Well sure it is. There’s no proof that any of it is factual. None. It’s baseless. It’s all based on feel…and how the material is presented and what mood the searcher is in when he receives it. People may spend a lifetime studying it, but that doesn’t make it any more real.
No, I didn’t miss JThunder’s point; he missed mine because he instinctively defends his belief system. I’d do the same if someone suggested the periodic table was a purely arbitrary construct. And of course individual religions have extensive rituals and mythologies and dogmas and whatnot. My point is that all of these are arbitrary and I don’t see any evidence from you or him to suggest otherwise. What if Christians stopped celebrating Christmas? Would that be an improvement or a loss? You simply have no way (that I’m aware of) to prove it one way or the other.
Also, you’re presume a great deal about what I would do or what I would consider, and you’re consistently wrong. Certainly religions vary in their “evilness” and this is measurable by the amount of pointless harm they tolerate or encourage among their followers, with (I would guess) Quakers at one extreme and Charles Manson’s mini-cult at the other. However, this has nothing whatever to do with the groups’ relative beliefs but only their actions. A devout follower of Manson who never actually committed a crime is less harmful than a devout Quaker who slaps around his wife. According to you, I won’t even “consider the possibility”, which is “ridiculous on its face”. Class strawman action - you wrote an opinion on my behalf and challenged it. Bravo, you defeated yourself.
Now try to answer some of the questions I did ask, please. Is there any belief-aspect of Christianity that can be independently verified? What is the non-arbitrary difference between Catholic beliefs and Protestant beliefs? What happens when a person converts? Do any of these beliefs have any basis outside the minds of the believers?
Because they are all the same. Religion, no matter which one it is, requires an belief without evidence in an all powerful force from which instructions flow which must be followed without question. Every religion posits some kind of punishment for not following the rules, and a reward is said to exist for following those rules. No religion contains any sort of testable claims or hypotheses, nor do any acknowledge their own internal inconsistencies. Each has adherents who pick and choose which of that religion’s beliefs, rituals and values they put into practice on a daily basis. Each religion has some central text that is claimed to be divine, or at the very least divinely inspired, and perfect with respect to all things despite its blatant internal contradictions and obvious scientific inaccuracies.
Sure, religions differ in the details, but on the fundamentals religion is all the same.
And of course, as Bryan Ekers asked:
If you say that there is, then what?
Except that you would point to independently verifiable facts that are absolutely the same and can be repeated through experiment regardless of the culture or beliefs of the experimenter.
Well, eventually, but my first reaction would be “Whaaat!? Get outta here, you doof!” *
- Cleaned up a little
Absolutely untrue. Many forms of Buddhism, for example, do not require belief in a creator god, much less a god from whom instructions must flow. Still, that doesn’t stop people here from insisting that all religions do require belief in some god to whom people must pledge their obedience for no reason whatsoever.
“But that’s different!” one might object. That’s precisely the point. It is different, so stop lumping all religions together.
Now, I’m not an adherent of Buddhism by any means. I’m not about to defend its teachings. I only use this point to demonstrate that when people ridicule “religion” for its belief in a god, it’s because they’re spouting preconceived notions. They lump all religions together without doing a modicum of research into what the various religions believe.
Ditto for the persistent claim that theists believe in a God for no reason whatsoever – that religion requires “belief without evidence.” That’s certainly not true of Judeao-Christian religions, which maintain that they do have sufficient evidence for a God. That’s precisely why Judeao-Christian philosophers offer a variety of arguments for God’s existence – cosmological, teleological, ontological, axiological, noölogical, historical, and more. One might disagree with the validity of these argumetns, as some diehard ridiculers of religion will doubtlessly do, but the point remains: Religion itself does not inherently demand belief in a god without evidence. Heck, some religions don’t require belief in a god at all!
Old school Taoism has no punishments. It’s just presented as take it or leave it advice. It’s source is credited as just a really smart old dude. It’s the reason I chose the nick. I was going for irony.
I wouldn’t be surprised if other religions followed suit in some ways. There is alot of different beliefs out there.
Excellent point, Revenge. Excellent point.
I think that whenever people insist that all religions are basically the same, one should question whether they’ve done any sort of exhaustive (or even comprehensive) study of religious belief. There are a lot of different belief systems out there, so whenever someone insists on lumping all religions into the same bucket, it’s a safe bet that they’re arguing based on preconceived notions rather than genuine information.
But I accept the fact that God is not falsifiable, and consequently any religion that is God-based (most) has as its foundation something that is unprovable. For some in this thread, that is axiomatically the same as saying there is no God and all God-based religions must be wrong. That is also not provable, and it does NOT lead logically to the conclusion that all religions are the same. I accept that something unprovable can still be experienced. Feel free to dismiss this, but that’s still an axiom for you, it is not proof.
There have been great minds, greater than any on this board, I’ll suggest, that have argued theology and philosophy to a level that is astounding and that has demonstrated real, stark differences in religious thought. Not so, we hear here, again and again. They’re all the same, all the believing thinkers and students and philosophers and theologians. It’s all the same, it’s all about “feel,” it’s all ignorance and silliness, and no action or outcome that flows from these beliefs count–however, different they might be–because God is at the foundation. That’s lazy. And, yes, it’s ludicrous.
