My Article on Concept of God and Religion

[Ammish]

Well... it's something I've made today. And I was about to share it on another forum, but I decided to share it on here as I hope people can be mature about this. It's something I worked on because I want to join and do well in AS Philosophy.

Now this is an interesting and tricky subject.

The term ‘God’ has been used ever since… Mankind probably developed brains… or when the word ‘Religion’ came in. A ‘God’ is a deity or being that ‘created’ human life.

Well… that’s the meaning supposedly. But I do not say ‘God’ created life and existence. I rather prefer the term ‘Creator’ over ‘God’.

Why?

Because I personally think the lines blur between ‘God’ and ‘Creator’, when I believe the two terms shouldn’t be confused with, especially in religion, where many believers have different concept of God. A Christian Believer could tell that a Muslim believer that what they believe in is ‘wrong’ or vice versa. It could happen all over every religion… But how do you know that your ‘God’ created everything?

That’s simply because… you don’t know. The reason the term ‘God’ exist is because of ‘not creating existence’, but rather because God simply have believers.

Don’t have any believers? Then what you consider God is no more. Those idols ages ago that beings built before Monotheism religion came in, was considered as ‘Gods’ at the time. But they were completely forgotten when Monotheism came in. There was one ‘God’ that everyone agreed on.

Later on however… That religion scattered into many other religions. Christianity, Islam, Judaism… Supposedly, there’s another one, but I think that’s forgotten. Why did they scatter though? Simply because ‘Books’ came in, which give ‘God’ many different concepts, called ‘The Gospel’, ‘The Torah’, ‘The Quran’ and another book I cannot remember. They gave God different concept, but yet still connected by similarities

But which God is real? Which God created existence? That term however doesn’t matter… God is God because it has it’s horde of believers. And that’s why many different aspects of God live to this day.

I remember a quote in an anime called ‘Serial Experiment Lain’, which does question life.

‘You give God too much credit’

Heh… Worshipping a being who did far less that what you might imagine? It can happen, yet people have hope of belief, which is a beautiful thing indeed. Yet they are blinded by ignorance in some cases… Creator is Creator. God is God.

Religions have caused wars for thousands of years, striving for which religion to be ‘true’. Which is idiotic as if it’s true or not, it’s what they feel it’s ‘right’ to believe’. Some people however… want to understand life that lies… in a book. I personally believe that people ‘should’ understand the world with their senses. Touch, Smell, Hearing, Sight and Taste. Yes… a book does have aspect of life, but indeed… you’re reading its traditions, its origins.

But this world always rapidly change, which people need to understand. Fairness, Freedom, etc… People need to see that and understand that. Yet they want to understand the afterlife, the glories of Heaven and the fear of Hell.

I’m sorry if this may offend you, but the person who came up with the term ‘Hell’ should get shot. It’s a horrible word that I despise, which seems to be a tool to strike fear into their hearts and follow the religion, and then do good stuff. People should do good stuff because ‘they’ want to or they feel its ‘morally’ right. Not because of some fear which comes from the thought of a ‘place of inferno’ or because ‘some book’ tells them to.

But hey… Religion isn’t always bad in my eyes. I believed that before religion, it was total chaos. That time, there weren’t such a thing as the 10 commandments. Believe it or not, but Laws now days in nearly every country is based on the 10 commandments (well 9 as Adultery isn’t illegal in some countries), Take them out and the Law would fall apart. So yeah…. Hate it or love it, Religion did bring some kind of order into this world.

So am I a Religious Person or an Atheist?

I’m pretty much neither… I do believe in the afterlife and the supernatural. But I won’t let it dictate my life. I could be… a spiritual person. I decide to believe… without the name of religion integrated in my life.

You can believe without following a religion. Even my best friend believes that ‘If you believe in God, then that’s enough’, which shows that you can believe without following a religion.

Thank you for reading this.

So opinions? Any positive ones and any advice that can help me is appreciated ^^

 

[ayase]

It's kinda stream-of-conciousness... not that that's necessarily a bad thing, sometimes you can get your points across better that way. However, if it's for college, teachers / examiners don't tend to like things written in that style (believe me, I know. Part of the reason me and education don't get along is the ridgidity of the whole system).

As for the contents, some interesting points which (as with any philosohical concept) people have been over before and will no doubt keep doing so until the end of time. My own personal view of religion is if you believe it, fine. Just keep it too yourself (like monks do for example) and don't presume everyone else has to live by your beliefs (like christian / muslim fundamentalists do). Something a lot of religious people would do well to remember is if you have no proof for your beliefs, then they are theory not fact, which is where their "faith" comes from - if they knew 100% it was true it wouldn't be faith! (don't test God, etc.)

