Religion is backed by the god of religion - Satan the Devil. Religion divides and afflicts.
Faith, spirituality and the full true "Good News" is backed by the God of Abraham. Faith unites and heals.
"Religion is a bureaucracy between man and God".
is all religon crap?
by thesaint 45 Replies latest jw friends
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punkofnice
Religion...urgh! “A fire-breathing dragon lives in my garage.” Suppose … I seriously make such an assertion to you. Surely you’d want to check it out, see for yourself…. “Show me,” you say. I lead you to my garage. You look inside and see a ladder, empty paint cans, an old tricycle—but no dragon. “Where’s the dragon?” you ask. “Oh, she’s right here,” I reply, waving vaguely. “I neglected to mention that she’s an invisible dragon.” You propose spreading flour on the floor of the garage to capture the dragon’s footprints. “Good idea,” I say, “but this dragon floats in the air.” Then you’ll use an infrared sensor to detect the invisible fire. “Good idea, but the invisible fire is also heatless.” You’ll spray-paint the dragon and make her visible. “Good idea, except she’s an incorporeal dragon and the paint won’t stick.” And so on. I counter every physical test you propose with a special explanation of why it won’t work. Now, what’s the difference between an invisible, incorporeal, floating dragon who spits heatless fire and no dragon at all? If there’s no way to disprove my contention, no conceivable experiment that would count against it, what does it mean to say that my dragon exists? Your inability to invalidate my hypothesis is not at all the same thing as proving it is true. Claims that cannot be tested, assertions immune to disproof are veridically worthless, whatever value they may have in inspiring us or in exciting our sense of wonder. What I’m asking you do comes down to believing, in the absence of evidence, on my say-so. The only thing you’ve really learned from my insistence that there’s a dragon in my garage is that something funny is going on inside my head. You’d wonder, if no physical tests apply, what convinced me. The possibility that it was a dream or a hallucination would certainly enter your mind. But then why am I taking it so seriously? Maybe I need help. At the least, maybe I’ve seriously underestimated human fallibility…. Now another scenario: Suppose it’s not just me. Suppose that several people of your acquaintance, including people who you’re pretty sure don’t know each other, all tell you they have dragons in their garages—but in every case the evidence is maddeningly elusive. All of us admit we’re disturbed at being gripped by so odd a conviction so ill-supported by the physical evidence. None of us is a lunatic. We speculate about what it would mean if invisible dragons were really hiding out in garages all over the world, with us humans just catching on. I’d rather it not be true, I tell you. But maybe all those ancient European and Chinese myths about dragons weren’t myths after all… Gratifyingly, some dragon-size footprints in the flour are now reported. But they’re never made when a skeptic is looking. An alternative explanation presents itself: On close examination it seems clear that the footprints could have been faked. Another dragon enthusiast shows up with a burnt finger and attributes it to a rare physical manifestation of the dragon’s fiery breath. But again, other possibilities exist. We understand that there are other ways to burn fingers besides the breath of invisible dragons. Such “evidence”—no matter how important the dragon advocates consider it—is far from compelling. Once again, the only sensible approach is tentatively to reject the dragon hypothesis, to be open to future data, and to wonder what the cause might be that so many apparently sane and sober people share the same strange delusion. —Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World
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Pistoff
What a great quote from Carl Sagan.
An equally important question (next to the original post) is why do people seek out a religion or church, and why do they stay?
Wouldn't it be great to see a graph showing who believes in God as the pastor describes him, who are there only for the sense of community and who are somewhere in between?
Some churches are great places to be, if the church has a social gospel sense and you don't take the teachings literally.
I think there are many who do just that.
But for most of us here, we were raised to believe literally, we were filled up with guilt and shaming from day one (you were born in SIN, remember?) and that message is not affirming.
I have always thought that the most successful witnesses (and other churchgoers maybe) are the ones who have learned what to ignore and who not to piss off.
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Simon
Every religion is started by a person. A man, or occassionally a women, thinks they know what God wants, that they have superior knowledge of his requirement, or a special connection with him. Some write a new holy book, others re-interpret an existing holy book, but claim only their interpretation is correct. They set up a religion, and for some unknown reason, other mindless humans actually believe them.
I remember a sketch by Jack Dee (UK commedian) where he pondered how religions get started because well ... when you have hundreds of thousands of members it's easy to get a few more but how do you get that first one? Do you walk up to someone in the street and say "I am Jesus" ... and occassionally, someone replies "are you?! That's a stoke of luck ... I will follow you !".
... and a new religion is born.
Or you can go the L Ron Hubbard approach and write sci-fi books.
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NewYork44M
Yes. However, just like junk food - it fulfills a need that most humans desire.
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Rattigan350
Yes.
I wish they would repeal the first amendment and ban all religion.