Thousands of Religious Sects - Which one is right?

no. the reason is in survival of the fittest. I am a biological entity and soul in it. I have two duties to perform. One is to follow the soul demands and the other is to follow biological entity demands. The soul demands are to follow the truth...which I chose as atheism/buddhism. The biological entity demands is to survive no matter what and replicate/pass dna to other life.

Now it is important to remember that I am in a specific timeline of human developmental stage. Such timeline when variety of food is available but there is no sure trusted choice of foods that cover the benefits of eating meat, which requires animals to be killed. Thus in order to be the top of survival of the fittest I choose the road that gives me advantage based on previous history. Humans in past ate meat and it gave them energy and they were able to go on with life. Same thing applies to me. I eat meat because it satisfies me the most and gives me most energy. I tried other foods...they did not give me enough energy and satisfaction I need to be that top survival of the fittest organism leading a life. Furthermore by humans having animals as their food source and other different choices of food sources...the chances of survival go up...because if one food source fails...the other can reimburse for it.

 

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then i would have failed to apply my reasoning to properly understand what is god and the process to approachhim - given that i am doing that now (applying reason etc) its not apparent what other course of action I should take

what to speak of the trinity, there are numerous plural potencies running in with defintions of god - for example there is the sunlight (all pervasive homogenous representation), the sun disc in the sky (localized aspect of the sun) and the sun planet (the full potency of the sun) - in other words you can point to a window at the sunlight or the sun the sun in the sky and say "there is the sun", but it doesn't mean that you are indicating a firey ball of heat that can incinerate anything and everything is right outside the window

god has many qualities that are not shared by others - omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent etc

No
I am saying that god has no need to present himself as irrational or illogical, at least on very basic issues such as the relationship between him, the phenomenal world and the conditioned living entity

from scripture and saintly persons, who are capable of giving explanations acceptable by human logic

if by default, you don't accept anyone sufficient as a substitute to guide you how to approach god, they're probably correct

given that allah is a word for the absolute momotheistic conception of god, they are probably correct

once again, we can get back to the asprin argument
if one brand says they can cure headaches, and if another brand (which has similar ingredients) also makes the same claims, then they cannot both be correct

 

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even if you want to accept this argument, since we are not in the habit of eating species to extinction (in fact in most places in the world, there are strict laws against it), its not clear how meat eating qualifies us for surviving as the fittest

given that one can subsist quite happily (in fact with improved economic, environmental and health benefits) its not clear how meat eating helps you in this cause

what are the unique benefits of eating meat? - many olympic athletes, particularly those innvolved in endurance events, are on vegetarian diets. There are many people in the world who have been vegetarian for at least thousands of years and they don't seem to have too much trouble with passing on their genes

Do you know how to cook vegetarian food?
(or did you drive yourself insane by eating rice and bananas for a week)

You can bite the backside off a dog anytime your stockpile of grains goes down, but in the meantime there are distinct advantages in having a vegetarian diet

 

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meat gives me energy and satisfaction...and so to many other humans...those who have energy and satisfaction have higher chance of a more productive life...or higher chance of survival (moderation is the key here too...so moderation with meat is important).

 

then it seems you use meat in the same way that people use niccotine - there is no essential biological need for it (on the contary one can drum up a few biological pros that come from abstaining from it) but it is used anyway since it gives some mental relief.

Anyway, given the whole recycling thing you brought up earlier, meat eating is not recommended or is at least regulated, since one could wind up being recycles on the other side of the dinner table sometime in the future

 

You think animals have souls? feel compassion towards them? Feel compassion towards intelligent beings...those who demonstrate that they want to live rather than demonstrate the fear of death their body shows.

 

people use nicotine because it gives them pleasure and hype.

people use meat because it gives them energy which allows them to do what they do/to work/play/ live life...and it also gives feeling of satisfaction. None of the vegan diets give enough of energy to go on with the day. Meat is not an addiction...it is a necessity. Humans can do away without meat...but they will not be able to accomplish as much in the life that they lead.

 

You're proving my original point. The brands of aspirin represent the different religions. The ingredients in each brand represent the different beliefs, sacraments, and requirements of each religon.

So there must be one brand of aspirin which is the BEST brand possible, right?

The best brand of aspirin would be 100% in speed of relief, and 100% in amount of relief, and 100% in duration of relief.

