Organised Religion

[ACubed]

Firstly I am really not trying to knock anyone's faith, or cause offence, this is just something that's been on my mind a lot recently.

Do followers or organised religions believe that theirs is the only correct one, and all the others are wrong? Because if this is so that would mean the majority of the planet are wrong, and of not its basically saying everyone's right in their own way, which doesn't make much sense either.

I just can't get my head around the fact that people might pick a faith based purely on what thier family follow, and then assume that's the one correct one.

Would love to hear thoughts of this.

if there was a god they would probably find it quite funny if people didn't believe in them

Its funny because I have always thought the opposite.
I imagine him saying: "Why do these idiots idolise me, I drown the whole dam lot of them because I didn't like them and they still worship me. I created a special hell and sent one of my angels to supervise torturing some of them for eternity and they loved me even more. So I crucified my own son and they still didn't get the hint. Then I got bored with them and disappeared for two thousand years leaving no evidence of my existence but they are like god damned cockroaches and still believe in me. I mean there is no evidence of me whatsoever and millions of them keep sending me prayers which I never answer. What do I have to do before they get the picture ... send a meteorite to destroy the whole planet? "

If I were to conceive of a likeable anthropomorphised God, I would imagine an egalitarian God that did not discriminate amongst theists of all different types, atheists and haven’t-a-clue-ists. He might want to give us all a big hug – being mortal is tough!

I can’t imagine this God being chuffed with religionism – prejudice against those who are not adherents of one’s own faith – or ideology (to broaden the idea to include atheism).

Actually I can think of one small gem of a story from the Gospels that shows Jesus advocating anti-religionism.

The parable of the Good Samaritan is about being a good neighbour but it also invites us to see the best in an outsider, and in particular a religious outsider like the Samaritan.

Jesus asks us to acknowledge that the person who doesn’t belong in our belief tribe can be a source of love and kindness and can, on occasion, be capable of exhibiting a humanity that is not always shown by the most devout of our own tribe.

That’s an important anti-religionist message. Appreciate that the best in human behaviour can be observed in someone who does not believe as you do.

On the other hand, I think that there is religionism in the writings of St Paul.

Here are two examples:

For the unbelieving husband has been sanctified through his wife, and the unbelieving wife has been sanctified through her believing husband. Otherwise your children would be unclean, but as it is, they are holy.

Do not be yoked together with unbelievers. For what do righteousness and wickedness have in common? Or what fellowship can light have with darkness? What harmony is there between Christ and Belial? Or what does a believer have in common with an unbeliever?

Swap white and black person for believer and unbeliever and see how it sounds to you.

I believe that Jesus said "I am the way, the truth, and the life; no one comes to the father except through me."

So yes, I do believe followers of other religions haven't found the truth yet.

Does that mean I believe the whole of the rest of the world is condemned to eternal hellfire and damnation? Absolutely not. First and foremost, God is Love.

I do believe it's impossible to reject Jesus without meeting Jesus. I also think it is entirely possible to meet Jesus and reject him. But I absolutely believe everyone will meet Jesus themselves, either in this life, or once they die. And I do think that there will be a decision to be made by everyone, at that point. But that's just my interpretation of what I read and I could well be wrong about that.

It's not something I go shouting about though; so much evil has come from people trying to forcibly convert the world. If people ask though, I'll tell them what I think.

outwith Surah al bayyinah is considered by half of people as a Makkah Surah and half as a Madinah and so abrogation isn't an issue. I don't think it contradicts the verses I quoted as its still about the good and the not so good people of other faith groups. There's still plenty of hellfire and brimstone but that's aimed at people who change the message of the earlier scriptures towards personal gain and power. As for the sincere followers of other faiths, merciful, compassionate people, righteous, scrupulous people '...if you entrust him with a great treasure he will return it to you in full...' As the first verse I quoted began with, then I have hope in that for them.

Moonstruck thank you for responding to my latest post!

Apologies in advance to those who are not interested in the minutiae of scripture but I’d like to add a few more thoughts.

