Religion: A Necessary Evil?

I don't think anyone is making fun of anyone, H&J

I believe you are right in saying you have faith or you don't, however, why are so may Christians so two-faced in their everyday life?

Surely, if they have faith then this type of attitude would be abhorrent to them. Or are they so blinded by their own security that the true message of Christianity has passed them by?

I would like to ask you one question that a priest asked at The Solemn Novena in Clonard one year that has stayed with me until this day.

'How many people, if * told them he had a place in Heaven for them, would want to go?'

All hands went up.

'How many would if he said it was to go right this very second?'

Not one hand was raised.

Why not?

Good to talk to you again, H&J ... haven't seen you about for a while ... best wishes ... TB

 

Hmm, don't know what to make of religion, I can never decide where I stand tbh.

I go to a Catholic school and have a religion teacher as a priest. I can honestly say that a lot of the time I feel like I'm being indoctrinated, not educated. When we are learning about the very touchy subjects within the Catholic Church like abortion, euthanasia, contraception etc it's just like having a very rigid set of rules and ideas being imposed on you. It is biased as * to the point where we just cannot have an opinion or at least express it within the class.

It's things like that which annoy me. I don't understand how a priest with lets face it, not a lot of knowledge of the living in the real world as such can tell us how we should be living our lives in an area where he has absolutely no experience in.

I believe in * and I think that religion can play a very positive role and be a comfort in many people's lives but personally, I don't allow the Church to control my faith.

 

Yeah, I'm cool with it and it's been an interesting thread with very good contributions. The point has been made re religious wars etc, one quote which made me smile but can't remember the author goes something like this.

"Wars are caused by those who believe they have a better imaginary friend than everybody else"

Anyone know the author?

 

i agree with Midnight Tokers post .

This all just does nothing for me and its not even a thread i feel i want to be part of .......* ,just have .

religion is the cause of all hassles one way or another, i prefer to Live life and get on with it .

 

thats very close to the way I feel although my belief varys from day to day. I have to say that a lot of the nicest people I know were given strong christian influences and even when they had stopped believing they still remained unusually nice gentle people. As I said, I think the churches create problems because they have dogma and they want to tell you what to think. Those topics you mention are never directly covered in the new testament as far as I can see so I think the church has no buisiness in telling you what to think when it is clearly a matter of interpretation and up to individuals concience (directly with *). Despite all those criticism of churches, I still fell that the way of thinking that Jesus shows in the bible is something amazing and stands seperate from and will outlive any church and I wouldnt throw that away lightly.

 

A lot of people say atheists are just as bad as fundemental religious people in enforcing their belief in no * on other people. To this i would say that if any evidence of there being a higher being or creator appeared - i would be the first to admit i as wrong and i would bow down and worship him/her

as it is though all the evidence (evolution etc) points to evoution being the way life started and developed. I also have a problem with children being called a 'muslim child' or a 'christian child' . Shouldn't people be left to decide on whether they are religious or not when they are old enough to understand the concept?? they are not allowed to because if they were almost eveyone would be agnostic or atheist

 

I have no time for religion myself. Certainly major organised religions are all just about power and control and usually side with the rich.
In Ireland it's ironic how the church was always going on about the family and it's moral code yet at the same time thousands of boys and girls were thrown into industrial schools, the Magdelene laundries, orphanges where they suffered horrific abuse. The history of the church in Ireland in the last century is a perversion of everything it is supposed to stand for.

Certainly you get many great and well meaning people in all religions who truly do want to help and who are inspirational people. But when it comes to who is in charge the churches are always about power and control.

At the end of the day for me if a person is very religious and has strong religions convictions that is fine as long as it is a private thing. But usually the people who supposedly claim to be the most religious are among the most mean and sometimes downright nasty and evil people I have ever know. They constantly spew out their judgemental rhetoric and demand that their lifestyle be imposed on everyone.

 

Good points Keltoi. However on the reading of say the "4" gospels again here the chruches are full of it. Many books were left out of the bible including the fact that there are more then 4 gospels.