Here's an example:

The Best, Optimum, or Perfect Aspirin Ingredients:

1) Aspirin
2) Element A
3) Element B
4) Element C

Aspirin A ingredients:

1) Aspirin
2) Element A
3) Element B
4) Element F

Aspirin B Ingredients:

1) Aspirin
2) Element A
3) Element D
4) Element Z

So Aspirin A is 75% correct in it's ingredients. Not bad.
Aspirin B on the other hand is only 50% correct. Not too great.

The same applies with religion. Religion A may be 75% correct in the way it dictates people to live life and its beliefs, and Religion B may be 50% in the way it dictates people to live life and its beliefs.

The point is, there is One Optimum belief, or religion, and one optimum way to live life. Everything else is suboptimal. It may be close, 95% or 90%. But not optimal.

The question is, what religion do we choose?

LG, you stated that we should choose based on:

Yet you haven't even looked into the writings of Muhammad, or probably hundreds of other scriptures.

Muslims and Christians have all followed your method for finding a religion, which is to look to "scripture and saintly persons, who are capable of giving explanations acceptable by human logic."

And guess what, they have signifigantly different beliefs than you do. So they used your same method for choosing a religion, and yet over half of the entire world found a different religion than you did LG.

I guess your logic is just better than over half of the world.

What does this mean? How about a solid yes or no.

 

and yet it snot uncommon for several or even several hundred brands of asprin to be correct in their claim of curing headaches

sure

agreed - but still it can be seen that amongst lesser or greater asprins, all can be capable of dealing with headaches to a lesser or greater degree (their claims are not false)

thus there is essentially only one religion - service to god, and religion is successful to a greater or lesser degree according to this

how many different head ache tablets have you sampled? When you have a head ache, and decide to take a tablet, do you go to your medicine cabinet or do you jump in the car and drive 40 minutes to some pharmacy you have never been to just to scope out any new developments?

In other words searching is the preliminary prerequisite for religion, but when one finds what one is searching for, the next issue is practical application

such as?

Once again, if I drink water out of a clay cup it is not essentially so different from drinking it out of a plastic bottle

only if I insisted that drinking out of a clay cup is the one and only way to drink water



What does this mean? How about a solid yes or no.[/QUOTE]

if by not accepting jesus, you do not accept anyone (meaning any other saintly person who is capable of providing guidelines on how to approach god), the answer is yes

 

perhaps you have some medical evidence for these claims

Medical evidence supporting the superiority of vegetarian diets becomes overwhelming. The American Dietetic Association officially endorses vegetarianism, and books by prominent doctors promote low-fat vegan or mostly-vegan diets (e.g., .The McDougall Program and Dr. Dean Ornish's Program for Reversing Heart Disease). The U.S. government finally ditches the antiquated and meat- and dairy-industry-sponsored Four Food Groups and replaces it with a Food Pyramid, showing that most of a person's diet should be based on grains, vegetables, beans, and fruits.
http://michaelbluejay.com/veg/history.html

 

Yes, all religions claim to be the best, or optimum religon. As we all know, "claims" and "reality" usually never go hand in hand.

Yes, and it is very possible that the BEST headache medicine on the market today is only 25% of the true BEST headach medicine.

We are talking about the nature of reality and the meaning of life here. I think that's a little more important than headaches.

Here is the key to this whole thread:

According to you, all religions are equal because they all are based on blind faith and all involve sacrifice or service to a God.

Great. So if all religions serve this ONE purpose, and someone is open to any religion or any truth, then what religion should that person choose?

Well, let's see:

Christians believe Jesus is going to return to earth and rule forever and ever. Earth will become a heaven/earth and we will all live happily ever after. Except of course everyone who didn't except Jesus as the Messiah. They will all be swimming in the luxurious lake of fire for eternity.

Do you believe this LG? Probably not.

"Muslims believe that God revealed his final message to humanity through Muhammad ibn Abdullah (c. 570 - July 6, 632) via the angel Gabriel.[15] Muhammad is considered to have been God's final prophet, the "Seal of the Prophets". The revelations Muhammad preached form the holy book of Islam, the Qur'an. The Qur'an is believed to be the flawless final revelation of God to humanity, valid until the day of the Resurrection."

Do believe this LG? Probably not.

"Muslims believe that the verses of the Qur'an were revealed to Muhammad by God through the Angel Gabriel on numerous occasions between the years 610 and his death on July 6, 632."

