Yet Another Religion Thread

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Super Aurora
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Post by Super Aurora »

Disney Duster wrote:Sounds like so many of you left religion just because you had bad experiences with people using the religion wrongly around you...
No. I never was interested in religion. I hate going to church. It was a boring waste of time for me. Every time I was forced to go, the only thing I paid most attention to, was not the priest or the sermon, or god. It was the fucking clock, and hoping when the damn thing would be over.



anyway, this is the real religion:



































































SHINTOISM
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Post by Scarred4life »

Super Aurora wrote:No. I never was interested in religion. I hate going to church. It was a boring waste of time for me. Every time I was forced to go, the only thing I paid most attention to, was not the priest or the sermon, or god. It was the fucking clock, and hoping when the damn thing would be over.
Completely agreed.
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Post by LySs »

Jew present. Not sure what I could contribute but here goes.

Although I'm Jewish, I'm not religious. Hell, I'm even somewhat agnostic nowadays, searching for answers of how and why things happen the way they do. I trust science and logic, but I also find ideas such as the paranormal, shamans, mediums, and an afterlife interesting as well.

I'm not shomer Shabbos (inb4 someone mentions Big Lebowski), nor do I really eat Kosher. But I did go to Hebrew school up until I was 11, and I do celebrate/observe the main holidays like Passover, Hannukah, Purim, Rosh Hashanah, and Yom Kippur.

But I was always brought up to respect all other religions, and was taught that no religion was wrong. Or at least in my family.

I still love Judaism for it's culture, philosophy, and traditions. That and my grandfather, who unfortunately passed away this summer, was a Holocaust survivor, so keeping the Jewish faith is important in my family, even if we're not religious about it. Hell, one of my sisters married a Catholic, and they're both practicing Buddhists.

What I do find interesting about Judaism from the spiritual point of view, is that there isn't really a concept of Hell.
There isn't even a specific doctrine about the afterlife, but there is a mention of "Gehenna".
Gehenna/Gehinnom isn't exactly "Hell", but is actually more of a purgatory where one is judged based on their life's deeds. It's sort of like a waiting room, a spiritual forge where one's soul is purified for their sins, until they're ready to ascend to the "Gan Eden", a place which is said to be of spiritual perfection. Unless the sins you committed were the epitome of ultimate evil or something, because then your soul is pretty much just destroyed.

However, even though Judaism DOES believe in the concept of afterlife, it is NOT the primary focus of our religion. Our actions are more important than belief. It is about doing mitzvot, helping your fellow man, and Tikkun Olam ("repairing the world"), and the pursuit of social justice.

Basically, even if there's a spiritual meaning behind it, the core belief is that we're put on this Earth to do something good, to help others, and NOT do it with the mindset that we'll be guaranteed to have a spot in Heaven.

But anyway that's my two cents.
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Post by Super Aurora »

LySs wrote: What I do find interesting about Judaism from the spiritual point of view, is that there isn't really a concept of Hell.
There isn't even a specific doctrine about the afterlife, but there is a mention of "Gehenna".
Gehenna/Gehinnom isn't exactly "Hell", but is actually more of a purgatory where one is judged based on their life's deeds. It's sort of like a waiting room, a spiritual forge where one's soul is purified for their sins, until they're ready to ascend to the "Gan Eden", a place which is said to be of spiritual perfection. Unless the sins you committed were the epitome of ultimate evil or something, because then your soul is pretty much just destroyed.

However, even though Judaism DOES believe in the concept of afterlife, it is NOT the primary focus of our religion. Our actions are more important than belief. It is about doing mitzvot, helping your fellow man, and Tikkun Olam ("repairing the world"), and the pursuit of social justice.

Basically, even if there's a spiritual meaning behind it, the core belief is that we're put on this Earth to do something good, to help others, and NOT do it with the mindset that we'll be guaranteed to have a spot in Heaven.
.

yeah, Judaism is way more different than christianity than one would believe. All that heaven and hell fad as well as the concept of the devil is christian shit. Christian changed the concept of God's personality too. If Abrahamic god was real, then the one it most likely be is the Jewish one as that is the original one: a violent jealous God.

This is why Duster is wrong when I told him about origin of religion.
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Post by LySs »

Super Aurora wrote:
LySs wrote: What I do find interesting about Judaism from the spiritual point of view, is that there isn't really a concept of Hell.
There isn't even a specific doctrine about the afterlife, but there is a mention of "Gehenna".
Gehenna/Gehinnom isn't exactly "Hell", but is actually more of a purgatory where one is judged based on their life's deeds. It's sort of like a waiting room, a spiritual forge where one's soul is purified for their sins, until they're ready to ascend to the "Gan Eden", a place which is said to be of spiritual perfection. Unless the sins you committed were the epitome of ultimate evil or something, because then your soul is pretty much just destroyed.

