After people read my rants about Christianity, Judaism, or Islam, I get a lot of questions about my religious persuasion; but I'm typically too shrewd and cocky to give them a straight answer; so let's end that here. I'm an agnostic. I'm not an Atheist and I don't worship Satan…but I do like a good day's sin. I'm not pretentious enough to declare the intelligent design concept completely worthless, because there's no way to thoroughly prove it wrong. Religious historians have a much easier case than scientists do, because all they have to do is produce some evidence that supports one of their holy stories; whereas, if one of us on the scientific spectrum finds some constellation in the Milky Way that spells out "God is Dead", we can't use that to back up our case. It's physically impossible to explore every inch of the universe to disprove God's existence. So, in short, I'm not writing to debunk anyone's faith, because I don't want anyone writing to cast the demons out of me. Do unto others, eh?
I can't help but think that, whenever I drop the R-bomb, I burn someone's biscuits to the point of them wanting to immerse me in holy water. Without all of the controversy surrounding religion, no, I probably wouldn't bother to write about it. Religion, especially when addressing one of the major followings, is one of those hot topics that tends to get me in trouble. Taboo dialogue is a social growing pain and I hope that, through communication such as this, I can loosen people up. Talking is what creates peace, not hiding out in caves and isolating yourself from other sects. If Jesus knew everyone would freak out and overanalyze everything he said (i.e. "Be nice, guys!"), he probably would've continued pursuing his dream of starting a carpentry business. It's a sad irony when three major religions, which, all descend from the same Abraham, stir up the most conflict in the world.
Major Religions: I use that term rather loosely, as it fails to acknowledge the other thirty-something-thousand religions, tribes, and cults that bleep on the spiritual radar. While I can't list them all off, I can say that Christianity isn't the first religion to nail a fellow to some wood in exchange for collective salvation. If people only knew how unoriginal modern religion is, they'd all be indulgent sinners like me. When you look at Greek mythology, Dionysus and Romulus did all the same junk: they were born fatherless, touched with healing abilities, killed horribly, and were resurrected, all on the same bogusly adventurous weekend. So apparently, bible scholars don't recognize international copyright laws regarding plagiarism. For shame.
Without the widespread news culture, people in the west probably wouldn't even be able to spell 'Muslim.' I don't mean to exclusively rag on the western hemisphere, but we've made it so easy to pick on. Even our own 'Head Important Guy' didn't know the difference between Sunnis and Shiites before the 9/11 attacks. I'm not completely innocent of that charge either; but then again, I was sitting in my seventh grade English class looking up cuss words in dictionaries; and fortunately, I didn't have the power to declare war. Does that count as an excuse?
The roadblock to communication seems to be bulging with lonely termites, all talkative, and all waiting for us to join in the feast. If religious discussion continues to be a taboo subject, religious existence will also be so. Personally, I really enjoy talking to religious people, because they've usually had some sort of 'doubt phase', in which, they questioned their own faith. I can relate with that, because I live that experience everyday. Questioning is something we all have to do, whether it's about religion, morality, health, or whatever. Never take the world for face value, because it takes us all for so much more.
Another well written prose, i always enjoy reading them. Religion is a mighty obsticle to traverse in five paragraphs, yet i say you've done an adequate job of condensing a cross country run into a 100 meter dash, and i was barely winded.
__________________ rip Chad McDaniel (USAC)
rip Scott Kalitta (NHRA)
rip Henry Surtees (F2)
rip Neal Parker (NHRA)
Nice work. I can't help but to think of the Persian god, Mithras, whose worship and folklore built the framework for the worship of Jesus some five centuries later.
Nice work. I can't help but to think of the Persian god, Mithras, whose worship and folklore built the framework for the worship of Jesus some five centuries later.
Now about agnosticism vs. atheism... just because you cannot disprove the existance of God doesn't automatically rule out atheism as a legitimate belief. You can't disprove anything when referring to the unseen. Whenever you make any decision in your life, you invoke probability. Now, we may not be even close to understanding the beauty and complexity of the universe, but postulating a God outside of space and time seems way too improbable.
Well religion started as belief , a belief of existence , growth and death. The base point, based on which entire universe was derived. The problem wasn't the belief it was more when the belief actually moved the base points to incorporate individual needs. When the universe derived, was molded to take into account personal expectation.
The result was creed, compromising beliefs with personal expectations of individual, which lead to creation of morals and ethics. Thats formed society which followed creed but falsely termed it "Religion".
We all, no matter what you believe in, relate our ourself to one base point. Thats our own created universe. Everything is right, wrong, left and right with respect to that point.
Point I am trying to make is there is nothing wrong in religion, cause its a belief which we need for our growth. In broad spectrum, different universe based on different beliefs would nullify as one. But our belief is contaminated, religion is contaminated, we have notions about right and wrong based on morals, ethics. Belief of any kind has to meet reality and thats where the whole point is being lost.
Its a belief there is nothing real about and there is no significance of duality which should make it confusing. Think about it, we followed human sacrifices before. We judge it as wrong, doesn't interface well with society and real life. Again it may have been right because of the belief because of the base point and may be thats why it was carried out.
How true are we to ourselves fighting our notions about right and wrong and believing in idea of perfect world and someday everyone follows suit.
How wrong are we not to accept and absorb what we think is wrong is someones right and someone's way to live.
Keep going deeper , we all would meet at some point where my right way and your right way would be same for a while and then we could say we shared a part of us for a while and hope that part will be free from us.