Being someone "without faith" in most senses of the word, I tend to need proof in order to believe something - and while there is no proof for god, there is nothing to disprove a non-iterventionalist god either. The truth is we can't know (yet) how life / the universe / everything came about - we can only guess, and as such I'm not going to weigh into the god / no god debate. However, I do not belive in an interventionalist god as I consider there to be no proof of this at all (as you can't trust individual people to tell the truth about meeting god), and as such I don't believe in anything written in so-called holy books.

 

[Kurogane]

Crusades, fanatacism, evangelists, ethnic cleansing...

Perhaps you should revise the above.

 

[MrChom]

Punctuation, and grammar are your friends, you need to get re-acquainted

The ellipsis or ... is fine for the Internet but most academics will bitchslap you back out the door for using it. I can agree with an earlier poster who said that this is all just a bit stream of consciousness too, it's not bad, it just needs some tightening up for academia.

Also I'd make the point that only four of the commandments are used as a basis for law in most countries:

Thou shalt not steal
Thou shalt not commit murder
Thou shalt not bear false witness against your neighbor
Remember the Sabbath and keep it holy (most countries have heavilly governed saturday/sunday work practices).

 

[Kurogane]

Punctuation, and grammar are your friends, you need to get re-acquainted

The ellipsis or ... is fine for the Internet but most academics will bitchslap you back out the door for using it. I can agree with an earlier poster who said that this is all just a bit stream of consciousness too, it's not bad, it just needs some tightening up for academia.

Also I'd make the point that only four of the commandments are used as a basis for law in most countries:

Thou shalt not steal
Thou shalt not commit murder
Thou shalt not bear false witness against your neighbor
Remember the Sabbath and keep it holy (most countries have heavilly governed saturday/sunday work practices).

It's place in respected literature is pretty normal, it's just not too common, and can always be worked around.

Needs more 'I Hate Flanders'.

 

[Tachi]

FLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAANDEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEERS

Right, now i can go facepalm as there's ANOTHER religious topic...i can only see this ending in fights...as usual *sighs*

 

[MrChom]

FLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAANDEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEERS

Right, now i can go facepalm as there's ANOTHER religious topic...i can only see this ending in fights...as usual *sighs*

Should we call the Dramambulance now to haul away the casualties?

 

[Tachi]

FLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAANDEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEERS

Right, now i can go facepalm as there's ANOTHER religious topic...i can only see this ending in fights...as usual *sighs*

Should we call the Dramambulance now to haul away the casualties?

Sounds like a good idea to be honest =/

 

[CitizenGeek]

Not a very good meditation on religion, I have to admit. It's too fragmented and your grammar, spelling and choice of form (the egregious stream of consciousness device) make it hard to read :/

Content-wise, I think you make some good points (god only exists when people believe in it, the flawed and fear-based religious morality) but all of these points have been made many times before in a far more articulate and nuanced fashion.

Also, you are totally incorrect when you say that before monotheism, the world was in chaos. This is patently untrue; Roman, Greek and Egyptian (to name but a few) societies were relatively civil and advanced and they all existed before religion. Japanese, Chinese and Korean societies all developed without monotheism or the ten commandments at all and each of them were advanced and civilised.

In conclusion, I think it needs work but you're on the right track ;]

 

[MrChom]

Also, you are totally incorrect when you say that before monotheism, the world was in chaos. This is patently untrue; Roman, Greek and Egyptian (to name but a few) societies were relatively civil and advanced and they all existed before religion. Japanese, Chinese and Korean societies all developed without monotheism or the ten commandments at all and each of them were advanced and civilised.

Roman, Greek and Egyptian societies were not pre-religious, they were the some of the chief pan-theistic cultures of the ancient world! Admittedly the Romans abosrobed any religion they found, and the greeks trod this weird line with theirs of being religious but not all the time, and the Egyptians have the most bizarre creation story ever....but hey, it's all good.

Even the Japanese have a pan-theistic approach to religion with figures such as Amaterasu on their roster of divine spirits.

Religion in some form has been with us ever since the first primitive societies feared lightning, longed for rain so they could drink, and waited for sun so they could see. This moved up into druidic cultures where nature overall was worshipped, from there to pan-theism where the aspects of life were anthropomorphised into gods and godesses, and from there into the monotheistic (in the main) times we see today.

To say "before religion" is pretty much to say "before humanity became aware of its own existence".

