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 somebody murders a child, we talk about the parents forgiving/not forgiving them

And if the parents were to go out and torture their other child to death as a means of achieving forgiveness for the murder, we would lock them up and throw away the key, not worship them.

So for example in the early days of Christianity, when there were only a couple of hundred followers, does the faith's teachings mean that the rest of the planet we're going to hell? And what about all the people who came before Jesus?

Faith is all about trust. Everyone has a faith. Atheists have a faith that there is no God and are trusting in themselves. Other religions have a faith, usually that they can somehow do special works to please God and somehow escape eternal damnation. But its not a faith in God, it’s a faith in themselves just like the atheists.

Those who came after Jesus looked back and trusted that He was the Messiah God had promised. It is that faith in God that saves. Before Jesus came, people looked forward trusting God’s promise of a Messiah would come to pass.

Good quotes! Yes, I've never believed but I always thought if there was a god they would probably find it quite funny if people didn't believe in them, I would. Doesn't seem very loving to consign people who don't worship you to hell.

But it does seem very loving to know there is a way of escape, and to clearly point this out to anyone open to hearing?

It’s a bit like walking on a dangerous cliff path. If there is a large notice telling you not to walk down a certain path because you will fall over the cliff, you’d be mad to ignore the warning and keep walking!

Just because you decided to ignore the warning and smash your body over the rocks as you fall down the cliff, doesn’t mean the person who put up the warning is in any way to blame.

Some people say that a loving God would never punish people or let them fall off the cliff in the first place, but you can yell “God is love! God is love! God is love!” all the way down the cliff as you fall, but that doesn’t mean the consequences of falling over the edge will change the law of gravity and be any different. There is a natural law of consequence in this life, so why should it be any different for a consequence of our wrong-doings?

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?

This is a common viewpoint but not an accurate one. Leading a good life is commendable but is all about YOUR works. Yet as humans we are fallible, we make mistakes, that’s what insurance is for after all! Obviously not all mistakes are deliberate, but we can let ourselves down. Most of us have set ourselves a new year resolution at some time in our lives, but we’ve given up by day 3 and the resolution fell by the wayside. So if we can’t even keep our new year’s resolutions, how can we really honestly pull all our trust in ourselves? That’s not to say we aren’t great and all the rest of it, but just realistically saying how we can let even our own self down when we least expect it.

Mindtrope Mon 24-Oct-16 15:44:51
I don't sin. I am perfectly human.

Have you ever lied? Have you ever stolen? Have you ever envied someone else, perhaps for their money or spouse, or perfect body? Then, you’ve broken 3 of the 10 commandments already! I think most people are honest enough with themselves to see they’re not perfect. This is a parenting website, and I think most, if not all, parents agree there is no such thing as a perfect parent. Just the say way there is no such thing as a perfect human (Jesus aside, since he is God).

ErrolTheDragon Tue 25-Oct-16 12:55:09
That real problem needs a real solution. Taking personal responsibility for your own behaviour is a large part of it. Christianity (and many other religions) simply don't seem to work in practice to address the issues of selfishness or harming others. Sometimes appears rather to the contrary I'm afraid.

I have to disagree with this statement. The bible is so full of warnings about consequences of selfishness and harming others. I can find nowhere that appears to the contrary and would love you to provide me with a passage (in context) to look up.

Mindtrope Tue 25-Oct-16 14:44:11
I am not a "sinner" I don't sin

Oxford dictionary defines sin "An immoral act considered to be a transgression against divine law."

I don't believe in god so I can't sin.

Thats a bit like saying "I don't believe in the UK law so I can't possibly break it". That's just not how it works!

Also, would just like to point out that the oxford dictionary actually says (in context) that sin is:

sin1

NOUN

	<span class="italic">1
An immoral act considered to be a transgression against divine law.
‘a sin in the eyes of God’


[mass noun] ‘the human capacity for sin’

More example sentencesSynonyms</span>
	<strong>1.1An act regarded as a serious or regrettable fault, offence, or omission. ‘he committed the unforgivable sin of refusing to give interviews’</strong>

So you see, you, like me and everyone else, will have regrettable fault, offence or omissions in our lives. Loads of them! This does, in fact, according to the Oxford dictionary, make you a sinner!

I'm a sinner in the colloquial meaning as in 'I'm human and screw up sometimes'. But as a non-believer I can't be a sinner in the religious sense because I don't recognise there is any such thing as divine law. So it's just semantics.

