How Does the Historical Context of Religion Effect Your Views on it? | |
First off, affect not effect. Honestly, I'd say that what has happened in the past is in the past. To me, the more important thing to look at is how the religion is today. Just because the Catholic church was evil back in the past doesn't mean that they still are. And I still like how the Jews do it. They acknowledge that the old testament was written by humans. | |
The historical context implies two things: 1.) That mankind's interpretation of the supernatural is inconsistent with reality, even if supernatural beings of the type in question do indeed exist. 2.) Much like it has been abused in the past, religion can, will, and is currently abused, and will continue to be abused for the foreseeable future It does NOT imply that: 1.) Religion is worthless or without merit 2.) Modern religions are responsible for past actions | |
Context is everything. Leviticus, which is the most controversial book of the Bible makes a whole lot of sense... if you're a King ruling a Kingdom 3000 years ago. Firstly, it is a health guide. You live in the fucking desert where there is little water, therefore isolate your wife when she is on her period so she doesn't drip blood everywhere. Men should be circumcised so germs cannot be hidden in the folds of the skin.
Also make it a sin to masturbate (not in Leviticus):
Finally make it a sin to have sex with animals............... yeah wanting to have sex with animals is a weird one anyway :s Context is everything, because it tells us what was the "will of God" and what was merely tribal dictators controlling their people. Frankly there is very little which isn't tribal dictators controlling their people. So yeah. Buggur the old testament etc etc. | |
This may be a nitpick, but EVERYONE on here seems to do this and it's driving me batty. It's "tenets", not "tenants". Religions don't have renters.
I don't understand what your question is here. All religions don't stem from the same roots. *My* religion has a fair bit in common with other Indo-European polytheisms, but doesn't stem from the same roots as Christianity, so their bible and its sources have no bearing on my religion whatsoever. | |
I would say we take what happened in the past, acknowledge it, and learn from it so it's not repeated. However I would raise the point that by definition the Catholic church is still evil. Their attitude towards the systemic abuse of children in their care, their attempt to hide it from the legal authorities, and their continued blasé attitude over that show it well. Also have to say I do like the Jewish way of looking at their texts. Written by man. | |
I'm fairly sure they don't. Christianity & Judaism have a lot in common, but are both completely unrelated to Buddhism (as far as I'm aware). And there are likely quite a few smaller religions that are unique. I'm an atheist so don't need to justify my beliefs based on culture. | |
I became an atheist rather than an atheist as I studied History. It seemed logical that the reasons for the thousands of religions was a want to explain the unexplainable*. And they are all so different, and they all claim they are the only one, and they had higher powers speaking to them to assure that they were the only one. That you simply cannot just take 'one' of them and say thats the true one. I think the most likely conclusion is that none of them are the true one. * And hope, if you are starving, theres a drought. Your family is sick, and tomorrow your best friend could get eaten by a wild animal or bitten by a poisonous animal. Thinking that death is the end is awfully depressing. It would make everything quite meaningless (For some)
This is just about as low content as not posting anything at all. | |
Affect is the verb. Related adjective: affected. Effect is the noun. Related adjective: effective. | |
Their origins are completely unrelated, but it does seem that through trade ideas moved across culture borders and Buddhism may have had some influence on some of the branches of Christianity that became known as Gnostics. That's part of the reason I find their heresy so fascinating.
