Indigo Opinion ~ Religion

Why Religion?

Whowhtwherewhen1's AIM profile:
"God - Large angry fairy-pixie like creature in the sky. Refuses to show any evidence of his existence but will sentence you to an eternity of pain and burning if you do not accept it.
Or if that offends you...
God - A very powerful imaginary friend
Of course that probably didn't help any, but I think its funny as hell. If you don't like it...go tell someone who cares..."

Religions are kool and interesting, yet I am against it. Religion is not proven, just myth, and I don't like it when people take it for fact. And I especially don't like it when people try to convert other people to their religion. Religions cause a lot of argument and war. Religions were created and controlled by HUMANS, not by gods. There is no proof of the truth of any of the religions. They are simply myths to satisfy people's insecurities about life and death. They wonder about how life came to be, so they make up stuff about powerful gods who created it all. They fear death, so they make up stuff about the afterlife. Greek myths are kool and interesting, but they are make-believe, just like a fairytale, just like any other religion. So tis stupid to have your life revolve around something that is not fact. In my opinion, it is okay to entertain the ideas of religion and other similar beliefs such as astrology, but we shouldn't take these myths seriously or let them control our lives, since none of it can be proven.

It is even more stupid to try to convert people to your religion. This is a horrible thing to do, because your religion is YOUR business. You have no business, making others believe in it. Christian people, for one, try to scare people into Christianity by saying stuff like, "You will go to Hell if you don't believe in God." If people are scared into a religion, they are not truly believing in it; they are just making you and themselves think that they are that certain religion in order to be "saved." But in their hearts, they don't believe. And I'm sure most of you "true believers" out there don't believe either. It's like Santa Clause--someone you've never seen, something that is far fetched and impossible to prove. You can only believe when you're young and naive, and then you begin to question things because things don't make sense. When this is applied to religion, you believe what your parents tell you (if your parents taught you the religion) when you're little, but when you're older you ask questions. But seeing as this is religion, the questions get pushed back in your mind, because you don't WANT to question the belief; you WANT to believe in the religion, even though it can't be proven. Why? Because you want to be saved. The saving thing refers mostly to Christianity; I'm referring to that religion the most in here because it seems the most popular. It certainly seems to be the religion that everyone tries to get everyone else to convert to, at least in my experience.

As I said before, religions are kool when not obsessed over. In my opinion, the Hinduism religion is neat because of the reincarnation idea, and Buddhism is neat because of the eight fold path. These ideas are interesting. I also think Greek Mythology is kool, along with tons of other religions. But one thing I hate about religion is sacrifice and worship. Tis fun to believe in stuff that may or may not be true, but when you kill people and/or animals on behalf of the "god(s)", that's just a waste of life. That is too big of a risk on something that may or may not be true. Worship is kind of silly; believing in the religion should be enough; you shouldn't have to prove yourself by worship. Religions sort of contradict themselves. In Christianity, God is supposed to love and forgive all his children, and yet you have to pray to Him and believe in Him in order to be saved. It seems a bit wrong, for instance, that a perfectly pure atheist will go to Hell while a serial killer who prays for forgiveness every time s/he kills someone gets saved and goes to Heaven. That's just WRONG. If the Christian God is real, and He condones that, then I would not want to accept Him. No wonder Satan rebelled against God! [If you don't believe that perfect atheists will go to Hell, consult these Bible verses: "Faith without good morality or works is dead" (James 2:17), but "morality without Christ leads to eternal death" (John 14:6).]

I found this in a post written by the GaiaOnline user, Stoneground: "So, a man from some Christian thingamajig came up to me and gave me a little pamphlet that is designed like a mini-comic book. (a stamp on the back of the book identified it as coming from the local First Baptist church, and it was published by Chick Publications)
The story was about a husband and wife who had spent their entire lives helping poor people in Africa, and they sit down on an airplane with a career criminal who killed several people, but he says that he got "saved" because he prayed a prewritten prayer and "accepted Lord Jesus."
So the plane crashes and everyone in it is killed. The murderer goes to heaven to live in his mansion, While the Husband and wife are thrust before god, who tells them that they are dammed to hell and throws them in a fiery pit because they didn't say the prayer and "accept him." All they did were good works, and even though they had been good people in life, they are damned for eternity because they didn't do what the murderer did.
What this says to me is that I can go and sin and do whatever the hell I want to, and as long as I "Confess with my mouth" that Jesus is Lord then I will be saved and there is nothing else I need to do.
So if this is what you people really believe in, I can't be a Christian, I cannot imagine any just God doing that kind of crap, and if it is the truth, I would rather rebel against an unjust god than live under such an evil being.
Oh what do you know, I found the thing over the internet... http://www.chick.com/reading/tracts/0041/0041_01.asp "

That's exactly what I've been trying to tell Christians all along. There are so many contradictions in that religion, tis ridiculous. I believe that tis the goodness of one's heart that matters over whether you believe in God or not. I'm a moral person, and people can be moral without religions. Tis only immoral people who need religion in order to behave themselves; they want rewards and fear punishments. Truly being good is being good for its own sake. To read more on the contradictions of Christianity I've found, visit the Myspace blog in which I wrote about it. Click here to read a debate I had with a buddy of mine about souls. Eventually I'm going to rewrite this entire page to make it more organized. That will probably be when I get around to reading the whole Bible. I definitely plan to do it. As soon as I do, I will update this page with all the thousands of contradictions that I find. In the mean time, read these:
My summaries, responses, and essay ~ the Hindu book, Bhagavad Gita (Song of the Lord)
My summaries, responses, and essay ~ the Chinese book, Tao Te Ching (Dao De Jing)
My summaries, responses, and essays ~ Buddhism as Philosophy
My summaries, responses, and essay ~ Zen Buddhism
My summaries and responses ~ Buddhism Without Beliefs
My religion called Aignosticism
"Salvation" by Langston Huges
"Thoughts of God" by Mark Twain.
"'Of course God exists. It says so in the sacred texts. And everything in the sacred texts is true, since it is the word of God.' This argument begs the question by including a premise, 'the sacred texts are the word of God,' that presupposes the truth of the conclusion, 'God exists.' It is fallacious because you can't prove that the conclusion 'God exists' is true by using evidence that already assumes it is true" (Buddhism as Philosophy, 75).

I know this Religion page will get a lot of controversy, so let me remind you not to send me hate mail. I'm not trying to get you to stop being religious, because I know no one ever listens to me or does what I say; the point of this whole thing is just to say my point of view on Religion. Last time I checked, this was a free country. But please don't send me hate mail or anything like that, because I already am aware that religious people don't agree with my opinions on religion. Too bad. Sending me hate mail won't accomplish anything; twill only waste your time and mine, and you know I won't care what you have to say, since I already know what you're going to say, and you'll just be proving my point about what I'm saying here! So act like you're in a museum -- just look, don't touch -- in other words, just read, don't criticize.

If everyone cared and nobody cried
If everyone loved and nobody lied
If everyone shared and swallowed their pride
Then we'd see the day when nobody died*

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