Go to Religion in the Modern World
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- Go to I speak out against modern day religion because I am a vile little man full
Speaking of intelligent design
is there really a Bill Gates if my computer keeps acting up?
(Do computers debate intelligent design? Maybe they dream of electric sheep...).
posted by
majroj
on March 6, 2005 at 9:37 PM
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A few bad apples
or maybe more than a few have left scars. I am a believer in God but not in religion. Born and raised Roman Catholic, I no longer practice any one "religion". Many believers may not be OK with that but why should I care what they think anyway? Really...who are they to think they can take up even just a little space in my head? I went to 12 years of Catholic school and I've witnessed beatings of students ( and have been hit myself) by nuns and have seen a priest brutally shake and slap a classmate. The reason? His mom recently died and he wouldn't stop crying in class. My favorite teacher in grade school was fired because she filed for divorce and pregnant students in highschool were politely asked to drop out. Even today, my very devout and extremely well meaning family continue to ask me when I am going to have my 8 month old son christened. Frankly, I could care less. My God would never banish my son to hell for eternity because he dared to be born. But...my father worries about getting that original sin off of him and I know he won't sleep until it's washed away. So, I guess I'll plan a christening this weekend. Am I folding on my principles? No. I'm doing something that is going to make my family happy. I'm doing it out of love and respect for their beliefs even if they are different from mine. What I have learned from all of this is that those hellish people who acted supposedly in the name of God were frauds. They were no more "religious" as I am, well, a virgin. Don't let stupid humans cloud your vision of who God is to you.
posted by
jmhtribulas
on March 5, 2005 at 8:23 AM
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Justsouno - no one can discount how a particular belief system works for
an individual. I say more power to you if you have found something that in fact does work for you personally. Please keep in mind however that in this posting I did preface all of the negative aspects I outlined with "can be" (as in can be about) which suggests fairly strongly that the aspects I describe are not necessarily present. No one can dispute that most religions have some sort of qualifying discriminitave aspect to them. It can be as simple as the belief in a supreme being. Anyone who does not believe in an omnipotent creator is excluded from most traditional religions, a shame really because this subtle distinction "can be" merely an interprative subtlety of definition. This is a good example of what I was trying to outline in this posting. Traditional patterns of religious thought would not even consider including a person that does not worship a supreme diety as a matter of conformative policy. That's the way it has always been and likely how it will always be. My question is why not? Are we to continue splintering into little factious denominational groups or will modern day religion ever finally realize that it isn't entirely about believing exactly as they do?
posted by
gomedome
on March 2, 2005 at 10:15 AM
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Right on DarrkeThoughts
that to great extent has been my experience as well.
posted by
gomedome
on March 2, 2005 at 9:53 AM
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You are wrong about the "air time" for other beliefs. The church I grew up in gave plenty of air time to other denominations or religions...they just filled it with a lot of propaganda and name-calling!
posted by
DarrkeThoughts
on March 2, 2005 at 8:25 AM
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Gomedome, you may be telling the truth, I can't speak for all people,
but I spent the first half century of my life well after 20 until 50+ in the religions your speak of. I studied reincarnation, and all the side lines, Astrology. I do mean studied. I found Christianity totally unlike what you are telling me it is. That is the strangest thing. I have found it to work for me. I have found it to be the whole of what all the other religions I studied to be a pretense of concept of, yet all the people who write against Christianity and say they are not one are those who are telling me what Christianity is. It is not, at least where I am standing it is not at all a 'little people' group thing. I just simply have a relationship with God, and it is powerful.
posted by
Justi
on March 2, 2005 at 7:23 AM
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UrbanPlowboy -- I could not agree more
Especially when you say "Religion is not the band-aid, it is the wound." During the fiscal year of 2004 we saw 17 new churches built in our city of 300,000. That was 17 new churches for 17 new breakaway denominations.
posted by
gomedome
on March 1, 2005 at 4:54 PM
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There is no debating the truth!
Paul preached no divisions. The world is divided over religion. New denominations spring up. Religion is not the band-aid, it is the wound. I have known many people of other than the Christian faith, and the spiritual ones agree that we all serve the same GOD! Religion is of man, while spiritual is of GOD.
posted by
UrbanPlowboy
on March 1, 2005 at 1:34 PM
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Make2short -- speaking about the Baha'i
I have some experience with that faith system. It calls itself inter-denominational and accepting of all peoples. To a great extent it is both except you must be a believer in a supreme being which of course elliminates a great number of people. It also has one major failing point in my mind. Alcohol and drug abuse as well as infidelity are not tolerated amongst it's members (at least supposedly). This would be fine and good if some members of society did not struggle with these things. In this case discriminitve criteria is pre-determined which I guess is fair enough but could be why they are over 100 years old as an organization yet only have 5 million members worldwide.
