I want to start out by saying I am not interested in any kind of “argument from design.” I’m a weak atheist, but for the purposes of this thread I will assume arguendo that it’s obvious the universe was designed by a Creator.
With God’s existence being taken for a given, how can we discern what God wants us to do with our lives, and which particular religious institution best represents the will of God?
I believe that, inherent in your question, is the assumption that God “wants” anything from us at all. If God is anything like a good parent (as many, but not all, religions would tell us), my best guess is that, like most good parents, S/He wants us to be happy with our lives, and that’s about it.
So, accordingly, my religion (neopaganism) teaches that there is no one true religion, nor correct or incorrect ones. Whatever makes you happy without harming others is correct, but it’s only correct for you. Harming others is frowned upon, of course, because it interferes with their ability to seek happiness for themselves, or as more commonly stated, infringes on their Free Will.
I’ve yet to hear an argument from another religion that’s compelling enough to make me change my stance on this issue.
I don’t know which religion is correct, I know which religion is mine.
So you believe based on the religion of your parents? Doesn’t that seem like kind of a shallow faith?
It’s like having confidence that the metaphysical secrets of the universe are based on your zip code.
Wow, only took three replies to the OP of a religion thread before someone started putting words in someone else’s mouth.
He didn’t say he believed in his parents’ religion.
How did it come to be yours?
I was asking. In the future you can tell this by the strange glyph I place at the end of some sentences.
If he went out and chose a religion, at random I assume (since he said he doesn’t know which is right), then it wouldn’t apply.
That said, I’m pretty sure that well over 50% of humanity apes the religion of their immediate parents. So my comment would apply to a lot of people in any case.
Alessan’s religion is not typically one of conversion, so I think the odds are pretty good he inherited it from his parents.
That’s kind of profound. I wish there were a non-sarcasm emoticon.
The OP’s question is why I stopped believing. I believed that my religion was right, and other people thought that their’s was right, but for the most part we just practiced our particular religion because our parent’s did. Therefore faith alone was not enough to establish one religion as correct, and there were lot’s of people who truly believed in their religion but were “wrong”. So what were the chances that my particular religious belief was the correct one? And if hundreds/thousands of religious traditions were wrong then it was not a big leap to say they all were wrong.
At that point everything fell into place. How do we reconcile Genesis with science? We don’t have to, it’s just a myth like Native American creation myths or Greek gods. Why does God let little children suffer and die while having time to listen to some Coach in Texas say a pre-game prayer? Well that’s easy, there is no God. Why are we here? There is no particular reason that there should be a reason at all.
Parent. It just matters what the mother is/was.
Let me see if I can turn this back towards the OP’s question here. Start by eliminating those that you believe are way off base and proceed until you have a core group of 3 or 4. Then spend a little time at each of those institutions and go sit on a beach and think about it.
Since a faith, a belief system is an intensly personal thing, the question should not be “which one is correct”, but rather “which one is right for me?” Since all the major religions (and all the minor ones that I’m aware of) have pros and cons it simply comes down to a matter of personal choice.
Dan Brown said “Religion is man’s attempt to explain the unexplainable”. And each and every one of us is likely to have a different explanation.
On a personal note: I was raised in a fanatically narrow christian sect. When I reached the age of majority, I got out as quickly as I could and never looked back. I still despise that particular church, but this has not blinded me to the many good people I knew there…people who are honestly living good honorable lives as their conscience dictates. Who am I to say that miserable strictured faith is not “correct” for them.
Not a churchgoer, but I consider myself a nominal Christian…as opposed to something else. I still tend to view matters of moment…morality, ethics, questions of immortality…through an essentially christian lens. And why not? It’s what I’ve learned, the particular faith I’m comfortable with. Christianity has been more-or-less tailored to fit the folkways, the needs of those of us in the Western European/American world. It serves adequately for my purposes. If I’d been born and raised in Japan, I’d probably be a nominal Bhuddist. Just as I’d be a Muslim if I hailed from Iran or the Arab world.
People love their country, or their sports team, based on a ZIP code. Why should religion be any different?
Religion, to me, is not really about faith. It’s a social construct - a system of customs and traditions, laws and obligations. I believe that there’s virtue in the enlightened observance of these, whatever they are, both to the individual and to the surrounding community. The fact that I received my these religious observances from my parents is irrelevant; the fact that I carry them on, is, to me, a good thing, although I have no problem with people who don’t need religion in their lives.
