Different Religions for Different Minions

[Zuruck]

I was reading a book by Phil Keoghan last night and I ask the question, which religion is the real one? I know this has been talked about before, but I didnt know where. Do all religious folk inherently praise one god? Are the Muslims right? Or the Christians? I don't want to start a Christian vs Muslim debate, so don't think about it. Is the bible more \"right\" than the Koran, or the Talmud? Which?

I know the poll has only three options, but I consider these to be some of the larger facets of religion?

[Kilarin]

What about Judaism, and Hinduism? I would also suggest adding Athiest/Agnostic. It's a large group.

http://www.adherents.com/Religions_By_Adherents.html

# Christianity: 2.1 billion
# Islam: 1.3 billion
# Secular/Nonreligious/Agnostic/Atheist: 1.1 billion
# Hinduism: 900 million
# Chinese traditional religion: 394 million
# Buddhism: 376 million
# primal-indigenous: 300 million
# African Traditional & Diasporic: 100 million
# Sikhism: 23 million
# Juche: 19 million
# Spiritism: 15 million
# Judaism: 14 million
# Baha'i: 7 million
# Jainism: 4.2 million
# Shinto: 4 million
# Cao Dai: 4 million
# Zoroastrianism: 2.6 million
# Tenrikyo: 2 million
# Neo-Paganism: 1 million
# Unitarian-Universalism: 800 thousand
# Rastafarianism: 600 thousand
# Scientology: 500 thousand


Kilarin

[Gooberman]

Buddhism is not a religion like the otherones listed are. In fact there are alot of Buddhist Christians.

[Shoku]

Interesting poll. I agree with Kilarin that it is too limited in scope, although I understand why.

Which religion is the real one?

The answer is dependant upon which beliefs are the direct result of instructions from the true God. Many writings may have been influenced by spiritual beings, but that does not indicate their truthfullness, nor that the true God was the source of info. And since there are so many diffeerent types of Christians, Muslims, etc., some who profess a particualr faith may not really be conducting themselves according to the proper instuctions for that belief, which complicates things a bit.

The key to the answer, then, is to investigate the \"truth\" contained within the individual \"Holy\" books used by the various beliefs. Upon such an examination it should become quite evident which \"book\" demonstrates a consistant revelation of truth - a quality which we would expect instructions from the true God would demonstrate. These instruction should not only tell us about the God, but what this God expects from us, and what the God intends for the future, along with the reasons behind his actions so that faith is never blind. If the God could also prove himself by foretelling the future in detail that would be an added incentive for believing in what he says.

[dissent]

Well to the point as usual, Kilarin.

There is hope for teh world at least -
there are still more Rastafarians than Scientologists.

[roid]

I was reading a book by Phil Keoghan last night and I ask the question, which religion is the real one? I know this has been talked about before, but I didnt know where. Do all religious folk inherently praise one god? Are the Muslims right? Or the Christians? I don't want to start a Christian vs Muslim debate, so don't think about it. Is the bible more "right" than the Koran, or the Talmud? Which?

I know the poll has only three options, but I consider these to be some of the larger facets of religion?

*thinks*
ah i see, you are perhaps asking if we are all actually worshiping the SAME diety? (note my bolding above)

i do beleive that both Christians, Jews and Muslims are all praising the same Diety. But it doesn't go much further than that, since after those major 3 you start to get into the thick of MULTI-Diety religions. So perhaps one could then say that they are worshiping various seperate archetypal aspects of one SINGULAR Diety.

Many writings may have been influenced by spiritual beings, but that does not indicate their truthfullness, nor that the true God was the source of info.

i dunno man, your God is kindof my Demon. and my God is most definitely your Demon (assuming you are a Witness... yes?).
But if we go deeper, the whole seperation of Demon and God is shunned by some religions. I believe Taoism defines this diachotomy of the universe as Yin-Yang, yes? So they define our world as a fight, or a dance (depending on your personal definition of conflict). This is also my shared personal definition of "the true god". I believe God may be either:
- Collective Humanity
- Collective Life
- The Collective Universe
- Another omnipresant or central aspect of the universe that we as yet have not theorised
- or Non-existant

And just as i'm not convinced either way that Human consciousness is solely an aspect of the BRAIN but may be an aspect of our entire body - i am open to the theory that a universal "True God" consciousness could be either all encompassing - or centralised in some point of space-time (perhaps at the center of our universe).

ok that about covers all the bases of my spirituality.