posted by
gomedome
on March 1, 2005 at 8:40 AM
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justAcarpenter and Make2short -- human nature is not the point in itself,
you are missing the distinction. My post was attempting to address one of the major influences on that nature in attitudes and thought processes that become ingrained. In other words: what causes humans to act the way they do? Organized religion, still to this day, plays a significant role in influencing that behaviour. The question I am raising is: What happens when the parameters of this instilled portion of our thought processes is reset?
posted by
gomedome
on March 1, 2005 at 8:06 AM
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Make2short
Human nature…that is the point…excellent example too.
posted by
justAcarpenter
on March 1, 2005 at 12:54 AM
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I thought the infighting
among Christians was unique until I read about people who joined the communist party. There the same exact thing happened. A particular interpretation of some tenet of communistm would be debated over. The "winners" would declare the rest to be out of sinc with the party.
What you are describing is human nature. As for a religion where you can pick any holy book, check out the b'hai. They seem to borrow from everyone.
posted by
Make2short
on February 28, 2005 at 9:07 PM
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justAcarpenter -- too easy an out
There is no disputing the problems that exist in other facets of our lives but let us not forget that to many, religious worship is supposed to be the answer to those problems not the very cause.
posted by
gomedome
on February 28, 2005 at 6:33 PM
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kooka_lives -- sometimes it does seem that way
I haven't yet figured out exactly why I do this.
posted by
gomedome
on February 28, 2005 at 6:12 PM
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simsimswife -- grab some shut eye
we can pick this up some other time.
posted by
gomedome
on February 28, 2005 at 6:09 PM
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Don’t you think, that your message here goes deeper than just religious organizations?
Most of what you have said here can equally apply to Atheist Groups, political organizations, and any bias media. Is your message here about bigoted discrimination, or just the discrimination of particular groups? If religions vanished tomorrow, would the problems you have mentioned in this post…disappear as well? Or is religion the only thing that contributes to these problems?
posted by
justAcarpenter
on February 28, 2005 at 5:59 PM
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As always
A great and truthful post that those who need to open their eyes and grasps what you are saying will most likely not do so. But we keep trying, don't we?
posted by
kooka_lives
on February 28, 2005 at 5:43 PM
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it is quarter past two after midnight where I sit
Hi gomedome, it is quarter past two after midnight where I sit, and I don’t believe I am doing this, considering that I’ve got work tomorrow, but I couldn’t help appreciating how right you are about the people’s thinking “This is just human nature, from the inability to look away when asked to do so, to the preconceived notions of what a particular blogging category should be comprised of.“
Believe it or not, I sincerely regret that I didn’t have the opportunity to become a blogger earlier as to read your posts which I find very interesting.
Although I converted myself to Islam in ’88 as a result of few years of “spiritual research” through all religions and sects I could find information about, I share some of beliefs with you. I, for one, don’t believe either that this contemporary Bible is the word of God. Which Bible out of 12 is the real Bible? There are twelve different Bibles with twelve different truths. The Word of God is supposed to be only one, adapted by Himself gradually to our power of understanding and our own needs. It can not be so different from Holly book to Holly book which leads me to the conclusion that Bible is wrong altogether. I believe though that Jesus, when he will descend from Heaven for the second time as leader for all humankind, will fight Antichrist to victory, unbury the Real Bible, the Word of God, from the place it is hidden by low human interests and confront people’s beliefs with it and will burn and destroy all the crosses, which aren’t but scorn.
There is another opinion I share with you: “Yet not once has a person here on Blogit ever held their ground in debate or said anything meaningful in terms of defending their beliefs.” It happened to me too; if you count that the only few postings they didn’t write one single comment about, are those I care for the most, and hold many of the aspects I found in your postings tonight, like why God isn’t showing his face, like Satan and many others. I must go now, it is too late, I hope you will share with me more of your opinions about Islam and BahaUllah.
posted by
ex_simsimswife
on February 28, 2005 at 4:29 PM
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empty_handed_painter -- certainly borrowing, common themes and attempts
at inter-denominational activities are ongoing but in the big picture make up very small efforts. For the most part each and every religion on this planet is still touting there own version of salvation as the only one true version.
posted by
gomedome
on February 28, 2005 at 4:21 PM
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actually there is a mixing
many Christian theologians borrow from the other religions, particularly Hinduism and Buddhism.
the higher aspects of other religions also are defining Christianity, as it should be.
posted by
Xeno-x
on February 28, 2005 at 2:10 PM
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