[sperry]

In response to ScottyS's long post that I don't want to quote...

You make a lot of interesting points about comparing religions, and the pitfalls of letting the observer's point of view cloud the results of the comparison.

That said, I still believe at the core, most organized religions are the same. The problems with religion comes from man's distortion of the "word of God".

1st, if you look at the geneology of western religion you'll see that Judaism became Christianity which became Islam and Mormonism. And even Judaism is really just a conglomeration of many earlier religions. So the question is, why do religions evolve? If God really did perscribe a way to live and worship, how come we're not all of the same religion? And how come it's changed so much over the last 4000 years?

The answer is of course that man is manipulating religion for his own purposes. Christianity has a *long* history of being a political force 1st and a religious force 2nd. In fact the split between Roman Catholic and the Church of England was *completely* political, and then became religious as the English wanted to make their own brand a bit different. And that's just one example of the distortion of religion for political or personal gain. Look at the televangelists. You can't tell me that those assholes on TV that are taking money from the poor, sick, and people down on their luck in the name of worshiping Jesus are doing God's work. They're using religion for their own goals, and to control the population... just like the Pope's of old did, or the way ancient Egyptian Pharoes claimed to be gods on earth, etc, etc, etc. The bottom line is that organized religions were created primarily as a means of government, wrapped around nuggets of truth that were used as means to get people to subscribe to said religion.

But now that we're in the age of secular government, we look to religion more for moral guidance than for political guidance. We look towards those nuggets of truth that are embedded deep within all the crap, since we've already got our own system of crap known as the federal government.

So, I think we need to look at our religions and throw out all the layers that mankind has added to God's message over the years. We need to boil our religions down to the basic elements that they all share. So one can pick a religion that feels right to them and use it to find community and moral guidance. Religion should be something that makes people happy, and makes people's lives better.

Unfortunately, because of the fundamentalists in every religion that want to take everything litterally, down to the last man-made word, this just isn't happening. Many people, like myself, find the retoric and bullshit that's still imbued in organized religion outweighs the core of good. Like the example of gay marriage. IMO, if two gay people want to get married, it has no real effect on me, why not let them be happy? Meanwhile my religion is telling me that not only should they not be allowed to marry, it also tells me they're gonna burn in hell because of their acts. Then in the same breath I'm told that Jesus loves everyone. Either I'm missing something in the church's message, or I'm not brainwashed enough to doublethink my way around the hypocracy.

So I stand behind my statement that orgainized religions are all essentially the same thing. If you throw out all the political crap designed to control the population, you're left w/ a simple message: "love one another". And yet, that seems to be the message that gets forgotten most easily by religions that have a hard-on for trying to convert everyone into believing their way is the only true way.

Now, regarding the claim that Christianity has improved our quality of life, I'd just like to point out the era known as "the dark ages"... you know when Christianity obliterated all the wisdom and advancement that the ancient Greek and Roman cultures developed. Not to mention all the religious wars (Crusades, Spanish Inquisition, etc.. even stuff as recent as Saddam Hussien's Iraq and the Taliban) that have kept people living in the dark ages in the name of religion. I'm w/ Austin on this one: quality of life has improved specifically because of our secular government that has allowed science and technology to flourish.

(And of course the standard religions discussion disclaimer: I don't claim to have religion figured out, and I'm not saying others should believe in what I believe in... all this is just my opinion, provided for discussion.)