The point I was trying to make in my original post is that in both the passage in Surah Al-Bayyinah in the Quran and that in Revelation in the Bible the statements about the fate of unbelievers are not qualified. There is no indication that it is only those unbelievers who behaved badly in life who are going to hell, rather it is the destination of all unbelievers.

I don’t think it’s possible to get to heaven unless you are actually a Muslim according to the Quran.

And whoever desires other than Islam as religion - never will it be accepted from him, and he, in the Hereafter, will be among the losers.

Al-i-Imran 3:85

There are analogous sorts of statements in the Bible.

He who believes in the Son has everlasting life; and he who does not believe the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God abides on him.

John 3:36

There's still plenty of hellfire and brimstone but that's aimed at people who change the message of the earlier scriptures

My understanding is that Christians are considered by Islam to have changed the message of the prophet Jesus by assigning to him a claim of divinity and this in itself is a grave enough act to keep them out of heaven.

They have certainly disbelieved who say, " Allah is the Messiah, the son of Mary" while the Messiah has said, "O Children of Israel, worship Allah, my Lord and your Lord." Indeed, he who associates others with Allah - Allah has forbidden him Paradise, and his refuge is the Fire. And there are not for the wrongdoers any helpers.

Al-maida 5:72

I realise that for balance I ought to emphasise that there are softer, beautiful, supportive passages within the Quran, particularly concerning the vulnerable and needy - as is also the case in the Bible. Such passages help to strengthen the bonds within faith communities.

I mention the more exacting passages only because they are pertinent to the debate at hand.

I think that a mistake many people make in comparing the views and objectives of religions is assuming that religions define things the same way or have the same objectives.

Heaven, for example. Christians say that only by believing in Jesus and behaving in a particular way will you enter heaven. Entering heaven is pretty irrelevant to Jews. Jews believe that you have to behave in a particular way in order to make the world in which you live a good place.

Hindus believe that the many gods are all different aspects of one overarching Deity. Baha'is believe that all religions are the same and equally valid.

Fundamentalists from any religion believe that theirs is the only right one, and that unbelievers and liberals are plain wrong. And that goes for Fdamemtalist atheists, too!

Personally, I believe that my religion is the right one for me. As long as you are a good person who treats others as you would wish to be treated, you can worship God, Ganesh, Dawkins or the Flying Spaghetti Monster, it makes no difference - our common humanity is all that matters.

That goes back to my original point - if doesn't matter what your belief system is as long as you lead a good life, then why not take the best aspects from all the religions and live by that? I understand in practice that may alienate people from their local community, but it's more of a thought experiment with logic. Surely by saying that it doesn't matter what religion you believe in you're saying that organised religions are defunct, and are merely personal preference.

I think those fearful passages of damnation were put in there to dissuade people from engaging with the competing pagan religions of the time.

At the time that the Abrahamic religions were growing and crystallising paganism was very popular and seen as a threat by those perpetuating the new religions.

Uniting people under one God allows power to be more easily concentrated in the hands of an elite or a ruler more so than a population who might have more divided loyalties to different gods.

Incidentally I saw a really interesting documentary by Francesca Stavrokopolou which argued that the Old Testament /Hebrew bible had been modified to hide the fact that Judaism was actually polytheistic.

aCubed IIRC that is pretty much what Bahaism boils down to. If you went a step further and said that so many different views of Deity are incompatible, so de-deify and just cherry-pick philosophy, you'd probably end up with Humanism.

Hinduism is a Pick 'n' Mix sort of religion. You are allowed to take bits from different schools of thought to create your own unique belief system.

If you want to go along with that philosophy, and it feels like many people today do, I think you have to start regarding belief systems as personalisable interwoven schemes of metaphor and allegory, capturing something of the human condition and the way we should relate to each other and to the world but not touching on objective material reality.

So I tend to think of religions nowadays as communal immersive art forms experienced uniquely and individually by each of us according to personality and personal history.

And the role of describing the physical world has been given over to science.

Natty- I like that. Really well put.

Thank you.