 

A good thread here, chaps!

Excellent attempt from Keltoi at providing an insight into the state of awareness that comes when drawn close to *, whatever that is for each person. There are many, past and present, that have contended this to be a fallacy, because a) they have not experienced this feeling (as cynics, never had an an inclination to) or, b) because things that are real in a spiritual sense are are far less quantifiable so as to be almost worthless to some people.

I'm not relay the mystical type, but I can say that at points in my life I've felt glimpses of something that was not the meat and bones of our daily grind, and I would tell anyone these things are as real as the houses and cars we all seem put our entire lives into securing in this day and age. It's almost a spooky feeling, knowing that there is another level to existence, and that our lives aren't merely a statistic of an average life expectancy to be filled with a series tasks to get by before we die and turn to compost.

Jesus would have called it the kingdom of heaven, Buddhists: Nirvana etc. I don't know exactly, but I'm certain in my self that it isn't a load of old baloney! :icon_mrgreen:

I think it's a total misnomer, to regurgitate the seemingly easy line that "religion is the cause of all wars" etc etc.

Almost certainly it isn't. It's usually the abject failure to listen to the message being told, or to wilfully distort it. There would be very little in the way of suffering if the tenets of each religion were truly followed as they are claimed to be, free from the twisted input of egocentric people with ulterior motives. Most wars are politically motivated, with maybe disingenuous individuals seeking to impart a Religious flavour to the exercise. I mean, for example, In 500 years time the Iraq war may be talked about as a war between Christians and Muslims, when we know for a fact it was an economically driven, politically conceived invasion.

Some people lazily class Muslims as being a violent religion, but it isn't really. Broadly, most references to use of force are concerned with protection from an aggressor, with mercy to be swiftly imparted should that aggression be lessened.

I would be interested to read the book mentioned: "the * delusion".. though I find it a highly ironic state of affairs if someone preaches against organised religion (perhaps he is not, merely against the notion of *) but then goes so far as to release a book on his beliefs! For what is he doing, only preaching his own beliefs, selling his own gospel, as it were?!

I remember watching a documentary series a few years back headed by a pre-eminent Atheist, but whilst he made very logical points.. thats all it seemed to be, an overbearing dependence on cold logic. I couldn't help but thinking: "He just doesn't get it".. and that despite his clear intellect, he was only utilising limited portions of his mind in his thought processes.

Another documentary, on the Tsunami: "Where was *?" drew similar conclusions from the host, who was a doctor and lapsed Christian. As he sought insights from Buddhist, Christian and Muslim and Hindu emissaries on the disaster, he was moved to tears as the realisation dawned on him that the thing these men possessed was something to behold, something rarer now in a supposedly advanced human race. "The intellect has it's role" he declared.. "but, my *, does it have it's limits" he said. It was an amazing moment to see this man have an epiphany of sorts on TV in front of me!

I think all in all, people should realise that the human institutions of religion are just that: human institutions with human flaws. It shouldn't be a reflection on the very real spiritual side of existence for many people.

 

I believe that there is a *. I'm an Orthodox Christian. However, I'm not a fanatic. I think that actually Christians, Jews, Muslims, etc. believe in the same *, just on different ways. Look at the similarities, e.g. they all have two great holidays (Christmas & Easter, Bayram & Bayram Ramazan, Pasha & Hanuka ...).
Are religions guilty for wars and conflicts? Well, as much as everything else on this world. Hitler didn't attack Jews because of their religion, but because he thought that they control all the companies and banks. USA didn't attack Iraq because they are Muslims, but because they have a soil full with oil ...
I believe in *. It's my choice. You don't have to. That's your choice.

