As much as I've known and seen I personally believe that all religions have decent amounts of true facts, and are overlooked or misunderstood. The bible alone has been edited, and reshaped several times. Why would a being with omnipotence leave room for human interference? Pushing aside the fact that the rules to abide by come with great benefits or consequences depending on how well you read it.
Then again an omnipotent being might be laughing at me right now, for my novice leveled intelligence and rationalization.
Alas I've never had an intelligent conversation with any animals. As far as an omnipotent being goes we seem to have this thing called freedom of choice. We do what we want! Always have! Everyone says the bible has been edited this and that but as far as I've read the important points are still there and I think that's what God would have us know. If you eat of this tree you'll die. Plain and simple! I've never gone wrong by respecting and honoring my mother and father. Teaches me to respect the wisdom of age. Sometimes I think we over complete religion! And bravo Jopo! All religions do have truth! Most are too busy bickering about who's right and who's wrong to realize it it seems.
Before I go around in circles, let's get two things absolutely clear.
1. It is estimated that around 800,000,000 people believe, or accept, the Holy Bible as the word of God. The rest of the world does not! This site is world wide, and not all members are Christian.
2. Too many members, especially the young, seem to think that Humans are not animals. Well, you can think again! We are mammals.We have exactly the same bone structure as all other mammals.We secrete, we defecate,we urinate, we are animals! And we are not descended from apes! We ARE apes! Just as different from all the other apes as a gorilla is different from a baboon!
I read something like that the other day actually. 90% of the entire world is religious. They believe in a higher authority of some sort. But only 30% of that 90 are Christians. And yes of course we are animals but I still have yet to see our fellow animals worshipping divine beings and practicing magick.
Honestly religion is always gonna cause hate. As above, so below is kinda the saying i guess?
Anyways, in my opinion religion is very useful. In terms of belief, if you have faith it can take you extremely far. In terms of some people whom are not so educated, they can be blinded by faith, thus claiming their way is the "true way" and if you don't follow it, you might as well live on the highway.
While debate of religion is good, and is expected. It should never be down to what religion is right. Because in reality, from other posts, religion was made by man to explain the world around them.
The bible, and the Adam's and Eve story, just proves this! Does it not?
In the old times, huge towns or country's made up exceptional myths that are still known, and followed today. Take the Greeks for example! There world evolved around a dozen gods and goddesses whom, all have had a major importance in one way or another. Demeter and persephone the myth? That showed or was believed to have been why winter happens, as we know it. In my practices i sometimes accompany this or value this. Because it shows how a mother and daughter will always be bound and loved forever. While the Greeks believed in a lot of wacky stuff, it created a fundamental ground for them. Encouraging them to live healthy, and be less discriminating. Unlike this day and age, some people say the Greeks were okay with homosexuality, or other things along those lines.
You can really see how over the years, decades, ect has changes the world. In terms of hopes, and beliefs.
Then there is the term of "Science". How the world was made, ahem...Big bang theory. Then that grew, and showed how us human beings were born from apes, and some other debate as we were first born from bacteria, or something along those lines.
So to me, what does religion mean to you? Because many claim to practice or believe something when in reality, they actually know little or nothing, of what they say they do.
That's because we have evolved a very complicated voice system. Very articulated. And very complicated languages. Other animals, as yet, do not have these. We have also evolved a higher intelligence. Although sometimes I doubt that! What that means is that we can think in the abstract; something other animals, as yet, cannot do. Although they do have "memory", so they are getting there!
I just find it very hard to believe that there are so many cultures, ethnic divisions, value systems and languages and people divided up all around the world from all walks of life and yet a good number of them have some form of religion. They weren't born with it they didn't learn it from animals, yet it's caught on and most importantly remained through wars, famines, ect ect for centuries. For me it's the very idea of religion and that it continues to exist. In the old days we attributed things we didn't understand to supernatural things but now we are more educated supposedly. We stopped believing in some things like the boogie man yet we easily accept wild ideas just because some scientists somewhere or another says it's true.
Science is realistic, but it doesn't always explain the unknown! They have explained so much however! The big bang theory, the laws of matter/states. Things like this, we would have never known. We would have never thought we would know it. Science though, has left the old ways, while we are more educated we are still blinded.
