It is my perspective that this is one of the fundamental questions that religion seeks to answer. That is, I think that belief in a creator is, more or less, independent of a given faith, but that a particular faith gives the specifics of that deity, including whether or not it desires worship and, if so, how it should be worshipped.
Does the fact that a “God” exists automatically mean that it deserves to be worshiped?
He also seems to stipulate that one or more existing religious institutions represent a sufficiently adequate expression of god’s will. The question he wants answered is which is truest expression - or at least I assume that is what is meant by “best”.
As a short answer, no.
As a long answer, relating back to some things I mentioned up thread, I think the deservedness of worship depends upon the intent behind the creation.
To illustrate my point, let’s examine an analogy of whether all parents deserve the respect of their children. I certainly think a father that cares for his children deserves respect, but does a father who basically is nothing more than a sperm donor and left the mother before the child was born deserve any regard from his child?
In the same way, a creator who is somehow engaged in the universe, whether through direct intervention or at least some form of intelligent design is arguably worthy of worship, if he so desires it. A creator who simply threw things together and doesn’t care, may arguably not be.
Beyond this point, the manner of worship also depends upon intent. I think a creator who did it to prove how awesome he is very well may desire a lot of direct praise. OTOH, a creator who did so with intent of having us grow, learn, and enjoy our existence may desire nothing more than us actually following through with that intent.
As such, I think it all depends on what properties we attribute to the creator beyond simply that he created us, which isn’t stipulated in the OP and, so, is a directly affected by the properties attributed by whatever religion happens to be most correct.
Both the learning and the converting were processes rather than solitary events. They overlapped. I don’t exactly see the point of your question. If you’re implying that I chose Christianity before I knew anything about any other religion, rest assured that I did not.
This I’ve already answered in other posts. The bones of my answer were that (a) I found that what Christianity says matches what I can observe concerning myself and the world I live in (b) all other religions, I have some irreconciliable disagreement with. As for why that is, I’ve already said that I can’t communicate everything unless you’re willing to sit and listen while I try to repeat my entire learning process to you. I’ve given examples and can give more. In Christianity there’s much emphasis on the fact that Jesus Christ was a poor person, as were the apostles, the martyrs, and the church fathers, and as a result it’s an integral part of Christianity that poor men and women, or more generally those at the bottom of the social ladder, can nonetheless be worthy of respect and make important contributions to society. As a result of this, many of the greatest Christians have lived in poverty, including St. Franics of Assisi and St. Thomas Aquinas, just to name two. Some still do. Compare that to Hinduism where the most notable social feature is the caste system; the caste system and Hinduism are integral parts of each other. Fundamental to the caste system is the notion that some people, owing to the random lot of birth, are simply not capable of achieving what others are. Those of the lowest division were not only held to have nothing worthwhile intellectually to contribute to society, but also often kept physically separate from higher case members by force. Millions of people suffered from this system for millenia and millions still do.
So I look at reality. I’ve known people from various social strata personally. I can read about the behavior of people at various different levels of society in the papers, magazines, and books. I can deduce facts about the social dimensions of the world I live in. The facts I deduce agree with the Christian position that those from low social strata lack nothing fundamental that those in upper social strata have. Hence they disagree with the Hindu position.
Or, to give another example, when I was young the schools often taught us a quote from Chief Seattle, a Native American leader: “For the earth does not belong to us, but we belong to the earth.” (There’s dispute about whether he actually said it.) The purpose of this, needless to say, was to show us how the primitive, earthy simplicity of the natives could outduel the cold-hearted ideology of western civilization. If you’d asked me around age 13 I would probably have agreed with it. Later on I realized that Chief Seattle, if he said it, was wrong. Humans do not belong to the earth. Instead, the earth belongs to humans. Which, incidentally, happened to be the Christian position. "Rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground. I give you every seed-bearing plant on the face of the whole earth and every tree that has fruit with seed in it. They will be yours for food. And to all the beasts of the earth and all the birds in the sky and all the creatures that move along the ground—everything that has the breath of life in it—I give every green plant for food.”
Nothing you’ve said constitutes what most people would consider “evidence”. Personally, I think you use that term so loosely as to be meaningless.
Evidence in religion is inherently going to be different than it is in most other fields of thought because it isn’t a science. Religion depends heavily on experience and perspective which are things that don’t really have an axiomatic basis. That is, I can provide something like a mathematic proof and, assuming it’s correct, I know that anyone who understands the principles will be able to understand it and accept the conclusion. However, if one person has a particular belief because of a particular experience, that will necessarily appear differently to anyone who hasn’t shared the same experience and will inherently carry a different amount of weight.
Or to give another example, I think asking someone why they believe what they believe is much like asking them why their favorite genre of music or their favorite color is their favorite. If I say my favorite color is green because it reminds me of a trip we took when I was a kid, and yet your favorite color is red because it reminds you of the awesome cherry pies your grandmother used to make… who is right? Moreso, if we were so inclined, we could even provide arguments about why another color is better, because of negative associations with the other color, or because of how society views them or because some famous person likes it or whatever. Both of us have provided an answer that is wholely consistent with your perspective and yet we disagree. Could you argue that any of those points are not evidence? Sure, it’s not scientific evidence, but it does explain why a particular position is held, even if you don’t find it as meaningful or persuasive as the other person does.
In your example I doubt that you’d say red is the best color, or even a correct one. Assuming that the phrase “the correct religion” has any meaning, we want to know why someone thinks the one they selected is correct.
