my religion theory

just to start off i am not a religious man
i believe in evolution and big bang and theorys along that line
but i do respect ppl that are religious
this theory is something ive made through trying to understand why there are so many religions

there are 3 main questions that we want answers for.
where did i come from
what is my purpose
what will happen when my file ends

our minds they way they are based want answers
religions were formed as answers to these questions

each religion as answers for these 3 questions but they go in depth


i had this written down in a note book and it took up like 5 pages
when i find them il get back to u but thats most of the base of this post
im open for opnions/praises/put downs/everything except flamming

You can say the same thing about the evolution theory. It was started to try an answer those three questions.

But in the end it is up to you as an individual to believe what you want to believe.

But I just disagree with what evolution teaches.

Anyone read Lord of the Flies, i personaly think it shows one way in which a religion can be formed.

We have had the AO religion vs. evolution discussion many times. I am curious though, my thought on the multitude of religions is that same as stated. Man asks those questions. I think it is the process of all sentient thinking beings to consider its origin. Perhaps early mankind used what knowledge was available to explain it. It's like a hypothesis, even though no formal evidence could exist to completely determine the exact answer to those questions. These people were isolated at one time with little or no communication among one another so very different views of the earth and its creatures were derived from local environments. Who wouldn't feel the wind or look up at the stars and wonder what kind of supernatural force was behind them; especially the sun rising each day and radiating heat that can be felt with a smile. Or a mysterious moon moving about the skies that sometimes seem ominous when popping up from total darkness and carrying with it, a red eerie glow when full and very close to earth.

Mankind is also intelligent enough to even question the supernatural and seek answers beyond religion. I for one, are glad we stopped burning witches who are possessed by the devil. Sometimes I think, if there was a god such as that portrayed in similarity to Christianity, Jewish and Muslim thinking - he would have done us all in by now. I know Jesus saved us from that but he's supposed to come back and take all those who love him and leave 90 percent of the planet behind for the amusement of Satan.

My curiosity lies in the question, how does anti-evolutionist thinking apply the question: why so many religions? I know the tower of Babel thing, but any other thoughts? It seems that, that only way to propagate a religion, which is to communicate it, outside of a local community, is through violence or intimidation. While I too respect those who seek Jesus in the name of salvation - religion is not complacent with peace and "getting along” with others. They each seek to devour their opponents and convert them to make their own conscience feel righteous. So after 4000 years, or what ever the timeline for creation… why so many religions?

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And they heard the voice of the LORD God walking in the garden in the cool of the day: and Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the LORD God amongst the trees of the garden.
And the LORD God called unto Adam, and said unto him, Where art thou?
And he said, I heard thy voice in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked; and I hid myself.
And he said, Who told thee that thou wast naked? Hast thou eaten of the tree, whereof I commanded thee that thou ********* not eat?

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http://www.hti.umich.edu/cgi/k/kjv/k...DIV1&byte=1477
:cool:

Religion is bullshit, should I try to convince you so, no that whats converts do and I'd rather you see the 'light' yourself ;)

Oh and religion answers nothing it simply clouds truth.

Posted by a friend on another forum. I'm not going to defend/argue/debate religion with you, mainly because I have no idea where I stand on the idea right now. But this caught my attention.

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My Dear Children (and believe me, that's all of you),

I consider myself to be pretty patient. I mean, look
at the Grand Canyon. It took millions of years to get
it right. And how about evolution? Boy, nothing is
slower than designing that whole Darwinian thing to
take place, cell by cell and gene by gene. I've even
been patient through your fashions, civilizations,
wars and schemes, and the countless ways you take Me
for granted until you get yourselves into big trouble
again and again.

But today, I want to let you know about some things
that are starting to tick Me off.

First of all, your religious rivalries are driving Me
up a wall. Enough already! Let's get one thing
straight These are your religions, not Mine. I'm the
Whole Enchilada; I'm beyond them all. Every one of
your religions claims there's only one of Me. But in
the very next breath, each religion claims it's My
favorite one. And each claims I wrote its Bible
personally, and all the other Bibles are man-made. Oh
Me, how do I even begin to put a stop to such
complicated nonsense?

