For starters, I have spent 5hrs compiling this post, i have tried to be as to the point and topical as i could be, if your interested, it only takes 2 minutes to read, ( believe me i proof read it 50 times ) I do know its a lot, so please try and read it clearly before you criticize me, I only want to try and shed some light and prove my knowledge wasn't wasted time in my life to myself. But by all means directly point out any facts that are not facts. This is what i strive for in my understanding of the world. I know its a bid discombobulated, but it really is a very round and round in circle issue. ( religion that is ) Now from what i understand.. and again please correct me if i am wrong..
sergeriver wrote:
I'd like someone to explain to me why would God give preference to any special group of people. He is supposed to be the creator of the whole universe, so he shouldn't care about Religion and worshipping. Why are all Religions so different, even the Abrahamic ones and all of them claim their teachings are right and the others are wrong? F.i. if Jews are the chosen people, what are the others? Is God Jew? Is God Christian? Is God Muslim? What is God then? Why are all Religions so intolerant with each other creating more hatred and discrimination? I know a lot of religious people that don't do that, but a lot of religious people forget the teachings that their faith supposedly holds and treat people from other faiths like shit. They even start a lot of wars over it.
sergeriver wrote:
Don't tell me, tell the religious guys that we created God, and be flamed.
Maybe by a person with a blind faith in something and very little education, knowledge or seriously thought about the subject. Technically if your discussing fact based issues, especially like this in a serious debate, yes we did create God, any one and all of them. But god is faith not fact.
To Answer your OP questions, you need to specify what god you are talking about specifically. By what you have mentioned, You described what IS the Abrahamic definition of who created the big bang. Or the original Theory of Adam and Eve.
Religions arnt so different, thats what they have a name like Abrahamic, because their all based on the same events, just many many years apart. There are also many similarities in other eastern religions, Christianity and Islam, Islam and Judaism, Buddhism and Hindu and Catholicism and Buddhism all have very similar qualities in pairs.
If Jews were the chosen ones who were the others? Well the pagans were wrong according to Jewish belief, and its also argued that Catholicism and Muslim are wrong too. That is mainly a Jewish or Abrahamic terminology though, being a chosen one.
Pagans believed their kings became gods, and the like although there many differences in pagan beliefs.
The Catholics believe they will be judged on their sins, and the Muslims believe that Christ will rise again, and only take them to the promised land.
Is God Jew, yes, if your talking about the creator of Adam and eve, and the big bang theory, he is- and that is an old testament fable or story. No scientifical basis to it.
God is catholic and Muslim, by the same definition. But not in Buddhism. Man is god i think in the Buddhist religion.
Its Judaism that cancels out Catholicism and Islam by definition. the Jewish interpretation is that the 4 gospels are fable and the old testaments are true accounts of history, claiming the messiah is still coming to save us all.
Catholics not coming around as a religion yet, Jesus' acts were not unrecognised by the Jews in Jerusalem, but acts like the walking on water, or the fishes story are renowned to be fable as well or at least argued by scholars that it was an intense analogy miss understood.
But he was recognised as a prophet. Cant remember if Jewish belief is whether Jesus rose from the dead or argued, but Hebrew beleife is that he wasnt the promised savior. Judaism straight out doesn't recognise Mohammad, as he was a self proclaimed prophet. So that put an end to a theory on Islam according to Jewish scripture, I'm pretty sure.
I consider a differance between Catholicism and Christianity, although technically they are one in the same, One is the term for the teaching of Christ, the other "catholicism" is the religion based on his theorys. Muslims are Christian as they believe Jesus was a prophet and the son of God. But only Catholics in itelf teches Jesus would return.
But then hypothetically, to answer the OP question from what i understand a catholic perception would be, apparently whatever answers your questions, when you ask,( in your head, if you hear a voice or something ) ) is it/them.. was god speaking. But not if your Jewish as god only spoke to prophets. Unless it was the devil talking to you of course. Or unless you believe your Jewish AND a prophet AND want to go tell the world.
( so is the catholic conception of god an analytical perception for a pre conception of a sub conscious? !! who knows, that kinda makes sense if the "god and man were one" theory was an analogy too where the similarity to buddhism comes to play)
Now
Realistically and logically.. ( my two personel favourites )
God would not be in a group or a certain religion. Man made the cool groups too.
The facts behind and current proof on many things 5000 years ago in religion is far and few, as some are just stories that apparently date to those times, some are arguable artifacts depicting several possible origins, and obvious land issues.
That is why religious time lines are broken up into sects pre Christ I'm pretty sure, but because of substantial remaining evidence, we are able to make a factual time line post Christ.
