One God, many paths?
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- čas přidán 15. 11. 2014
- Michael Ramsden: Aren't all religions essentially the same?
This lecture was presented at the University of Pretoria in August 2014 and was hosted by Dialoog and Antwoord ministries.
www.dialoog.co.za
www.antwoord.org.com
Thank you for sharing
All theistic positions, save for deism are essentially; 1) there is a god(s) 2) that god(s) has some rule(s) that you have to live by 3) if you don't follow those rules, you'll go to that theistic position's construct of an eternal(or semi-eternal) inferno where you'll burn. Pascal's wager is born out of this.
He's right about one thing though, the Christian faith is unique. It uniquely plagiarises Zoroastrianism and the religions of ancient Egypt (Horus was born on the 25th of December to a virgin mother, was tempted in the desert for 40 days and nights). Aside from that, this guy bullshits through his entire session. The Christian religion has religious dogma as well, you ought to follow the ten commandments for example. You also ought to follow the teachings of Jesus, those who don't are equated to the Pharisees "who wear cloaks at night and profess to love god during the day".
Why you have SO much trust in the bible I have no idea. Agreed Jesus is a wonderful figure as is the message about him. Beyond that the God (Jehovah) is very plainly shown to be continually angry, forgetful, vengeful, jealous, murderous, and he literally commanded genocide, slavery, and sexual slavery (concubines). Beyond that, any objective study of the book reveals many hundreds of internal contradictions. Tons. For instance, at the tomb, did Mary "immediately run and tell the disciples" what she saw or did she "tell no one" what she saw. Depends on the gospel you read. Did Judas take the 30 pieces of silver and cast them onto the temple steps then hang himself or did he use the money to "purchase a field of blood". Acts says the latter, Matthew the former. Many, many more examples could be mentioned. One more... John says Jesus was crucified on a Thursday, the other gospels say Friday. We no NOTHING about Jesus outside the bible, we know about what xians believed, that is all. Beyond that there are literally millions of differences between early manuscripts of the gospels. This is quite obviously because the bible has been heavily edited by the church. A lot of evidence for this. Beyond this the books of the bible were selected by men 300! years after the alleged events, at the council of Nicea. Beyond this xians treat the bible AS IF it was dictated by God. NOTHING in the bible even comes close to saying this. Beyond that the bible is full of stories that obviously are not literally true. The world is just not 6,000 years old, add up the generations from Adam, that is what the book plainly says. There were millions of animal species at the time of Noah. Do you really believe millions of species floated around in Noah's ark for a year? Seriously? This biblical fundamentalism was just not believed at all by many of the church fathers, like Origin. This speaker gave not one reason to read the bible in the fundamentalist way he is reading it. Also, the speaker strongly suggests "God" is going to torture all non-xians in fire forever and ever while (weirdly) claiming that God is just and good and all powerful. Sorry dude, your story is just not believable. The speaker's condemnation of all non-xians is immoral and self-serving.
If one wants to go to the Biblical heaven then obviously one needs to follow the bible instructions, If the heaven of the Koran is where you want to go then do the same, and also with the other Faiths.
And if none of the various afterlives exist (which seems likely) then following all those instructions is a complete waste of time.
You both have seemed to miss a lot of what Michael said. He made points that religions are NOT the same. They differ on ALL the crucial points. For instance, you both seem to think that "doing" (your instructions as you put it) in a pragmatic sense - like Michael talks about - while that's true in Islam, it's not true in the Christian faith. The christian faith is in a person - a relationship with Jesus Christ - not in ideas, or instructions or feelings. "The work is to BELIEVE in the one He sent".
All faiths cannot be different and yet True. Only one can be true, otherwise it would be contradictory.
Beat Fabrik correct, they can not all be true. But they *can* all be false, which seems to be the most likely scenario.
Correct. So the question becomes one of Truth. Why does it seem the most likely to you that all be false?
Beat Fabrik because they are pretty obviously man-made. Every single word of every holy text or scripture ever could easily have been the work of merely human effort, for instance in the Bible the book of Mormon and the Quran there is not a single shred of information that was not already known to the people writing. Every once in awhile they might speculate and get close to the mark when it comes to some later discovered scientific fact but just as often they show a complete lack of understanding for the world around them and completely missed the mark.