Why Be Interested In Other Religions?

[goodlife]

Regardless of where you live, you have no doubt seen for yourself how religion affects the lives of millions of people.

[Hypognosis]

@goodlife

Power of prophesy implies the course of events is predestined. Predestiny implies we have no free will. If we have no free will then any love in either direction isn't real; it's mechanical.

In the meantime, at least we know your craving for the apocalypse is real.

[jomifl]

Hypo, predestination also implies that what we do either has no effect on the final outcome or is predestined anyway. Does that mean that we can steal murder and pillage as part of god's plan?

[glenallan]

More people have died on this planet Earth due to religion than any other cause!!! Get rid of all religions and we will have "PEACE ON EARTH AND GOODWILL TO ALL MEN" Give it a try, after all religion is only a crutch for dic kheads to lean on when they can't live their own life!!!

[agchristie]

glenallan > Get rid of all religions and we will have "PEACE ON EARTH AND GOODWILL TO ALL MEN"

Rather fanciful. There will never be peace and there will always be cruelty irrespective of religion.

[naomi24]

^True, but without religion there would be less of it.

[Khandro]

Enters stage left glenallen; "More people have died on this planet Earth due to religion than any other cause!!!"

Am I like Sisyphus, to be punished by being forced to roll an immense boulder up a hill, only to watch it roll back down, repeating this action for eternity?

[naomi24]

Khandro, 'your idealism is more damaging than mine' is a stupidly unproductive argument. See my post at 09:07 this morning.

[Hypognosis]

@jomifl
//
Hypo, predestination also implies that what we do either has no effect on the final outcome or is predestined anyway. Does that mean that we can steal murder and pillage as part of god's plan?
20:13 Sat 26th Mar 2016
//

Now that question would, surely, be worth a thread in its own right although we'd reach, unavoidably, the conclusion that god's plan is very strange indeed or at least his methods were suspect. Either that or my pet theory, which is that 'god' is just the sum total of us. We're just displacing it by a level, because worshipping humanity would be… odd.

[Khandro]

n. You're welcome to your idealism, I'm talking about historical facts - (I'm married to a historian) - no room for idealism in history.

[naomi24]

Khandro, I'm not talking about my idealism. I'm talking about yours. It seems to me to be a very wonky argument.

[Khandro]

n. I don't have an "argument", I'm talking facts. If you think my facts are wrong, disprove them.

[naomi24]

Khandro, you don't have an argument? Why are you arguing with several people then? I haven't said your facts are wrong - simply that arguing in favour of an ideology that causes fewer multiple deaths than another is ridiculous. The simple 'fact' is they're all potty!

[modeller]

Goodlife Y " For this the religious leaders have much to answer for. They teach doctrines of men rather than the Bible. "

[modeller]

Goodlife Your words above imply that there is a difference between religious
leaders and the words in the bible ! Who do you think wrote the bible then ?

[atalanta]

Who wrote the Bible ? Where the OT is concerned, a bunch of rabbis with overactive imaginations. Actually, science and archaeology do come in here - science and archaeology prove that ( for instance) the exodus never happened. Research in the very extensive ancient egyptian records and archives shows absolutely no sign of plagues of blood/locusts/boils, death of the firstborn, escape of many thousands of slaves, destruction of a huge pharaonic army. Nothing in the egyptian records or any other records, come to that. Can you imagine plagues, thousands of deaths, etc, NOT being recorded ? being just forgotten ? And the old testament goes on to describe all the places the hebrews took after the exodus - but none of those places ( Jericho, Ai, Gibeon, Chephirah, Beeroth, Kiriat-jearim, etc ) had any kind of settlements or inhabitants whatsoever at the time the Hebrews were supposed to have conquered them. They would therefore have conquered only empty and nameless bits of desert. So, goodlife, you had better not write off science and archaeology, since between them they have definitively written off a huge chunk of your scripture.
Ref: Implausible beliefs, A Mazur, 2008 9781412806770

[goodlife]

The history of religion is as old as the history of man himself. That is what archaeologists and anthropologists tell us. the new Encyclopædia Britannica says that “as far as scholars have discovered, there has never existed any people, anywhere, at any time, who were not in some sense religious.”

The questions come where did all these religions come? Since there are marked differences as well as similarities among them, did they start independently, or could they have developed from one source? In fact we might ask: Why did religion begin at all?

The answers to these questions are of vital importance to all who are interested in finding the truth about religion and religious beliefs.

The same principle can be applied to the investigation of the origin of the rise of atheism


What are people searching for then, well just as the ancient world did not understand Jesus, it did not understand the Christians and therefore hated them. Since they refused to worship the emperor and pagan divinities, they were accused of atheism. If a catastrophe occurred, they were blamed for having angered the gods.

[naomi24]

Goodlife, //The same principle can be applied to the investigation of the origin of the rise of atheism //

The rise of atheism is the result of education.

[Khandro]

naomi; //The rise of atheism is the result of education.// Would you care for a list of some highly educated people who are not atheists, in fact some of the most educated and brilliant minds on the planet?

[naomi24]

Khandro, no thanks. They haven't learnt enough.