A few things are debatable whether certain religious occurrences actually occurred and havent been proved as fact, or ruled out by science. Noah's ark, or a wife-pillar of salt, we dont have, but there are stigmata, even today, all over the world, and incorruptibility for example. They are heavily researched and the terms are based on scientifically definition of fact. I'm not referring to wafers of someones face, I'm talking about bleeding and healing wounds that science cant explain, and the catholic church seriously watch/ work with.
So if you study time lines around 500 or more years before Christ, you'll see Buddhism which was a refined version of Hindu, started to come into play. Buddhism and Catholicism both strongly rely on the same principles, not Christianity. Christianity is based on occurrences of the old testament, and Catholicism is the new testament, which is a revised version of the Hebrew teachings. Its the exact same thing that happened in history, the Chinese were just 500 years ahead. And who knows what travellers and literature found themselves elsewhere in the world that 500 years.. they introduced books in china in 1200 bce.
Just into that time line Muslim started about 500ad. ( for anyone interested who didnt know ) So most of what i understand is Muslim is a off break of Judaism and Christianity, not Catholicism. Severe enough to be too different, but still Christianity in fact very pre dated. ( historically people had stopped thinking like that in other parts of the world, and that's why they went to war over it ) Again, people stopped the eye for an eye mentality all over the world, but in a few develoved civilised coutries they decide to re-addapt that law.
Major differences in religion were, the issue of forgiveness or not. That is the Big issue, many others of course but the concept of forgiving somebody came along, and people hated it.
The old testament taught an eye for an eye, but then not everybody liked that.
Jesus was followed by some Jews up until the point he asked them not to stone a woman, so they took him away.
Muslims and Jews i think both were based on the eye for an eye, and Catholicism and Buddhism are similarly preaching forgiveness.
- Google both terms- "an eye for an eye" and forgiveness.
If you study roman and Greek philosophy and of course any history you will see funny changes in mind frame, say at times of Socrates for example.( 500BC roughly ) Before then, the interpretation of the beginning of the world was very different, and some scholars believe that Socrates invented the philosophy of heaven, which he was arguably executed for. Similar to Galileo Galileis persecution. Even 2000 years later in 1500ad (roughly) they still though the fucking world was round!!!!!
And so the "powers" and demands of god have become significantly less over the few thousands of years too.( purely because we make the rules obviously )
The creation theory is Abrahamic, it has all ways been the same although interpreted differently through out history as it comes from the old testament. So the Muslims, Jewish and Catholics all are taught to believe it happened.
Because of the religious battles, politics and religion becoming tied together in the roman senate originally and I'm sure more, we have most of the Abrahamic beliefs tied to our legal system too. ( murder theft etc, but filed down a touch with the adultery etc, an even medium was found ) As they were based on severe moral acts on society, not half toned crimes like cheating, cursing/respecting your parents etc.
But there are some things unlike the creation theory which have real world basis and facts, unlike mummification where they ( Egyptians ) believed..( xx ) in a pagan system, and nothing but rotten 4000 year old corpse's were found and its not a 100% proven anything has come of this spiritually,but again the actual pagan worship. There have been occasions where apparent miracles have occurred, which technically ( by definition ) is an event that appears unexplainable by the laws of nature or science and so is held to be supernatural in origin, or an act of God. eg. Incorruptibility.
These occurrences in the past 2000-2500 years can be more documented, researched and defined as fact or myth. Especially in these times. There are some that have been neither proven by religious sects or claimed factual and held to any certain group. eg: if you notice the Vatican are very hesitant to claim any apparitions of Christ or Mary etc, but consistently throughout history (a.d) people claim to have seen such things and in a large proportion of numbers.
The same as pre Christ theory's/ occurrences of miracles, but its harder to the prove the existences of Noah's ark or a wife/pillar of salt, along with most old testament story's. Jews believe Jesus wasn't the prophet they were waiting for, and are still waiting for one A lot of Islam is based on an Orthodox sect of strict Catholicism. Muslims and catholics recognise Jesus, and so recognise significance in the modern miracles, such as,
The Black Madonna of Częstochowa, it is available to both science and religion and has been thoroughly researched and tested.
Apparently and obviously vandalised, on any attempt to repair such marks as the stab wounds from several robberies, reappear, ie the cuts in the face, where she (Mary) apparently bled, the catholic church does not recognise that as fact. Science recognise that the painting seems to have a mysterious reoccurring issue, that it cant explain.
