"My religions is right" (paradise, salvation, disciples, hell)

[SwedishViking]

With all the hundreds or thousands of religions out there claiming to be the one of "enlightenment" or "true path" or whatever have you ever thought about wether your own can be right?
in a hundred religions claiming the other to be false, at least 99 are bound to be wrong.
(my personal bet is that all 100 are)

So question is; Why is your religion right?

My answer is that I believe in modern science; the nuclear bomb, modern medicine, and countless machines are fairly good statements. Without any of the discoveries of science all you middle aged people would be past your life-expectancy by far and be completely toothless.

[rifleman]

Originally Posted by SwedishViking

With all the hundreds or thousands of religions out there claiming to be the one of "enlightenment" or "true path" or whatever have you ever thought about wether your own can be right?
in a hundred religions claiming the other to be false, at least 99 are bound to be wrong.
(my personal bet is that all 100 are)

So question is; Why is your religion right?

My answer is that I believe in modern science; the nuclear bomb, modern medicine, and countless machines are fairly good statements. Without any of the discoveries of science all you middle aged people would be past your life-expectancy by far and be completely toothless.

(Now now; careful with those pigeon-holing "you middle-aged people" comments. I'll may just have-tah whittle you down to size, suhhh-neee!)

Anyhow, we atheists agree with you, even us middle-aged (or senior and near-old) "toothless [hee hee...] ones! Doesn't mean we've lost our intellectual marbles after all. In fact, some of us got smarter, not dumber, with age. So don't worry; we've got the really good irrefutable arguments against the relentless pious and self-righteous Christian hoards, all well-practiced.

We've got your back, son.

[SwedishViking]

point is most middle aged people are far from done with their lives today, a few thousand years ago, you'd be bones by 35 years old.

[Truth light]

"Say: We believe in God, and in what has been revealed to us and what was revealed to Abraham, Ishmael, Isaac, Jacob, and the Tribes, and in (the Books) given to Moses, Jesus, and the Prophets from their Lord: We make no distinction between one and another."(Quran)

Muslims believe in all of the books of God.
This includes both the Qur'an and the earlier books revealed by God to His various messengers. While all of God's prophets received divine inspiration and revelation, some of them were given an actual book of revelation. Those, who were given such a book, are frequently referred to as the messengers of God.

The Qur'an notes five such books of revelation: the book given to Abraham ; the book (i.e. the Torah or the Law) given to Moses (peace be upon him) ; the book (i.e. the "Zabur" or the Psalms) given to David (peace be upon him) ; the book (the "Injeel" or the Gospel) given to Jesus (peace be upon him) ; and the book (Qur'an) given to Muhammad (peace be upon him). Muslims believe that all these books, as they were delivered in their original form to the messengers who then imparted them to mankind, were guidance from God. The operative phrase, however, is "as they were delivered in their original form".

The book of Abraham (peace be upon him) is no longer known to exist, and no trace of such a book has been left to modern man. The book of Jubilees, however, a Jewish religious writing of the third or second century BCE, seems to make reference to this book of Abraham. It notes that upon his death, Jacob left his books and the books of his fathers, i.e., Isaac and Abraham, to his son Levi.

As regards to the book of Moses (peace be upon him), the "received Torah", as found in the current Biblical books of Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy, is a far cry from the original Torah, although traces and elements of the original Torah may continue to be found, scattered here and there in the "received Torah". In fact, Biblical analysis by Christian scholars has clearly demonstrated that: these five books of the "received Torah" did not reach their present form until late in the fifth century BCE, i.e., around l,000 years after Moses (peace be upon him); and that these books are compilations from earlier written sources, known as J, E, P, and D.

Likewise, the current Biblical book of Psalms is a poor resemblance of the original Psalms of David (peace be upon him). Occasional chapters or verses in the "received Psalms", however, may be part of the original Psalms. Interestingly, this Islamic belief finds significant support from Christian scholars and commentators on the Psalms.

It must be noted that the original gospel of Jesus (peace be upon him) cannot be found anywhere in the corpus of the Bible. Although various sayings attributed to Jesus (peace be upon him) in the Bible may represent preserved fragments from the original gospel or "Injeel". The original gospel of Jesus (peace be upon him) would have been a word-for-word repetition of the words of God to Jesus (peace be upon him). In that regard, it may have been similar to "Q" (a lost collection of the sayings of Jesus (peace be upon him) utilized by Matthew, Luke, and Thomas) or to the apocryphal gospel of Thomas, both of which were books of the sayings of Jesus (peace be upon him).

In contrast, the current canonical gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John are basically small biographies of Jesus (peace be upon him). The canonical gospels are merely the writings about Jesus (peace be upon him) of anonymous authors, to whom the later Christian churches assigned the names of various disciples of Jesus (peace be upon him) or followers of the disciples of Jesus (peace be upon him). They certainly are not books that claim to be the word-for-word rendition of Jesus (peace be upon him) wherein he quotes the words of God.

For further details:

http://english.islammessage.com/articledetails.aspx?articleId=616

[MattClyde]

Originally Posted by ditchlights

And this exact argument is why I have issues with the doctrine of eternal torment. People actually believe this stuff. Some of them even seem happy that everyone who believes differently than them are going there.

This is why fundamentalists despise Universalism. The belief system eliminates their "special" status, and opens the door for every human to enter paradise, regardless of their belief structure.

This and... Because I said so DUH!

[SwedishViking]

@truth light, did you forget to post what your point was?

[ptsum]

Wow, if it isn't the Christians preaching at you that you're going to eternal hell because you don't believe the way they do, it's the Muslim trying to prove to you that their sacred book and their Allah is the only true God. When will these people realize that not everybody believes the way they do and back off on all the preaching, you know I think this world would be a whole lot better place without either one of these two organized religions. At least maybe there'd be a chance for some peace and quiet and people quit trying to kill one another over some silly stupid religious belief...

[Randomstudent]

I don't necessarily think anyone's religion is wrong, illogical, or improbable maybe, but there is really no way of proving a negative where deities are concerned. I believe what I believe because it makes sense to me. I don't expect other folks to agree on a belief system because everyone is bound to have a different perspective on life.

[Katzpur]

Originally Posted by SwedishViking

With all the hundreds or thousands of religions out there claiming to be the one of "enlightenment" or "true path" or whatever have you ever thought about wether your own can be right?

I think about it almost daily.

So question is; Why is your religion right?

Since I have no way of proving that my religion is right, I won't be put in the position of insisting that it is. All I know is that it works for me. It makes my life better than it would otherwise be, and hurts no one else.

[Jason28]

To be enlightened of the fact that there are literally hundreds of thousands of different religious selections and to still believe that yours is the only choice to "salvation", whatever that means, is the absolute definition of ignorance. Most people ONLY believe what they believe as a sheer chance of geographical randomness. Those in America are more prone to christianity, those in the middle east islam, those in India hinduism, etc...

It's even funnier when you consider how many tens of thousands of different variations there are within one branch of a religion. Take christianity for example. Last I checked there was near 30,000 some odd versions. That has to make any christian with a brain wonder if perhaps, just maybe, there religion is a made up thing of comfort fabricated by leaders of Rome thousands of years ago to control the masses with ease.

At it's core, religions were made up in an attempt for people to understand things that they can't for some reason or another. Think of their holy books such as the bible as a pacifier for adults. I could expound further into religions but fear I would lose any audience I would have reading this. I'll close with one final solid point. The ONLY reason that near 100,000 different religious selections exist is because not a single one of them can provide a shred of credible evidence, to the individual or anyone else for that matter. If one of them could, which it can not and will NEVER be able to do, it would immediately demolish all the others.