the older i get, the more accepting of my religion's 'mores' do i become...

[pukkapatch]

i believe in God. i have faith. but i am a lazy lazy person, so dont really follow the rules and regulations. people who dont know me wouldnt think that i believed in God.
but, as i grow older, and listen to more and more discussions/arguments about various practices by various religions by people who dont necessarily have a depth of knowledge abuot the topic under dicussion, (circumcision, homosexuality, punishments for criminals, the application of the law, mode of dress, etc.) the more inclined i am to just say (or at least think) 'because God says so'
if you accept that God created us, and is all powerful and all knowledgable etc (whatever your religion), then you cannot pick and choose your the bits you like, or try to second guess Him/Her. in particular when people say that they think something. well no disrespect to them, but surely God's opinion has a little more weight than theres? as an analogy, i would trust the medical opinion of a doctor, over the medical opinion of a plumber. even though both are capable people.

i come from a regligous family that rejects almost all cultural aspects of their religion and question and study it, so i do have a great deal of knowledge, but i am a lazy soul, who is too shallow to think of the afterlife 99% of the time. does anyone else feel like this? or am i alone in this?

I don't believe in God or have any faith - I do think my life would be easier if I did. I envy your ability to just say "because God says so".

BUT - isn't the problem that there are so many interpretations of WHAT God said? Whether in the Bible or the Koran - isn't a lot of it just open to interpretation? e.g. Christians and homosexuality - some believe it to be a sin, others can reconcile their homosexuality with their Christianity quite comfortably - and they're all using the Bible as "what God says".

i think its a great big cop out to 'accept' that 'God' , some higher power, has it all under control and its not really for us to question.

i really really do. it just seems such a completely improbable leap to imagine that theres a conscious being deciding the minutea of peoples lives.. and that therefore responsibility for our actions, decisions, principles, kindnesses, humanity etc all lie elsewhere. its a cop out. bloody convenient, not to have to think too much about why something is or isnt right.

and no doubt that will really offend some people, and for that i sincerely apologise. it is not my intention to insult or offend, but this is a public forum and i do feel that my feelings are as valid as the next persons.

i think if my faith was stronger, then, yes, i would be more content. but i suppose to a certain extent, i am, because i can pass the buck as it were.

yes. the problem with religion does lie in its interpretation. in a way i am quite lucky, being a muslim. the Quran has not had to suffer through lots of translation, and i have always been taught to refer back to it, and never ever accept something just because the culture around me accepts it as divine law.

i'm thinking back to a recent thread about circumsion. i strongly feel it is mutilation. no way did i want my perfect little baby anywhere near a scalpel. but after many childish tantrums on my part, i finally decided that if i believed in God, and he had prescribed this, then it was wrong of me to deprive my child. iyswim. had it been a cultural issue, i would never ever let anyone near my boys.

same with homsoexuality. if God says it is not acceptable then i accept that. and pseudo scinetifc arguments about being born that way just seem to be a waste of breathe to me. however i recognise that their are levels of sin. if two consenting adults want to live their life as they choose, i dont really care, as its none of my business. its between them and their God. iyswim.

but even with all the misinterpretations around about religions, it seems to me that saying that your God says something is, i feel a better argument than saying i think something. again the doctor and the non medical professional analogy.

boys, your feelings are perfectly valid of course. and i made sure i posted on this topic as i feel that people here tend to be politer, whislt holding opposing views, iyswim.

it can be a cop out, and at the same time it isnt. i dont know a great deal about every relgion, just some about the one i was brought up to. the main thing i was taught is that we all have free will, and choose to do whatever we do, or dont do. yes God knows what we are going to do, think etc,, but it is our responsibility for choosing our own actions, and we must take the consequences. so, no, i dont believe it is a cop out, unless you choose to make it be that way.

its like the alcoholic who beats up his wife and kids, saying 'it wasnt me, it was the drink'. well, no i feel, it was you who chose to drink the alcohol in the first place, knowing full well that you would lose your inhibitions. iyswim

Do you know, that had never, ever occured to me -- that the Quran is a more lucid indicator of the requirements of Islam than the Bible is of the requirements of Christianity. Because it has not been serially (mis)translated I mean.

That makes the whole business of 'what is truly part of Islam and what is simply an incidental cultural association' quite significantly different from parallel debates within Christianity.

I've no idea what conclusions to draw from that difference. I'm just amazed hat I never twigged it before pukka mentioned it just now.

I do yearn more for a belief in God as I get older. The rationalist atheism of my youth seems a bit shallow to me now and I know that there is value in faith.