Unless you meant to say Egypt, Rome, and Greece existed before the MODERN concept of religion....which is somewhat more true, although still a little flawed.

 

[Rui]

A lot of people seem to be muddling the concept of religion with that specific Judeo-Christian religious mishmash. This came up in the [gay] marriage thread too a few times. Marriage, and religion, seem to default to "Christian" in this country and forum still.

R

 

[CitizenGeek]

Unless you meant to say Egypt, Rome, and Greece existed before the MODERN concept of religion....which is somewhat more true, although still a little flawed.

Yes, that was my point. Religious organisation like Christianity or Islam did not exist in those cultures and they thrived nonetheless. Also, Chrono's original point was that the world was in "chaos" before the arrival of religion, suggesting that religion paid a huge role is civilisng people. But this obviously untrue as Greek and Roman societies were relatively civilised and certainly not chaotic and the customs that developed that were not based on religion or a belief in a God in any real way.

On a broader note, the Christian Bible gets too much credit for 'developing' morality here in the West. Most Christians would agree that the death penalty is an immoral punishment for eating shellfish (as mandated in Leviticus), wearing two different fabrics at the same time (Leviticus again) and most would agree that slavery is totally immoral also, even though it's clearly mandated throughout the Bible. Obviously, there's a sense of morality there already that allows people to understand that these parts of the Bible are wrong. A pre-existing sense of morality (which I cannot explain properly, but is probably the result of natural altruism interacting with culture and customs over thousands of years, developing contempory morality) is what makes certain Christians understand that putting a woman to death for sex during her period (as outlined in Deuteronomy) is wrong and immoral.

Phew, that was awkward but I hope the general point gets across.

 

[MrChom]

Unless you meant to say Egypt, Rome, and Greece existed before the MODERN concept of religion....which is somewhat more true, although still a little flawed.

Yes, that was my point. Religious organisation like Christianity or Islam did not exist in those cultures and they thrived nonetheless. Also, Chrono's original point was that the world was in "chaos" before the arrival of religion, suggesting that religion paid a huge role is civilisng people. But this obviously untrue as Greek and Roman societies were relatively civilised and certainly not chaotic and the customs that developed that were not based on religion or a belief in a God in any real way.

On a broader note, the Christian Bible gets too much credit for 'developing' morality here in the West. Most Christians would agree that the death penalty is an immoral punishment for eating shellfish (as mandated in Leviticus), wearing two different fabrics at the same time (Leviticus again) and most would agree that slavery is totally immoral also, even though it's clearly mandated throughout the Bible. Obviously, there's a sense of morality there already that allows people to understand that these parts of the Bible are wrong. A pre-existing sense of morality (which I cannot explain properly, but is probably the result of natural altruism interacting with culture and customs over thousands of years, developing contempory morality) is what makes certain Christians understand that putting a woman to death for sex during her period (as outlined in Deuteronomy) is wrong and immoral.

Phew, that was awkward but I hope the general point gets across.

Actually, as a Christian, I can honestly say that the bible plays very little part in my life. I accept it is a flawed translation of a translation of a translation, of a document that ha been lost, rewritten, edited, re-edited, and then selectively looked upon for years. I cannot see why a lot of my fellow Christians see the Word of God as coming from a document that's basically just all the bits a random roman emperor decided he liked.

Yes, there are some interesting moral tales, and some underpinnings of morality are there but most of the original sense has been lost, to be replaced with the words of selfish men who wanted to leave words to promote their own immortality.

I do, however, think that the bible had a lot to do with the development of morality in the west. Heck, America was founded on the principle of what would now be deemed Christian Fundamentalism and thus its social development (and lingering prudeishness) can be traced to that. Yes, there is a form of "Natural Altruism", but I don't think you can say it alone developed morality as we know it, simply because up until the middle part of the last century the lives of everyone in the west were so heavilly dependent on religion as a centre of community. It is, however, as I said largely the SELECTIVE teachings that promoted this turn the other cheek/respect your elders/etc. mentality; it was realised even then that there were some quite hefty parts had become irrelevant, or no longer made sense.

With regards to lifestyle and culture in Rome and Greece having little to do with religion I really have to disagree. Read any of the literature of the day, look at any of their plays, inspect their architecture and you'll find it full of references to the full pantheon of gods. The greeks had a somewhat odd attitude as I recall, but they were just as guided by religion as anyone now.

As for world chaos before religion, like I said, a moot point. From the second man thought there was a being who made the lightning, let loose the rain, and brought up the sun there was religion. The chaos is generally caused when one idiot twists faith (religious and/or non-religious) into something they can rally against others for.