^^
Why don't you go look at my proof on the prior page before you start criticizing it.
Not to mention all the other religions that claim if you don't follow them you lost.
I'm curious as to how many religions actually make this claim. I mean, originally religions were not exclusive. Meaning the Greeks had their gods, the Vikings had their gods, the Druids had their gods, the Aztecs had their gods, the Egyptians had their gods. Each culture believed its gods favored and watched over THAT culture in particular. A Greek did not disbelieve in the gods of the Egyptians. Rather, they believed their gods were STRONGER. The whole concept of faith in the existence of one's god (or gods) as a prerequisite to mercy from that god (or gods) was a non-issue.
As far as I know, the ONLY religions to ever switch to a presumption that you must believe THEIR god was the one and only god in order to receive that god's mercy and salvation after death are (1) Christianity, and (2) Islam.
I mean, even Judaism does not seem to include this kind of thinking, at least not originally. Many passages in the Old Testament seem to be written from the standpoint that the Jehovah was the God OF THE JEWS. I mean, just look at the first commandment: Thou shalt have no other gods before me. This phrasing implies there ARE other gods, and Jews should remember to put their god first in their loyalty and worship. Otherwise, the commandment is meaningless and should have read, "There are no other gods than me, and thou shalt not worship false gods." I mean, sure, Jews and Christians nowadays INTERPRET the first commandment to mean that. But obviously that is a stretch. That is the same sort of pretzel-twisting on Bible passages that they do all over the place in order to keep the Bible from contradicting itself.
Also, look up how people got saved in the Old Testament as compared to the New Testament. The O.T. does not set forth a system of salvation that required exclusive belief in Jehovah as God and nonbelief in other gods as a prerequisite to salvation. In fact, it is my understanding that present day Jewish belief includes no hell whatsoever. Rather, Jews believe nonbelievers go to purgatory for a period of time to pay for their sins and then eventually get elevated to heaven. If anyone knows differently, please post it because I'm a little iffy on this.
Anyway, so you have a world where only 2 religions ever required exclusive belief in that religion's truth in order to avoid eternal torture and in order to achieve eternal paradise. Hmmm... Not surprising that those 2 religions ended up having the most rabid, violent followers or have taken the firmest hold on their followers or spread the quickest among their followers. I mean, an apparently learned man tells peasants that God has spoken to mankind and said that he will send people to eternal torture unless they specifically believe this book (Bible or Koran) is the only true word of God and that all other gods are false myths, what do you think the peasants will do? In those days, that was how news spread -- by some guy coming around and telling people about it. That's how you learned about wars, about plagues, about all manner of current events. To them, that guy was their equivalent to CNN. How many Americans would buy into a religion if CNN reported that God had revealed himself to man again and given new laws? I bet a hell of a lot of Americans would think, "Shit, if CNN is reporting it, it must be true."
Also, if you are at all familiar with memetics, you can see how a religion that requires exclusive faith as a prerequisite to avoid eternal torture and achieve eternal paradise would be insidiously powerful in spreading. See, ideas are like animals that live within our brains and fight with other ideas to fight, to survive and to grow. Over time, you get a form of evolution of ideas where some go extinct and others flourish. An animal that evolves a poisonous bite may suddenly flourish compared to its counterparts with no comparable weapon and that animal may start spreading like wildfire thanks to its newly developed offensive weapon. Similarly, you can look on the idea "You must believe this book is the true word of God and all other gods, or books on gods, are lies, or you will suffer the worst fate imaginable after death...oh, and if you do believe, you will be rewarded with the best fate imaginable after death" as an incredibly powerful tool / weapon for helping the ideas in that book spread and defeat any opposing ideas that are not so armed.
In a way, this "faith" requirement to avoid hell and achieve heaven is sort of like gun powder for the mind. The old religious views were fighting with swords and arrows. They had no hope.
So, anyway, the spread of Christianity in the Western World and Islam in the Arab world, and the firmness with which they clutch the minds of people in those areas despite all the absurdities within those religious texts, all the sexism, racism, brutality, contradictions (within the texts, with historical evidence, archeological evidence, and modern scientific knowledge) is not a testament to their truth, but rather is a testament to how powerful a insidious a weapon it can be to link faith to the most extreme system of reward / punishment conceivable (I mean, can anything be conceived that is worse than eternity in hell, or anything better than eternity in heaven? Those notions were specifically designed to be the max bad and max good, so that no new religion could come along and offer a worse threat for nonbelief, or a better reward for belief.)
