All REM references aside, religion has caused pandemonium across the world since its creation. Religion has started wars, broke up families and slaughtered millions in the name of various Gods. Our entire society is founded on the principles laid down in the Holy Bible. Billions of people across the world look to the sky and silently ask their God for help in their darkest hour. I don’t buy a single word of any of it.
While I’m no atheist, I take serious issue with the religions of today be it Christian, Muslim or Catholic. Alluding to the lyrics of John Lennon, can you imagine if there was no heaven or hell for people to fear. I’m sure many would claim that the world would erupt into the largest display of decadence hereto seen. However, I offer a different point of view. People are going to do what they choose to do regardless of the consequences; be it jail or some fiery hole below us. Whoever created us gave us the ability to reason and choose our own morals. And because of that, humanity should strive in itself to be better individuals…not because an invisible God and ancient text tell them to do so.
I view the Holy Bible as a sort of morbid Aesop’s Fable. Baring everything else, the sheer amount of people that God killed in the Bible is staggering. I read almost the entire Bible during my brief stay with the Christian youth group Straightway and I found God to be more of a petulant child than an all-knowing Father. God is far from a kind and loving man, rather he is a rampant megalomaniac that slays individuals for the slightest indiscretion.
As this article may come across as angry and pointed, I will interject here to elaborate on faith. I honestly believe that faith has helped humanity in unimaginable ways, even if it is an intangible placebo. I understand that, given our small stature in this grand universe, we must look to something in order to convince ourselves that there is a better place, a master plan for us all. Without faith, a large part of humanity feels that they have no reason to go on living. Faith is a powerful and potent tool and I am loathe to try to take that away from anyone.
I suppose I am writing this because it is just hard for me to fathom how much stock my fellow men put into religion. My main issue there is that you can’t pick and choose which parts of religion you wish to follow. It doesn’t work like that. Having sex before marriage? You’re violating your religion. I laugh on the inside when I see that my friends have constructed some sort of archaic “custom” religion that suits themselves. They follow the parts of the Bible and “God’s word” that they want to and attend church on the rare occasion they feel like it and, in their mind, they have fulfilled their obligations to their Lord. I’ve got news for you, if there is an afterlife, I doubt the powers-that-be will take too kindly to your a la carte religion.
I just hope that people will begin to think. I want individuals to be good people because they are good people, not because an invisible God or book told them to be. I believe if someone is a bad person, and only keeps those bad actions inside because of religion, then he/she is still a bad person.
Once again, I must state that I am not an anarchist, atheist, agnostic, pagan, wiccan, pacifist, or any other slanderous term that will no doubt come my way. I am a deist and believe in a creator. I am a Freemason and believe there was a Great Architect. However, I am wholeheartedly against the logical fallacy that is religion and those that would force it on others. I am against those that would bend religion to fit their own goals and, in the process, hurt others. I am for a world united in the common goal of good morals and sound ethics. I constantly think of the biblical story of Babylon’s Tower and how God scattered mankind and cursed each with a different language to stop them from easily communicating with each other. What sort of holy father would do that?
Religion has never started a war. People have started wars in the name of religion, to be sure. But religion is not the problem, Man in his fallen nature, his sinful nature, is. If we were able to follow God and His word 100% of the time with 100% free will, there would never be a problem.
We are not to fear heaven or hell. In fact, hell is, doctrinally, rejecting the love of God permanently. Heaven is being present in the total love of God.
The Bible is not a fable, it is the history of Man, from the time of nomadic tribes which constantly fought and killed each other, to approximately 60 years after Christ died. Certainly there are wars, murder and mayhem. This demonstrates the fallen nature of man. It also has holy men in there, telling people that they are acting wrong and by doing so, losing favor with God. When the give him their all, he saves them and takes care of them until they forget him again. Enter Jesus who proclaims a better way of living.
You are right about people nowadays picking and choosing what they want to do and believe. That’s not the way God wants us to live, witness the sorry state of the world today. That’s why I’m a Catholic, as totally in love with God as is humanly possible, and I find ways to love him more every day.
I think freemasonry is turning you away from the one true God, though…
The Bible is not a fable? Then how come nothing as insane as Sodom & Gomorrah has happened since? How come there is no evidence of the entire world flooding? Why did Emperor Constantine DECIDE that Jesus was the Lord in the Council of Nicea? Why was the Red Sea parted and where is the Burning Bush?
Are you a Freemason? Do you know anything about Freemasons? Do you know that a requirement to join is to worship the one God? Maybe you think that way because the Catholic Church abhors Masons and their freethinking such as the edict in the early 1600s which granted the Catholic Church power to execute Freemasons just for BEING Freemasons.
If Hell is only turning away God’s love, why it is depicted as a place of evildoers and suffering? If God truly loves us as a Father, he shouldn’t pick and choose who gets to go to Heaven. If you had two children and one of them was awful, rebellious and went against everything you stood for, would you send him to jail for eternity knowing you didn’t have to?
Because God deepened his covenant. There is evidence, you just don’t accept it. Emperor Constantine did no such thing. In fact, when he legalized Christianity (AD312), he wasn’t yet a Christian. He converted on his deathbed. Nicea happened in AD325. When I get to heaven, I’ll be sure and ask God why he parted the Red Sea and where is the burning bush.
I know enough about free masonry to know that you only have to believe in a supreme being. I know enough about free masonry to know that they teach heresy.
Hell is the choice of the human, not the choice of God. A loving father nurtures his children, but tolerates no evil. He loves the child but hates his evil actions. A loving father separates the person from his actions. But it’s the person who chooses against God, not the other way around.