But I still feel I couldn't believe in God except as a result of reasoning myself towards the belief, and a God whose existence is proved by reason would surely have to be one whose commands were reasonable -- i.e. he would have to have good grounds for prohibiting or requiring something. So the commands of faith would have to be the same as the commands of morality, leaving no room for commands like 'curcumcise', 'avoid pork', 'renounce homosexuality'.

i reasoned myself towards God when i was doing genetics at uni.
there was no way i felt that something as beautiful as the genetic structure of life could have come accross by pure chance. a monkey bashing away at a keyboard producing the entire works of shakespeare, three times in a row is far far far more likely than life coalescing without a guiding hand.
then you come up with the problem of who created the creater, but perhaps i am copping out there thinking that my puny brain wouldnt be able to understand that.
i think the faith has to come before the rules and regulations. they follow on, not necessarily iyswim. their was a man, described as a self confessed sinner, who came to the prophet and said that he believed in God, and wanted to follow his teachings, but felt that there were too many regulations, and he wouldnt be able to follow them all at once as he would then fail. so the prophet told him to stop lieing. just that. nothing about stealing, or any of the other immoral habits this guy had.

not drinking alchol, no pork, no beef, attending church, dressing appropriately etc should all happen as secondary things i think. there is no point in not eating any pork if you regularly beat up your wife and kids.

Just read OP

I think if you do have a belief in God that's great for you. BUT I have to say that all the various practices generally tend to be the dictates of MAN through the centuries .. so are naturally developed through priests/rabbis/imans etc decisions and moral judgements ..

But I would always want to ask 'why?', 'why can't I do that?'

That is just the state of not having attained to faith I suppose.

I think that as I get older I want to think of God as just a way of conceptualising a life led with meaning. I think that if we understood God wholly we would see he was nothing other than the meaningful life of a self-conscious being, or of all self-conscious beings together.

A meaningful life has to be a richly textured, substantial one, i.e. one that is full of values -- cultural, aesthetic, etc as well as moral. And all values entail the idea of prescription ('you should seek that') so a God conceived just the location of meaning wouild have to prescribe all these things, I suppose.

But that idea of God isn't separate enough from self to be quite the one we need.

but twigg, if you can separate the cultural practices from those that are definitly prescribed by God, then surely HIs/Her word has more weight?

culturally, girls have their ears pierced. i wont let anyone near my perfect little dd. but circumsion has been prescribed by God, so my boys have been done my medical professionals. i would never for any reason other than God's law allow such mutilation to happen. but had you asked my 16 year old self, then i would have said that ear piercing was fine, and circumsion was wrong. at 16 i had very different views about religious mores than i do now. and wonder what it is about ageing that is changing me.

If all muslims had the same attitude as you, or if all believing people, whatever their religion, had the same attitude as you pukka, then the world would be a better place.

I do think the whole 'because God said so' is a lazy cop out though, even if it does lead to an 'easy' life. It's too bloody simple. A theory that explains everything explains nothing imo, and God is just a theory.

If our kids ask us questions, it is a cop out to respond with 'because I said so', and using that with God is just as bad.

I don't buy the whole benevolant-all powerful-all loving thing either. If God where a parent, he'd be done for neglect by now (but that's a whole nother thread which I'm not going to start)

I don't think you are necessarily questioning God by disagreeing on various issues. He gave us free will to work this stuff out for ourselves. A lot of things you mention are the result of man's free will and his interpretation of what God wants us to do. I don't necessarily think that God wants us to circumcise our little boys or punish criminals in a certain way. These things are the constuct of man.

I think the exception to your list is homosexuality as that isn't necessarily something that anybody can do anything about. I do believe that most homosexuals are actally born that way and that as such we should be as accepting of them as we are of anybody who was born different to us.

Gosh, not sure what I am trying to say really except that we don't really know what does want of us. We have to spend a whole life time trying to find that out.

But don't you ever ask yourself 'Why' pukka? Why has Allah prescribed circumsision on boys? Why does he care? Why does it matter in the grand scheme of things? Will being circumsised make a better person of your DS?These are the kids of questions I ask, and I guess the reason I find it hard to believ in God, despite being brought up surrounded by it and bein told by teachers, in response to all my questions "Becasue God said so" or "God didn't give us the brain capacity to understand these things, so there's no point trying to think about it, just accept it". Sorry, but whatever my brain capabilities might be, I can't do this!

Maybe age just makes you accept things more, and question things less?

I do think though, that if you are going to follow a religion, then you need to accept it, warts and all, and not just pick and choose the bits you like and dismiss the bits you don't like, as many people seem to do, especially in Christianity ime.

