Religion and Death... some 3am thoughts

[Wren57]

Religion and death are the two things man has the hardest time understanding; perhaps because they can't be understood.

What makes a person religous? Is it the notion that there is a diety out there, and a person feels its presence and therefore obeys it and worships it, or is it, as Agent Smith would say, "A temporary construct of a feeble human intellect trying desperatly to justify an existance that is without meaning or purpose." This debate will never end, and this debate is not the purpose of this thread.

While we can not truly understand religion or death, we do have the ability to understand the relation between the two; religion is directly correlated to death. Now, before you naysay, yes, all people die, and no, not all people are religous. Regardless, there is irrefutable evidence that religion leads to death. Throughout history, wars have been waged by man claiming to have the authority of God. How silly. Nearly every religion I can think of that exists is based on love, acceptance and peace. Given these three core values of every religion, why is it that so many people feel it is their right, nay, their duty, to carry out wars in direct violation of these principles? These wars range from a single person being condescending to another due to different beliefs all the way to full scale military operations. The only reason I've ever heard of is the quest to convert and assimilate. I understand the desire to propogate one's ideas to others, but for the means to contradict the purpose and meaning of the ends completely discredits and invalidates all possibility of the very nature and goal of the war; peace. Why is it so difficult for each individual to realize that he/she is one of 6+ billion alive today and one of billions before, and that no one person or group of persons has any right to enforce any religous belief on any other, because there is no way of knowing what the true "correct religion" is. As long as nobody on Earth knows for a fact what God wants us to be doing on Earth, why fight about it? Why not form personal beleifs, and focus on living your own life according to those. Surely God does not want us fighting, for any reason, especially not under the premise it is for him.

I challenge each and every one of you to re-examine your religous beliefs, reconsider how you approach others' beliefs, and how God lives through love, acceptance and peace; not hate, genocide and oppression. Something to consider, and certainly something that could make this world a better place.

[GT40FIED]

You say all of that, yet you're a staunch supporter of Bush? Of course all relgious belief is rooted in the afterlife...it's not something that can be proven while on earth so the only way to get people to comply is by promising them paradise afterwords. The "afterwords" being the part that no man can explain or claim to comprehend. It's not like anyone can come back and tell you yes or no on the grounds of heaven or hell. Almost every war throughout the history of time can be linked to religion (with the possible exception of the Spanish-American war that is almost solely due to the propoganda of William Randolph Hurst), so why fight them? I don't see people sitting in darkened rooms saying "my god is better than yours...we must fight to the death!". I think the majority of the problem is that christianity spread like a cancer over Europe, especially in it's infancy due to the belief that it was superior to all other faiths. This lead to torture at the hands of "christians" during the inquisition and to hundreds of thousands of deaths during the crusades (the children's crusades were a particularly nice touch...send kids to their deaths). As a matter of fact, religion and death CAN be removed from one another if the person has the constitution to distinguish one from the other.

Look no further than Israel vs. Palestinians. True, there has never been a nation known as "Palestine". Then again ,Israel wasn't a state until 1947 when it was established as a sort of apology for the holocaust. Now they battle it out and we chose sides. Some might tell you it's because god stated that he who supports Israel will be loved and he who curses Israel will be cursed. Bullshit. It's because there are more jewish voters in this country than there are muslim. There's nothing wrong with that fact until you start taking sides in a bullshit fight for a bullshit cause with a bullshit result. They're ALL wrong and chances are if there is a god he'd be pissed that we're supplying one with money and guns and not the other.

People will never see eye to eye. As stated before, there are 6 billion people on this planet. That means there are 6 billion different ideas of peace and love and war and violence and poverty and wealth. That said, a selfish handful of people (namely the UN) define what peace, love, war, violence, poverty, and wealth really mean in modern societies. How can wars be waged in the name of religions where fools dole out what it right and wrong?

[CD5Passion]

Religion was conceived to answer the unanswerable....ironically that's all religion is too unanswerable
people needed a belief because they refused to beleive that death is a whole lot of vast nothingness
so you're right death can be thought of as the clay for religion

[Wren57]

Nice reply, Steve; we are in complete agreeance here. Although you did gave examples of previous and present wars fought over religion, you didn't really get down to the core of the real problem; why any individual thinks he/she has a better understanding of religion/God than another. Yes the wars are important, and the surface motives are as well, but the underlying individual emotions in relation to those wars are what is the key.

Don't really want to bring politics into this thread; politics don't make religious beliefs; religious beliefs make politics, so arguing about politics here would be regressive and responsive in nature rather than proactive. That said, if you want to start a thread tying religious beliefs to politics, go right ahead... I'll comment on it.

[Wren57]

Originally posted by Gosei_Passion
Religion was conceived to answer the unanswerable....ironically that's all religion is too unanswerable
people needed a belief because they refused to beleive that death is a whole lot of vast nothingness
so you're right death can be thought of as the clay for religion

You missed the point. I'm not talking about why religion exists, or the mystery of death; I'm talking about why people kill other people based on differences in religion.

[GT40FIED]

Originally posted by highlander
Nice reply, Steve; we are in complete agreeance here. Although you did gave examples of previous and present wars fought over religion, you didn't really get down to the core of the real problem; why any individual thinks he/she has a better understanding of religion/God than another. Yes the wars are important, and the surface motives are as well, but the underlying individual emotions in relation to those wars are what is the key.

Don't really want to bring politics into this thread; politics don't make religious beliefs; religious beliefs make politics, so arguing about politics here would be regressive and responsive in nature rather than proactive. That said, if you want to start a thread tying religious beliefs to politics, go right ahead... I'll comment on it.

Well...any war fought with a religious pretext or undertone HAS to be fought with the idea that "your" god is superior. The ironic thing is that people all fight for the same god (usually), just with different names. I don't think anyone could make a respectable argument that the Iraq war and the Israel/Palenstinian conflict would be happening if those leaders (Bush, Sharon, Arafat) weren't strongly involved with god, yahweh, and allah...respectively. It's all the essentially same god with seperate men construing what he wants. I think the main reason some people think they understand/know god's intentions better than others is a two-punch combo. Half power (whether real or percieved) and half ego. Someone like the president of the U.S. is no doubt saying to himself "well, they voted for me...they must trust my judgement and by extention my belief in faith". The problem there is that no president has ever been unanimously voted in. Especially this last time around...51% is not a resounding "yes" so you're stuck with a lot of people who don't agree with what he's doing. Ego has to play a role in it as well since it'd take one hell of an ego to think you're important enough for god to pick you to know the "truth", so to speak. From a leader's standpoint, transferal of responsibility may also have something to do with it. If you're about to send a few thousand people off to their deaths, it's gotta be easier to think "well...it's what god wants".

As for bringing politics into this, I hate to as well but to a small extent i think it has to at least be touched on. I mean when you talk about religion and death, wars fought in the name of religion will inevitably come up and without politics those wars never get fought. Until people can learn how to seperate religious ideologies from political ones, I think it'll always be that way.

[mylittlecivic]

why do men fight 1john5:19 we know we orginate with god but the whole world is lying in the power of the wicked one. (satan)

1corinthians 10:20 "the things which the nations sacrafice they sacrafice to demons and not to god."

2timothy3:2,5 "men will be... having a form of godly devotion but proving false to its power"

alot of religions profess to love god and serve him but its an outward display. They do things god does not aprove of like helping with wars, and what not.

and as for death that was never orginally meant for humans, its something we can barely handle.

k ill stop will my little spew there. I just know most of the answers to alot of peoples questions are in the bible, they're just not always easy to understand.