However, even though Judaism DOES believe in the concept of afterlife, it is NOT the primary focus of our religion. Our actions are more important than belief. It is about doing mitzvot, helping your fellow man, and Tikkun Olam ("repairing the world"), and the pursuit of social justice.

Basically, even if there's a spiritual meaning behind it, the core belief is that we're put on this Earth to do something good, to help others, and NOT do it with the mindset that we'll be guaranteed to have a spot in Heaven.
.

yeah, Judaism is way more different than christianity than one would believe. All that heaven and hell fad as well as the concept of the devil is christian shit. Christian changed the concept of God's personality too. If Abrahamic god was real, then the one it most likely be is the Jewish one as that is the original one: a violent jealous God.

This is why Duster is wrong when I told him about origin of religion.
Well there's no concept of the Devil or Satan in Judaism, but there are mentions of demons. But it's so minimal, so demons are treated almost like folklore or legends.

The most well-known "demon" is probably Lilith, who is said to actually be the first woman that was created at the same time as Adam.
But because Adam wanted Lilith to be more submissive, she was pretty much all "fuck that shit", and went to have sex with the Angel of Death. She's now seen more as a succubus that seduces men, and threatens babies and pregnant women.

There is a vast demonology in Kabbalah, but demons weren't exactly viewed as "evil". More like, they're out to punish you if you had the opportunity to help others and didn't do shit. This article can explain it better than I can.
http://atomick.net/fayelevine/pk/demons/pk003.php

Kabbalah is pretty interesting in itself, in that's it's a mystical interpretation of the Bible, even though the teachings are esoteric.

Also I don't think Duster is wrong, I think everyone has the right to interpret religion as they want, as long as you're not forcing your belief on others.
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Post by Super Aurora »

yeah i'm all aware of that stuff from Judaism. As for the duster thing, I'm not referring to religion but the historical fact standpoint and origin of how most religion start off. If you read the explanation i pointed out it would make sense.
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Post by Disney Duster »

Well yea, if you didn't like church, once again that is a bad experience with religion that may have made some of you decide not to to want any of it at all.

Goliath, anyone can do harm to a person and use anything to try and reason that harm. Religion is just something people use and abuse for such harm, like they can do with anything. You can turn anything good into something bad. As for the rest, Maher is taking thing literally. Of course spiritual things don't make a lot of physical sense.

Super Aurora, okay, this is not the best example, but you know how we discover new things about ourselves and our world all the time? It is certainly possible that people discovered new things about spirituality and God, not that they purposely "changed it". Maybe Jesus had to explain "Yea, um, God isn't quite like you Jews believed he was." That's just an possible example to help you get what I mean.

LySs, that's a cool story about your Judaism. I do like the afterlife theories they have, but I think it's perfectly okay to think of doing good to have a good afterlife. A good deed is a good deed. People are still helped, the world is still made better.
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Post by Goliath »

Disney Duster wrote:Goliath, anyone can do harm to a person and use anything to try and reason that harm. Religion is just something people use and abuse for such harm, like they can do with anything. You can turn anything good into something bad. As for the rest, Maher is taking thing literally. Of course spiritual things don't make a lot of physical sense.
Okay, so you admit that religion has been the leading cause of death, suffering, misery and violence for the past thousand of years? Thanks.
Disney Duster wrote:Super Aurora, okay, this is not the best example, but you know how we discover new things about ourselves and our world all the time? It is certainly possible that people discovered new things about spirituality and God, not that they purposely "changed it". Maybe Jesus had to explain "Yea, um, God isn't quite like you Jews believed he was." That's just an possible example to help you get what I mean.
Jesus of Nazareth was but one of many, many self-proclaimed prophets around in Palestine at that time. They all preached different versions about God. Christians just had the luck that their cult (as it was viewed back then) was picked up by the Romans, eventually, and through them, spread throughout the Roman empire. By the way, very weak "explanation" of your part. Surely you can do better than this guessing when someone presents you with historical facts?
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Post by ajmrowland »

as often happens, i'm in the middle here. I see the illusions and abuse of religion(I play "Assassin's Creed" after all) , yet i'm a practising christian. our church still preaches the bible but we're very open and my youth group included two atheists.
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Post by Disney Duster »

Goliath wrote:Okay, so you admit that religion has been the leading cause of death, suffering, misery and violence for the past thousand of years? Thanks.
No on so many accounts.
Disney Duster wrote:Jesus of Nazareth was but one of many, many self-proclaimed prophets around in Palestine at that time. They all preached different versions about God. Christians just had the luck that their cult (as it was viewed back then) was picked up by the Romans, eventually, and through them, spread throughout the Roman empire. By the way, very weak "explanation" of your part. Surely you can do better than this guessing when someone presents you with historical facts?
You only recently formed this answer with how we discussed the beginning of Christianity earlier, and you had to use the word luck, and we all know you can call things that seem to be miracles luck. Anyway, no, it could very well be that people believed in it more. No one actually knows what happened back then, and even historians say how Christianity came to be is rather foggy.

