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%title Because Whitcomb's making me.. %date 2002-08-31 20:44:12 :diary:livejournal:fossils:
I'm going to discuss my religious views. If you disagree with them, or are personally offended by them, please don't email me, but leave a comment here. That at least gives me an option to read them. If you mail me, I'll delete your mail. These are my opinions and I'm not asking for yours.
Religion is a good idea implemented in a bad way, especially christianity. However, I consider myself a christian in an.. abstract sense. Religion, to me, is a way of getting large amounts of people to do something that you want to do without having to talk to them directly. The goal of most religions (note the 'most' part) is to get you to be a Good Person according to society by providing a peice of literature, a myth, or some way of communicating your desires in a way that, while people may not believe it, it'll make them think about it. That's why the bible is contradictory: it has to appeal to all sorts of different people to get them to be Good (my liberal use of capitalization is not an accident). This is why there are quiet, happy christians, loud and angry christians, and every thing in between. There are christians who fear God, and there are those who are on a first name basis with him, because either they were imprinted with this philosophy at childhood, or something in the holy writ spoke to them. The threats, like 'be Good or go to Hell' spoke to some, while other parts, like the promises of heaven or the ideal Love spoke to others. Religion reaches so many people, too, partially because of the story aspect: the bible may or may not be true, but it's still a story, and has a plot. Anyway, what I'm getting at is that religion presents a set of ideas for an ideal society.
The badly implemented part is that the majority of people take religion farther than I find comfortable; pushing the more obscure (and obsolete) Ideas down other people's throats by means of politics, rules, circular arguments, and general overzealousness. They don't realize that there can be different degrees of faith in their religion and that life will still go on. Subtle seems to be a difficult concept. People who can recite bible verses should check to see that they understand them, first. For example, I can recite Romans 1:22 "Professing themselves as wise, they became fools", but I understand what it means: that it is foolish to say that you're smarter than you are, or to show off how smart you are to other people. Also, people who recite should try to take the verses to heart. I know that I sometimes show off, but, for the most part, I try not to do it.
Now days, however, things are starting to shift a bit. The majority of religious people still tend to be fairly zealous, but more and more people that I meet tend to be reading more into the bible, not as a story, but as a set of ideas put forth by the School of Deuteronomy, the Apostles, and other people who worked on the bible to help promote Goodness, even if it means fighting for Goodness, because Goodness is Good.
This probably didn't make sense, but at least I have it written down somewhere now.