Is there value in religous values?

[Peach]

I think that religion would be a much better place if it forgot about the stuff that doesn't make sense.

Fair enough, don't kill, don't covet, don't shag your neighbours wife make sense. But is it right to preach 'No contraception', 'No shellfish' and 'Don't be using pedestrian crossings on a Sunday' in this day and age?

Fair enough, there is a place for tradition. But is it right to ban pork, the education of women and gay priests in a modern society?

I think the world would be a much happier place if the Muslims, Christians and Jews et al didn't need to enforce out dated practices that don't make a lot of sense today.

Or is the 'word of god' as it was communicated way back when, the way, to the letter that we should live our lives now? Why can't we have a new, New Testament?

[sortius]

organised religions are social control tools, without dogma and contradiction there can be no control made.

Confuse the masses to control the masses, ie:

Child: Where do people go when they die?
Mother: Well, if they obey the chruch, they go to heaven, if they dont, they burn in hell.
Child cries and learns that obeying the chruch is the only way to ensure a heavenly (peverted) afterlife.

As humans, we seem to want to be shown what we want, if that makes sense. To dream of dieing and having a better life when dead is somewhat disgusting. This is how they catch you. When you believe one religion can control your fate both in life and in death, you give up all control over your psychie and soul, so to speak.

Dont forget, everything born of fear rots and decomposes eventually. Something born of love is everlasthing, and I'm not talking the christian "love" that is a vengeful god, I'm talking about real universal harmony love.

[thingy]

This issue you have raised is one of many reasons why I no longer follow religion, and am in fact against it. Take us back two to four thousand years ago, the rules that are dictated in the bible were the norm. They were acceptable by general moral standards of the time. As society evolves, so does what is seen as being acceptable and what is seen as the norm. Many things that were just how things were are now looked down upon as being cruel and even dispicable.

This puts the following predicament on religion.

A religion that changes with the times: How can you worship a religion that changes its belief as to what is right and wrong as easily as roman catholocism? Many things that would once send you straight to hell are now perfectly acceptable things to do. Surely if God in all his perfect and infinite unfallable wisdom once said something was evil, it would always be so. Isn't changing of this going against Gods will with results similar to Dogma if the two angels were to pass through the doors of that church? It's hypocricy.

A religion that doesn't change with the times: How can you worship a religion that preaches cruelty while still claiming to be good? A religion that puts equals on unequal footing such as by making women cover up, encouraging stoning and murdering. It's hypocricy.

If there is a God, then all it would want is for us to work for the better in every way we can - to ourselves and to others whether it be people that we know or don't, to those alive now, in the past, or in the future.

Religion is the bane of humanity. But as for as long as we are human, we will have religion. Sad, but true.

[DumHed]

Originally posted by thingy
If there is a God, then all it would want is for us to work for the better in every way we can - to ourselves and to others whether it be people that we know or don't, to those alive now, in the past, or in the future.

The way I see it is this:

If there's a god, then it's a total bastard, which is why I don't want to follow it. :)

[Plough]

I may be as bold to say "God is a creation of man"

[maccabean]

i am by no means a religeous man, but i can speak for judaism.

many of the laws followed by jews have no reasoning, but since they come from the word of God, that is a good enough reason for them to be kept.

tradition and culture are just as important in judaism as its commandments and laws... yes they may be outdated, but if they have been followed for centuries upon centures, it would be somewhat arrrogant for jews to assume that in this day and age we no longer need to follow them. besides this, tradition and laws are a very good reason as to why judaism still exists after 3000 years

i personally believe that if the religious laws and traditions don't hurt anybody and are not forced upon people....who cares?

[Al]

As above, it's a tool to control the masses.

People who need something to hold onto tend to go for it, christians are usually pretty wierd!

I don't mind people believing whatever, preach religeon at me and I'll tear it apart.

[Cassa]

Originally posted by maccabean
i personally believe that if the religious laws and traditions don't hurt anybody and are not forced upon people....who cares?

True in theory..but that's the big problem innit.

[maccabean]

another thing...

in judaism the concept of hell is differnt to the christian idea of it.

in judaism, as long your generally a good person, you will go to heaven....(it doesn't matter what religeon you belonged to during your life)

if youve been a bad person, you may suffer in the afterlife (hell) but this is not indefinate....and after you've suffered enough you are permitted to enter the gates of heaven.

though some evil people, if they've been really evil (stalin, hitler, pol pot, etc), their souls are destroyed as soon as they die. thus becoming a non-entity.

ehem, apparently....

[oracle]

I'd like to warn against gereralising about religion. Taking beliefs from this and that one, and putting them all under the banner of "religion" just makes you sound ignorant.

Now that that's out of the way, I do not believe or follow any religion, but I do have ideas about spirituality... but they aren't hard belifs. Nor do I believe you need a religion or a church in order to have ideas on spirituality. Even though I'm well aware that the vast majority of ZGeek are athiest, I just wanted to state a few ideas of mine re: "God".

If "God" does exist, I wouldn't think He's exactly "sentient." I wouldn't even think he should be referred to as a "He" because that denotes that "He" thinks like us. If "it" exists, it probably doesn't "think" at all. I tend to think of it more as a universal binding energy.

It also probably doesn't "care" a great deal about what you do in day-to-day life. Pesionally (and this is just IMO) I think the most important thing, spiritually, is creativity. If "God's" gift was creation, and we are the only creatures capable of creativity, it stands to reason that it is a "devine" function of our mind.

Secondly, if the "afterlife" exists, you ain't going to care once you get there about you dead parent/sibling/pet, as I would doubt human emotion would even exist in this "realm" or plain.