I could break a law of my country. But I can't break a divine law because to me there are no divine laws.

OP, in answer to your first question, not all paths lead to the top of the mountain and you are absolutely right when you say they contradict each other so can't all be right.

The way it works is this: God says we are all born with his laws on our hearts. This is also know as our conscience. We all have a choice to make, either for God or against him, and he promises that if we seek him we SHALL find him.

Other religions share commonalities such as fear of a penalty, but you will notice they all are about how YOU can save yourself by doing everything possible to please the (false) god in your own strength. The problem with this is no one really knows if they've done enough and live in fear.

God says he "has not given us a spirit of fear but of power and of love and of a sound mind" 2 Timothy 1:7New King James Version (NKJV)
The bible is also clear that we can't earn our own salvation, in Ephesians 2:8-9 it says: "For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— not by works, so that no one can boast".

Jesus was willing to leave his place in a perfect heaven, and submit himself to be the perfect sacrifice for all sins, once, and for all. It wasn't about a vicious God cruelly following pagan child-sacrifice. Not at all. Jesus chose to come, He chose to put himself in the line of fire, knowing that He was the only one who could cover everyone's sins forever. This was because he was a lamb without blemish. He was perfect. Only a perfect being could atone for the imperfections of all of us. You couldn't, I couldn't but Jesus could. He didn't have to but he chose to. You wouldn't complain about a parent taking a bullet for a child, would you? That's what Jesus did for you. He took your place so you don't have to. This is why Jesus says "I am the way, the truth and the life, no man comes to the father but by me".

With other religions, apart from the fact that the bible was the first (islam came 500-600 years after the bible was written, and Buddhism around only 600BC, so that in itself gives you a clue as to which religions fit into God vs false gods.

The main thing is that you remain open to God, even if you don't believe in him, you can still pray "God, I don't even know if you exist, but if you do, please show yourself to me because I honestly want to know". I can promise you He will.

Nowyousee - you keep trying to explain my view using your rules. you talk of me breaking the commandments.

I don't work like that and more than I tell you it's a felony to spread toast with a butterknife because my pet pixie says it's wrong. I don't accept the existence of your god, he sounds brutal, callous, jealous and emotionally immature. If he was a human I would decline social invites.

If we take the longevity of a religion as a marker of it being real then there are many older belief systems than Judaism such as Hinduism.

God says we are all born with his laws on our hearts. This is also know as our conscience

But our conscience is culturally bound. It's formed by the place and time we live. 100 years ago it was acceptable to think homosexuality as depraved. Today having such views are deemed antisocial. So there's no one conscience we can look at and say 'that's the right one'.

Two Christians in the same church can also be told different things by the same God. He tells the one on the left that He doesn't approve of gay marriage while telling the one the right He does.

And interestingly the church is behind the curve of progress and gets dragged along by society rather than the church being at the forefront of change as we see with fighting anti-gay beliefs.

no one really knows if they've done enough and live in fear.

Unless you deem all religions and deities as man made and just do the best you can and try to live peaceably, and leave the world a kinder place.

He chose to put himself in the line of fire,

The line of whose fire? Gods? His own? Again if someone lets me down I don't need to see them suffer to forgive them if they ask for forgiveness.

I just forgive them because I know how it feels to feel like that and I know people have better relationships if we don't hold grudges. And I can understand how people make mistakes. I have seen how I have made mistakes and that it was usually lack of experience or some other factor.

And knowing this I am able to appreciate that sometimes I will be hurt. And that I feel guilty and it helps to know I extend that same awareness to others as they would me.

That's not to say I would open myself to repeat hurts. For example if my DH had an affair. I may well appreciate in time how and why it happened but I would probably call it a day on the marriage. I wouldn't need to see him suffer to move on.

You wouldn't complain about a parent taking a bullet for a child, would you?

But you're saying it's god firing the same bullet that he is saving us from. And that he thinks the child deserves to be shot. How about he just doesn't shoot? It's ridiculous when you analyse it logically.

nowyou - Me: That real problem needs a real solution. Taking personal responsibility for your own behaviour is a large part of it. Christianity (and many other religions) simply don't seem to work in practice to address the issues of selfishness or harming others. Sometimes appears rather to the contrary I'm afraid.

You: I have to disagree with this statement. The bible is so full of warnings about consequences of selfishness and harming others. I can find nowhere that appears to the contrary and would love you to provide me with a passage (in context) to look up.