[Kilarin]

I guess the reason I haven't answered the poll yet is that I'm not certain what question it's actually adressing. A short background story may illustrate.

I had a friend at work who was a devout Hindu. He and I seriously disagreed about the basic reality of the universe. HOWEVER, we found that we had more in common with each other than we did with many people of our own faiths. Why? Because we both believed in Absolute Truth. We believed that truth is not relative to your point of view, truth is actually measured against a standard that is outside and beyond ourselves. While we had many points we could agree upon, one of the most important was that we both agreed that where our religions differed, one, or both, were wrong. We couldn't both be \"right\" because reality is not dependent upon how we view it. Two contradicting points of view can not both be \"true\".

Surprisingly enough, this common ground of believing that one (or both) of us were WRONG brought us closer together. Since we believed that there really WAS such a thing as truth, we could discuss which of our religions lined up with it better, which was something that I had a hard time doing with some of my Christian friends because if we disagreed on a point they might just say, \"Well, that might be true for you, but it's not for me\". Kinda hard to discuss anything further after that.

So, yes, I'm a Christian, and as a rational being, I wouldn't BE a Christian unless I thought it was actually TRUE. Not true for just me, not true because it makes me feel good, not true because my parents believed it, but true because it lines up with the actual hard core reality of what IS. I would HOPE that was true for everyone in every religion.

So is the question, Are you a Christian? yes.

Or is the question, do you believe your religion is TRUE? Well, yes, otherwise I wouldn't be a Christian.

Or is the question, do you believe that all other religions are wrong? I don't believe that all other religions are completely wrong, they may have much truth in them, but being a Christian MEANS that I believe that where other religions contradict Christianity, they are wrong.

Or is the question, do you believe that you KNOW absolute truth? In which case, I must answer NO. Obviously I believe Christianity is true, but I'm not foolish enough to believe that all of my beliefs line up exactly with reality. I do the best I can.

Kilarin

[roid]

That was thought provoking Kilarin .
Perhaps i could say that my personal TRUTH is Psychological Science. I've never really considered it to be my spirituality before though. hmm...

It's the whole duality thing. I have my scientific parental self that watches over my natural carnal self - the 2 entitys seeming to be somewhat seperate, disassociated from one another. It's like my adult rational self taking care of my inner irrational child - feeding it to keep it happy and healthy, and steering it away from things that are poisonous to it.

If people don't do this, my personal truth (first paragraph) tells me that they are playing with dissassociative mental illnesses:
They could scapegoat aspects of their own personality onto others - projecting their religiously indoctinated selfhatred.
Or their self could even completely dis-integrate, and be faced with Multiple Personality Disorder.

[Hostile]

What about the Jedi. I remember seeing a story sometime ago that a lot of people were claiming it as their religion. Australia maybe.....

[MD-2389]

What about the Jedi. I remember seeing a story sometime ago that a lot of people were claiming it as their religion. Australia maybe.....

That was in London IIRC.

[roid]

http://www.snopes.com/religion/jedi.htm
it was Australia, UK, and New Zealand.
and it was all untrue.

[Shoku]

i do beleive that both Christians, Jews and Muslims are all praising the same Diety.

If you take a serious look at what each group believes you'll discover they do not praise the same God. They may profess common origins, and may think their God is the same, but that is not true, especially where Muslims are concerned.

[Shoku]

i dunno man, your God is kindof my Demon. and my God is most definitely your Demon (assuming you are a Witness... yes?)

You must not read all my posts. If you did you would never pose such a question.

[De Rigueur]

I had a friend at work who was a devout Hindu. He and I seriously disagreed about the basic reality of the universe. HOWEVER, we found that we had more in common with each other than we did with many people of our own faiths.