Do you believe this LG? Probably not.

"The punishments in hell includes adhab, "pain or torment inflicted by way of chastiment; punishment", a very painful punishment (see 29:55, 43:48); khizy, "shame, disgrace, ignominy" (16:27, 11:39).[47] The descriptions in the Qur'an of hell are very descriptive (see 4:56, 47:15 etc)"

Do you believe this LG? Probably not.


"Those who consider performance as an integral part of faith consider anyone who does a grave sin to be out of faith, while the majority of Sunnis who view works as merely the perfecting the faith, hold that a believing sinner will be punished with a temporary stay in hell. "

How about this LG?

There's probably hundreds of other fundamental differences between Hinduism and every other religion.

It is not as simple as drinking water out of any kind of vessel. According to you, any religion is fine. It doesn't matter if it is .01% truthful in terms of it's doctrine and beliefs, according to you everyone still gets the water, or still serves God.

Great, so what steps do we take to figure out what is the best, or most truthful vessel for drinking water.

Translation:

Great, so what steps do we take to figure out what is the best, or most truthful religon for serving God?

So you are saying that a person can pick any one of the hundreds of supposed saints out there to worship and they're all set.

Great. Which prophet should a person choose?

LG, the Catholic Church used to offer something salled "indulgences" to the church members. People would pay money for these indulgences, and then they could go out and commit a sin as long as they paid for it with money beforehand.

LG, this idea of indulgences is either correct or incorrect. Which one is it?

Martin Luther decided that it was bullshit and started his own religion. John Calvin and others took his religion even farther and went against Luther.


My whole point is this:

If anything goes in terms of serving God, then what dictates how we serve him?

According to it you involves two things:

1) Human Logic and Reasoning
2) Whatever the saints in ancient writing say to do. Any saint is acceptable, even though many of the writing of the saints of every religion contradict each other.


LG,

Hinduism, and therefore you, are against eating animals.

So to you, everyone else is incorrect in eating animals. So Christianity is that much lower in percentage truth than Hinduism. How did you come to this conclusion LG? Because one of your saints said so? If so, why is that saint better than a different saint which says you can eat animals?

 

nds1

i think I mentioned earlier that if I insist that one can only drink water out of a clay cup I am not correct

true, but to determine that would require an examination of quality andnot mere tentative claims

obviously it is an analogy - in this instance illustrating the importance of practical application

regarding the bit in italics, I never asserted that all religions are equal, just like all headache remedies are not equal - but however amongst all head ache remedies, greater an lesser, all could be correct in their claims that they help deal with the symptoms of headaches

generally such things are limited by time, place and circumstances and the level of determination of the seeker - quite similar to determining what type of headache remedy a person will take

regarding the anticipation of the future, there are many difficulties and hardly a unified front (unless of course such concepts are clearly verified by scriptural references - for instance I have encountered christians who acknowledge that there are other saintly persons in different circumstances - but of course they find jesus's compassion more compelling, thus they devote their determination in that field) - reagrdless, the practical application of such an ideology would be remarkably similar to any other theistic ideology (in other words the relationship between the living entity, god and the phenomenal world would dictate a course of action in daily life that is practically identical with other faiths)

Once again, the practical application is virtually identical

I cannot see any reason to disregard it

descriptions of hell are not famous for their glorious descriptions of the efficiency of the customer service dept

similar concept in the vedas regarding prayas (over endeavour) and niyamagrahah (attachment to rules and regulations as the final word in spiritual perfection)

hundreds of peripheral differences actually

Once again, I never said that - i said some things are more effective at containing water than others - if something is .01% truthful, the next step of advancement innvolves coming to 0.2%

generally sympromized by abating from material desire (name, fame, adoration, wealth, opposite gender etc) - its a big subject in scripture, and represents perhaps greater than 75% of the struggle of spiritual life (ie - proper discrimination)

start with scripture and venture on to an analysis of the words and actions of a saintly person - that's the first step

before one can locate something they must determine the quality - like for instance if you don't know what gold is, you could probably locate 250g of gold at your local hardware store for $5 (gold spray paint)

lol - what do you think?
is such a practice validated by scripture? Or institution?

