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Philip started a nice trend in his LJ, and I've been thinking a lot about the questions that he's raised. So from here on out, my LJ is going to still contain some random shit from my skull, but will be primarily dedicated to important concepts that I want my friends to discuss, learn, and discover all there is to find out based upon our little
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I would like to start off by stating that I have no contempt for ANY religion at all, whether it be any branch of Christianity, Islam, Judaica, or any other equally important and equally respectable set of beliefs.
I think I will start with that. Religion as a set of beliefs. The primary base focus of religion is to unite a group of people. When you get down to it after all of the written word is stripped away, religion was a basis for organization. It has escalated and evolved into an important part of everyday life. For some people, religion is a base of living. A guide for the rules and regulations that should govern everyday life. Common law reflects this. But once again, where did religion start? At the earliest forms of human organization, with sun gods and gods of the harvest. Yet, according to most religions, God waited until thousands of years later when Moses happened to run across the 10 commandments to begin to show himself to people. Is this truly plausible? Not really. The fact remains that the bible was written by man. Men in contact with God or a supernatural being? Not likely. Not to tread on anyone's beliefs, but today people claiming to hear the voice of God are ignored and often persecuted by the same organizations that put their belief in men saying the same thing thousands of years ago. Make up your mind people. You believe "prophets" of years past but you treat your "prophets" now like dirt? Like crazy people? Oh thats right, because they were right back then because... uh... God spoke to them? Somehow you run into a brick wall when the question is raised "how do we know this is true?". Christians may answer "because god told us in the bible", Muslims the Koran, and Jews the old testament. The bible was written by common people! How can whole civilizations base their beliefs on the written word of a few men that would now be called crazy?!?!
The answer lies in the security that religion provides. A belief so strong in something that one honestly believes in can almost make it true. But there is doubt. There HAS to be doubt. You weren't there when the bible was written, you weren't there when these great men of wisdom were "touched" by the holy one. what if one of them, just one of them was a phoney? how drastically would religion be affected if Abraham was a false prophet? if John didn't really hear the voice of god? If Muhammed was just a crazy person?
Just think how religion would be affected if only ONE of the voices of the holy books was false. now, think of how it would be if many of them, if all of them were false.
Religion is a made up world, created by people who either want to provide a sense of security for a group of people (people fight harder for a cause i.e. the crusades, jihad, the maccabees, etc.), want to have fame or fortune for themselves, are truly crazy, or are truly touched by some supernatural being. The last of these options seems the most unlikely. Have you ever been touched by God? Ok sure, mabye "he"'s helped you with a major decision that went the right way in your life. mabye he's helped overcome drugs or another addiction. mabye he's healed an unhealable wound or turned your life around for the better. Mabye not. Mabye you just chose right, according to a simple moral code. Mabye you just decided to be a "better" person (a topic for a future debate) and be strong. Mabye something in your genetic code worked for you for once?
Simply put, religion is a safezone. A fallback place where you can base your decisions on what the bible says. Its easier to make decisions when you're told whats right isn't it?
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