Didn't you say that you were a CS Lewis fan? I believe he makes an observation similar to this somewhere in Mere Christianity.

i do beleive that both Christians, Jews and Muslims are all praising the same Diety.

It may seem that way from a distance, but Judaism and Islam reject the central thesis of Christianity, namely, that Jesus was God in human form.

I believe God may be either:
- Collective Humanity
- Collective Life
- The Collective Universe
- Another omnipresant or central aspect of the universe that we as yet have not theorised
- or Non-existant

I like the way you put that because it makes the concept of God more general. At the risk of repeating myself, I like Tillich's notion of "Ultimate Concern" by which he meant whatever entity is the ultimate for a given individual. I think most of the things you mention would qualify as an Ultimate Concern, especially if you allow me to substitute "Nature" for your "Collective Universe". With this more general concept, we can bypass the distinction between those who are "religious folk" and those who are not becuase virtually everyone believes in some kind of Ultimate -- they just give different answers to the question, "What is the nature of the Ultimate?"

They could scapegoat aspects of their own personality onto others - projecting their religiously indoctinated selfhatred.

Yes, I suppose they could -- if they aren't aware of the doctrines of grace and forgiveness.

[Kilarin]

Didn't you say that you were a CS Lewis fan? I believe he makes an observation similar to this somewhere in Mere Christianity.

Yes and Yes. Lewis goes further into this idea in "The Abolition of Man". EXCELLENT books, but then, in my opinion, anything by Lewis is.

i do beleive that both Christians, Jews and Muslims are all praising the same Diety.

I'm going to come down half way between on this one. Shoku and I obviously are poles apart on the issue of Christ's divinity. That is a critical issue about the nature of God. And yet, we probably agree on far more than we disagree. When you compare my beliefs to Shoku's, we would be MUCH more closely in line than comparing my belief's to roids, or a pagan, or a Hindu's. I feel that it WOULD be valid to say Shoku and I worship the same God, we just disagree on one (very important) point about His nature. Whereas a Wiccan certainly does NOT worship the same God I do, at least not in any sense other than that of Emeth in "The Last Battle".

So, yes and no. I believe Christ was fully God. Shoku believes Jesus was a created being, and the Jews and Muslims claim Jesus was just a prophet. That means we obviously are not worshiping the same God. And yet, we are, in a way that could NEVER be said about myself and a Hindu. I say G. W. Bush is a terrible threat to this Nation, Will Robinson thinks G. W. Bush is the best thing since sliced bread, but despite our disagreement about his nature, we both acknowledge the same president. The guys who are part of the "republic of Texas" movement do not. It's an important distinction.

Kilarin

[Zuruck]

My apologies for quite a narrow poll, it was a quick idea, not long winded.

[Kilarin]

My apologies for quite a narrow poll

Nothing to apologize for! Look at all the interesting discussion it has spawned!

Kilarin

[Palzon]

# Rastafarianism: 600 thousand
# Scientology: 500 thousand

Kilarin

It is time to give it up when you find yourself in the religion that is beaten by the religion of getting weeded.

[fyrephlie]

What about Pastafarians?

[Palzon]

His noodly appendage be praised!

[roid]

i do beleive that both Christians, Jews and Muslims are all praising the same Diety.

If you take a serious look at what each group believes you'll discover they do not praise the same God. They may profess common origins, and may think their God is the same, but that is not true, especially where Muslims are concerned.

i was referring to how Christianity branched off from Judaism. My linking it with Islam was just coz Islam's singular diety structure is so similar to Judaism/Christianity it's uncanny.

i dunno man, your God is kindof my Demon. and my God is most definitely your Demon (assuming you are a Witness... yes?)

You must not read all my posts. If you did you would never pose such a question.

sorry, one thing my memory isn't good with is names (and exact dates) so i can get mixed up as to who says what on the internet . I do recall though that your beliefs have on occasion struck me as very similar to JW beliefs.

i do beleive that both Christians, Jews and Muslims are all praising the same Diety.

