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Old 12-28-2014, 09:58 PM
 
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Comparative Religion - The Ultimate Reality in world religions

God is defined as either personal being, impersonal being, or impersonal force. So I've heard "all religion is the same" thrown around by atheists and fundamentalists, mainly as an excuse to pidgeonhole religion. Okay then, how do you explain this?

Maybe it's the same God, but not the same religion. C'mon explain away.
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Old 12-29-2014, 05:52 AM
 
Location: S. Wales.
50,086 posts, read 20,691,451 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by bulmabriefs144 View Post
Comparative Religion - The Ultimate Reality in world religions

God is defined as either personal being, impersonal being, or impersonal force. So I've heard "all religion is the same" thrown around by atheists and fundamentalists, mainly as an excuse to pidgeonhole religion. Okay then, how do you explain this?

Maybe it's the same God, but not the same religion. C'mon explain away.
I am open to correction, but it seems your argument is based on a false premise; "all religion is the same". I believe atheists don't say so. Unless you mean in saying that none of them are credible - which makes your argument based on the fallacy of equivocation.

I am sure the same applies to religious fundamentalists. They would surely NOT accept that "all religion is the same"though they would all surely argue that it was the same god they all worshipped, but (especially fundamentalists) I am sure they all believe that there was something disenfranchisingly suspect about the Other ways of worshipping God.

So it seems as if your argument is ill -founded and poorly worded to begin with. I think you need to go away and have another bash at it before you can expect atheists or fundamentalists to address it.
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Old 12-30-2014, 04:50 PM
 
Location: Missouri
611 posts, read 280,824 times
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Default USA = Ship of Fools

Quote:
Originally Posted by bulmabriefs144 View Post
Comparative Religion - The Ultimate Reality in world religions

God is defined as either personal being, impersonal being, or impersonal force. So I've heard "all religion is the same" thrown around by atheists and fundamentalists, mainly as an excuse to pidgeonhole religion. Okay then, how do you explain this?

Maybe it's the same God, but not the same religion. C'mon explain away.
All religions are divisions of the word of God. The Bible is not about religion, it is about a way of life. If you want to know what God thinks, search the scriptures. If you want to know what men think, join a religion.

People are just dumb when it comes to understanding the word...or rather, concepts of God. At the end of creation, at the end of the sixth day, God looked back, "And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good...and Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them." Genesis 1:31 & 2:1 -FINISHED- A wrap up. It was very good. There was no Satan in heaven with God nor upon earth. And anyone that dreams up some Satan or claims God had a Devil with him is either a liar or makes God into a liar.

Genesis 3:1 is the origin of Satan: "Now the serpent was more subtle than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made." Now the serpent, that lying tongue, was more subtle than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made...means what to you? Eve SAW, Eve DESIRED, Eve REASONED, Eve ATE and that same lying tongue gave to Adam to eat. And since they chose to believe they knew better than God, the God of truth, he told them the truth when he put them outside of Eden...Woe! unto the woman, a continuous bruising cycle from head to heel with no soundness in the way they chose. And Woe! unto the man which he sent to till the ground, and Woe! unto that lying tongue, that it may eat dust all the days of his life. And there has been no Satan with God, nor walking with God since Genesis 3:24

And every since it has been, the spirit of God vs. the spirit of man.

The spirit of God is love, peace, and understanding. The spirit of man is hate, war, and confusion. The Bible only gives us a glimpse of God, and a whole lot of ourselves with that lying tongue. God said go kill, murder, and covet...yeah right, you lying tongue. Don't you know Christ? You should know better than to believe all that bloodshed in the O.T. was the desire of God. Shed a little more blood for a little more milk and honey, forget the commandments...thus saith God? I don't think so. That God is a devil, they don't serve God, they serve devils and have no discernment of scriptures at all. Surely, if you know Christ, how can you not spot all the sins and those lies?

Subconscious - 1. Existing or operating beneath or beyond consciousness. 3. The totality of mental processes of which the individual is not aware; unreportable mental activities...this sounds a lot like God to me. You don't even know it exists, yet you must because you can find it in any dictionary.