institutions, regardless of what branch of knowledge they advocate, constantly need to be introspective and re-examine their foundations - otherwise external fractures like this will develop

the foundation - scripture

logic applied to scripture - usually religion has some founder that establishes or reforms existing modes of religion - they are often associated with scripture, which aims at capturing their teachings. thus the focus is the words of a teacher

the vedas give concessions for meat eating

there are philosophical reasons for not eating animals - christianity tends to focus more on introspective analysis of material desire and surmounting it by surrender to jesus, thus it tends to lack a clear terminology in some areas - for instance if you ask a group of christians what the word "soul" means you will get an array of answers
There is even the argument that christians were originally vegetarian (the romans described christians as strange because they were vegetarian) - the topic of vegetarianism was one issue that caused the split between the roman and greek orthodoxy
There are even contemporary strains of christianity that advocate vegetarianism on the strength of the bible (7th day adventist)

 

Okay, I kind of get what your saying LG.

I'm still confused though.

Let's say I am thirsty, and I want water. I look around and see ten vessels of water in front of me. Each vessel is comprised of a different material. Which vessel should I choose?

 

i dont think there is only ONE big truth.. there could be lots of small truths... and all the religions could actually have made one religion, based on turning all the small truths into one...? or just collecting all the small truths, bringing them all together, and remembering to add all the new truths that turn up on the way...

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There isn't just one big truth. There are millions upon millions of them.

When I say there is only one truth, I mean one ultimate set of truths.

Let's assume, for simplifying purposes, that there are 10,000 total truths of reality (there are really millions upon millions of them).

What is a truth? It is a statement that is true.

Here are some of the 10,000 hypothetical truths:

1. The earth is round.
2. Gravity pulls everything down to the surface of the earth.
3. There is less air pressure the higher you go.
4. Water has two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom.
5. Two plus two equals 4.
6. etc.
7. etc.
8..........................
10,000. Water can conduct electricty.


There they are. The 10,000 truths of reality. Some of those truths involve God, or whether or not there is one. Others involve what is pleasing or displeasing in the view of this God. Others involve whether Jesus was the Messiah, or not.

Let's say that 2,000 of the 10,000 truths of reality are applicable to religion.
Let's also say that Religion A knows 1,500 of these truths. This means Relgion A knows 75% of the total truth of religion.

Now, every one of the claims of this religion could very well be 100% true. Let's say that Religion A through scripture and other saints makes a grand total of 1,600 claims (1. Jesus is the Messiah 2. Though shall not murder 3.etc).

Let's also say that only 1,500 of those claims are true. This means that 93.75% of the claims are true. However, the total truths that are known only amount to 75% of the total truths of religion (2,000). If Religion A didn't make those 100 false claims, then it woud have been 100% truthful even though it hasn't uncovered every truth there is to know.


Let's assume a child was born on an isolated island and raised by robots. So this child hasn't been exposed to any religion. Then the child is transported to the U.S. after he turns 18.

Then, let's say the child understands the concept of God and believes in it through his logic. He then wants to serve this God, but doesn't know how. Where does he turn? What does he do?

He sees all these new religions which he has never been exposed to, and has to make a decision on which one he wants to follow. So he researches every single religion out there and all the accompanying scriptures. Does he go with the Muslim, ONE God, no Messiah, or the Christian Trinity (Father, Son, Holy Ghost) and Jesus the Messiah in which case he would have to get baptized in water. Or do the Veda scriptures appeal to him, and he goes with the Hindu faith. Maybe he chooses the polythestic route and worships Zeus and the rest of them.

What religion should this person choose? The easiest, most convenient one to follow? The hardest, most sacrificing one to follow? Or maybe the one that sounds the most like it could be real, or true logically. Maybe he just becomes an atheist.

The point is, this man wants to live his life a certain way and wants to serve God, but doesn't know exactly how he has to live it since every religion represents a different prescription.

 

LG,

Let's say I am thirsty, and I want water. I look around and see ten vessels of water in front of me. Each vessel is comprised of a different material. Which vessel should I choose?

 

whichever you can lift to drink the water.

 

Let's assume you can physically lift all ten of them.
Let's also assume that each vessel is a different weight.
Which vessel would be the best vessel to drink out of?

 

whichever is the closest...whiever needs less energy to come to it. so no turning required...just simple plain reach for it and drink it.

 

your choice would be immaterial since it would be the same essential experience - it also wouldn't matter which one you took if you insisted on pouring it in your ear (if you mess up on the practical application, even if you make the right 'choice', the result is ineffective)