 

religion and homosexuals

Don't mind them aslong as they don't force themselfs upon me

 

your post at first glance seems quite authentic, then you go on to say the iraq war in 500 yrs time will not be a case of muslim faith v christian faith it will simply be a politcal conceived invasion
living as i do in a muslim country for 5 yrs now and i also have a 15 yr association with the free state of turkey(i am not turkish by the way unless springburn has moved and no one has informed me) your points are like the majority of people who have never experianced muslim faith first hand
due to b/ness commitments i chose to emigrate to turkey, i also own property in bulgaria, the muslim faith let me inform you have NO time for the christian belief,s at all, in fact they will laugh at you if you even try to make a topic of conversation on theese matters, i know im living it as they say
i personally know people (european) whose children have been refused education here because they are catholic,and in some instance,s that europeans have been accepted for education, there children are asked to leave the classroom when the muslim prayers take place, the problem you and people like yourself dont understand is that when you are brought up muslim in a muslim country you are taught muslim END OF STORY they have no teaching on ANY other religion from starting school, so are basically ignorant that any other religion even exists

the muslim religion is and will become an even larger problem as these people re-allocate to christian countrys (france/germany/spain/sweden are all having massive culture problems within their communities

i am catholic and i have no chapel here, i travel once a month to rhodes which is a 2 hr ferry journey for me, but i dare not ask for a chapel to be built,(they would take my visa and throw me out my friend) how many mosque,s are built over the european union ?

so in reply, to you thinking that one day it will be written as a political conveived invasion, you are wrong

 

No I am afraid you are wrong. The majority of your post, dealing with Islam's intolerance towards other religions, I do accept. But the invasion of Iraq was without question about politics and economics. It was not about religion. The reason for this is that it is a complete fallacy that Saddam Hussein was an Islamic fundamentalist. In fact he was the sworn enemy of the fundamentalists.

Throughout the 1980s Iran and Iraq waged a * war which killed millions. The Ayatollah and the fundamentalists had ousted the pro-Western Shah of Iran and installed a more fundamentalist regime. Saddam fought the Iranians for the best part of a decade at the behest of the Western powers - to keep down the rise of fundamentalism. Saddam was put in power, armed and his miltary trained by the west so that he could be our man in the region, a friendly country. His regime, which was at times brutal, was a secular regime, not a religious regime.

 

i am from a protestant back ground and went to a protestant school my family choose not to christen me or my sister

But my sister has chosen to send her daughters to the catholic primary school because it has smaller classes and a better chance for a good education and the added advantage they get the choise of two secondy schools 1 mixed which is in girvan a small town with * all in it or the catholic one in ayr where they will meet new friends and ayr is like the city in comparison so its a no brainer.

it is purely educational purposes non religous My family are celtic supporters but in no way catholic wanabes just want the best for our kids

what are your thoughts on this

 

I don't subscribe to this argument that relegion is there to stop war and bloodshed but instead all it seems to do is cos it.

Do you really think that when cave men were bonking each other over the head that it was about one having Muslim beliefs and the other being a *?

I think not,it is just mans sick * for violence and power.They would find somethig else to give them an excuse for violence

To Irvy?

That seems fine,catholic schools tend to be better than non-denominational ones.

 

There will always be large amounts of people who will need to believe in something - even if there is no evidence of it existing.

 

it seems then we will agree to disagree, history will indeed show the reasons behind most wars, unfortunately neither you nor myself will be here to say "i told you so" one final thought, though "* bless america"

 

Without religion would we ever have been able to truly identify between right and wrong? Religion might cause some of the worlds wrong-doing's, but all it really does is make most of it evident. So yes i believe that Religion is a necessary evil. I dont believe in *, i couldnt with all the horrible things been done under his name. Anyway what makes us so special that we must have a higher purpose? We are as insignificant as the dust.

 

There's nothing to disagree about buddy. I have explained to you the facts about Iraq before the Gulf Wars.

Saddam Hussein was not an Islamic fundamentalist. He waged war on them and they hated him. Those are facts.

 

I always like to hear about non-Catholics who support Celtic. It shows that our club welcomes all, unlike der hun.

Years ago I went out with a lassie who worked for the Scottish Refugee Council and she told me that almost every asylum seeker who come here supported Celtic. Before they had even mastered English they were able to work out that Rangers were about EXCLUDING people and that we were about INCLUDING people. That says it all to me.