thread: 2005-08-09 : The New Open House 2: Religion
On 2005-09-25, Thevail wrote:
Disagreement noted NInJ.
But I'm not sure the guilt anf fault are so much Catholic ideas, maybe generally Christian ones, but Hindus also do a lot of things as "tests" of faith. So do some Muslim extremists.
I do agree though that not all religions do. So conceptual religions like Taoism for example may largely be excused from the following diatribe :)
I think though that it seems to be a part of some human condition to first realize that you can think about thinking, then try to develop some sort of system for self monitoring. Which seems to inevitably become a part of society and gets applied to all people not just an individual, and then becomes sanctified as a religion. I mean did we really need any "prophet" to tell us not to harm others, or kill others, or not to take other peoples things. I believe that most people have parents who point that out before we can read, much less cognitively participate in any religion.
But most of the "major" religions of the world seem to place an awful lot of emphasis on an individual believing unswervingly and having "faith" not only in whatever the main concepts of that religion are, but also in all the social status quo defending codicils that get written into it by people over time. That's where Faith and Guilt usually rear their pointy little heads. Because if you think deeply about what you REALLY believe you may very well not believe that some of those codicils are all that necessary.
And that's when the guilt sirens go off, for a lot of people. In an "Oh GREAT OMNIPOTENT BEING, please forgive me because I don't believe everything I'm supposed to!" sort of way.
And I still think forcing yourself to have faith is impossible, without, I should say, turning your whole existance into something based on an initial lie. Well, or possibly going crazy.
Which is not to say that there aren't people who do have faith. And if it works for you stick with it by all means! I'm so glad that there are people who are at peace with themselves. It must be a really comforting thing.
But because those people do have the faith that they and others feel they should have, they don't really have to deal with the whole guilt thing.
Thevail
This makes NInJ go "What major religions?"
Spell it out: how do the major religions do this? Which major religions are you talking about?
Please, give specific examples about how faith is central to those religions.
