Religion is Culture

I know I am playing with fire... but you cannot get a tolerance for being burned unless you tease it now and then

;)

In America they believe the Christian God
In India they believe in Ala
In China they believe in Bhudda
In Australia natives believe in dreamtime
In Greece they believe in the Olympian Gods

All around the world we have different beliefs in what and who "God" truely is.

The interesting point is that in all of these religions they each consider themselves to be the one TRUE religion while all others are "misguided", and all of them just HAPPEN to have the belief in the same country as where the religion became popular (whether it is by right of birthplace or of conquest).

If there is but ONE God who created this universe and everything in it... Why would there be so many different religions with different ideas and different "laws/morals"?

And if one of these particular religions claim "they know the ONE TRUE God" then how do they know they are right?

If a Christian was born in China would they still be Christian? I doubt it...

And yet because they have accepted the religion of the culture they live in they assume it to be absolute.

Personally I think this personifies the evidence that no God actually exists as it only highlights the fact we only believe in what culturally surrounds us and what we are exposed to...

In the middle of the Christian wheatbelt in America, nobody is going to just "suddenly" jump up and down claiming they are bhuddist just the same as someone isn't going to miraculously jump up and down in the middle of china claiming they are Christian.

People on "GAIN FAITH" as a result of being exposed to the religion.... which indicates it is a social and cultural condition and not some absolute truth that seems to permeate everything.

If they say "the evidence of creation is all around us" then why pick one particular God and say it is the right one? Because thats the "flavour" of where you are living?

People don't just become Christians without having been exposed to its teachings. Of course born again Christians claim to have "seen the light".... but if they were born in China would they be claiming the same thing about Bhudda?

This is just one more factor that I personally believe highlights the unliklihood of there existing a SINGLE Omniscient diety that brought existance to everything.


I shall sit tight and await for the zealous to tell me how blind and misguided I am :D

OK Gen-X, I have nothing against most of your arguments but can you try and get your facts straight? I mean isnt ignorance one of the traits of theists? :)
1) Allah is the Muslim word for god and the majority of Indians are Hindus not Muslim.
2) China being a communist country officially pushes atheism does it not? And Buddism was not China's main religion before the communist revolution either. Most Chinese before were followers of Confusicm (sp?), a "religion" based on logic and without a deity/god
3) I think it would be very hard for you to find a Greek alive today who belives in Zeus. Most Greeks are Catholics?

Speaking of religion I read an interesting article in the local paper (Toronto Star) a few weeks ago that was on the theory that there is a part of our brain that sees patterns and makes up beliefs to explain them. This ability helped our hunter/gatherer ancestors and thus remains in our brain today which might explain why people the world over seem to have some sort of religion. This is of course only a theory.

Well well, Gen-x, I think I have to take your side:

Religion is basically the language of faith, it's nothing more obvious you have to take something unexplainable and explain it suprernatural, or base a religion upon it. Whenever we believe we are right and they are wrong we are just being ignorant and cannot accept that the others also have a possible solution. Instead we try to convince the other side by all known methods including killing, which have given religion it's disgusting interface.

"A true religion" is a contradiction itself, because you don't know if it is true, you belive it is.
---
GOD
---
There are millions of definition of GOD and GODS, depending on religions, but the most common aspects are that
1. God created the world
2. God is a Omniscient being
3. God is guiding us
The rest is as Gen-x said depending on the social and cultural environment. This means that Religions evolves and sometimes splits up as the culture changes. And furthermore we have all independent image of our god, so there's no way telling which is the actual god.

Therefore we should reduce the definition to "Creator of universe" where universe is the world we live in.

Watch religious people suddenly notice i'm right, Gen-x, but i'm not sure if they're going to admit it... ;)

Having studied comparative religon, (had to get a brwak from the computer labs and make up the rest of the degree), Gen-X is completely right...religon is a reflection of the culture and mores of the society that developed it.

Therefore, most of what we would call primitive religons were based around the notion of explaining their environment. For example, Egyptians explained the existence of the sun through the god RA. Norse explained thunder through the existence of the god Thor.

In all religous cycles there are creation and last battle stories. Review the biblical stories, the garden of eden and...hmmm...forget the name of the place but anyway the last battle. Compare that to say the maori myths of Maui etc. Very similar.

Of course this doesn't explain the extistence of American TeleEvanglists.

In the words of Bono, "My god doesn't need a dollar"

Apologies in advance to all good Christians out there, but the christian church is based on Jewish codes of living etc not on any god head who created the world.

The "Devil" is a creation to usurp the control of the tribal group from women, and to undermine the celtic druid traditions of western europe.

In the words of Queen Elizabeth 1, "I do not wish to open windows into the souls of men", totally agree. Believe what you wish, but lets not start trying to convince every one else that our view is the only view.

Religous War = "Two people fighting over whose imagnary friend is better"