. Catholics now acknowledge other routes to heaven.

Most of the answers thus far have focussed on the most negitive aspects of religon without acknowledging the positive elements. For example almost anyone who was educated in Africa who was responsible for their education and the majority will tell you the church. I grew up in Zimbabwe where many people are suffering crushing povery and terrible oppression, and as with many troubled places it is only peoples faith in God that keeps them a alive and holds communities together.

The theory's religion is only a tool for controlling people or something people adopt to minimise uncertainty are weak and flawed. Many of greatest thinkers, leaders, scientists and philosophers in history have believed in a God.

In a debate of this nature it is obviously impossible to prove or disprove the existance of God. But faith does exceed the boundaries of rational thinking, and I'm guessing that many of the posters who have posted such crass answers have never looked for God or been in the position where they have needed God.
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Octavius and Fingerprint:

Thanks for your answers, I was hoping to attract a wide audience with this Question.
Firstly I am not mocking religion, I am merley questioning it, to find a better understanding just like how some great scientists i.e Newton and Einstein question the universe for example.

I Agree with you when you say that people should be respected for their own beliefs, for me it should be normal practise.

what is a christian, a follower of Jesus Christ? in the bible does Jesus say "I am the truth and the light and noone comes to the father but through me" my point being that from this if your not a follower of Jesus christ you cant go to heaven?

So by agreeing with other peoples point of views and respecting them if they are bhuddists or muslims are you still considered to be a true christian? and follower of Jesus? as Jesus you could argue was a fundamentalist to wouldnt agree with other peoples oppinions? just a though.

The world is 4.5 billion years old, since then have all people gone to hell? because they were not christians, or Jews or Muslims? or Hindus? etc. so where are they? do all religions have different heavens? heavens for christians? heavens for Islam? etc?

FingerPrint: I agree with your views about how religion can and has changed African people, as religion can bring people together.

But when you said "But faith does exceed the boundaries of rational thinking, and I'm guessing that many of the posters who have posted such crass answers have never looked for God or been in the position where they have needed God"

Are you saying people need to be in a position to need God? could man have created God because he cant answer certain questions about his life? through lack of knowledge maybe? hence 1 person or a group of people come together and develope a religion?





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I don't deny that relgion, churches and the faithful have done and continue to do many great things around the world.
Many also do, in the name of the faith, bad things. No one, even the most blinkered, can deny it.
A bad person is a bad person religous or not. Religion gives bad people justification.

'Many of greatest thinkers, leaders, scientists and philosophers in history have believed in a God'

This, like God, can never be proven or disproven. In many cases it's quite likely that those claiming faith actually only did it so they would get their funding and wouldn't be ostracized. It has been claimed that Einstein was relgious but this is demonstrably not true. Some of his comments have simply been taken out of context.
Even if it were true, so what? It proves nothing.

I have no wish to mock and fully respect peoples rights to believe whatever they want to believe. I wish I could believe in something so strongly.
My problem with relgion is that there are so many unanswered and unanswerable questions that I just cannot understand how any rational, right thinking adult could possbily believe any of it.
No-one above the age of 10 believes in Santa yet were supposed to believe in an omnipotent omniscient super being who exists outside of space and time.

Please, someone convince me I'm wrong.
Llamatron, As I have already said, you believe there is nothing to believe in and you have the freedom to do that, so why should I try to convince you otherwise? If you are looking for enlightenment then you can find that yourself, you don�t �have� to be a sheep.

As regards believing in the omnipotent omniscient (big word for a Friday) why should I prove or justify any beliefs I may have on that to you? Is what I am doing harming you in a particular way that I need to explain myself? I would like to think that I am a rational human being. Even though people don�t believe that Santa exists, it doesn�t stop them going through the annual ritual of dressing up and gift giving etc. Incidentally, I thought Einstein was an atheist. I can accept that.

2deanbag, the bible says many things. It tells me to smite thy enemies and to sacrifice a calf. In the times these texts were written this was just a typical days work. Since the beginning of mankind there has always been a belief in the afterlife, wherever they ended up and whatever they believed in, it was their own heaven no matter what name they gave to it. Someone said above that we are all in the same melting point, and I agree with that.
Fair point Octavius.

Doesn't stop my need to understand or quell the urge to grab a believer by the lapels, shake vigorously and shout 'WAKE UP'.

Each to his own.
Then you could equally accept the urge of someone of a Religious persuasion to grab YOU by the lapels and say �See the Light� or �Believe�. It works both ways. Fortunately, most of us don�t do that.
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true, unfortunatley not everyone sees it like that though... hence the ongoing problems.
Ah yes, but the big difference is that I'm right. ;-)
Quite simply, Religion has one purpose only, and thats to the control of the masses by the few.

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