But Buddhism isn’t consistently referred to as a religion, according to your link:
In fact, this particular example is far outside the generally accepted definition of religion. If many people refer to it as a philosophy rather than a religion, how can it be in the same basket as christianity or hinduism?
…and how many of the tramplers would self identify as capitalists.
And what if one were not to object? If you’re going to imagine responses, at least put in the effort to imagine more than one.
Saying something is arbitrary and baseless isn’t automatically ridicule. It can be a simple statement of fact.
It’s not feasible to do a complete survey of the world’s religions. If you know of even one religious belief confirmable by scientific means, please let us know.
Well, of course they don’t casually admit their beliefs have no basis. That means nothing.
Some diehard questioners of religion (and defenders of reason) could do so as well. Why are your perceived opponents always wearing a sneer?
So? You’re spending a lot of time attacking the motives of the people who are questioning you, without actually answering their questions.
Or they are making a generalized statements based on the fact that many religions do have a lot in common and it was never their intention for that statement to be literally true.
I suppose for the sake of accuracy a better phrase could be found.
Now perhaps you’d be interested in answering BEs questions. Beliefs being arbitrary doesn’t mean they were pulled out of a hat or selected by throwing a dart. They were selected by man’s choices, personal preference, and some loosely agreed upon interpretations of writings also declared sacred by men. What part of that is not arbitrary?
Buddhism wasn’t developed as a religion, and in fact it’s not entirely accurate to call it one, although many people do. Siddharta never claimed to be divine, or that anything he did was divine. He was raised as a Hindu, and never really gave up all of it, so there are some Hindu ideas mixed into the Buddhist philosophy (reincarnation and such), but Buddhism was the response of Siddharta’s students after his refusal to appoint a successor to teach his philosophy after his death. Although, if you want to get really pedantic, many Buddhists today revere the Dalai Lama as if he is a living god. It’s almost as if they worship him. Punishment? Well, if you fail to live the right way, you keep getting reincarnated until you learn.
This is a common, if tired, refrain from religious believers. You say that you have evidence, but you never say what that evidnece is.
Why won’t you say what your evidence is?
So you ignore belief in spirits of the ancestors and in immortality, as well as the mysticism regarding the five universal elements? I understand that Taoism defines a correct path (that in fact, Tao refers to the path) one should follow. Does it also say what happens to those who do not follow it? If so, there are consequences to not following the path. A kind of ‘you will not be rewarded with heaven/72 virgins/everlasting life/total happiness’ system?
On what basis do you accept this as fact? I have seen no reason to consider that a fact.
I have no reason to assume that if such a thing as god existed, that existence would be any less provable than the existence of France.
Why do you accept that? On what basis do you accept it?
I have never been presented with a reason to think religion is anything other than a mental defect akin to an adult who believes the Tooth Fairy still exists. The only difference between the Tooth Fairy and God is that we expect children will grow out of believing in the former. I cannot imagine any other way than ignorance that someone could believe in a god, whether that ignorance is willful or not.
Well, there you are then! We’re all convinced and see the light, ignorance fought, and all that. No real debate here, and certainly some instances of a strenuous attempt to not see the other guy’s point (you decide which)–so, at this point it’s just dueling axioms.
Why do you think we’re not trying to see the other side’s point? I’ve tried for my entire life to see the other side’s point. Sorry…it’s not making sense to me. Not even a little bit. It doesn’t mean I didn’t try.
In the 1600s, “slut” meant “someone who works in the kitchen.” When I go over your Mom’s house for Christmas dinner and tell her what a great slut she is, I know she’ll take it as the compliment I intended. 
In fairness there are Buddhist hells. None are eternal. You get stuck in them till your bad karma runs out. They very in length and punishment, the worst one lasts IIRC around a billion years depending on how you interpret things.
Early Taoism defined no such things, later Taoism and NeoTaoism do. People just kind of glomp on things as time passes. There’s a Buddhist story about that I could share if anyone’s interested.
It doesn’t explicitly say what happens to people who don’t follow it. Atleast not in the works I’ve read. It does give warnings about the problems with excess, too much activity, ego, and forcing your will on other people, and tells you the virtues of simplicity, empty space, selflessness, accepting things as they are, and action without action.
There’s an online translation of the Tao Te Ching I like to read sometimes at: Tao Te Ching
If you wanna take a look for yourself. There’s no eternal consequences for not following the Tao because it’s about how to live a peaceful earthly life.
I have lived on both sides of the coin. I was not defective on either side. I just was.
Actually I wanna revise that answer a bit. Rereading it the Tao Te Chig it does mention spirits in one spot so far in a part about unity. Doesn’t seem to make any claim what these spirits do though.
There’s also a couple spots where it does talk about immortality through the Tao, but more in a Buddhist Nirvana loss of individuality sense. The individual is lost but the whole continues and the individual is part of the whole.
The fact that people can endlessly debate a subject, study and produce exegetical works on it, compare and contrast differing perspectives on it, etc, is no indication of truth. Much of the same type of literary analysis, philosophical discussion, and quasi-thelogical argumentation has gone into, say, the work of Tolkien, or Star Trek, but neither elves nor warp nacelles have the necessary condition of actually existing.
The statement seems to be “there are legitimate, definable, rational differences between religions, so it is a mistake to lump them all together”. What is a rational difference between, say, Episcopalians and Presbyterians that is based in observable, provable fact?
Episcopalians, I think, have a higher median income.