Okay, listen up now I'm your Father and Mother, and I
don't play favorites among My Children. Also, I hate
to break it to you, but I didn't write that stuff.
I've always been more of a "doer" anyway. So all your
books, including the Bibles, were written by men and
women. They were inspired, remarkable people, but they
also made mistakes here and there. I made sure of
that, so that you would never trust a written word
more than your own living Heart.

You see, one Human Being to me-even a bum on the
street-is worth more than all the holy books in the
world. That's just the kind of Guy I Am. My Spirit is
not a historical thing, It's alive right here, right
now, as fresh as your next breath. Holy books and
religious rites are sacred and powerful, but not more
so than the least of You. They were only meant to
steer you in the right direction, not to keep you
arguing with each other, and certainly not to keep you
from trusting your own personal connection with Me.

Which brings Me to My next point about your nonsense
You act like I need you and your religions to stick up
for Me or "win souls" for My Sake. Please, don't do Me
any favors. I can stand quite well on my own, thank
you. I don't need you to defend Me, and I don't need
constant credit. I just want you to be good to each
other.

The thing is, I want you to stop thinking of religion
as some sort of loyalty pledge to Me. The true purpose
of your religions is so that you can become more aware
of Me, not the other way around. Believe Me, I know
you already. I know what's in each of your hearts, and
I love you with no strings attached. Lighten up and
enjoy Me. That's what religion is best for.

What you seem to forget is how mysterious I Am. You
look at petty little differences in your scriptures
and say, "Well, if this is the Truth, then that can't
be!" But instead of trying to figure out My Paradoxes
and Unfathomable Nature-which, by the way, you never
will-why not open your hearts to the simple common
threads in every religion? You know exactly what I'm
talking about:

a. Love and respect everyone.

b. Be kind. Even when life is scary or confusing,
take courage, be of good cheer, I Am always with you.

c. Learn how to be quiet, so you can hear My Still,
Small Voice (I don't like to shout).

d. Leave the world a better place - live your life
with dignity and grace.

e. Hold back nothing from life - the parts of you that
can die will surely die, and the parts that can't,
won't.

f. So don't worry, be happy Simple stuff. Why do you
keep making it so complicated? It's like you're always
looking for an excuse to be upset. And I'm very tired
of being your main excuse. Do you think I care whether
you call me Yahweh, Jehovah, Allah, Wakan Tanka,
Brahma, Father, Mother, or even The Void or Nirvana?
Do you think I care which of My Special Children you
feel closest to - Moses, Jesus, Mary, Buddha, Krishna,
Mohammed or any of the others?

You can call Me and My Special Ones any name you
choose, if only you would go about My business of
loving one another as I love you. How can you keep
neglecting something so simple?

I'm not telling you to abandon your religions. Enjoy
your religions, honor them, and learn from them, just
as you should enjoy, honor, and learn from your
parents. But do you walk around telling everyone that
your parents are better than theirs? Your religion,
like your parents, may always have the most special
place in your heart; I don't mind that at all. And I
don't want you to combine all the Great Traditions
into One Big Mess. Each religion is unique for a
reason. Each has a unique style so that people can
find the best path for himself or herself.

But My Special Children - the ones your religions
revolve around - all live in the same place (My Heart)
and they get along perfectly, I assure you. The clergy
must stop creating a myth of sibling rivalry where
there is none.

My Blessed Children of Earth, the world has grown too
small for your pervasive religious bigotry and
confusion. Air travel, satellite dishes, telephones,
fax machines, rock concerts, diseases, and mutual
needs and concerns connect the whole planet. Get with
the program! If you really want to help Me celebrate
life, commit yourselves to figuring out how to feed
your hungry, clothe your naked, protect your abused,
and shelter your poor. And just as importantly, make
your own everyday life a shining example of kindness
and good humor. I've given you all the resources you
need, if only you would abandon your fear of each
other and begin living, loving, and laughing together.

