Views on religion...

[thesixthwizard]

http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showpost.php?p=2894890&postcount=1

Quoted from thread:

In the past decade Christianity has tumbled from British life. Although in 2001 over 70% of British citizens identified themselves as Christians, in the same year 65% claimed that they do not believe in God. Believe what you will, Christianity is on it's way out in

Comments

[russandol_0]

I'm no Formen, but here are my two cent, for what they're worth.

I'm always puzzled at questions like "what does religion give the world / me". It seems like the wrong approach to me. I agree with you: somebody who joins a religion for some sort of help should rather join a support group or see a psychologist. To me, the only valid reason to belong to a religion is if one believes at least the essence of what that particular religion teaches. The "belief in and love for God" (or something equivalent to that, depending on the religion) should lead one into a religion, not some more or less egoistical, personal or sociological gain.

~Mac, your friendly next-door freestyle theist (or something like that), who isn't entirely certain whether he has just made sense. ;)

[hukbillgoomba]

I think claiming that religion is the cause of all the world's ills is a little deluded. There are people in the world who want to control other people, if not through force, then through manipulation. because religion has become something that people associated with 'what you can't prove', 'it's just a feeling inside' and 'what I believe', it has become easily misused

[russandol_0]

This is more than a little off topic and, VI, I'm sorry abuse your blog for this.

Joel, you mention the difference in theology between the Old and the New Testament. Can you explain how this change came to be? I once read a few articles about the Zoroastrian influence on Judaism. Is there a connection to this?

[hukbillgoomba]

It's not that certain theologies cannot be found in the OT, indeed they can, but it is interesting to study the world into which they were written and look at what those writers were saying to their audience. They may have said things that were more true than they imagined. C.S. Lewis gives an example of the servant at a bath house in Rome who when told 'the water isn't hot enough' responded 'it will soon be quite warm', two hours later, all of Rome was on fire. He may have had nothing to do with the burning down of the city, but what he said became truer than he was aware

[russandol_0]

That was much more and much quicker than I expected.

Thank you!

[tgwbs]

I remember reading about Blair's comments on religion and laughing to myself - because, of course, thousands of years of history really show that religion is the best way to solve problems. But the guy who wrote that post is really, really overemphasising the part religion played in Blair's downfall... Mostly the war, anti-incumbency and a real opposition, I feel