Leaving aside the false or at least badly-worded claim about all religions having the same roots in culture, I think awareness of the human derivation of religions makes them more compelling. Being aware that religious interpretations evolve as the societies they are in evolve is only a threat to religious belief if you demand religion be something it needn't be. Many Christian-influenced religious people and atheists are obsessed with this notion that religion must be a capital T Truth claim about the nature of reality, when really this kind of thinking is entirely unnecessary to religious participation. Religion is a paradigm- a way of structuring thought. It needn't be anything more than that, really. And supposing for a moment that a particular interpretation of a particular religion is true, it makes a lot of sense that people 2000 years ago wouldn't have evolved to the point that they would truly comprehend the thoughts, words, ideas, and intentions of a higher being. Hell, they wouldn't likely even understand the thoughts, words, ideas, and intentions of one of us. This is one of the things I like about Bahá'í. To retcon monotheism so that all of the different interpretations of the one true God are just different interpretations of messages brought by different messengers of God- that in effect God wears the mask your society needs to see in order to comprehend Him is a brilliant move. A pity that the Bahá'í I spoke with were so eager to proclaim their founder, Bahá'u'lláh, to be the final revelation[1] [1] Especially since according to Wikipedia this may not be a mainstream Bahá'í view. | |
There are many ways to discredit religion, and historical analysis is a fun one, but not the best. You can convince someone that their beliefs come from a long process of social evolution, but that really has no bearing on whether the beliefs are true. Keeping the unconfirmed sources and borrowed rituals in mind can be helpful in a debate, but most of my problems with religion can be addressed without it. | |
The "Old Testament" has the entire Torah in it.
I assume you're talking about Revelation, which was written sometime towards the end of the first century. Unless you have a different definition of "medieval times" from everyone else, nope.
What? Why?
The Zoroastrians were dualists.
No they don't. | |
Then Jesus said to the woman, "I was sent only to help God's lost sheep--the people of Israel." These twelve Jesus sent forth, and commanded them, saying, Go not into the way of the Gentiles, and into [any] city of the Samaritans enter ye not: But go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.
Not really. More like Judaism and Islam. | |
2500 years ago, the Word of God said 'marriage' was one man and as many women as he could purchase or steal. History tells us that religions are VERY mutable. | |
Historical context states that religion has been used as a method of power and control for centuries. It's no different now than it ever was, they just have to go on a smaller scale since there are checks and separation clauses in government now. Simply put, they can't influence the government, but they can always influence people. Since we primarily have elected republics/democracy, control of the populace can, to a degree, extend to control of government. The U.S. is a perfect example. How many anti-abortion bills have we seen come through just in the last year or two? How many do you think have a mostly religious basis? Same goes for gay marriage. | |
Mark 16:15 And he said unto them, Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature. Matthew 28:19 Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost: | |
Captcha is telling me to get out, so already a good omen.
So yeah, I will readily admit I'm an atheist. But bear in mind I'm not setting out to start an argument in this question. But there's lots of problems facing a legitimate view of most religions in looking at them from a societal and historical approach to them. I don't mean things adherents did in the past, because people of any kind of things can do things that were pretty immoral from a modern western perspective. I guess the inherent problem here is, there isn't necessarily a real deal sort of original religion that we'd be able to find. I wouldn't even be surprised if religion had pre-human origins, but let's not even bother digging that deep. Since it's the religion probably most of the religious people are in here, I'll use Christianity as an example.
The Bible is composed of two main bodies of text, the old testament and the new testament. We all know this. The old testament is the majority of the Torah, the primary Jewish text. The new Testament is a compilation of the supposed works Christ(some of which we now know should actually be attributed to Greek philosophy as preached by the early adherents of Christianity in the area,) the tenants of practicing the religion as written by the Romans and a few later additions from medieval times about hell and the end times. This by itself is kind of a clear strike against the religion, because I find it hard to believe that an ultimate truth imposed by supernatural elements could come from so many sources.
But that's just following every word of the Bible, which at least most people I know, don;t really do. It's just a book, but it's a wise book and the Judeo-Christian God is probably real, and Christ could totally be the savior, right? I mean, maybe, but that's got a few holes in it too. This kind of brings us back to the whole "roots in Judaism" thing. God didn't originally have a son. But what a lot of people don't realize is that in the earliest days of the Hebrews, God wasn't even the ONLY God. Yahweh is the modern God worshiped by Abrahamic faiths, but before Abraham, there were many Gods to the Hebrew people. Monotheism, in fact, was probably invented by the Zoroastrians. The Jews then likely took that idea from them, sometime under Babylonian rule. So really, that whole one god thing is kind of a misconception that happened over time. And this same thing is true of all modern religions. They've all changed dramatically and influenced each other, to the point thaat it's hard to imagine that any actual religion is completely true. Hindus didn't always worship Brahma, after all.
Tl;dr: All religions stem from the same roots in culture, how do you justify this in regards to your religion?