The totality of all your mental processes exists where? Some cosmic consciousness with some cosmic perspective? And I think if Mr. Sub C. began leaking into Mr. C. he could do whatever he wanted with Mr. C. You are not alone in that body. People hang themselves because of it. And look at mankind and the hate, wars, and confusion...it's not God doing that, it's you man. I think if man would just stop killing each other, they would have a lot less murders to blame on God. And if man would just stop doing all that wickedness, they would have a lot less evil to blame on God.

Climb out of this bottomless pit here: Deut 28:15 & 16 & 20 & 29 & & &...And that's not really God doing that to you. It's you doing it to yourselves. The Father gave you some advise: love, peace, and understanding with which comes blessings...and man gave us hate, war, and confusion with which comes curses. God never made anyone do anything, and he never decided for you, you always decided and look at where we are today...No love, no peace, and no understanding...just look at us today...all liars and deceivers without any understanding of God.

A Short History of Man
--RIP--

Man started out by hiding and lying to cover up sin.
Then man started killing animals to cover up sin.
Then men started killing each other to remove sin.

Then one day man killed all the animals off the land.
But sin remained.
And then they poisoned the waters, and poisoned all the creatures in the waters.
But sin remained.

And they cut, burnt, and destroyed all the trees.
And they dug up and cracked open the earth and put poison inside.
And they poisoned the atmosphere.
Yet sin remained.

And then one day all men died off and were dead.
And sin took a rest.


–-Lest comes the Lord.
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Old 12-31-2014, 10:25 AM
 
15 posts, read 10,391 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by bulmabriefs144 View Post
Comparative Religion - The Ultimate Reality in world religions

God is defined as either personal being, impersonal being, or impersonal force. So I've heard "all religion is the same" thrown around by atheists and fundamentalists, mainly as an excuse to pidgeonhole religion. Okay then, how do you explain this?

Maybe it's the same God, but not the same religion. C'mon explain away.

God is the same, even religion is also same but the ways of worships are different..Religions created by hymen beings and are involve too much in all these..To know more about basic of religions go through : all religions of the world..
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Old 12-31-2014, 12:52 PM
 
Location: Victoria TX
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All Theology is more or less the same. But religions vary widely on the extent to which their principles or doctrines arise from a foundation of Theology. As soon as a religion wanders away and begins to interpret Theology and apply it to the lives of the faithful, then there is no limit to how far afield they can go.

Knausgaard speculates on the utility of the biblical God, who tries to enforce his law by sending in squadrons of angels to punitively darken the sun and turn the seas to blood, none of which has had any lasting effect whatsoever on human nature. It is religion, not theology to assign those kinds of personalized attributes to a God, and their variations are as endless as the human imagination.

Last edited by jtur88; 12-31-2014 at 01:06 PM..
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Old 01-01-2015, 03:49 AM
 
Location: USA
1,589 posts, read 2,133,683 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by bulmabriefs144 View Post
Comparative Religion - The Ultimate Reality in world religions

God is defined as either personal being, impersonal being, or impersonal force. So I've heard "all religion is the same" thrown around by atheists and fundamentalists, mainly as an excuse to pidgeonhole religion. Okay then, how do you explain this?

Maybe it's the same God, but not the same religion. C'mon explain away.
I think this statement was taken out of context so to speak. It's like saying: all women are the same, they all... do such and such...

So the statement "all religions are the same" would mean probably something like: "they all brainwash you into believing something that's not true" or "they all are illogical", or..... basically find a common denominator and insert here...

But also we generalize and use bias. So someone who says: all women are the same, they all betray you... is someone who is not being accurate, but is simply expressing his narrow focused emotion (he is not reflecting reality, he is not saying what really is true, but just expressing a frustration).

It's not a scientifically accurate statement, it's just an expression.

That's my feeling anyways.
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Old 01-01-2015, 09:09 AM
 
Location: USA
17,161 posts, read 11,383,953 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by AREQUIPA View Post
I am open to correction, but it seems your argument is based on a false premise; "all religion is the same". I believe atheists don't say so. Unless you mean in saying that none of them are credible - which makes your argument based on the fallacy of equivocation.

I am sure the same applies to religious fundamentalists. They would surely NOT accept that "all religion is the same"though they would all surely argue that it was the same god they all worshipped, but (especially fundamentalists) I am sure they all believe that there was something disenfranchisingly suspect about the Other ways of worshipping God.

So it seems as if your argument is ill -founded and poorly worded to begin with. I think you need to go away and have another bash at it before you can expect atheists or fundamentalists to address it.