"the face of Christ" wash towel, used to wipe Jesus' face on the cross with his face on it. Which is recognised by both the Vatican and science and most definitely documented to a wide extent.
Lourdes in France, where 68 people have been recognised by the catholic church. Thousand more claim to have been witness to its healing powers. Ie: they have physically healed, from disease, or life threatening illnesses, which is a scientific fact. As they has incurable symptoms which are now non existent. The church has officially recognised the specific 68 cases i referenced.
Obviously these can be argued as a catholic faith system, but non-catholics, unbelievers or atheists, in devout Christians and Muslims ( maybe even some Jews ) have all been part of those instances, witnessed or been involved first hand. And these are just 3 of the 1000's or recordings documented, and debated myth or fact, some scientifically unexplainable, so therefore, considered miracle by definition.
But where the philosophical argument comes full circle is, without going through the rundown of what the qui'ran teaches about god speaking to prophets, the Jewish religion doesn't recognise Jesus as a Messiah, they dont recognise Mohammad as a prophet, therefore, have a belief system that diss believes in the past 2000 years of documented "religious based" history. But then as we know the crusades were a massive world conquering campaign to convert the word to Christianity, and a lot of the current documented history available, was via "possible brainwashing" to coin it harshly and limited resources for outside information, or opinions. Having a god that will save you sounded pretty good seeing as though you were murdering your young in sacrifice in the pagan realms, had a fear base belief of no belief at all. Just say your sorry to a priest and dont do it again, kind of principle became easily adapted.
Mohammad proclaimed himself a prophet under Abrahamic god, unrecognised by the brothering religions such as Judaism and Christianity.
So yes, i think religion ( Abrahamic based ) is all about not wanting to believe the other guy. In my interpretation PURELY.
The only real answers we have are with what we have left from history and what we as a race can manage in science. If we get lost in bed time stories this will never become a serious debate for all parties.
I must add also to the argument two important points i didnt really mention that was on topic. Atheism in its true form is not having a belief system not believing in any higher existence or of any of the old testaments and new testaments storys as , so you cant have a sub-Jewish base or half-half belief. You cant believe in heaven if you dont believe in hell, or anything.
Most of the time statements made in atheistic conversation defines as an oxymoron. ( that's not directed at anything, or meant to come off as a flame )
Now fanatics are where the problem is, there are many peace loving humans that are devote believers or have some belief system that have existed for centuries. Though power use to reign belief back in pagan times, i reference the Abrahamic religions and eastern religions.
Muslims in specific are the worlds largest populated religion, and since the last few decades has been the fastest growing religion too.
We only unfortunately hear and have some understanding of the fanatics in these times with our media.
To mention th OP bigot question, as stated already, anyone can be a bigot. The reason being that you dont hear of people -not bible bashing, if they arnt bible bashing. Real atheist dont question whether God is real, they know it isn't. That's what a belief system is, not uncertainty. People who arnt racist dont get up and make stupid statements either. And it is not Atheism that is defined by a dis belief in any presence, and not allowing outside belief of a higher presence. That in itself is bigotry too by that definition.
Of course people get upset too, even if you dont believe, some still are partial agnostic, where they are just too unsure.
Its also a little how the human brain works. We have all this info up top, although we never say things out loud some of us have very long thought trains in life. Say for example, I'm polish, i was born first generation Australian, but i carry a Polish surname. Even though i might say im Australian, and i have very little current word contact with being Polish ( apart from speaking polish at home ) I would still get offended if someone said -fuck all polish guys are dickheads. I might not be anything like a 30yr old Polish guy, but it would hit home..
We all have some sort of religious understanding and belief system based upon our society we live in, its hard to centre clear thoughts unless you question them ruling our clearly what your belief system is, so you dont get offended and can confidently question less..
You know what the answer with religion is every time, Lets stab each other and see whos smarter. We are all just stupid animals. What good is philosophy when technology advanced spiratically over the thousands of years and some people still have a 3000 year old belief system, they year after year impose on a new generation of children, again partially brainwashing them.
History only repeats its self. Its like a wash cycle every millenium .Beep. clean world/ rinse and repeat.
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Edits: some typos i missed and i wrote budd ism once .. must be my religion lol
I also needed to add a few detailed points etc. Socrates and Fanatics for example. Damn, now ive done more patches than ea/dice would have released.
EDIT EDIT: fuck such a headache i know. im sorry to anyone seriosly annoyed by this. If anything ive tried to answer a million spam posts reguarding religion on a really good place to do basically everything else .. thx chuy srry for wating b/w lol
Last edited by OneSixty (2007-12-04 22:54:59)