It’s not that I don’t believe in God. I do, and I’m glad He (or She, or Whatever) is there. It’s just that my faith isn’t that important. I have my own morals to guide my behavior, and science to explain the universe. God, along with my faith, just is.
That’s an extremely solid answer. Thanks for the insight.
I agree.
My wife and I are both atheists, but we also belong to a Jewish temple. Our attitude is that we all need a framework to give structure to our lives, and that there are many aspects of Judaism that structure our lives in positive ways. So we take the parts that are useful, and ignore the rest.
The way I see it, I believe that God exists, that E is good, and that E is worthy of worship (stated by way of background; I don’t think this thread is the right one to go into why I believe that). I do not pretend to know what is the best manner in which to worship God. Lacking any compelling reasons to the contrary, then, I choose to worship God in the same manner as my family. Were I to marry someone who worshiped in a different manner (but with the same core beliefs), I would at least consider changing the way I worship, since I believe that it is more important that a family worship together than any particular mode of worship.
Personally, I studied various religions, learned what the members of each believe, read the apologetic arguments (if any) that they put forward, investigated the evidence and the historical record, and followed where the evidence lead me. I found that the evidence pointed towards Christianity, with so many lines converging in that direction that I eventually converted.
I have never truly understood the argument that the existence of many distinct religions and many firm believers in each somehow argues against there is probably not a unique, true religion. There are many types of government and many firm believers in each, yet should that shake my faith that democracy is the one and only good form of government?
Oh so you’re an atheist?
Wah, wah, whaaat? 
The difference being there is evidence to be had that democracies create good results. There is no evidence that Jesus rose from the dead and had magic powers. I know you just said there was, but you’re mistaken.
I have to say I love this question and it’s something that I’ve put a lot of thought into, so hopefully my perspective is helpful.
Any being powerful enough to be able to create the universe is likely to either be beyond our comprehension, or at the very least, very difficult to fully understand. I liken this to the analogy of the blindmen and the elephant or of some 2D cross-sections of a 3D solid. That is, there really can be only one truth about the nature of the creator, but if he is so difficult to understand, it’s likely that slightly different perspectives from different individuals and different cultures will result in slightly different ideas about the nature of the creator. In fact, that these various perspectives don’t completely match up isn’t necessarily evidence that one is more right than the other, but could be evidence of such different perspectives attempting to encapsulate the nature of the creator into the human mind.
To give a simplistic example, imagine a solid where one cross section is a perfect circle and where another might be a perfect square. These two ideas seem to have nothing in common when directly compared, in fact, we might intuitively think that one must be true and the other not because we’d at least expect cross-sections of the same solid to be similar. However, if one realizes that the true nature of that solid is a cylinder, then can realize that both cross-sections were both accurate and incomplete.
In this same way, I think the nature of the creator is filtered through the perspectives of the people that perceive it. Values of a culture that are similar to the creator will be emphasized, and those that aren’t will be de-emphasized. And so, to argue that one religion is necessarily more correct than another is to ignore one of the most basic principles of the likely nature of the creator.
As such, the correct religion is that which best matches one’s likely incomplete perspective of the nature of God, which likely won’t be exactly the same for everyone. In fact, I don’t think it’s really possible to have a correct religion, but rather only identify when one is following an incorrect one because an inconsistency with that perspective is revealed.
To this end, this is also why, though I was raised Christian and still consider myself one, I have fundamentally rejected some major portions of the traditional dogma (eg, the trinity) because they simply don’t align with my perspective of the nature of God. Meanwhile, I still feel that what I believe are the most important parts of Christianity are the most consistent with my perspective, particularly the vast majority of the teachings of Jesus, particularly his two greatest commandments being about as succinct and as accurate a way of portraying what I believe God wants in the temporal and cultural context that it was presented.
That all said, if we take all of these different perspectives into consideration and adjust for the cultural and temporal contexts, under the assumption that all of the perspectives aren’t completely orthogonal, we might be able to find some major commonalities about the nature of the creator between these perspectives, and perhaps we can gain some greater insight into the nature of God.
Didn’t you find the Pelopenesian myths about the water people creating the earth from the bladders of fish at least a little convincing? Good coincidence that you ended up with the religion embraced by the majority of the Western world.