Also, historians have said that Jesus was not just some prophet, he was called the "King of the Jews" and was seen as a threat to Roman authority and, well, it was he that was crucified and not other prophets. Then, his followers were very devout, and spread their religion to many others, despite being killed for it, which is how it was seen as a threa to Roman rule (they didn't obey Roman laws of allowing other gods or worshiping the rulers). It was emporer Constantine, who's father had previously tolerated Christians, who said that Christ came to him in a dream, just before he won a battle against enormous odds after inscribing Christ's sign on his soldiers' helmets, which made him choose Christianity. Some historians do think it could have been for political reasons, but for what political reasons they can't seem to think of. There would have been more Pagans than Christians at the time of Constantine's conversion.
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Post by Goliath »

Disney Duster wrote:You only recently formed this answer with how we discussed the beginning of Christianity earlier, and you had to use the word luck, and we all know you can call things that seem to be miracles luck. Anyway, no, it could very well be that people believed in it more. No one actually knows what happened back then, and even historians say how Christianity came to be is rather foggy.
No.

YOU say that. YOU "don't know" that.

Funny thing: back in university, the only ones who didn't want to take the course about the Bible, Christianity and its origins were the religious people. Because, you know, knowledge could really fuck up the "faith" thingy.
Disney Duster wrote:It was emporer Constantine, who's father had previously tolerated Christians, who said that Christ came to him in a dream, just before he won a battle against enormous odds after inscribing Christ's sign on his soldiers' helmets, which made him choose Christianity. Some historians do think it could have been for political reasons, but for what political reasons they can't seem to think of. There would have been more Pagans than Christians at the time of Constantine's conversion.
This is true, Constantine conversed to Christianity, but only on his death bed, because he knew "choosing Christ" would wash away his sins and would forbade him committing more sins. So he waited 'till he felt his end coming, so he wouldn't have to stop murdering and conquering before, and he could die a "saved" man. Which proves what I say about religion: it's not about a greater, nobler goal or about pure aspirations. It's only about me, me, me: "as long as I get saved". And actually, Christianity had been adopted by large numbers of people back then, if I'm not mistaken, because it was more practical to worship one God instead of a dozen (to whom they all had to sacrifice as well). So most conversions were inspired by pragmatism, not by a big faith in Christ.
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Post by Super Aurora »

Disney Duster wrote: You only recently formed this answer with how we discussed the beginning of Christianity earlier, and you had to use the word luck, and we all know you can call things that seem to be miracles luck. Anyway, no, it could very well be that people believed in it more. No one actually knows what happened back then, and even historians say how Christianity came to be is rather foggy.
However, Historians and archeologist have been able to piece in together various clue, artifacts, etc with help of technology. It's no different how police and forensic are able to piece clues and evidences together to figure out the crime. And even if some of it is estimated guess, it is a lot more validate than so call words written to you in a book filled with numerous contradictions.



Disney Duster wrote:Also, historians have said that Jesus was not just some prophet, he was called the "King of the Jews"
that was written in the bible. give me link or source where historians say that from any other evidences?


Disney Duster wrote:and was seen as a threat to Roman authority and, well, it was he that was crucified and not other prophets.
No, it was the religious High Jewish priests who saw Jesus as a threat to their religion. The Romans didn't give a fuck about Jesus' activities. It wasn't until many of the Jewish high priests whine and complained to Pontius Pilate and demand his execution. Pilate was actually rather reluctant to do it before given in.

This goes back to what goliath and others have been saying, Religion (especially the ones of Europe and middle east- the Abraham religions) was use as a mean to keep society together and control the people within them and that if something comes up that challenge or "threaten" their religion, it is a sign of usurping of their power. The Jews did, the christian did it, the Muslim did, and so forth. The religions that show barely using religion as a manipulation tool and actually use as a religion are many of the east Asian countries.

Disney Duster wrote:Then, his followers were very devout, and spread their religion to many others, despite being killed for it, which is how it was seen as a threat to Roman rule (they didn't obey Roman laws of allowing other gods or worshiping the rulers).

The Roman were smart in that in order to keep a vast empire, accepting foreign religions was something they encourage and accepted. When the Roman took over Palestinian, the Jews were very stubborn and arrogant and did not want to accept their god to Romans or accept other gods to theirs. Because of this, this cause loose tension and could cause something. The roman knew that monotheistic god would be troublesome issue to deal with as it could cause problems to that policy on foreign religion i mention earlier.

