ATTN: Theists

Can any of you give me a valid reason why you chose your religion over countless others

Because mah book says so! All praise the great eagle lord.

[fallinghouse]

It's not about having valid reasons, because on this level, they don't exist.

So no one belonging to a religion can answer this question? What a shock

Because I don't understand how anything can just pop out of a hat? God had the power to do it, he is everything. He just "was".



If you don't get that, then life as you know it, well, it just doesnt make any darn sense.

[fallinghouse]

Why can people say God just 'was', yet everything else needs to pop out of somewhere?

[Rizzo in a box]

I belong to and find wisdom in just about every religion.

quote:Originally posted by Rizzo in a box:

I belong to and find wisdom in just about every religion.

You are a wise man, and I agree completely.

Furthermore: I am not a religious person but if I had to take a guess on why most people picked there religion I'd say 75% of them we're raised with those beliefs, and the other 25%.. well why else would you believe in something?... because your logic and morals decieve you into thinking that it must be true.

[RAOVQ]

quote:Originally posted by Rizzo in a box:

I belong to and find wisdom in just about every religion.

i find no wisdom in any. at least, nothing that you won't hear from a first year psychology student. i don't really consider that wisdom, more a cheap trick.

quote:Originally posted by RAOVQ:

i find no wisdom in any. at least, nothing that you won't hear from a first year psychology student. i don't really consider that wisdom, more a cheap trick.

It is not about reading and listening, and believing.

Words are just our way of communicating, it is taking in the knowledge someone has left behind and making it your own.

Wisdom can be found in any literature, for wisdom isn't the literature itself it is waht you make of it.

Call me a troll.

[IanBoyd3]

quote:Originally posted by Rizzo in a box:

I belong to and find wisdom in just about every religion.

There are some good themes you can pull from religion, because there are some good themes you can pull from every good story.

The bible has Jesus' self sacrifice, laying down his life for others. Yet, it also has lots of horrible, disgusting brutality (old testament mostly) which we should throw out.

In Tim O'Brien's "The Things They Carried," there are many good themes, and good ideas, but there are also the bad ones (although truthful). For example, the moral ambiguity of war where there isn't any clear cut solution. Still, there are the ideas that the dead always live on in our daydreams and imagination.

In every story there is good and evil, just like there is in the real world. We should learn from all of them.

This doesn't mean, though, that we should dedicate our lives to believing whole heartedly in the stories.

Tim O'Brien makes an important distinction between story truth and happening truth. Sometimes, stories that aren't technically true, convey the real emotions better than just the facts. They give you the same feelings that the people who were there felt, and in that sense the stories, although fiction, are truer then the stories of what actually happened.

The bible stories mostly didn't happen. Yet, in some ways, that doesn't change the fact that they are true.

If Christians understood this, the world would be a better place.

quote:Originally posted by Florida Snow:

Because I don't understand how anything can just pop out of a hat? God had the power to do it, he is everything. He just "was".



If you don't get that, then life as you know it, well, it just doesnt make any darn sense.

So how can God just 'pop out of a hat'?

[Rizzo in a box]

quote:Originally posted by Kooper0:

So how can God just 'pop out of a hat'?

Through absurd, self-proving paradoxes.

quote:Originally posted by fallinghouse:

[b]It's not about having valid reasons, because on this level, they don't exist.

b]

Exactly. Absurdism.



[This message has been edited by Lord. Better Than You (edited 02-05-2007).]