Quote:
Originally Posted by Guru
Everyone needs to believe what they want. Does it really serve a purpose to call someones religion a fairy tale though?
|
Someone's religion? How about everyone's religion.
Let's face facts here. One can not prove a single speck of fact from any single set of 'religious' beliefs. They are what they are, beliefs that require faith (a blind leap into a chasm which we can't see where we'll land) to even believe in them in the first place.
All religion, regardless of amount of gods worshipped, where it's practiced, what sect, etc. (I'm not singling out ANY religion: christianity, islam, shinto, buddhism, tao, et al) is basically the same. They contain certain archetypes (the flood myth appears in many cultures from around the world [*note: the bible's flood myth isn't the first flood myth, and contains many of the same concepts/archetypes of other flood myths, but I digress*], as does the creation myth [*once again, christianity's isn't the first, and certainly not unique*], the dying and resurrected deity myth [*yep, jesus wasn't the first: inanna, ishtar, tammuz, dumuzi, dionysus, mithras, zoroaster, krishna, and a LOT of other deities--too many to list here-- predated jesus, and his 'dying/resurrection' myth contain, you guessed it, elements of all of these myths*], and many other of the same archetypal stories, morals and ethics to live by within a society, etc. The kicker is that mythoi, in almost every instance, shows evidence of spreading from culture to culture, maturing in the process, and in the filtration from different cultures, we get the various myths in cultures that never met, could never have met, etc. As a matter of fact, one of the more interesting bits about religion and the spreading from culture to culture is that one's cultures gods/goddesses become the demons/devils/bad places of the next 'religion,' or set of myths. The catholic church was particularly good at this: the halo (sol invectus) went from sacred symbol of the undying sun to the 'headband' of saints. The horns of Satan are from numerous fertility gods. The devil's pitchfork? that belonged to poseiden. The cloven hooves? Nope, not the devil's exclusively, but from greek mythology: pan! The witch hat? belonged to wise cronos. But I won't bore you with the countless other examples.
I keep telling myself that I'm going to stop posting on religion, because it's one of a select few unwinnable debates, and ends up pissing everybody off... but here comes the meat of the issue:
The main issue I have with religion in general (although christianity seems to have more of an issue with this than other religions, but they all have this weakness to a certain extent) is that the more vocal members of the different religions (let's use christians in this discussion) are so narrowminded that they can't or won't admit that there's any possibility on planet earth that they may be wrong. They've so painted themselves into the proverbial corner that to admit wrongness might very well destroy them. They have faith, but in this instance faith isn't a good thing.
The problem with faith (which is normally a good thing) is that when one has faith, it tends to absolutely sew one's mind shut against the possibility of being wrong. With faith, one very rarely (if ever) will even acknowledge a situation where one might be wrong, as it collapses the house of cards.
At its very base, religion (every religion) was founded on principles and ideas that are unprovable. If one attempts to disprove a tightly held religious belief (godforbid jesus was married!), one would bring a firestorm of scrutiny on one's self because people simply don't like to consider the fact that what they believe is nothing more than an elaborate fairy tale, and will fight to the death to believe what they want to believe.
When one has faith (I'm sure there are exceptions), one basically shuts one's mind off of the possibility of being wrong. Obviously, my main issue with that is that we, as human beings, are wrong all the time--hell, it's practically what we're best at. Mankind started religion (long before christianity, judaeism, or even recorded history) to explain the unexplainable--Where we truly erred is when we began to refuse to believe that we might be wrong.
We tied the whole of humanity to religion and religious practices in general (not singling out christianity), and that restricts the potential that we have as human beings. We have the potential for so much more. I despise it when we paint ourselves into the tiny restrictive boxes of organized religion.
To finish, I'll be the first to admit that I may be wrong about this-- If there is a god (which I certainly won't rule out, but the world we live in certainly reeks of unfairness and injustice, two tools that I believe a just and righteous god wouldn't allow--that is a debate for another time and place), I'll stand judgement for my disbelief. If one has to go by all the pageantry of modern religion to stand any chance at heaven, that the only shot at a good eternity is to dance like a little monkey, then I'll gladly accept hell. If there is a god, he gave me the brain to be a rationally thinking human being. With religion, we're basically forced to shut off our brains and just accept what we're told--SO WHY GIVE US COMPLEX THINKING BRAINS IN THE FIRST PLACE?
alright, enough of that novel... 'submit reply'