It may seem that way from a distance, but Judaism and Islam reject the central thesis of Christianity, namely, that Jesus was God in human form.

When i say that, i mean it like... they are all worshiping the same diety but (from their perspective) perhaps some or all of them have bits mixed up, as if each religion has long ago evolved away from one shared single-diety religion. But i can say that i honestly havn't looked into the proposed religious evolution of Islam. I just see them as similar, like all the indo-european langauages are similar, and we know that all those langauges evolved in stages from one single proto-indo-euro root language. So i'm open to the theory that religions evolved the same way.

[Birdseye]

I don't think there is such a thing as a 'true' religion, however I do find that there is some truth in every religion.

I find the least truth in the dogmatic portions of religion, which they almost all have, including those who have an immutable faith in science to the point of dogmatism. I have friends who are applying to medical school who say 'nothing happens' after you die and that they 'know' this because of what science taught them. Such is no more dogmatic than Christianity, Islam, or a Re-Incarnation system.

What I do find is that all religions are an attempt at self-defense, or 'ego defense' as I call it. The most popular religions are ones that promise the most -- Christianity and Islam for example have the most fanciful or fun to belief promises. They tie up all of our difficulties with the world and provide for a guaranteed fantastic afterlife if you follow their way. Life is so unfair that humans have developed these dogmatic parts of religion as a coping mechanism. For many it's too hard to imagine a situation where they, as a person, aren't directly transported into an afterlife, especially a positive one. There is also a hunger for your actions in life to 'equal out' somehow. The unfair inequality in life is the second biggest driving force in what pushes us to seek 'answers' in life. That's why so many people will dogmatically accept faith-based systems such as Karma or Heaven/Hell. We want life to make sense and be fair, since it's not humans try to balance the equation through religion.


The re-incarnation portions of Eastern Religion such as in Hinduism and Buddhism are less 'fanciful' in the sense that the lay person likely will not reach the 'promised land' or heaven. Only the most studied yogi's (meditation master, meaning to yoke, with the ultimate reality, which is called Brahman in Hinduism and Nirvana in Buddhism) will be able to liberate themselves at the point of death beyond the cyclical re-birth cycle. However, they still provide a source for ego defense as there is confirmation that even though they might not acheive nirvana, perhaps their exact copy of themself is not going to survive but that somehow their 'soul' or 'essence' will be replanted again is very comforting, and that perhaps again when they return to human form they will have another shot at Nirvana.

But I still find a lot of things great in religion. The best thing I find is to throw what you enjoy from each into your shopping cart and discard the rest. From Christianity I would take the teaching's on compassion and loving your enemy from Jesus, which I think is widely understood here on this board.

I don't know anything about Islam, but I probably should.

Here's an example from Hinduism, but since most people here haven't the faintest inkling of what eastern religions are about, I am providing background:

While some people think all Hindu's worship multiple gods it actually depends on the Hindu whether or not they are theist. The lay hindu may worship a god such as Shiva or Vishnu, but the intellectual Hindu that studies Vendanta ('high branch' of Hindu thought, coming from the Rig Vedas, meditation instructions from anonymous sages, which are the source of Hinduism) understands that these 'gods' are simply manifestions of \"Brahman.\"

Brahman itself does not have to be taken as a god, but rather that the ideas that the multitude of things and events around us are but different manifestations of the same ultimate reality (interconnectedness of all things). It still leaves room for a god to have created brahman, but it does not imply that a belief in a god... most Hindu's of the Vendanta school would probably think that Brahman exists but is not not an 'intelligent thinking thing' but rather simply 'is' (more accurately that it is beyond human conception) and that life's changes are simply manifested in the constantly changing 'dance of life' which is sometimes called Shiva. The lay Hindu may worship Shiva as an actual god, but the intellectual Hindu understands that Shiva is but a manifestation of Brahman. It's hard for the lay Hindu to understand this, so much of Hinduism involves huge mythic tales as explanational allegories.