Now, Buddhism and Taoism and other "universal oneness" type spiritual paths seem to be taking an interesting approach -- one that I hope will triumph in the end. Rather than fight the mental armory of Christianity and Islam with their own weapons, they practice a form of peaceful, non-aggressive resistance, akin to Ghandi against the British in India. They fight hateful, divisive thoughts (like, "You will burn in hell if you do not bow down to my god") with love and kindness and gentle refusal to embrace such a hurtful assertion. Rather than send missionaries to scare nonbelievers into accepting their faith, they merely allow their own lives to serve as examples for those who care to notice.
So you can look around and see priests fucking little boys, you can see the Catholic Church committing atrocity after atrocity to expand its power base, you can see the majority of Christians greedily clawing their way to greater material wealth and refusing to worry about the welfare of strangers...and then you can see Buddhists quietly tending their gardens, meditating, living simple lives of compassion for others, with little concern over material wealth, striving to embrace a path of moderation in all things. If a tree is in the way of a path they are making, they put the path around the tree while the Christian chops it down. And, if you are openminded, then the solution is obvious as to which path will lead to a better future world for humanity, which is truly the path of love and light.
Yeah, sure, some Christians are swell, compassionate saintly people. And some who claim to be buddhists or taoists may be greedy motherfuckers (though I don't know of any of the latter). But, from my own experience, the above generalizations seem to hold true most of the time.
Anyway, in Buddhism you do not achieve heaven by believing in Buddhism. There is no hell. Arguably, there is an equivalent based on the form in which you are reincarnated (ant = bad, stud pony = good, for example). But faith in Buddhism does not get you a better reincarnated form. Rather, your form of reincarnation is determined by the level of personal growth you achieve in life. It is completely merit-based, not belief-based. Personally, I don't believe in this teaching (which is only in some schools of buddhism, not all). However, my point remains: It is the exception, not the rule, for religions to require exclusive belief to avoid eternal damnation. It just happens that those 2 exceptions (Christianity and Islam) have an insidious power that has propelled them to the forefront of world religions.
But you can escape it. Look at me. I was raised Lutheran my whole life, from both sides of my family. I went to Sunday School, then confirmation classes and was "confirmed" Lutheran in a ceremony at 16. So I had all the indoctrination.
Plus, I am pretty smart (high school valedictorian, top 0.1% on all standardized tests, full acacemic scholarship to college, etc.)
And I can tell you I have spent a lot of my brainpower looking at this issue, and I now stand here absolutely, 100% certain that Christianity and Islam are both bullshit. I have absolutely no speck of fear at all that when I die, I will go to some place of torture for my failure to believe the Bible or the Koran were true. Surprisingly, coming to this place of 100% certainty on the falsity of these 2 religions has allowed me to reach a place where I have little or no fear of death.
I did not even realize this before, but even when I was a firmly believing Lutheran, I still wondered if I would get into heaven or end up in Hell. I mean, we all sin, right? Exactly what sins would be forgiven? What if I sinned and died an hour later, before asking Jesus for forgiveness? What if the Baptists were right and some tiny nuance of my version of protestantism was wrong? What if God really was a stickler for details and my pastor didn't keep his flock to the straight and narrow as much as he should have? What if I was not quite respectful enough of my parents? What if God really didn't want me doing chores on Sunday and was ready to send me to Hell for it?
Forget heaven, people in Christianity and Islam are motivated by fear of hell. Christianity -- even for the devout believer -- brings with it a huge weight of fear that abides deep in your psyche, because it requires you to believe there is an omniscient, omnipotent being who is willing to send humans to eternal torture if they don't meet some rather vague standard of behavior and belief. Geez, how scary is that? How does that compare to living in a world where no one has any belief that some omnipotent being is judging them and sending those who fail the judgment to be set on fire and cut into pieces and have their eyes poked out and genitals stretched and generally tortured in all horrible ways imaginable for trillions of years? I hope you are starting to get some idea of how stressful daily life is for Christians.
Frankly, I think the only Christians who do not live in perpetual fear and stress are those who, on some deep level, have had a nervous breakdown. They just can't take day after day living in fear that they might fail God's test and end up suffering the kind of horrible fate that awaits people in Hell. So one day they just snap. Oh, externally it may not be obvious, but internally as a form of self-preservation their mind broke in its ability to think rationally. And, in breaking, it left them with a deep and unshakable certainty that not only was their chosen school of Christianity the true school, but they were going to heaven FOR SURE. Snap goes the mind, "Ahh..." goes the spirit. How good to lose the fear of eternal damnation!! What a blessed relief! Yeah, I can see how those types of Christians think they have had some kind of miraculous, uplifting revelation from God. It feels so good to not be in fear anymore!!