Care to point me to this evidence? Because I’ve never seen a credible news source (such as Discovery, Nat Geo, etc) report on any evidence. And yes, Emperor Constantine did do that:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicene_Creed#Comparison_between_creed_of_325_and_creed_of_381
Please, make sure you educate yourself before debating. And you obviously DON’T know enough about freemasonry. But, I can let that one slide because you are Catholic and I know how you people are.
As for your last paragraph, I can’t even respond to that because the entire thing is one big piece of rhetoric that avoids my original point.
http://www.earthage.org/EarthOldorYoung/scientific_evidence_for_a_worldwide%20flood.htm
and others. But I question your sources…National Geographic? Hah! Discovery Channel? Nice fluff, little science. Wikipedia? Good starting point, but check the facts. FACT: Constantine legalized Christianity in 312. Edict of Milan, look it up. FACT: Council of Nicaea 325. Nicene Creed written, which AFFIRMS (not invents) what was believed for 300 years prior. Try looking up Ignatius of Antioch, Iranaeus, the letters of Paul, the letters of Clement of Rome. These all show the belief that Jesus is God.
Regarding freemasonry, I’m not debating it. I know that it’s a pagan secret society. No debate there.
You can’t respond to the last paragraph because it is damn hard to refute the absolute truth…
Ha, ha, HA. Love it. I love bible bumpers. They’re my faves.
I picked up a bible a few weeks ago. I was cleaning my room and found the one I received when I was a child. Needless to say it has stayed in storage for quite some time.
When I opened the bible, just for the hell of it, I opened it directly to Ecclesiastes. So, out of curiosity, I started reading. It made a bit of sense to me. We work all our lives, but many have nothing to show for it, and it seems useless. I kept reading. It wasn’t changing my idea about the bible and it being fables, but it made a little bit of sense.
Then, Ecclesiastes, at one point, started in on women. I can’t find exactly how it was worded in my bible, but this gives you an idea:
I found one upright man among a thousand,
but not one upright woman among them all.
There’s basically an entire section that degrades women. I put the bible down. That was enough for me.
I love how this guy thinks that the Discovery Channel is “nice fluff” and that NatGeo is a joke. And then he says there is no debate that the Masons are a pagan secret society. I can’t help but laugh.
Mo: I know you’re exactly right! You have to love a book that people worship which depicts women as lower than dogs.
Where in the physical world is heaven and hell?
In this vast and incomprehensible universe, where resides the physical place of HELL and of HEVEN?
If one cannot answer that, then a new question arises. If not in the physical, where then, do the places of heaven and hell reside?
Perhaps you heart. Perhaps your mind. Perhaps your imagination. If the body dies and there is a soul that exits and finds a new plane of existence to occupy, how do we know it? Are we conscious of it? Can we report our findings back to our loved ones or scientists?
If when our bodies die and we have no soul that exits and occupies an un-known plane of existence, then are these places and our gods and our faith just the dust that we all eventually become?
In the third law of thermodynamics, it states that matter can neither be created nor destroyed in this universe. All the matter that exists, existed at the moment the unverse was created. This can be, no matter what doctrine you believe, either be the stuff of the big bang or of god(s). We existed, albeit in a different form, or no form at all, the second the universe existed, by anomillical chemical reactions or by the touching of a black canvas by the finger of the Christian god. (insert the innumerable other creation myths here as well)
But the question of Heaven and of Hell has yet to be answered.
Are they physical places and if they are, we should be able to find them. If not by science, then by the Bible. Does the Bible tell us where Heaven and Hell are? Is Hell below the earth and Heaven above? But is the earth’s crust and core, all gas and fire and rock and element…is that not what we have proven lies within the cavernous belly of the earth? And of heaven, the firmament, have we not proved without reasonable doubt that above us is in fact ozone and atmosphere and gas and sky and space and more and more space?
So if the physical is out, then where exactly is heaven and hell. If not the physical, then these places exist in the spiritual realm. A realm that we have no proof even exists. It would take a soul to get to this realm, that we have yet to prove actually exists. Sure, there are those in society who believe that they can communicate with the deceased and maybe there is some merit to it, since we are never really, truly, or scientifically GONE, just exist as particles and matter that become something else. Perhaps we get put back together again, parts of us anyway, in other things. A blade of grass, a tree, a ray of light. Perhaps there are those that can tap into that energy and SEE something that we do not.
Or, it is all a fantasy constructed to moralize a once savage and rabid people who were determined to erradicate themselves.
I always think of the Egyptians. So obsessed with thier security in the afterlife that pharos would have their servants killed and embalmed upon thier death, buried with sacred ornaments, food, gold, protection. Thier organs carefully removed and perserved for re-unification in the next realm. Immortality. And in a lot of ways, I think they achieved that. Thousands of years later being found again, dug up, studied, preserved…immortal. Was that not thier intent? Immortality. Ironic that what they sought, they found in THIS world and not the NEXT.
To place a recall on one of my previous statements, it is not the 3rd law of thermodynamics, but the theory of the conservation of matter, that states matter can neither be created nor destroyed in the universe. Similar to the theory of the conservation of energy.
The 3rd law is relative only to the randomness of particles and that at no point, can the randomness of particles be stopped completely by reaching a temprature of absolute zero.
Similar, but not what I was trying to say.
And for the record, religion has started wars. Muslim extremists state clearly that it is the will of Allah that the infidels be erradicated. A case could be made that the statements are interpretations of thier texts and not the REAL intent of Allah, however, the same could be said about the Bible. So are we to believe that religious texts are only being interpreted correctly when they are interpreted for good intentions and somehow, those that use thier religious texts and beliefs for ill are in fact just mis-interperating thier religion, or are just generally bad people. I would think that if a religious text even remotely left violence and destruction open for interpretation, then the irrationality of the crimes committed in the name of the god or religion could be rooted directly in the religions themselves.