The main spiritual experience is in meditation, in which all labels and concepts are let go of, and the uncolored experience of the 'ultimate reality' or 'the interconnectedness of all things as one' or 'Brahman' is experienced. This is the same experience sought by Buddhists, Taoists, and many other eastern religions, but each interprets it differently. Only a few of the most studied in each of these religions will experience this in meditation, as the experience takes a lot of training. Whether they actually experience an 'ultimate reality' or not, there is at least an allegorical experience to what we are starting to see experimentally/observationally in quantum physics in wave/particle duality relationships where the waves/particles cannot be thought to exist on their own, but rather can only be understood as an interconnected relationship of the whole.

Of course you may be wondering if Brahman is beyond human conception, how could one human experience it? I agree, although there is a powerful experience of interconnectedness in eastern meditation to experience, it still requires a human mind. So this is probably just an allegorical experience, and actually many Hindu's and Buddhist's would agree, although many remain attatched to the idea of directly experiencing a 'full ultimate reality'. After all, both Hinduism and Buddhism recognize each other as accessing the same meditational experience, and Buddhism stems from Hindu traditions, and the Buddha is thought of in Hinduism as but a manifestation of Brahman. Many of them think the only way to truly experience Brahman is to 'yoke up' to it in death (to reach Nirvana/Brahman), through meditating at the time of death. Otherwise, we get re-incarnated back into the cycle of re-birth, possibly as a 'lower life form' that cannot meditate, and as a result won't be able to pass into Nirvana. They may get another chance as a human eventually, after more re-births.

Although I do not necessarily agree with all of Hinduism, Buddhism, and Taoism, I do find the parts I like to have wisdom that actually helps me. Because they are non-dogmatic, one is free (actually encouraged in Buddhism) to only believe things that make sense to them. Therefore even you believe in some small parts of Buddhism you can be considered a Buddhist (Jesus would be considered one, as his 'turn the other cheek' philosophy is mirrored by the Buddha's thoughts on compassion for all beings, and always leaving the door to your heart open).

But the Buddha also encouraged that his ideas be built upon and had the possibility to be improved. This is also why there are so many sects of Buddhism (often called lineages since the teachings are transferred from one person to the next, not just by a book); The Buddha encouraged you to find the answers your self, and that he merely provided an avenue for you to consider. If you felt he was wrong, he would say you should stick with your beliefs and to continue to search for what you thought was right. It is, like the universe, living and breathing. It can change along with scientific discovery (in fact, the Dalai Lama wrote in one of his books that if science has a conflict with Buddhism that clearly can be proven, he thinks Buddhism should change to agree with a scientific finding).

The Buddha's main teachings dealt with the constant change the universe which results in the impermance of all things, including sentient beings. Where Buddhism differs from Hinduism is that is much more focused on dealing with the human condition stuck in reality; our distructive cyclical thought process and attachment to things only brings us unhappiness.

Once we understand impermanence and can accept it through the understanding of the interconnectedness of all things (his enlightenment under the bodhi tree, a powerful direct spiritual experience and not just a cognitive realization or rational decision) death is not so bad, as the idea of the completely seperate self is an illusion. Through meditation we can have an *actual experience (allegorical or otherwise)* of being interconnected with the world, and this liberates the human condition from the subject-object entaglement, or the Cartesian system put forth by Descartes and other western philsophers (meaning a seperate self from the rest of reality, although interestingly 'i think therefore I am' seems to grow back some credence in the quantum world when we find particles only 'exist' as particles when we observe them, and otherwise behave differently, although this isn't what Descartes meant).

Once liberated, compassion for all beings will arise naturally and powerfully as the liberated being understands the terrible place he was once stuck in and understands that almost all negative things in life are based upon this fundamental misunderstanding of life (subject/object entaglement, or self seperate from the universe). Thus compassion for all beings arises out of your own realization, rather than by a command of God.

However anyone who studies any of these eastern religions in depth and gets really into quantum physics like I have will likely end up abandoning the dogmatic belief in a god, although there is still certainly room for one. There isn't proof either way. An interesting side effect for many (including myself) re-opens their mind in a stronger fashion to their being a god. After such a shockingly 'mystical' experience your preconceptions are totally shattered... not that I have talked to a god or anything, but the experience is so powerful one questions *every* belief or idea.