Just a slight correction... fundamentalists (of the Christian variety, at any rate) would never say that anyone else worships the same God they do. They would say everyone else is worshiping false gods.
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Old 01-01-2015, 09:19 AM
 
Location: USA
17,161 posts, read 11,383,953 times
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Originally Posted by auralmack View Post
<snip>

Climb out of this bottomless pit here: Deut 28:15 & 16 & 20 & 29 & & &...And that's not really God doing that to you. It's you doing it to yourselves. The Father gave you some advise: love, peace, and understanding with which comes blessings...and man gave us hate, war, and confusion with which comes curses. God never made anyone do anything, and he never decided for you, you always decided and look at where we are today...No love, no peace, and no understanding...just look at us today...all liars and deceivers without any understanding of God.
Interesting post overall. Really. I actually agreed with some of what you said. But you have a really low opinion of people in general, it seems. Maybe you aren't seeing any of the good because you're only looking for the bad?
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Old 01-01-2015, 10:08 AM
 
Location: S. Wales.
50,086 posts, read 20,691,451 times
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Originally Posted by Pleroo View Post
Just a slight correction... fundamentalists (of the Christian variety, at any rate) would never say that anyone else worships the same God they do. They would say everyone else is worshiping false gods.
Arguable. One may claim that they are praying to gods that don't exist, but others might reason that they are actually experiencing the same god, but are failing to understand him correctly because they believe the wrong religion.And muslims would say the same.

But I concede that some may say that, if you got in touch with the real god, you would know which was the right religion. I can't actually recall that happening, though. There are cases of conversion (both ways) but not (reliably) out of the blue.
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Old 01-01-2015, 10:23 AM
 
Location: Northeastern US
19,956 posts, read 13,450,937 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by AREQUIPA View Post
Arguable. One may claim that they are praying to gods that don't exist, but others might reason that they are actually experiencing the same god, but are failing to understand him correctly because they believe the wrong religion.And muslims would say the same.

But I concede that some may say that, if you got in touch with the real god, you would know which was the right religion. I can't actually recall that happening, though. There are cases of conversion (both ways) but not (reliably) out of the blue.
Fundamentalists inherently believe that there is a correct / true interpretation of god (in practice, the Bible) that is discernible. As such they tend to see all debate about interpretation to be a reflection of "spiritual warfare" between the holy spirit (testifying to the Truth) and Satan (lying about the Truth). They love to quote passages in the Bible that speak of "holding fast to the word of truth" and "contending for the faith once and for all delivered to the saints". The operative phrase here is "once and for all" -- it happened once in history and applies to everyone.

In practice, I have found that fundamentalists do not like to be put into the position of overtly claiming that sufficiently distant denominations (liberal Christians, mainline denominations, Catholics) are counterfeit faiths, as it exposes them to the charge of bigotry and/or arrogance and also further marginalizes them on the fringe of Christendom. As I've said before, my particular subgroup often spoke of "weaker brothers in Christ". But at a deep if generally unspoken level, they are suspicious that, at the least, their "weaker brothers" have been duped and deceived by the Evil One.

So I would characterize the general fundamentalist mindset about the rest of Christianity, that it is a distorted, corrupted, watered-down, and generally lifeless version of the pure faith that they practice.* Somewhere outside the precincts of protestantism, and definitely outside of Christianity, then you are dealing with false gods. Fundamentalist missionaries may take a slightly more nuanced view, out of necessity, or no one in foreign lands would give them the time of day. But in the pews, there is a line in the sand beyond which exists only the unwashed and utterly deceived heathen. And sometimes that line in the sand doesn't go far beyond one's own church or at least denomination.

* The irony in the case of my "denomination" (IFCA) was that even while decrying the "dry letter of legalism" over against their living faith based on grace, they are, as a general rule, the most morose and joyless, one-foot-in-front-of-the-other bunch I've ever encountered. I still get reunion letters from my alma mater, Grand Rapids School of the Bible and Music (now defunct) and they are so dull and lifeless and depressing that I don't even read them anymore. Just a bunch of old-timers hanging on to the bitter end, getting together to resurrect fond memories of their salad days traveling from one tiny struggling church to another singing four-part gospel harmonies. Makes me feel vaguely suicidal just recalling these missives that have fetched up on my doorstep year after year.
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