Christainanity Discussion

[Feed the Monkey]

Hey all. Great points from both sides here. Really nice to see such well thought out debate.

It is my belief that fundamentalists in any religion are vastly intollerent people. We can see this in Christianity, Islam and any other major religion. My own personal faith is Buddhist (japanese), and there are even fundamentalists within certain forms of Buddhism. Even fundamantalist Atheists haver a lot to answer for! It is the refusal to see anothers point of view, and I believe, a certain insecurity in their own faith, that means they cannot see the whole picture.

At the core of every religion of value is, I believe, a really good message. Be good to your fellow man, and to thine own self be true. It is the constant mission to find out what being good to your fellow man actually is, and also what is really meant by thine own self. Any faith that teaches self betterment and compassion to others is well worth it. Of course what is difficult is when misinterprets teachings of ANY nature. And this does happen with ALL teachings. Be that a Bible, Koran, Torah, Sutra, Theory of evolution. It is by constant practice, study and faith in WHATEVER we choose to believe that really allows us to really advance ourselves. And yes, the bible has no doubt been used as a means for some terrible attrrocities. But it was not the core of the attrocities. At no point in any relegion does it say "Go and kill someone you don't like". People use it as an excuse to fuel their own personal need to do such things. If the terrorists on Sept 11th weren't Islamic, would they still have bombed those buildings? Probably. If George Bush wasn't a fundamentalist Christian, would he go and bomb a little country of brown people? Probably. What these people are doing that is wrong, is saying that they are following the word of their teachers. They really need to go back and reanalyse what is really being said.

And to say that science holds all answers to lifes questions, be that evolution or whatever is unfortunatley a gross exageration. Science has yet to give us any solid answers as to why we are actually here or how we can be happy in this lifetime. Science can explain why someone dies, but never why we are alive. We can break down an atom into it's smallest component levels and realise that past a certain level there is.... nothing. It's all about rythms and energy. And i would also point out that it is because of science that we have atomic weapons, capable of mass destruction on an unprecedneted scale. So science, the new religion, has also prooved to be capable of taking human life also. "Hey, we have this new atom bomb. Lets proove that it works...."

Ultimately, if a faith works for someone, great. Be that jewish, islamic, christian, buddhist, sikh or jedi. If someone doesn't have faith in a relgion per se, then that doesn't mean that they can't become happy. And faith in a religion doesn't guarantee happiness. I beleive that we have to work hard in this lifetime to realise true happiness within our lives, and however we do that is entirely up to us. What we should never do is tell someone else what to do. Or kill anyone. Period.

Anyway, my two cents.....