| superchunk said: I will just jump into the middle of this.... Raised Christian. Wife's family is Muslim (Palestinian). Shortly after turning 18 I began to research beliefs and figure out what makes sense to me. This is the attitude I wish all people did instead of blindly following someone else's ideas, but that is another topic all together. First off I made a few conclusions that I though of as more logical. 1. Existence and life are too complex to be caused solely by a series of randomization and chances. Therefor I believe in a God. 2. If there is a God, it would not be constrained to anything. The ability to create everything must conclude that God is everything and is absolute without limitations. 3. Therefore God would never be human or any other figure / viewable / solid entity. This automatically cut out a lot of belief systems. I began reading a lot of materail including my original major at the University of Theology since I am very interested in Theology. I have read and studied: - KJV Bible - Catholic Bible - NRSV Bible (Best one in my opinion) - TaNaKh - Quran - Hindu Vedas - Various writings of Buddah - Various writings and books of religious works not accepted by above groups like the Gospel of Judas, etc. - Studied history of religion classes from many viewpoints. This lead me to have full scepticism in all organized religions for a few years. Until I read the Quran. This answered nearly all of my ideas and and for the next 6 years I was a fully practicing Muslim. This was greatly applauded by my wife's family and she too agreed with my overall conclusions. However, I never fully agreed with some of the interpretations by the Muslim mass. Example, No where does the Quran state women should be fully covered in any form. Just the private areas, same as men. However I always told myself that if I found issues with the Quran itself, such as human tampering, then I would not hold Islam as the only chioce. The about 2 years ago in my continued studies and reevaluation I began to see things at a higher level than any religious work detailed. One common theme could be seen in all of these teachings that made it all that more clearer and a much more sense. None of them were 100% perfect or the 'only' path. Pretty much my belief in God can be characterized in one passage of the Quran. "Surely those who believe, and those who are Jews, and the Christians, and the Sabians, whoever believes in The God and the Last day and does good, they shall have their reward from their Lord, and there is no fear for them, nor shall they grieve." Q-002.062 Basically anyone who believes in God, the Day of Judgement, and is a good person will get rewared by God. The implys that no specific path or organized religion is required. I still consider myself Muslim by definition. "One who submits to the will of God". |
I actually went down a similar path in my life... granted no wife or kids nor any conversions but when I ran into a similar passage I realized something very important
"Surely those who believe, and those who are Jews, and the Christians, and the Sabians, whoever believes in The God and the Last day and does good, they shall have their reward from their Lord, and there is no FEAR for them, nor shall they grieve."
What got me is that ultimately everything boiled down to fear and pleasure... Just emotions. There was no logic at all nor was there any attempt to explain anything in a way that our minds can understand yet god created us with this mind in a 3d world with the constraint of time and many other laws. Why do all that only to then say that you shouldnt use any of it to decide and just believe blindly? Well if we arent supposed to use it and have blind faith then how can we discern which faith we should have except for our own subjective emotions? It almost sounds like whoever wrote the passage was afraid of something and/or (the most likely scenario) trying to control people very much like politicians.
Lets get back to emotions for a second. Emotions are a very strong thing and make you do things that you otherwise would not do somewhat like riding a roller coaster and knowing that you will be safe yet still gaining the anxiety and fear reflex for no reason. It is not heavenly intervention that we feal, it simple animal instinct for self preservation and I think that we misunderstand those signals as something else when it comes to things like religion (since we arent sitting on a roller coaster). When someone comes to you and says "repent or you will be struck down and burn in eternal flames" how can you not get emotional one way or another? This guy is talking about putting you in pain for eternity, something that no one wants. So we start a chain of emotional talk that eventually leads to seeking a God to help us avoid pain and death out of fear for those things. Our belief is then reinforced by pleasures and rewards and all you have to do is follow the religions morals and ethics but you were already doing that to begin with (people are usually attracted to religions that match their own own ethics... what a surprise when they join and find that they are very similar lol).
I do because I am afraid or I do because its pleasurable... This is how lesser intelligent forms of life behave and here I always thought that humans are supposed to be a little smarter than that. If we as humans can learn ethics and morals on our own without religion naturally by living among each other, then if you take away fear and pleasure from religion, what do you have left to make any religion unique be it Judiestic or otherwise? Even if God existed, what the point to organized religion at all except for maybe helping teach things we should already know like ethics and morality and scaring those who do not follow?