Finally, I'm not really ticked off, I just wanted to
grab your attention because I don't like to see you
suffer. But I gave you Free Will, so what can I do now
other than to try to influence you through reason,
persuasion, and a little old-fashioned guilt and
manipulation? After all, I Am the original Jewish
Mother. I just want you to be happy. I really Am,
indeed, with you always. Always. Trust In Me.

Your One and Only,
You Know Who

---

Nice

I'm sorry Debs but thats just kinda what the stuff my overbearing Catholic bloody brothers used to do when they had no arguments for Gods existence, make up little things like that

'Blame men for ruining my reputation'

Religion is the opium of the masses, nothing more, nothing less.

Oh, you needn't think it's just Catholic brothers who do it :D I don't know about other religions, but protestant ministers are equally good at it.

Like I said, I'm not going to debate it, cause I don't even know my own mind on this subject. But it seemed appropriate for this thread. Everyone has their own theory, and that sort of covered the topic. At least imo :D

hey deb, where did you find that? sounds like an interesting site

oh u r watching lots of matrix

deb.. I got tears in my eyes over that.. first I'd ever heard of it.. I like it, thanks.

Abtronic, here's where I think the original source of it was from..

"written by Bret Walters and directed by God."

http://www.wtv-zone.com/celestial/Mag/god.htm

JenJen, I'm glad you liked it, and also, thanks for the link. I didn't have one. Like I said, it was just something a friend of mine on another forum pasted, she didn't provide a link for it.

My own theory goes to God being manmade and not vice versa.

I believe that man wants to answer the questions posted previously, as well as many others. Given the body of knowledge 5000 years ago they had no better answer than to defer to a mysterious higher power. So you had a god of wind, god of water, god of lightning, etc.

What's funny is how the ancient Roman / Greek, Egyptian and other gods were so capricious and petty. Man gave them a lot of their own characteristics and turned it into somewhat of a soap opera.

I believe that the consolidation into a monotheistic deity was a power move. As long as there were 50 different factions worshipping 50 different gods it was hard to rule them all. So, lets eliminate all the gods and narrow it down to one. Then we'll have that one "true" god proclaim me king. With the backing of god the people will accept my power.... at least that is how it goes in my mind.

The bible was written by men (and maybe women). There were many books available and a group of rabbi's got together and voted on which books should make up the Torah. It was more a written history than a religious work in my mind, but regardless of what it was intended to be, the fact remains that men wrote the books and other men chose which books should be included and which should be brushed aside.

Over time we have learned much through science and expanded our body of knowledge. Things that were once "miracles" are now easily explained (although still possibly miraculous). There are still things that remain beyond our body of knowledge, but I consider it lazy or irresponsible to assume, still, that there must be a higher power to account for them. Just because we can't explain it currently doesn't mean it can't be explained.

I also believe in the power of the human mind and the collective subconscious though. To a paranoid schizophrenic- their reality IS reality. They don't know about or care about your reality- to them their reality is "true". Not to suggest that people who are religious are paranoid schizophrenic, but I believe that if YOU believe in your mind that your god is the one true god and that works for you- then it works for YOU. It is almost like a placebo, but I can't debate yuor god with you. Your truth is your truth and my truth is my truth. There are things for which there is no one absolute truth in my opinion.

I have had lengthy philosophical debates many times on theology, cosmology and other deep topics. I have read extensively across a range of religions and remain an atheist. I have friends- very intelligent and well-read friends- who have read much of the same stuff I have and come to the exact opposite conclusion so it seems that trying to apply logic to the problem is fruitless. Obviously my logic and their logic is not the same logic.

In the end, the root question always comes down to "if there is no God, how did we get here?" to which I respond "how did God get there?" It is a circular argument with no answer- that we know of yet. If god could just "be", then why can't we just "be" without a god? The mind of man has boundaries. We can only conceive of nothing in relation to something. We have no grasp of what nothing truly is. Time is a manmade concept and we have difficulty breaking from the linear thinking that says there must be a beginning and an end.

