Letters to the Editor
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Here's what you have to explain
Please tell me why I should have belief or faith in your, "God," with a capital G, Jehovah, Yahweh, and not in:
An, Anat, Aphrodite, Apollo, Ares, Artemis, Athena, Atlas, Baal, Bacchus, Brahma, Ceres, Charun, Demeter, Diana, Dionysus, Eos, Freya, Gaia, Ganesha, Hades, Helios, Hera, Hermes, Ishtar, Isis, Juno, Jupiter, Krishna, Loki, Luna, Mars, Mercury, Minerva, Mithras, Nanse, Nemesis, Neptune, Nut, Odin, Osiris, Pan, Phoebe, Poseidon, Quezalcoatl, Ra, Shiva, Sol, Thanatos, Thor, Tiamat, Utu, Venus, Vesta, Vishnu, Vulcan, Xi Wang-mu, Yarikh, or Zeus.
All of those gods have or had holy scriptures, and at one time, thousands upon thousands of believers. I'd wager that every single Christian reading this is an atheist when it comes to every single one of the gods listed above.
Simply explain to me why your God is the correct one, and all of the above gods are false, without resorting to the Bible or faith without evidence, and I'll convert.
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Oh, "Renegade."
Your challenge is based on the false premise that anyone who accepts a belief system has anything to prove to you.
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Which hell would that be? And which heaven?
The thousands of each cited in Buddhism?
The Hades of the ancient Greeks where you don't burn in a Lake of Fire or find yourself head-first up Lucifer's behind fighting Dick Cheney for a more comfortable position -- relatively speaking -- but just sort of fade away instead?
Those aren't valid beliefs pointing to possible realities?
Why not?
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Tnx. VenetianMilwaukee...
"80 Million (or 40 million), where are they?
80 Million Non-Belivers going to church? Well, yeah. Some of them are members or friends of a Unitarian-Univeralist Church, where all are welcome, believers, non-believers, Buddhist, Jewish, Sufi, Athiest and Agnostic. We gather for community, to support one another and to work out side of our church in our city and country to help our fellow human beings and the earth on which we live."
Stole my thunder, dammit! UU UNITE!!
I find it hard to believe, though, that John Marks sez there are 40 million non-believers going to church...UUs might account for 1 million (okay, I'll spot us 2 million), but where the hell are the other 38 million?
And to Kappakkaa (sic)...don't be so hard on the Beave...Salon is a left-wing political commentary-esque website. The last religious story I remember reading here was about that wack-o New Age guy who died a year or so back, and it was just an expose (although a good one, IMO)...Salon is no more capable of having a "spiritual" moment that the Wall Street Journal. It's a news website, not a David Thoreau book reading club. Salon tends to cater to a non-religious/secular type of reader, so you can't really blame them for pandering to said audience.
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Renegade Iconoclast
The other religions you listed did not have holy scriptures. They claimed to have, but they do not. A cursory reading of any of those scriptures would make that evident. Don't take my word for it, if you prefer not to, read any of them for yourself.
The Bible is the only holy scripture. I encourage you to read it through one time. See for yourself if it is likely that forty writers over thousands of years with no technology could put together such a book which is so individual and yet so perfectly interrelates without divine guidance.
If you satisfy yourself that the Bible is the only true holy scripture, then it will be easy to ascertain that the God of the Bible is the only true God, because that is what it says.
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Origin of Religion
If you want to understand were religion comes from read Julian Jayne's "The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicarmel Mind".
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What is religion?
Before the modern religions evolved, the concept of heaven and hell was not a factor in people's lives. Paganism and Pantheism were attempts to provide answers to life's mysteries.
The Greeks ushered in a new way of thinking. Aristotle, on trial for heresy in 339 B.C. said " the unexamined life is not worth living". Here was the basis for conscious living that is as valid today as it was then. He was suggesting that we are not merely subject to the whims of unseen forces, but can actually have power and some control over our own lives
Jesus, in his mission to his people, said essentially the same thing. He was exhorting them to go back to the basic Jewish teachings - or perhaps a more enlightened version, from the Essenes. In any case, he was not talking about founding a new church; Christianity as we know it today was developed long after Jesus' death - by at least 50-100 years.
The concepts of the resurrection, heaven and hell, original sin and belief in the body and blood of Jesus as a source of redemption were all inventions that served to make believing in Christianity a worthwhile endeavor. As Christians saw it, the penalty for non-belief was eternal damnation. This may be good marketing for building church membership, but it wasn't what Jesus was teaching.
What Jesus was talking about was our own emotional and spiritual development. Like the earlier Greek philosophers, Jesus knew that each of us needs no intermediary to connect with a greater reality; the only thing we need is the intention to live a meaningful life and the will to carry it out.
Faith based religions which preach hell and damnation are often counterproductive, for they rob us of the one thing precious to all people: free will. The value of free will is that it offers the chance to achieve what each of us is capable of: being the best we can be - and achieving our own destiny. Free will suggests we are not born in sin, and that we need not believe in some supernatural power for redemption
Of course no one knows if hell exists, but we certainly know how miserable life can be while we are alive. That, in my opinion is sufficient.
The calmness that blind faith provides is very much like building a house on sand, for when the tide comes in the house crumbles. It is one of the profound mysteries as to who chooses to lead an examined life. But Jesus, Mohammad, the Buddha, and Aristotle before them, all said the same thing: embark on your journey, learn your lessons, achieve your identity and finally, give back. This life is muscular, involved, invigorating and purposeful,and quite honestly is not a life that is easily achieved.
This is not the lesson that most Christian churches teach today, or one that was taught even when Christianity began.
Jesus was radical in his teachings for he confronted the status quo then, just as he would if he were alive today. He did not offer an easy way out, but he did offer a way that worked - if you were willing to embark on the journey.