There is huge value for individuals and for societies in having a lot of shared beliefs about how to act. I mean, not just moral values but also things like how to dress, what to do on a Friday, or on Christmas Day, or at Ramadan, etc.

Even if a lot of those are, in themselves, without value (e.g. avoiding pork), there is none the less a value in sharing them. Our society is terrifyingly empty of values. Christmas is just commerce, etc, and we a re rendered unhappy, and also simply bad, to the extent that we lose that texture of shared value. What I'd be interested to find is a way of reasoning from that social fact to a religious one, i.e. a belief in God

yes, i think that is a very important point. you should accept your religion warts and all. not pick and choose the bits you like.

i have spent a lot of time in my youth questioning all aspects of my religion. but i do so less and less as i grow older. why was somthing that was constantly on my lips. and my parents most defiitly had the patience of saints. (my why was not liimited to relgion

Being a very lazy Christian myself, I suppose the thing that most people fail to see is that the Bible is not some moral Christian code but an account of man's relationship and history with God.

I do not agree with some of the stances taken up by the Church, but what is important to me is my relationship with God ... some of the worst crimes against humanity have been endorsed by the church...

can i just put the whole pork thing to rest please?
in islam, we are allowed to eat all animals, except those that eat other animals, ie carnivores. all vegetarians are allowed. and all fish from the sea. although for some reason that i dont understand some poeple wont eat shellfish, usually people from land locked cultures
since pigs are not vegetarians, muslims are not allowed to eat them. in the same way that they are not allowed to eat snakes and dogs and lions and tigers.
unfortunatley the whole thing is a huge huge huge cultural issue. i regularly get emails from well meaning relatives abou tnot using such and such toothpaste becaseu it has E245 which is derived from pigs, etc. or not to eat cheese as the rennet/renin used is ovine. etc. that is being pedantic. and not in the spirit of islam.

i cannot speak for others of course. only myself. and i find myself more accepting as i get older.

interesting point about the bad parent analogy. but God isnt our father. that is the way i see it.

no1 terrible crimes have been perpetrated by organised religon all over the world. when people lose sight of the actual spirit of it and become power hugnry obsessive and selfish

sorry, didn't mean to fixate on the pork thing. I was just trying to find an example of a proscription that didn't particularly have value in itself, but wasn't a harmful proscription either.

The ban on alcohol makes total sense to me, when you see how much misery drunks wreak on their families and on society and how terrible it is for peoples' health.

Yeah, I know in Islam God isn't seen as 'our father', but in Christianity it is. And if you believe in God you believe he was responsible for creating us, that he knew our fate before we where even born, that it was all written down in advance right? So if he knows in advance, why does he let it happen? Sorry pukka, I know this isn't what your thread was about, I won't go on about it.

Funnily enough, as I get older, I question more and accept less. As a teenager I just accepted it all as what God said, as I got older thouugh I quesioned more and more. So my experiences are sort of the opposite to yours!

Yes saadia, alcohol can have terrible consequesnces, but surely if we have free will we should be allowed to make those choices for ourselves, after all, many people can behave responsibly around alcohol and drink in moderation.

Surely if God didn't want us drinking it would have been easier to just not have created alcohol, or not given people the ability to abuse it? I mean , if you don't want your kid eating chocolate you don't pack the friedge with it and then say "you're not allowed any of that chocolate", it would be far more sensible and productive to just not stock the fridge up with chocolate right?!

Skimmed thread, but I get what you mean, pukka. I'm going through a bit of a shift at the moment, sloughing off a lot that isn't actually central to my faith, and one of the things that has happened as I've done that is I've realized what is non-negotiable in my faith, which has been interesting.

you see, it makes perfect sense to me that those proscriptions, like dont eat animals that eat other animals , and circumcision etc, came from genuine health concerns at the time they were written. BY MAN. it seems perfectly obvious to me that all these religions were made up, by man, to explain stuff to those who were curious, to control people/populations who otherwise may have been in disarray or a bit uppity perhaps...

how anyone gives them a moments credibility as truth, these days, is beyond me. they are interesting, historically speaking. they had a function, sure. but why anyone swallows it now is just so perplexing.

i see people saying the 'you have to accept it warts and all' argument - all sorts of people - and i dont get that at all. THAT sort of dogmatism seems , well, unthinking and lazy to me. SURELY, if you do have some desire to explore the spirituality within a given religion you ought to do just that, but not to question any of the bits that are downright irrelevant now? and to say 'because god says so' seems awfully arrogant too... if god had said it directly, fair enough, but His word is always written as told by someone who heard it from someone He spoke to... who presumably had a photographic memory ??

its all SO implausible.

and to think all that does not rule out spirituality imo.