Much is unknown and yet to be discovered.

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what will happen when my file ends

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ASCII code 26 - End Of File

I have always considered religions to be a method with which to explain the unexplainable. I cannot attribute everything I do not understand to a higher power. Simply because a phnomenon defies all explanation and logic does not mean it requires divine intervention to exist. It simply means we don't understand it.

There is an innate human instinct to understand everything. It is the driving force behind civilization, progress, and invention, and it is what seperates us from animals. The desire to understand is one of the few things on earth that is uniquely human.

But this desire to understand also extends beyond the limits of human comprehension. I came to realize many years ago that there are some things which I will never understand. To assume that these things must be divine simply because I don't understand them is rather arrogant. Rather than attempting to explain things with a higher power, I have come to accept that I never will.

God nicely fills in the gaps of everything we do not know. This is why I belive He is an illusion created by those unwilling to accept the fact that human reasoning and comprehension has limits.

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I consider it lazy or irresponsible to assume, still, that there must be a higher power to account for them.

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People often come to this conclusion through some kind of tramatic event, or they are taught to believe and have no issue doubting it through culture. I don't agree totally with that statement. I know very intelligent people who have achieved great things, that believe in god. For some they feel it in their heart and even with great pressure to abide that belief; they stand. Now that I have said that, I think, with you, along a majority line, the vast majority of the flock does fit of your descritpiton. They don't want to challenge knowledge or absorb the accomplishment of mankind, they want to plod along and feel happy in their lower station on the chain of life, and turn an blind eye to anything outside of their commune. An excuse for their traits.

My outlook on religion is that it was simply a way to impose a moral sense on people. It's actually scary but there's a lot of people who don't think for themselves, they think that without some kind of religion they would have no idea of what is right or wrong. It's this same reason why a lot of these religions claim to be better than the other, the people can't think for themselves and believe blindly in their religion without even attempting to think for themselves. Faith can be a good thing but with all things there's a line to be drawn where you've gone too far. It has been used to explain some things that we can't explain as well but I think the primary goal behind it was ethics. My 2 cents anyways.

Basically, it all comes down to faith. Nobody can prove God's existence to everybody's satisfaction, nor can anyone prove He doesn't exist. Nobody can prove that Jesus rose from the dead, and nobody can prove He didn't. That Jesus was a real person isn't questioned thanks to Josephus.

It's all a matter of faith, and I'd rather think that once my time is up, my soul goes someplace rather than dispersing into nothing.

Read Marx on religion, I know a lot of you wouldnt like reading Marx for obvious reasons but grab one of those introductory guides and you get a clear overview of how religion was formed.

I don't like explaining these things, makes me uneasy when my mother who believes in angels asks me to explain some of the stuff Im studying at the moment, basically some people I suppose need religion I guess.

Though I believe it is the opium of the masses.

There are some worthwhile attempts at the proog of gods existence, try Anselm for example.

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Nay, we have still stronger evidence of the proposition for which I now contend,
viz.,that a sense of Deity is naturally engraven on the human heart, in the fact, that the
very reprobate are forced to acknowledge it. When at their ease, they can jest about God,
and talk pertly and loquaciously in disparagement of his power; but should despair, from
any cause, overtake them, it will stimulate them to seek him,and dictate ejaculatory prayers,
proving that they were not entirely ignorant of God, but had perversely suppressed feelings
which ought to have been earlier manifested.

---

Calvin
:cool:

God gave mankind free will.

Therefore I use this will, to question his existence because I am drawn to the enormous amount of curiosity of things that make up an enormous existence in the universe. Therefore one could say I posses an enormous amount of understanding to its mechanics. I am, it appears; travesty to Christianity. :D ,because I am forbidden to question Gods divinity.

This is all I have to say :

When a frenchman monarch proposed the persecution of the Christians in his dominion. An old statesman and warrior said to him:

"Sire, the Church of God is an anvil that has worn out many hammers."

