Recently had the privilege of going through a list of several religions, and as I suspected, none of em really appealed to me. Meh. They all had a few similarities and a few differences.

I dunno if I'm going to continue reading the Bible. I'm split about 50/50. And YES, my freakin' mind is open when it came to reading that book. I pictured it all happening and stuff, but meh. If I'm not going to read the texts from other religions, why pick and choose (from an outsider's opinion)? It's just... even if I read it, I'm not going to follow its teachings... and personally I find it boring.

I'll admit that you guys (well, the 'Good Points' crew) taught me that religion has created way fewer wars than crooked politicians and misguided mobs (although they may be associated with religion in some way). You'd think over the millenia we'd have gotten the politics thing right, and I guess democracy is a step in the right direction, so, hurray for us.

Summary thus far: Good chance I'm done with the Bible, and I've realized how dangerous politicians can be when they're backed by mobs. Even if they're stupid.

On we go, then. So, laws are good for keeping society structured, and religion can help keep people stay... good. Some people would probably stay nice without either, but such people are in short supply.

Religion's pretty good at comforting people about confusing things that aren't proven. I guess this is where religion gets into a feud with science, especially on the BIG questions where neither side can prove anything (whether or not they want to). I like imagining the possibile answers as much as the next person, but I'm quite satisfied admitting that I have no idea. Maybe that's a good thing that could bring all of humanity a bit closer together - we know **** -all. If we ever do solve the biggies, a lot of people will find that the various conclusions they jumped to were wrong. It's unpleasant to be proven wrong, but that's not why I have no beliefs written in stone. The number of different creation theories (spiritually based or otherwise) is impressive considering how little we can prove.

And as for the spiritual ones that are part of a religion, well, every religion has uber-faithful people, miracles, prophets, etc... But since they're all based on faith, they can't prove each other wrong. This is pretty much why I see all religions as equals. And then each religion has people praying for people in other religions, while in turn they are being prayed for by other religions, while in turn they are being targeted by a car bomber, okay so I see some religions as worse.

Anywho, it's been a surprisingly enlightening debate, although we didn't solve any big problems (I hope nobody expected that). And thanks to the magic of dynamic IP's, the Samus Forum is fair game again, so bye to all.

I think I kept this fairly un-controversial (compared to my other posts), so hopefully no one will feel it necessary to paste a three page essay as a farewell.

*edit*
And so no one gets too picky, wherever I say "every" or "all" I really mean "some" or "most" or "a lot of". Meehaw.

[This message has been edited by CheeseStorm (edited February 16, 2005).]

well, you probably could see this coming but, don't stop reading the Bible.

quote:

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religion has created way fewer wars than crooked politicians and misguided mobs

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Soterion Studios

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-- All that is gold does not glitter,
Deep roots are not touched by the frost,
The old that is strong does not wither,
Not all those who wander are lost.

--D-SIPL

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"One World. One Web. One Program." -Microsoft promotional advertisement
"Ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Fuhrer!" -Adolf Hitler

Naturalistic Philosophy != Science

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I dont like siggys. They are to hard to think up :(