These are the people -- slightly insane by any clinical definition because they have a mental block against thinking rationally about religious or spiritual matters -- who are the bedrock of Christianity. Their dullwitted grins of peaceful pleasure are craved by the masses who still live in that state of fear. Their assurances that the KNOW deep down that they are saved, that they are on the right path, soothes those who do not feel such certainty with the hope that maybe one day they will get a similar revelation of God's truth.
Revelation? The only revelation is the mind's refusal to keep living with the kind of perpetual fear that Christianity fosters in any sane mind.
I think there is still a deep fear within these people. A fear of returning to a state of doubt. Lord knows they don't want to go back there! Better ignorant certainty than intelligent doubt! Like my mother, who firmly believes in her church and yet won't discuss religion with me, her own son, even though it is apparent that under her view I'm going to hell and only by changing my mind can she save me...She does not try. She refuses to discuss the issue. And I can sense a fear underlying her refusal. A fear that if she opens the door to discussion, I might shake the certainty it has taken her so long to achieve, that she values more than truth. More, even, than her own child's soul.
Then there are those who have that ignorant certainty and DO discuss religion. But those discussions either run in meaningless circles or the other person runs away. They refuse to be pinned down in any way that might result in a true evaluation of the rationality of their beliefs. And you can even stick in their face a clear and rational reason why their beliefs are wrong-headed and irrational and they will look at it and not see it. They will call a duck a chicken before they will allow their faith to be shaken. What is better, to see a duck as a chicken, or to risk living in a perpetual state of fear that you might be destined to suffer eternal torture when you die?
The ironic thing is, these people think they must cling to their irrational certainty to stave off that horrible, deepseated fear of hell that they lived with for so long. They think that if they come to doubt, or even disbelieve, in their version of Christianity, they will be right back where they started. Because they don't realize, on a conscious level, that their past misery was based on a subconscious fear of hell. So they assume that if you decide Christianity is all wrong, but are not sure what is right, you will be back to that state of fear of hell. They do not realize that, in rejecting Christianity and rationally seeing what a crock it is, you will also realize what an absurd and irrational idea it is for some omnipotent God to send humans to eternal damnation. The concept of hell goes away with Christianity. And, as a result, even if you are left in a state of spiritual uncertainty as to what really DOES exist, that deep fear of hell does not return. It is gone. So they can feel the same sense of relief and peace by rejecting Christianity as they feel by snapping their brains in order to have full faith in their own salvation through Christ. Alas, they do not realize any of this, and I'm not sure how they can be made to realize this.
I look around and I see a lot of people in this world wandering around with self-inflicted brain damage. I can even link it to the deteriorating state of world affairs. When you have to embrace faith over rationality, what kind of decisions are you going to make in the democratic process? Believe everything the government tells you, failure to critically analyze what is being said. The Christian influence in America is linked to the stupid, sheeplike behavior of Americans. To their refusal to see the destruction of the environment, their growing control by heartless corporate interests, their habits forming a slow suicide. Americans keep obsessing more and more over looking good, while getting more and more obese every year. How can the mightiest people on Earth be so ineffective in achieve such a simple goal, the goal they seem to want more than any other, to be physically fit? And why the hell don't they have the sense to reflect on that? Because we are not in charge! Because our own happiness is not the goal of our present leaders. Because corporations have stolen our money, our minds and our hearts and have left, in their place, some a box with flashing colored lights that we can stare at all day and all night.
And we let ourselves be distracted, even though it means the death of the human spirit, like a deer trading its life for a good look at bright headlights.
Did I mention that faith in the notion that incorrect belief leads to hell is insidious? Perhaps evil would be a better word.
~psychoblast~
, although I am happy to say that the XHTML and CSS on my site validates perfectly (except for the contact page...). There's something about light-blue on white that my eyes find incredibly relaxing - maybe that's why I spend hours on end reading posts here on BL. The whole thing (xigma.us) is kind of an experimental platform for me - my next objective is to provide a mechanism from which to choose from several different stylesheets. It's something I know how to do, just haven't had the time... although if anyone would actually ask me to build a site for them, I would FIND time to do that... but I understand this is not the place to solicit business, so I'll end it right there.
Jesus and Mohammad comparisms..