Scientifically our brains have to process 'quantum phenomena', considering that is what we are 'composed' of, (although seemingly there may be no such thing as a 'basic building block' but interelationships of the whole, at least according to quantum physics) so perhaps the meditation experience is just accessing some of this 'raw data' the brain processes, allowing for this experience of interconnectedness. After all, if quantum physics is right, our brain is somehow processing this interconnectness into neat, solidified objects for us (if one hasn't studied quantum physics and doesn't buy what I'm saying, you can at least understand that we're missing much of reality -- a good example of this is frequency range, where we can only see a small percentage of the frequency spectrum in the form of visible light, with things such as X-Ray's, ultraviolet light, etc. beyond our perception) so perhaps meditation is the process of unravelling this process towards more 'raw' data by letting go of labels and conceptualizations.

At the same time I consider the Scientific Method as put forth by Newton to be an integral study in spiritual practice as well -- just as important as the spiritual experience offered in eastern religion was to me. If our spiritual experiences run completely counter to what the scientific method finds (and the reason I don't soley abide by the scientific method is that it too has limitations), then perhaps they are wrong or just illusions of the mind. That's how it has been for science and eastern religion for thousands of years, until the last 100 years with the revolution of quantum physics. Now one of the main concepts of eastern religion has been scientifically proven (impermanence is pretty obvious already) -- the interconnectedness of all things. All it takes is study of basic quantum physics to realize this. If you want to read a great book on quantum physics, I recommend Schrodinger's Kittens by John Gribbin (available on Amazon and major bookstores). Gribbin puts forth a shockingly lucid and un-solidified view of science. Regarding the experiemental results, there is almost no debate about the interconnectedness of all things. The quantum world can't be thought of as seperate objects. No models work that way. The debate rather is how quantum physics applies to 'particle reality' or 'classical physics' in scientifically consistent manner between the two. Quantum Physics is the most shockingly philosophical part of science I've ever seen. I always grew up thinking classical physics was a gross generalization of reality, and that scientists got too caught up in their 'models' and 'constants' as being rock-solid things. Quantum physics shatters these long held scientific beliefs, such as there being a 'funamental building block.'

So I'd consider myself an Agnostic Scientific Buddhist who doesn't believe in any form of dogma or a formalized karmic system (which the Buddha didn't invent either; it was added later by others as a way to make reality try to make sense, i.e. that a criminal would get what's coming to him/her. Kinda like Christians who have something bad happen to them and then attempt to rationalize it as a test from God; this makes them feel ok with the difficulties life presents that have no logical or fair realtionship) or in re-incarnation (which I'm not sure the Buddha believed in, considering his main teaching was the impermanence of all things, and re-incarnation sure isn't impermanence. Of course we, like Jesus, don't necessarily know if one man called the buddha is the source of all these teachings, especially for Buddhism considering it sprung from Hindu traditions, but it is the spirit of the teachings that should be focused on, since they are flexible and non-dogmatic.

So, I haven't really answered some of the most comforting questions for myself, such as \"What happens after I die?\" which is really what everyone wants to know. I'm afraid we'll all just have to wait and see, as none of us has ever died! It's not an experiment you can carry out. However, I do feel much more at peace having scientifically and subjectively experienced the interconnectedness of all things. It puts me at peace knowing that I am part of a whole, rather than being this seperate entity. I am part of the universe, the universe is part of me, we are in a sense one.

I'm still open to the possibility of there being a God, or for any of the dogmatic religions to be correct. They just haven't been proven to me. Obviously, I'd love to go to heaven and be with God eternally... but I simply cannot make that kind of leap of faith. The world is still so unknown by humans that I think us pompous to think we have explained everything. Really the main thing I have learned is that I don't know very much; perhaps nothing at all. In a sense that is comforting as the universe is a fantastically beautiful and changing thing. I feel pure potential now, that there could be any result after death, many of which could be positive, or at least neutral. I'm not worried about the outcome of death like I once constantly did. I feel liberated at least from that struggle.

At least, that's my take.