Rob the word of God of its credibility?


Based on my belief that there is only one God, only that we all give Him a different name.

In the eyes of God we are all equal.

Yet, in most religious dogmas there are always some people more equal than others.
Most of these dogmas claim to be the only one, and with promises to the followers,
And threats to those who follow another dogma or none at all, the differences start.
Followers look down on those who don’t follow, claiming they have the one and only truth.
Therefore I would call them self righteous. Which, ironically is against most of the main
Religious Dogmas.

Dogmas give guidelines on how to single certain people and groups out and judge them,
This, according to most main religious dogmas is not allowed.

Where is the equality?

In case you never noticed - All religions are built on hypocrisies, false logic, double standards, and an inability to accommodate the observable nature of reality and the the existence of other faiths.

This is one of an infinite number of inconsistencies.

Why do religions promote interpreting observation to fit the belief, rather than re-interpreting the belief to fit the observation?

No attack - Just an opinion.

Remember, most religions are based over centuries old ideals.Basic and good goals for thier followers. While still true today, tolerance has been lost to the few who are"God's Chosen".

I don't understand the connotation of "God's Chosen"

Yes, I have often found it puzzling how so many "religious" people seem to be very concerned with social status.

The religion itself often talks about loving one another and all being one etc... but there seems to also be a lot of talk about who was better than whom amongst the church members themselves and also about how members of other religions were not as good as members of this group...

But it's not just religious intolerence, I think people feeling like they need to be "better" than someone else is the basis for pretty much all intolerence, bigotry, etc.

I always have to ask: Why does someone else need to be "less" to make you feel better?

Hi Invisible,
Funny you should bring this up. I researching the other night, looking into the "doctrine" of various Christian beliefs. My intention was to do comparisons, to find out where the differences in the dogma stemmed from.

After several hours, what I discovered was that each sect has a doctrine and often the sect get's partitioned into churches, who also have their own doctrine. Now one would think, that the Lutheran faith would hold with the doctrines establised by Martin Luther - however, there are also Lutheran sects and there are differences between all their dogma.

I also found that most of this doctrine is extremely long and fairly formal. In reading much of it, I wondered, just how many of the "religious" even have a clue as to what's in their doctrine? Especially in this age, where people move from place to place and fill a space in a pew in a church under the same "catagory/sect" as they came from, never knowing how the doctrine has changed.

In the end, after about 5 hours I came to the same conclusions I've had for years. There are only two similarities consistant within each Christian doctrine, God, is creator and Jesus is God made man.

If all scripture was suddenly lost to the world, and all there was, was a belief that a single God created the univese and that he visited humanity as a human named Jesus - I wonder
what kinds of doctrine would follow with only those two references??????

Long wrote:
” In case you never noticed - All religions are built on hypocrisies, false logic, double standards, and an inability to accommodate the observable nature of reality and the the existence of other faiths.”

This isn’t true. There are religions that don’t do these things. However, all of those religions are based on the pantheistic view that we are the universe.

This is how I believe. Although, I confess that I don’t follow any particular organized religion. If I did, it would probably be Taoism or Zen Buddhism, or possibly a religion of the Native American Indians such as Sitting Bull believed in.

I steer clear of adhering to any specific religion because I’m not prepared to necessarily back up or stand behind another man’s specific ideas or proclamations which all organized religions ultimately become contaminated by.

However, having said all of that, the general natural pantheistic view is one where we are seen as being the universe perceiving itself, and the ultimate conclusion is that the universe is an inseparable whole. Everything is connected.

In this “Religious view” or “Spiritual view” there is no dogma that proclaims how things must be. Whatever the universe is, is what it is. In other words, if we discover that we have evolved out of it, then that’s the way things are. Of course, that fits with the pantheistic view anyway. In fact, so far we haven’t discovered anything about the universe that conflicts with the pantheistic view. If we did, we would need to consider that. But it’s pretty hard to imagine finding something about the universe that would deny the pantheistic view.

About the only thing that could deny it would be for an actual personal individual Godhead to make an appearance. That seems to be a highly unlikely scenario. Even in the Biblical stories the Godhead almost never appears to the masses. All accounts of having actually seen any Godhead have been hearsay from just a few individuals. Jesus of course wouldn't count since he didn't not "appear" as a Godhead, but rather he "appeared" as mortal man and in fact did die just like any other mortal man.

In any case, there are religions that don’t represent hypocrisies, false logic, double standards, or have an inability to accommodate the observable nature of reality. Pantheism is certianly that view. Moreover, the pantheistic view does not require that anyone believe it. If a person wants to believe in the Wizard of Oz it won’t hurt them, unless they do things based on that belief that are detrimental to their health or the health of those around them.

In other words, if they start claiming that everyone must believe in the Wizard of Oz, then they’re causing negative problems. Only then will a pantheist speak out and say, “Hey, if you’re going to be bugging me with your beliefs, how about if I bug you back with mine?”

I can only say that personally, I believe they can.

I have a personal relationship with God, consider myself Christian but do not belong to a religion.

For me personally - no. The possible existence of a God is independant from the conduct of humans. My atheism is not effected by my opinion on religious beliefs. All people could be wrong about God, and there could still be a God. And, I have a high opinion of the quakers and the amish and some other theistic groups, but they could be good people, slightly deluded.

Socially, yes, I think many are turned off from theism because of poor conduct of certain theistic groups - and that makes me sad. Generic theism is not evil, and is good/healthy for many.

Hm,
I got a few responses here,
but I wonder where the people are who live within these dogmas.
Have they nothing to say at all?

Inv -- But doesn't "Us vs. Them" always carry at least the unpsoken connotation that the Us is better than the Them? -- morally, intellectually, physically, financially, governmentally, etc. -- doesn't have to really be limited to a religion thing.

The "common enemy" (unbeliever, Communist, racial or religious minority, whatever) always carries a stench about him, even if it's only smellable to the ones doing the smelling. As such the "common enemy" is a useful tool to get the multitude of sheep to rally, when a "leader" needs some support....as seen on TV a few years back.

In answer to your initial question -- I see nothing in God or in the words that carries any credibility whatsoever to begin with!

It can for sure

There's an old quotation that says something like "Good people do good things, and evil people do evil things, but to get a good person to do an evil thing, that takes religion"

People can be at heart completely well meaning, and completely convinced they are doing what is absolutely best, and do some really bad stuff to other people simply out of delusion.

I consider myself a Christian, and definately believe in God and Jesus, but outside of that I have trouble narrowing it down. Faith has no basis really, so it's hard to fault somebody for citing a lack of evidence.

It also says in the Bible though, don't judge unless you want to be judged. And a WHOLE lot of people are going to be in some serious trouble if that's the case.

Odlam,

You wrote:

"... Faith has no basis really, so it's hard to fault somebody for citing a lack of evidence..."

That's all there is. Trying to explain, justify, or prove your faith and beliefs, whatever it is you chose 'freely' to base it all upon for yourself, simply corrupts your faith.

That's the beauty about faith: No proof, no expalination, no justification required, and as a bonus, no possible disagreement, or cause for religious conflicts.

Beauty 'Odlam'! You seem wise and young. Maybe there is hope for this planet yet !!!

Well thank you very much man, that's quite a compliment. My preacher used to say that back when I was little, so I can't take too much credit. Faith has to be taken on faith.

Stick around the 'religious chat' 'odlam' , we need all the clear headed, straight thinking folks we can round up.

"... Faith as to be taken on faith..." that's all there is! Wouldn't life be so much simpler if only people 'got' just that simple little sentence!!! No justifying, No proving, and no more 'My truth is the real truth thumping' !!!

Very refreshing indeed!!!