Unlike the 3 Abraham religions, east asian countries were smart, like the Romans did, and accepted various religions as well, and even better in that they were actually about to blend/adapt many of those religions together drawing out similarities and such. In Japan, Shintoism and Buddhism work well with one another despite it's differences. Same with China with it's various Chinese origin religions, Buddhism, Taoism, Confucianism, etc.

This is why I like the Asian religions a fuck lot more than the others.
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Post by Linden »

Super Aurora wrote:The Roman were smart in that in order to keep a vast empire, accepting foreign religions was something they encourage and accepted. When the Roman took over Palestinian, the Jews were very stubborn and arrogant and did not want to accept their god to Romans or accept other gods to theirs. Because of this, this cause loose tension and could cause something. The roman knew that monotheistic god would be troublesome issue to deal with as it could cause problems to that policy on foreign religion i mention earlier.
Seriously, you guys have to start this discussion during finals? I don't have time to help Disney Duster out at the moment, but I wanted to say this really quick. Super Aurora, do you really think it's arrogant to refuse to renounce your religion? Religion isn't like your favorite clothes or something you just try on and take off all the time. It becomes part of you; it comes to define you. They were most definitely NOT being arrogant. They were refusing to give up their highest belief. They were refusing to betray themselves and, more importantly, God.

Okay, back to school. :P
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Post by 5star »

I have a very simple question for anyone who believes in religion to answer, here it is: what exactly compels you to believe? yeah.. Its a very simple question, but you may take your time. :wink:
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Post by ajmrowland »

a rather childish need to have simple answers to complex mysteries and to feel comforted by them.
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Post by Disney Duster »

I don't think we're going to truly be able to answer a lot of questions here, because unfortunately a lot of historians even debate against each other.

There are numerous respectful history books and web sites that say they know what happened back then but some might say things that contradict what others do.

Of course people are religious would not want to listen to something that may perhaps mess with their faith. No matter what you say, you cannot prove it means that they were avoiding true knowledge that would disprove or destroy a lot of their faith. Sometimes you simply have to avoid something that sounds very convincing, but it may not be true. The only thing that would be for sure avoiding truth would be to avoid something you can see and touch in front of you, pretty much. Maybe a lot of those people knew better than to listen to what may actually be lies about the origins of Christianity. You can say no all you want, but you can only think it must be, you cannot prove it.

As far as I know, Constantine believed in Christianity way before his deathbed, as I said, but perhaps he waited for full choosing of only Christ on his deathbed, and if so, then still, he chose that one instead of something else.

And yes, it's rather interesting that the Jewish people clung to their religion over the others, and that then it was Christianity which was a threat and became what it was. Those two religions were pretty darn powerful, it just aids in what I'm saying about why they should be believed.

5star, well, I believe simply because I do believe it must be true that there is a powerful something that made everything that exists intentionally, and that us beings who wish for good and an afterlife must end up getting good and an afterlife in the very end, and it just makes plain sense to me, despite any physical stuff that science studies, because that's still only physical stuff.

ajmrowland, well that can be one reason, but I think religion and spirituality are far more complex than atheism or science which, actually, science tries to always have the simplest answers it can! It's true, that's what scientists always try to do. Spirituality is something so complex it's beyond complete description by words, like complex feelings, etc.
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Post by Heartless »

Disney Duster wrote:5star, well, I believe simply because I do believe it must be true that there is a powerful something that made everything that exists intentionally, and that us beings who wish for good and an afterlife must end up getting good and an afterlife in the very end, and it just makes plain sense to me, despite any physical stuff that science studies, because that's still only physical stuff.
I'm interested in hearing why you believe in Christianity over other religions that offer explanations of the same things you mentioned above.. Because if another religion offers explanations to everything you stated, what makes you believe one over the other?
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Post by Goliath »

Heartless wrote:I'm interested in hearing why you believe in Christianity over other religions that offer explanations of the same things you mentioned above.. Because if another religion offers explanations to everything you stated, what makes you believe one over the other?
The answer, of course, is because he has been taught to believe in Jesus Christ. Had he been born in Pakistan, he would believe in Allah and Mohammed. I've explained that to him before, but the refused to believe it. But, Duster, Jesus didn't came to you. You were led to Jesus by others.
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Post by 5star »

Disney Duster wrote:
5star, well, I believe simply because I do believe it must be true that there is a powerful something that made everything that exists intentionally, and that us beings who wish for good and an afterlife must end up getting good and an afterlife in the very end, and it just makes plain sense to me, despite any physical stuff that science studies, because that's still only physical stuff.
Oh, I see. You fear death.

There is no after life, or spirit or soul..what you think is your spirit or soul is simply your brain, which is responsible for your personality, memory etc, and that decomposes along with your body when you die, so basically everything that is you will eventually decay away into the earth..Sad I know, but theres no escaping it, It happens to every living thing, you just need to accept it, forget it and just enjoy life as much as you can.
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Post by Disney's Divinity »

That's an opinion...
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