I could go through a list of 10,000 gods that no one believes in yet lots of people get weird about the 10,001 god. I get up in the morning and watch the plants slowly evolving, birds using aerodynamics and the sun appearing to rise as the earth rotates as gravity holds me on land. I am amazed at how people think some guy (its always a guy), that they have never seen, never spoken to, just clicked his fingers and it all just popped into existence 6,000 years ago. Life is so much more wonderful.

But that's not necessarily what faith is. Many people of faith are not Creationists, nor do they necessarily believe in Beardy Bloke In The Sky. Many people see scripture (of any faith) as an evolved work of philosophy, written by people trying to explain their understanding of the world, their nation's history, their ethics etc as they evolved over centuries and millennia.

Our understanding of the world has changed since then, but that doesn't mean that our knowledge is complete. We still debate ethics, still look for ways to understand and for guidance. Faith is just one framework , which many people find helps them.

I've not rtft in detail, but it occurred to me you might be interested in the Reith Lecture which was on Radio 4 yesterday (and obv will be available listen again/podcast). I wasnt giving it my full attention but was struck by some parts about how, although we tend to focus on the importance of the 'belief' part of religions ('orthodoxy'), actually a lot of it is really about (a) community and (b) orthopraxy - the practice - rather than what you believe.

I think this probably does have a lot to do with why organised religions developed in the first place, persist now and are important in peoples lives. The beliefs are inconsistent and irrational but the community and practices give shape to peoples lives. I'm someone who doesn't miss god or reading the bible one bit, but I do miss the church.

I think that’s true Errol. Religion seems to provide a framework or a pretext for the evocation of particular feelings or the binding together of communities but the actual theological details don’t seem to be so important to most people.

One consequence of this is that people appear to be peculiarly blind to the harsher statements in their own holy books.

I've experienced religious services of quite a lot of religions (cause I'm do worldly and what not . Actually not sure how I have I follow no religion). Overall they are quite similar; deities and a book. Fundamentalist aside most followers feel their religion is the one for them and therefore correct, but this doesn't mean others are wrong. Many might accept it's all the same god.

I've only come across one religion where the believe was that they worship the 'correct' god and everyone else had it wrong. They even had as hymn during the service 'our god is better than your god' (do something similar. I sat there rather bemused by that.

I think when people when people use the word faith they are really referring to their own personal philosophical beliefs, which are rooted in their upbringing. Their is no way they can deny their own faith because it would be akin to denying their own thoughts.

A lot of the more thoughtful comments seems to be trying to trying to disassociate religion from their beliefs because obviously organised religion can't be defended but a more honest personal philosophy called faith is much more ethical and real.

God is one of the last shekels good people of 'faith' need to throw off, so they can dissociate themselves from books like the Bible and stop being seen as worshipping a dodgy deity.

I was an aethiest and am now a Christian. I believe there is one God and that different religions worship him in different ways as a result of cultural and geographical differences that have increased over time.
In reply to a previous post all the Christian's that I know believe in evolution. It's in the Bible - first God created planets/stars, then sea/land, then plants, then animals then man. I am not sure when the Old Testsment was written and I know a lot of it is not meant to be taken literally but read in the context of the time/culture when it was written, but how could they have known about evolution when Genesis was written? It's amazing.
I find christianity.org.uk/ really helpful.

ACubed, that's such a good question, and a really hard one.

Short answer - I believe that Jesus is the Way, the Truth and the Life, and no one comes to the Father but through him.

It's not an easy thing to believe or talk about, but I have spent the last 30-odd years studying the Bible and trying to live by its teachings. So much of it has been proved true in my own life that I trust the parts I don't understand.

Do I believe that God wants everyone to come to him and be saved? Yes.
Will everyone do this? No.
Do I know who will and who won't? No, and I would never presume to judge. But I believe God sent his son to die for my sins, and why would he do this if I could get to heaven by being a good person?

notatschool why does god only save those who believe?

Why do you need to be saved?

But I believe God sent his son to die for my sins

He could just forgive you? I don't need to see something suffer before I can forgive. What a bizarre notion.

One of the things that I don't get about Christianity, is why you need to be good today (ie in this life) in order to be rewarded tomorrow (ie in a next life). Surely being good in this life is in itself being rewarded in this life? By being good in this life we can help make the living world a better place for everyone.