Thirdly, the idea that Hell would exist is laughable to me. That there would be an eternal physical plane designed to punish those who misbehaved is stupid, and as most of you say, was probably invented by church leaders to scare people into a form of conrtol.

NB Like I said up the top, these are ideas, and not hard beliefs. I'm also willing to accept we may just be intelligent animals... We really just don't know. I don't, and I'm not going to base any beliefs off uncertainties. But as I've mentioned before, I've read alot of books and texts relating to esoteric and metaphysical stuff, (including stuff on the beliefs of ancient Egyptians, Incans, Astecs, Hindus, Japanese (Jomon), Maltese, Middle Eastern, et al) which has made me question (but not deny the possibility) of the whole "intelligent animal" idea.

... and for the record, I do believe in evolution.

[Al]

Originally posted by maccabean
i personally believe that if the religious laws and traditions don't hurt anybody and are not forced upon people....who cares?

crusades
witch hunts
jihad
religious wars in general...

Religion is one of those things that people ALWAYS end up fighting over it seems.

My god's better than your god,
my god's better than yours...

[maccabean]

and don't forget missionaries...

spirituality is a very subjective topic...

[oracle]

To clarify, I use the term "spirituality" when I want to avoid saying "I believe in God" because, I dont... At least not in the traditional sense.

[robotoverflow]

There is value to some religions, specifically ones of the eastern variety. I say this because even though there are numerous Eastern religions which each have conflicting beliefs, they seem to get along because they promote good values such as acceptance and all that. True acceptance, not Christian "you have your own beliefs but you're still going to hell and we won't let you forget it" acceptance.

[Al]

I like the idea of Buddism and religions that go down that track. I'm too much of an anthiest to look into it these days...

[oracle]

I concur... As (I think) I've mentioned before, the Eastern flavoured Religions (Hinduism/Taoism/Buddhism, etc) are much sounder than the Western ones.

[DrDivad]

*ahem* welcome to divad's crazy ass view



my theory is,.....ther is no god, BUT more importantly, there is no god as we understand.


i am not a religious cabora, but i'm not anti religion, people have free will,they beleive what they want,

at any rate though, i think there exists "a force" no not THE force, just a force, almost like gravity if you will,

now if any of you have ever read up on quantum stuff, there's a lot of crazy ass shit goin' on,....now maybe if i read more and did more maths, possibly there'd be an explanation,

but here's mine,

i reckon there must exist a particular force, or perhaps a strange relationships among particles and fields that generates various "quantum" behaviour, including stuff liek wave particle duality blah blah.

so i guess if you imagine not so much a thing liek gravity, but like, everything is how it is, but do to it's nature, in certain circumstance you get strange results...

now if you look to a crazy ass thign like Electron Spin, in case you don't knw, if you grab an electron it will have 'spin' in the three axis, x y z,

but, whats bizarre is pick any angle you want, any at all from the 360^3 possible degree and all the minutes in between, no matter with one you pick, it will have either 'spin up', or 'spin down',

now this is quite hard to visualise, since theoretically it could have spin up say on 0 degrees pitch heading and elevation, but spin down jsut one degree along, crazy huh


anyways, the point of all this is, if you can learn everything about a systems state, and how it functions, then given an input state, you coudl determine the output state.

as it stands we have quantum measurement problems that say that when you measure something you change the state, so you can never find out what state a system WAS in, only what it IS in now,



however, cut to the chase, my point is, maybe sometimes in peoples brains, these 'spin' properties occur in such a way that a phenomenal insight is gained momentarily by the person (this is their brain electrons, now that isn't to say they sudenly get smarter, but if everyhting 'aligns' sorta, they can't help but understand it, even without being able to explain it, or even know it's happened, but they jsut know what happens next, they can predict the next state....ever had a premonition,...or deja vu?


so i reckon, what we call "god' is jsut alignments of electron spin, or even certain people more susceptible to be able to predict the state changes and hence they think "i can speak to god" or some such, but all 'god' is, is mere physical phenomena.......phew!


i apologise if any of my science was incorrect, and please be aware it's merely interpretive, none of it is neccessarily true (trying to prevent flame wars here)

[oracle]

I sort of understand DrDivad. I've looked a little bit into quantum theory, and it's very interesting stuff. I, unfortunately, do not posess the scientific mind required to understand alot of it, so I stick to ancient myths, which sometimes seem to encode vast scientific knowledge in their stories.

You also made a point which reminded me of something I left out about God: The reason why we will most likely never prove it's existence, is because I don't think humans have the capacity to understand it, even if it did exist.

Just my thoughts.

[robotoverflow]

Divad, it seems like you're trying to slot in god where science hasn't delivered, though at least you've taken a rational approach to things I guess.

[Peach]

Originally posted by maccabean
i personally believe that if the religious laws and traditions don't hurt anybody and are not forced upon people....who cares?

Banning contraception in Africa and the education of women in many Muslim countries, as well as requiring animals to be slaughtered with out prior stunning, are examples of rules that could probably do with updating on the grounds of welfare.

I'm pretty certain that the contraception one has only been around since the present Pope?

On the subject of religions being able to be dynamic, I once read an affectionate story about the Amish. Having shut themselves off from the un-godly world and gone back to basics, they presented themselves with a unique problem: what happens when one amongst them invents something like the hamster wheel or wind up tooth brush? Apparently, they all argue about whether it's un-godly or not and they end up splitting into ever smaller groups. This is fundamentalism at its best.

[DrDivad]

hehe, yeah could be way off track,

but thats just my take on how things might be, one of a zillion possible explanations