You can select a baseball team to root for for a variety of reasons, but most rational people won’t actually try to argue their selection is the “best” team. People do select religions for a variety of reasons, but lots of them argue that their religion is correct. Historically, using a sword.
And I’d have a lot easier time getting elected to public office not being a fan of any particular football team than I would as an atheist, and thus not a fan of any particular religion or god.
I mostly agree but in the extreme case that you seem to be arguing that means the discussion is essentially pointless since every person will have their own equally valid perspective.
I don’t have a problem with that personally, but then don’t call it “evidence”. In the context of religion I think you can still have evidence that doesn’t amount to empirical proof. I’m not saying it necessarily exists, but I think that it can. Take for example the process that the Catholic Church goes through in deciding if a person should be beatified. The evidence they use is subject to debate but they attempt to strike a balance between faith and observation.
That’s all I’m asking for here. I don’t expect anything resembling a proof, but I do expect more than someone saying essentially that they chose Christianity because it was in accord with pre-existing biases.
Huh. Well, I guess we have a few things in common. Buddhism doesn’t recognize the validity of the caste system, and it also believes everyone has the potential to reach Nirvana. Even Women! Which was quite a radical thing for someone to say in 500 B.C.E. The Buddha also denouncing the slave trade (“trading in human beings”) which Christianity simply didn’t do.
One thing that I found very, very disconcerting about Christianity is the notion of an eternal hell for those who don’t believe in it. You get just one chance, in one lifetime, and that’s it. I used to be a Christian, and I just couldn’t bring myself to accept that people go to hell forever without any chance of redemption. It actually kept me from sleeping at night sometimes, just thinking about that. All the good people I know and love, going to endless torment. Einstein, Socrates, and Mohandus Gandhi? They’re going to hell, because they weren’t Christian.
I prefer to believe that everyone can eventually find salvation, even the worst people. That’s one of the things I found more appealing about Buddhism.
Diogenes can correct me and probably provide cites if I’m correct, but there was no concept of hell or Satan in early Christianity. Remember, it was an off shoot of Judaism which also lacked those concepts and I believe it still does.
In Judaism, I think they believe in a physical resurrection of the body. That was the reason for gathering one’s bones to one’s ancestors. I don’t think concepts like hell developed until much later although it’s been a while since i’ve read the new testament epistles so I could be wrong about that.
Eternal, burning Hell is not a Biblical concept, but it did enter into Christian theology within the first couple of centuries, though it was not parcticularly important or developed until the medieval period (and some Christian fathers, like Origin, said it didn’t exist at all, but was a useful tool for scaring sinners).
I think that’s overstating the case. It’s definitely not an OT concept. There are some Intertestimental writings which seem to suggest it. However, there are three passages in the NT (in Matthew 25, Revelation 14, 20) which can be used as proof-texts. Those three passages can be interpreted other ways but they can support Eternal burning Hell.
We’re going off topic again, but if no one minds, do you have any idea where those ideas may have come from?
I’m not sure about the dating of either book but my impression was that both were fairly late - certainly after 70AD and probably after 100AD. If that’s true, that would have been enough time for the concept to evolve but it’s still a mystery to me as to where it came from. Tartarus is the closest thing I can think of but there isn’t really a pattern of early Christians adopting Greco-Roman concepts - is there?
Not if those passages are understood in their original language and cultural context.
A religious experience can be self -hypnosis, if one wants something to be, and they have the need for proof they can hypnotize them self in to believing it was real.
Only religious people have religious experiences or people who want there to be some one to help them believe. If an Athiest wants to believe something they can also conjure up a religious experience to help them to believe.
All religious experiences happen in the mind, not all are hallucinations.
Isn’t it strange then, that Humans cannot live with out the plants and animals, but plants and animals can survive without humans? We need plants and animals both for food and comfort. Early man used animal skins to be able to live in cooler climates, plants and animals to eat, and wood , stone etc, for housing. Humans like to think they are in charge of the food chain but they are (in reality not). We are last in line; even one version of Genesis backs this up.
No, not really. It’s true the way you’ve phrased it because you’ve removed humans from the group animals, and that’s going to be true for any animal you so choose to arbitrarily yank from the natural world. “Isn’t it strange, then, that Wolves cannot live without the plants and animals, but plants and animals can survive without wolves?”
Would we be the same creatures if God sent down manna for us to eat three times a day? No, probably not. Certainly learning to hunt without claws and big teeth developed our brains and language, and that probably allowed our technology to advance far beyond what chimps have. But corn and bananas and apples and dogs and chicken and pigs wouldn’t exist in their present form without humans, either. And if we remove ourselves from the world, they will pretty quickly revert to their “natural” forms, just as wild roses spring from cultivars left unattended and feral dogs breed themselves into dingos or yeller dogs.
The idea of property is a human concept that we impose upon the world. It is only our property in so much as the Earth and other species lack the capability to tell us “No.” Property is someone laying a flag down on a piece of ground and saying “It’s mine!” I don’t believe that’s proof of a divine mandate for us to do whatever we want with the earth.
Even if the Earth does “belong to us”, we still need to consider the fact that we depend on the Earth for our survival, and it’s quite possible we can pollute it and thereby damage ourselves in the proccess. There are some Christians that apparently think God won’t let anything bad happen to us because of this alleged divine mandate. Like Senator James Inhofe.
Or, lest one thinks Inhofe is a one-off, Representative John Shimkus. Dumbasses.