The bible doubtless does have warnings about selfishness and all sorts of other things, and not the contrary. Unfortunately, as I said, it simply doesn't seem to work in practice. Quoting bits of the bible is not persuasive. Declaring faith isn't impressive. 'By their works shall you know them'? Sorry, but IME christians behave no better, and some of them worse, than anyone else.

how can we really honestly pull all our trust in ourselves

But I don't have any reason to think I have a choice about who/what I trust. I have no reason to believe there is a God who wants anything to do with me. I have just as much reason to believe in any God. Or one I made up myself 5 minutes ago.

you’d be mad to ignore the warning and keep walking!

That analogy doesn't work. You can't see the cliff. And there are other warnings from other religions. And no visible danger. And all the signs are about different dangers. You're ignoring their warning signs put there by other religions. Think about how you are able to decide those signs are false. That's how I feel when I see your sign. I've never seen the cliff or anyone fall off it.

Put it another way. You'd be foolish to ignore a warning 'Beware of the bull'. But if the sign said 'Beware of the unicorn' - well, would you be mad to ignore that or heed it? Even if you'd read a book about unicorns.

way down the cliff as you fall, but that doesn’t mean the consequences of falling over the edge will change the law of gravity

But it's god who made the cliff for the purpose of people falling off it. How about he just doesn't have the cliff?

and he promises that if we seek him we SHALL find him

In which case why does the god a person 'finds' overwhelmingly depends on their location in time and space. For example a Viking would most likely have 'found' Odin and a guy in Afghanistan will most likely 'find' Allah. The statistics massively prove this.

Everyone has a faith. Atheists have a faith that there is no God and are trusting in themselves. Other religions have a faith .... But its not a faith in God, it’s a faith in themselves just like the atheists.

No, atheists do not have a faith that their is no god, that is why they are called atheists, because they do not have faith. If anything you would claim atheists have confidence in reasonable evidence. Faith is belief without reasonable evidence.

I think it makes theists feel better to believe without evidence, if they can convince themselves that everyone believes something without evidence its just a different belief, which is just as (un)likely to be true. Its a self reinforcing delusion, aka trust in the unknown.

Out of the 10,000 religions in the world who decides which 9,999 have a faith in themselves like atheists and who decides the one that has a faith in a god?

I don't believe in god so I can't sin. - That is a bit like saying "I don't believe in the UK law so I can't possibly break it". That's just not how it works!

I break the speed limit I get a speeding ticket, which is reasonable evidence of the existence of UK laws. Not even comparable to divine laws, which has no reasonable evidence of existence. So until their is reasonable evidence of their existence its sensible to follow then as much as you follow any other imaginary laws.

It’s a bit like walking on a dangerous cliff path. If there is a large notice telling you not to walk down a certain path because you will fall over the cliff, you’d be mad to ignore the warning and keep walking!

To make the analogy a bit more accurate: Its a bit like putting your own children on a dangerous cliff path, which you have deliberately built to be dangerous. There is thousands of paths forward some with signs of varying sizes written in various languages, all saying contradictory things. You would be mad to follow any of the signs and keep walking.

The way forward would be to look for reasonable evidence of which paths are safe and only go forward when confidence is very high that you have safe passage. All the while cursing your parents for building the dangerous cliff and putting you there.

God says we are all born with his laws on our hearts. This is also know as our conscience.

Only your conscience resides in your head not your heart and everyone's conscience produces different moral outcomes.

Jesus chose to come, He chose to put himself in the line of fire

So god didn't send him? Jesus committed suicide by Crucifixion? Why didn't god stop him, if my son was trying to kill himself I would do everything I could to stop him no matter how altruistic his reasons for wanting to do so.

The University of Helsinki recently released a study showing that "people with religious beliefs have a poorer grasp of the physical world'.

I don't believe in the UK law so I can't possibly break it

False analogy. I can go to parliament and see laws being made. You've never seen God let alone seen him making laws. Plus I've seen the police arresting people for breaking laws. I've seen the local magistrates court. I've seen prisons where people who break laws go. I have good reason to think that the laws of this country are real. I've never seen God arrest someone. I have no reason to believe there is a 'god law'.

so why should it be any different for a consequence of our wrong-doings?

It's barbaric for starters. Do you honestly think I deserve to suffer for eternity because I don't believe in God? I don't. And I don't think you would if you didn't believe in God. And you know what, that makes me morally superior to the God you believe in. I can't worship a god who is morally interior to me.

Atheism is a faith? Really?

So me not playing football can be classed as a hobby?