Religion Isn't That Bad...

[paralizedfish 0]

Y'know, religion isn't that bad. It promotes morals and ethics, it can take the most crooked individual and put him on the straight and arrow (it did wonders for Bush) and it brings people together. So, yeah, religion looks good on paper. But y'know what else?SO DID COMMUNISM.And the irony is that if there is a God, that is, a God in the sense that is described in ANY major religion, then right now he's shamefully shaking his head while he watches us jack off to our lastest STOLEN porn and enjoying our indulgent freedoms while we pretend to follow his teachings. The rabbis are eating pork and the priests are fondeling chior boys and everyone is sinner in some way, in some form, according to these religious documents. But y'know what else?NOT EVERYONE IS A BAD PERSON. So what does this tell us? Quite simply, religion is good... to an extent. And all the wars and battles and everything bad that has ever happened in the name of "God" happened because they took "God" too seriously. They took RELIGION too seriously.

[abartar 0]

Well religion is nothing but the teachings to be and act in a socity. All religion teaches one thing broadly that is to be good to one another.What is wrong is how we interpret things...saying in religions and use it as per our whimps and fancy.Tell me which reliagion teaches to be cruel to other, to kill or hurt others but for the sake and name of religion we do what ever we wnat and what we our pleased with and then give it the name of religion. The way we preach religion . the way and the things that we our thought in the name of religion. We all our responsible citizens of our countries...so let's be good to others and to ourselves.If you hate the name religion give those teaching some other name. What is more important is to be good to others.Mind you Religion, rituals, sprituality, etc are not the same... they might be lingked some way or the other.

[adamok 0]

I consider myself religious and believe in one God. However, I have often wondered whether being religious = being moral = being ethical. It should be but sometimes we get people who seem religious doing all short of wrong things (like killing people in the name of their God! for example). So how do we measure religiousity? It is by the number of time you pray, or go to the church/ temple/ mosque, charity work, starving yourself, etc. etc. Maybe all of these are the outward showy things considered important when it is what is inside you that really matters.

[mitchellmckain 0]

You know after watching a film like "Water" one can really get the impression that religion is a tool of those in power to get those without the power to tamely accept their abuses and injustices without fighting back. But what this point of view fails to realize is that these religions were not constructed for this purpose but twisted later for this purpose. Anything can be twisted and abused as tools for those in power and I don't even think that this is done consciously. The real problem is lies in the nature of human beings to manipulate others and everything else to serve their own desires. We are all victims of a spiritual disease that make the maxim "power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely", a fundamental truth of human nature.The irony is that many if not all religions seek to combat this very spritual disease. Yet as always in the battle between good and evil, evil often seems to have the upper hand, and as a result even the small victories of good requires some faith that a victory is possible, because the evidence often makes it look rather hopeless. Building and creating things requires hard work and imagination, but destruction is so much easier. Evil derives from laziness and complacency.

[iGuest 3]

Since this thread seems to tackle many different issues, I'll try to express my opinion as briefly as I can, and hope that I nonetheless convey my thoughts correctly and thoroughly.

 

 

I'm an agnostic, and I thus don't believe that it's possible for us to know for sure whether there's actually a god or not. But after studying a good number of current major religions, I came to the conclusion that none of those religions can be a revelation by the Supreme Being that created this universe, if that being does exist.

 

 

But that's my own conviction. Yes, I believe it's built on very sound grounds, but I suppose that's how everyone feels about their belief/logic/religion/etc. So the following thoughts will assume that no religion is a Godly one, i.e. revealed by a God.

 

 

First of all, it seems that a lot of religious people believe that, without religion, people will turn immoral and unethical, and basically become thieves and murderers. I tend to wholeheartedly disagree. Religion don't have a monopoly on ethics and morals, as any objective observer would most likely conclude. Just compare Europe (as an example of a continent with a predominantly non-religious population) to North America (as an example of a continent with a predominantly religious population, statistics-wise).

 

 

I admit that most religions do promote ethics and morals. The problem is that those morals are static. They don't change with time; they can't. For example, in ancient Egypt, it was a rather common practice for a man to marry his sister. It was even a royal custom. It wasn't "immoral" back then. But religion came and made it so. And now, incestuous relations are a spreading phenomenon. I'm not advocating either situation here; I'm merely trying to show that religious morals have to always remain the same, even if time proves that they aren't practical or reasonable.

 

 

Naturally, there are those morals that are universally acceptable, such as honesty, good manners, etc. But then again, religion doesn't have a monopoly on those, either. Most philosophers, thinkers, even politicians promote the same thing.

 

 

 

Conclusion #1: One can't say that religion is the only way to be "good." (I won't delve into a critical discussion of goodness now, don't worry )

 

 

 

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Now back to the original idea of this thread, which was "Religion Isn't That Bad..."

 

 

Honestly, I largely agree!

 

 

You see, just as religion doesn't have a monopoly on morals, it doesn't have a monopoly on ignorance, cruelty, or self-indulgence, either. Those are human traits; it's up to US to choose which traits we adopt. Religions doesn't make us "good," but it doesn't make us "bad," either. BUT...

 

 

Most religions provide a "Control Mechanism" for their clergies. Be it Christianity, Islam, Judaism, or any other religion, their "Holy Books" contain words. Words are interpretable by people. And for most religious folk, they accept the interpretation of the Clergy as true. So it becomes up to the clergy to decide what those "holy" texts say... THEY get to deem *this* good and *that* bad. So if the clergy is corrupted, the religious followers are consequentially corrupted. If the clergy declares a Holy War is in order, then it's time for a blood bath, because hey, God wills it, right?

 

 

Conclusion #2:

Religion isn't good or bad in and of itself... it only has the potential to be either this or that. Or even both, as an aspect of it can be good while another is bad.

 

 

 

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And, to conclude this long (and, I know, rather boring ) post, I'll say this...

 

 

If a certain religion can be attributed to the Creator, and the Creator tells us (through the texts of that religion) to either follow it or go to Hell (quite literally), then I believe this religion should be followed, no questions asked!

 

 

But, even then, we have to come up with a way to limit the infinite power the clergy has. And by "we," I mean believers AND non-believers. Because this is a matter that affects all of us, as human beings who share the same space, time, and dimension.

 

 

Finally, I apologize for my faulty use of English grammar. I tried my best to make this post as comprehensible as possible, and I'm sorry if it wasn't quite so.

 

 

 

 

All the best