"So the hammers of infidels have been pecking away at this book for ages, but the hammers are worn out, and the anvil still endures. If this book had not been the book of God, men would have destroyed it long ago. Emperors and popes, kings and priests, princes and rulers have all tried their hand at it; they die and the book still lives."
--- H.L. Hastings ---

That is my 2 cents ......

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I for one, are glad we stopped burning witches who are possessed by the devil

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I think the torches have been replaced with car bombs

I'm not too concerned with asking the big questions, if you open your eyes and ears you can see answers you never would have seen in searching. If I died and found myself in front of god, i would try to sucker punch him, why you might ask? Have you every tried sucker punching someone omnipotent, i'd like to say that i've tried, if god was omnipotent he'd see that my actions are in good fun and not of anything hostile :)

I myself think the Big Bang Thoery is full of crap that only a liberal science teacher would beleive. The beleif of God is much more practical than a theory people can come up with. Religion itself has been around for thousands of mor years than the Big Bang Theory.

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I myself think the Big Bang Thoery is full of crap that only a liberal science teacher would beleive. The beleif of God is much more practical than a theory people can come up with. Religion itself has been around for thousands of mor years than the Big Bang Theory.

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Your argument hardly holds water. People thought for thousands of years that the Earth was the center of the solar system, or the Earth is flat, or rats were spontaneously created by trash, and a myriad of other disproven "facts". Do you suggest we should still believe those theories because they were around for thousands of years more than our current "theories"?

Being the longest held theory is not equivalent to being correct.

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I myself think the Big Bang Theory is full of crap that only a liberal science teacher would believe.

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Everyone who is a scientist is a liberal? The Catholic Church is full of liberals? Liberals in the South aren't deeply religious? lol. Religion has been around much longer that the Big Bang theory. It took mankind a long time to figure out that the Earth wasn't the center of the Universe. In fact later on in history, to even state that the Sun wasn't the center of the Universe (which was a rightfully a popular stance) was cause for execution or torture. So it's no surprise thousands of years went by before accurate observations could be made in reference to the cosmos. But going along the lines that a "religion is older than the big bang" you are absolutely correct, in fact go further, during the time of the bible's first testament, much older "pagan" religions were already established so their method of religion must be the right one, after all they are older. Do you realize it wasn't until the last century that mankind finally realized that germs and virus infections were what caused disease. Before that it was demons.

//edit Sorry didn't look at the date, came up at the top of my list for some reason.

Somebody bumped this thread so I decided to reply to it since it's already been drug up...

From what I've read here, it seems like you could call Athiesm and Evolutionism religions too. Both try and answer the same questions, it's just they try to answer them without the use of a god. Does a religion necessarily have to focus on a god? I think it comes down to what you find easier to believe: a belief in eternal matter or a belief in an eternal god. Either all matter that exists has *always* existed or there is a god that has always existed that created all matter that exists.

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In the end, the root question always comes down to "if there is no God, how did we get here?" to which I respond "how did God get there?"

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I suppose that's the same principle, except perhaps *slightly* more basic just b/c it goes back to the existence of matter and not our existence. There's a lot more to it of course, but I think that's what it boils down to.

I personally choose to believe that God (I'm aware that "God" is a step beyond "a god") has always existed just because I find it difficult to believe that so many incredibly complex things could come about on their own without intelligent design. There are many who find no traces of intelligent design. I look at stuff like how we have so many different systems in our bodies running in tandem to keep us alive. Our ability to think marvels me. Heh, I marvel that I am able to marvel :p . The convenient fact that water is the only chemical that won't freeze solid first (it's the only chemical that is lighter when solid which makes ice float and strangely act as an insulator allowing animals to live underneath) or how a solar eclipse can be so perfect....I see stuff like that as intelligent design while many others choose to see it as chance.

I suppose this is what the most basic decision comes down to, but no matter which one you choose, you still probably have "religion" if you count athiesm and evolutionism. Anybody agree/disagree?

*edit*
Hah, RoadClosed noticed that it was old too :D ^.