RE: What Is The True Purpose Of Religion?
May 17, 2011 at 3:45 pm
(This post was last modified: May 17, 2011 at 4:21 pm by Zenith.)
(May 10, 2011 at 9:34 pm)JohnDG Wrote: Your absolutely right, Ive been contempt in understanding the main religions in the western world ive completely forgotten about those in the eastern. Mainly ive only studied Christianity, Catholicism and a little bit of Islam and Judaism. Take in not im not just studying the religions im studying the people that believe in it. Ive been to many churche's around my city and talked to many of the people, none of which are really interested in anything scientific some are hostile to it. Mainly the Catholics for some reason some which still believe in supernatural things like witches and trolls oddly. My model doesn't rightfully encompess the entire world because I havent studdied every religion mainly just the ones closest to me. But from what Ive seen and heard it fits my area quite well.
I live in United States, Lancaster California.
Im not picky but to me a Religion is Religion, therefore to me their all bad and science is the only answer.
"I've actually learned a small bit about buddhism and I don't believe it's truely a religion therefore is excluded. And I might actually practice it so I can get out of all the stupid christian group activities and crap because they narrow mindedly will think it to be a religion."
You are mostly right, but I don't agree with everything.
First off (it wasn't you who said that, but) the Dark Ages - it's quite a controversial issue, read the first section of this page
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_Ages_(historiography)
Now, how I see the history regarding Christianity & western culture is like this: Christianity was born and started to spread throughout the Pagan Roman Empire. It was simply a philosophical thing, with no authority or political power or something - people were free to join, free to leave, free to believe what they wanted. In the early 4th century it is accepted as an official religion, and was put in the form the pagan religion was - now they had churches (like pagan had temples) and the christians were divided into laymen and clergy (i.e. priests have been set by the state to deal with the matters of religion, as pagan priests existed to deal with the matters of the pagan deities - and were paid by the empire and ceased to pay taxes). Don't remember when the Roman Empire became to have the majority as christians, but now we talk about the Christian Roman Empire: it was latin (greek was also spoken in Balkans and modern Turkey, aramaic was spoken in east Mediterranean and egypt). Therefore, the Christian scriptures have been written in greek, latin (vulgata) and aramaic. People
knew these languages. The only problem is that the ruling class has set clergy to dictate everything: all how must be believed, understood, followed, etc. And all was generally dictated by councils formed of the important clergy, where even the Emperor could have participated and impose his view. Later we get the western part of the empire falling to pagans - the high culture of the western roman empire has fallen to barbarians, who did not care about culture, learning, and stuff (at least the early barbarian invaders). The eastern part of the Roman Empire continued. The russian states have been converted to christianity (and then, after the great schism they followed Constantinople in orthodoxy) in the 9th century, if I do not mistake - and the bible has been translated into their language then. Here, Islam has already taken the north africa and all middle-east, except the modern turkey. They still had christians among them, in that period. the greeks (i.e. what was left of the Roman Empire) had the greek translation of the Bible, and were following constantinople in teachings. The western christians were following the pope of Rome, and the religious language has been preserved as latin (though the common did not speak latin for centuries now). We jump to the reformation period: luckily for us, the leaders of reformation sought independence from the catholic pope, and to give the scriptures in the language of the people, and to clean themselves of the heresies (i.e. that which was not written in bible but imposed by the catholic clergy) of catholics. The bad luck is that their followers followed them blindly (i.e. they took them as prophets or something, seeing everything they, i.e. the reformation leaders believed as the absolute truth). Then the fall of Christianity begins (i.e. people's faith has been shaken after the things that happened, things like getting to have dozens of versions of what the bible says, things have gotten out of the pope's hands, catholics doing a lot of evil butchering people, once it happened, if I remember well, that there were 3 catholic popes at once, due to some political problems, etc.). And we have the Enlightenment Age (18th century), when people started to focus on reason and started to see religion as bullshit.
Conclusion: Christianity was not built to be a brainwash for the people. It only developed in that direction.
Quote:Ive been to many churche's around my city and talked to many of the people, none of which are really interested in anything scientific some are hostile to it.
There is a very little minority that is interested in studying anything. Most don't care to study any science and not even their own religion! And the cause for this is not "religion" as much as it is the man not willing to think for himself. If you look around (and if you're not like them) you will see: very many people want someone or some specific people (clergy, philosophers, etc.) to tell them what to do, what to believe, what to think, etc. They really WANT that! And the few that really want to think for themselves usually get out of the herd.
I've also went to different churches in my town, and the description fits perfectly the one you gave. It seems that people like to limit themselves to basic things, and want to have other people (clergy) to tell them what to do and what to believe and to tell them the things they love to hear (like, that they are special, that they are the elected, etc. whatever makes them feel good). And I even wanted to talk with one of them on internet, for a debate (a lad) on the bible, but he wasn't even able to seek a verse in the bible! Perhaps he didn't even hear that there are bible search engines (to seek a verse based on some words). And he didn't like at all the idea of debating anything, what to say about thinking that something may be different than what the pastor said!
And yeah, there are a few, but there are religious people interested in scientific things. You can find christian medics, psychologist, etc. Also muslims.
BUT, unfortunately, stupidity doesn't make a difference between believers and unbelievers: where I live, but I guess not only here, atheists and non-religious people don't have reasons for being so, they only follow the crowd, the only rule being what everybody does and what everybody believes. Talking seriously about religion is ridiculous, and an agnostic/atheist would be most insulted and would feel very ridiculous if he ever read a verse in the bible! It's like those superstitious people, if you say the word "bible" they either laugh or say "wuuuu!" and if you say "satanic bible" they scream "aaaaaaa!". Studying anything that is not for faculty (well, future profession) is almost never found. Now what to say about studying religions? That is the most odd thing to do! In the current fashion, people have no idea about the history of christianity, except 'documentaries' like zeitgeist and movies and music (which have very subjective views). Some believe that Islam is a denomination of Christianity, others believe that Christianity was created by the priests in the Middle age, when they wrote the bible! If you ask agnostics/atheists about the theory of evolution or big bang, or "why god, why not god" nobody cares and nobody knows anything. (always exceptions, but this is the majority)
