I think there are two things that need to be separated if you wish to understand religion. The people, who are fallible and flawed as all humans are. And scripture which is divine, interpretable and perpetual. Sometimes religion is a peace keeping force, sometimes it’s sickly and pathetic, sometimes it can be warlike. I believe it’s all cyclical and always has been, people think religion has just always been on the wain in this country, but there have been revivals constantly throughout time, we have been here before.
Why are you asking me this, can’t you google that? Do you want me to say “God spoke directly to Moses”, so that you can guffaw at me on a football forum?
Man wrote it is the answer. Which makes it quite hard to separate what you suggest to be divine from what you suggest to be fallible.
That doesn't compute at all. That might make sense if you looked at the Abrahamic religions in a vacuum. God spoke. People listened and heard slightly different things. Different religions formed. OK. The polytheism of the pagans, much older beliefs than those mentioned, kind of stamps on that thought. They aren't different in that they've been interpreted differently. They're just different altogether. The gods. The morals, the values, the stories. And not only are they different, they're in stark contrast to one another and they have very very little common ground. What common ground they do have is likely due to decisions made where a burgeoning Christian religion (man) borrowed bits and pieces from the older religions to make their shiny new religion slightly more palatable to those they were trying to convert. The suggestion that I'm some sort of lesser-read and guffawing philistine doesn't sit very nicely with me so I will leave you with your German philosophers. I much prefer the Greeks.
Pagan is a Latin word for a person from the countryside. There is no singular Paganism, it’s a catchall for non Abrahamic religions that were Polytheistic, usually excluding eastern religions. Many White supremacist love the Greek pantheon btw, they tend not to be fans of Abraham, I’ll let you figure out why.
100%. That's what I like about this place - we can debate, argue and even fall out, without it becoming a toxic environment
The sooner aliens show themselves and say they seeded the earth, then we can get rid of man made mind control which is commonly called religion
I used to laugh a the scene in Red Dwarf where they "found" the missing page to the Bible... "All characters portrayed within in this novel are fictitious and any similarities to persons living or dead is purely coincidental"
I'm harsh on it generally but I see it as a means of control when it has been corrupted and it's at its worst. I dont think that's the stem of it though. I think it's conceived to make sense of and to help cope with life and the world around us. And that's as good and as pure a thing as anything we've created in our time here.
