OANST says some very good points - It's rare that people can discuss religion in a civil manor without feeling angry or upset, and from what I've read here while lurking, what he says is true. If you look at the past few posts for example, you have a few people admitting this, in a way.
Nobody can agree on anything because there are as many different tastes as there are people - It's like the constant debates over everything else that's different, such as colours or cars or games consoles or football teams or whatever. People love to debate, they love to argue and disagree - Opening a topic like this is asking for trouble here IMO.
But I'll bite the bullet and leave my contribution:
Reading this - And in fact, any religious discussion - Has made me glad that I was given a choice at a young age, and was brought up to believe what I wanted to rather than having anything forced upon me.
I've chosen to believe that religion is a waste of my time, that the reason why we're here and that life exists isn't that important (must there be an answer to everything?), and that scientific discoveries and theories make a lot of sense to me as an explanation of how the universe works even though there's a lot of ground that we haven't even looked at yet.
But it is amazing that we are here, we should make the best of it, be what we all can be, discover ourselves, try new experiences - We should try and make the most out of our lives and be as happy and as kind to each other as we possibly can, then die happy knowing that we enjoyed ourselves and without regrets. These are the morales that I run my life by - There doesn't need to be more of a "why" than that.
As for there being a god? We don't know and don't have a way of proving it as much as we don't have a way of disproving it either. If there is a god, it probably won't be anything like we imagine it to be. But as we all know, religion is a lot more than just that.
IMO religion was something made up as an early answer to how things worked before we understood things better, and also as a form of law to keep us all in order. We owe a lot of our culture to it, sure, but it's something that's passed it's sell-by date, and we aren't prepared to let it go. But that's fine - Religion in itself isn't a bad thing. People can believe in whatever the hell they like if it helps them sleep at night - It's what they do with it which is harmful. They use it to manipulate people who don't know better, use at as an excuse to go to war, use it as a cover to perform morally bad acts, and shove it down other people's throats - That's what I oppose, rather than religion itself.
Also for example I mean no harm with what I've just written, but I can guarantee that someone, somewhere out there would find it so offensive that they'd want to hurt me. I don't find that acceptable either.
|