Monday 12 February 2007

religion in a nutshell

I was thinking about religion and belief - and how its such as vast subject...how many hundreds of thousands of books written on the topic...then i thought - actually religion is very simple, and I came up with the 2 key questions which sum up what its all about:
1) Is there a God?
2) (If yes to the first one) Did God communicate to us through the Quran?

Thats it! because simply, if the two answers are yes for a person, then he would be foolish to not become a Muslim...as he has accepted the Quran...so he knows the benefits of Islam and also the punishment in store for him if he then rejects Islam after accepting that the Qur'an is the word of God.

Now the second question doesn't have to have "through the Quran" in...it could be any other religious book such as the Torah, the Bible or the Bagavad Gita. Now we approach the next hurdle in the search for truth....Which religion is correct...if not all being either right or wrong?

1) Are religions wrong?
2)Are all religions correct?
3) Which religion is correct?

1
Okay, I think ill start with this. Here we are basically stating:
"all religions are wrong"
Right, that doesn't really answer the purpose of life, rather it avoids answering it. But that is not reason alone to dismiss this stance. The next is, that this argument is just a conclusion- it needs support, such as proving why all religions are in fact wrong. Also how then can we for example dismiss the scientific facts in the Quran or other miraculous events? Also refer to an answer to atheism in my older posts.

2
Okay, again this is a huge thinking flaw, many religions contradict in their teachings, for example you have Muslims saying Jesus was only a messenger of God, while Christians claim he was the son of God - how can both possibly be right?
And for a religion to be from God, it ALL has to be 100% correct, so the next argument that in fact all religions teach good things therefore are all right, is also easily dissmissable as even if a religion has good teachings, if its beliefs are wrong, then there is no point trying to reach God through the path which is clearly wrong, rather we should search for a path which is authentically from God and which also teaches good.

3
Here we are entering into comparative religion, and I wont go into this as theres plenty of sources out there already:
www.beconvinced.com
www.muslim-responses.com
www.answering-christianity.com
and ofcourse theres a "christianity" part to my second post, which rather pales in contrasts to the forementioned sites ;).

But basically heres what we have to look at:
Is the religion's teachings sensible and logical and in harmony with what science tells us?
Are the teachings actually what they were when they were first revealed from God, so in other words - ARE THEY AUTHENTIC? ARE THEY UNCORRUPTED?ARE THEY WHAT GOD SAID OR JUST A MAN?

To conclude, religion is really quite easy to understand once we know what questions we are trying to answer. I hope this doesnt sound like the ramblings of a madman ;)

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