RE: If You Were A Theist
August 27, 2015 at 8:18 pm
(This post was last modified: August 27, 2015 at 8:20 pm by Jenny A.)
(August 27, 2015 at 6:01 pm)Catholic_Lady Wrote:(August 27, 2015 at 5:51 pm)Jenny A Wrote: You'll have to pick a religion, cause they're all too different.
Without getting too specific, would it be ok if I said any of the Abrahamic religions, since they are the most common? Or do I have to pick a particular one?
I don't mean to be obstinate, but it would still make a hell of a lot of difference.
If I were Jewish it would change my whole eating pattern. No more three cheese and sausage lasagna for me (especially if the sausage is pork), no more bacon, no more cheese burgers, no more shrimp or lobster. And that's no counting restrictions before passover. *Gasp* no yeast, baking soda, or baking powder. How could I live? *faints from hunger* Seriously, being Jewish especially the more fundamentalist sects would require serious life style changes. . . . So would becoming Mennonite or Amish. No buttons? Help! No education past the eighth grade, I wouldn't be me.
Islam would require me to change the way I dress and and my views about female equality, though come to think of it so would some Christian and Jewish sects. Oh well. . .
And Christians, Christians are all over the map. If I became a Lutheran semi-Evengelical, which is how I was raised, I could keep science and evolution (Genesis is all a metaphor for something or another) and even feminism generally, but I'd have to believe I was fundamentally sinful, and that life begins at conception.
Go fundamentalist and I'd need to give up science, feminism, hate gays, and possibly people of other races, and stop reasoning all together at least on a certain list of topics.
Catholicism I no less about.
* * *
Here's the serious bit:
I'd have to give up rational thinking about at least one subject. That might kill me.
And, I'd need to believe in the afterlife (disclaimer: some Jews do not) and if I really, really believed that it would change my whole view of what this life is for. If I really had an eternity to come, I'd really spend now teaching as many people as possible how to have eternity. And I would have no fear of death. . . . But wait, I've yet to meet a Jew, Christian, or Islamist, who behaves that way. There are a few historically, but not many.
So maybe I would be the say watered down theist as most people and nothing would change.
I'd have to give up rational thinking about at least one subject. That might kill me.
And, I'd need to believe in the afterlife (disclaimer: some Jews do not) and if I really, really believed that it would change my whole view of what this life is for. If I really had an eternity to come, I'd really spend now teaching as many people as possible how to have eternity. And I would have no fear of death. . . . But wait, I've yet to meet a Jew, Christian, or Islamist, who behaves that way. There are a few historically, but not many.
So maybe I would be the say watered down theist as most people and nothing would change.
If there is a god, I want to believe that there is a god. If there is not a god, I want to believe that there is no god.