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There is a very fundamental reason why many religions insist that their followers do not look elsewhere for answers to life’s questions. It is the questioning that leads to the answers that free people and give them pingala ida an understanding of the whole picture rather than the narrow view from a small corner of their mind. It is the refusal to ask the questions that keeps them devoted to one specific answer. Take away the questioning and you ensure a future of followers. You make everything scary and frightful so that the follower is actually afraid of swaying from that one answer they have been given. You can’t help but smile and thank God in your heart.
- Spirituality is an individual practice and belief, whereas religion is centered on a set of organized practices that a larger group shares.
- They have an essay-writing contest on religion every year as a way to promote this.
- From the substantive or essentialist perspective, religion originated and survived as a speculative enterprise which is all about trying to understand ourselves or our world and has nothing to do with our social or psychological lives.
- I guess I have a nostalgia for those Bible debates about slavery.
- “Yes…,” he says, with a chuckle, that’s at once a challenge and an invitation, prompting you to ask him the next question, and the next, and the next…
Through the break between the Christian and Jewish communities, the fall of the Roman Empire, the rise of Islam, and the growth of Western empires, Miles reveals how Western religious thought has always been based on comparison of the known with the emergent unknown. Religion as We Know It challenges readers to unmoor themselves from traditional thinking and observe how the events of the still-unfolding past continue to shape how we think of religion today. Muslims are closely divided on whether their religion should preserve traditional beliefs and practices or adjust traditional beliefs and practices in light of new circumstances. Among other religious groups, including Jews, mainline Protestants and Catholics, the most common view is that religions should adjust traditional practices.
Academic Philosophy For A General Audience
But, just like anything powerful, understanding it as fully as possible—both for better and for worse—is the real fundamental good. So as much as it’s tempting to buy into oversimplifications like, “religion is good,” real life isn’t so clear. Although the research shows that religion and spirituality are often helpful, we should be open to the idea that specific aspects of religion may be good or bad for our health under different circumstances. Despite the research connecting religion with well-being, it’s important to avoid concluding that people who consider themselves atheist and agnostic can’t be just as healthy and happy as those who are religious.
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I am so tired of religion that I am in tears and sick to my stomach as I write this comment. I just came from a prayer meeting and with every powerful prayer of grace and believers authourity, was an echo of doom and gloom from the religious sector–correcting each prayer of truth of the Word of God with lies from the pits of hell and the mind of man. No wonder the Lord called the Pharisees snakes and vipers.
And what people found is no religious switching, which to me is also disconcerting in a way, like the point of education is transformation, right? I wouldn’t be upset if one of my students who took a world religions class came out of it a Buddhist or a Sikh or something. But anyway, they found none in this high school over a course of – I think they’d looked at it for a year or maybe two years. Then I think, just for political purposes, it’s fine to have an opt-out. I think that the notion that this is too controversial really has to do with a false understanding of what’s out there in America in terms of discussion about religion.
And so one of the goals for me for religious literacy isn’t so much of turning every high school kid into a mini-Ph.D. That, to me, would be a goal worth reaching on this score. But the question is for people in terms of how religion is powerful, not just what you know or what you believe, but how you live your life differently, how it helps you navigate these great questions of what it means to be human and what it means to live a worthy life.
But when this sense of group or ethnic identity is raised to the level of one’s exclusive identity, I think that it partakes of a fallacy, which can, and at times of inflammatory political circumstances does, turn malignant and violent. Humanist that I am, I do not think that ethnicity will ever disappear. It may change its substance and its form, but I don’t think that it will go away.
We need to renew our mind and eliminate teaching that says life is meaningless. Grace isn’t a season to walk through as much as that is nice. As on some other traditional measures of religious belief, older adults are more likely than younger adults to say their religion’s holy text is the word of God.
In their defense, many people are raised with their religious background and taught that it is completely about love. At the same time, the religious leaders that instruct them do not even attempt to discuss the negative characteristics of their text. Often, when they do, it is glossed over and never given full thought as to the magnitude of what is being described. If we really thought about it, we would be able to draw the same conclusions for the wrongdoings of our man-made deities as we do for those human beings who choose to commit similar hideous acts. In closing, I would like to say that as small as it is, I think Ethical Culture has gotten it right.