Civil Discussion About Religion

[jsarno]

Originally Posted by RobH4413

Yeah, sorry... it was 4:00am when I wrote this...

I was referring to those kind of people that exploit people in general. They've always been here, and always will be here. So it's not hard to fathom that some random guy, or group of people, decided to make a religion and exploit a populations fear of death into some scam.

Secondly to clarify about a 100% pure person...I was speaking about the possibility that someone purely good can't go to heaven according to certain religions.

If Ghandi, for example, didn't believe in god and helped millions of people how could he not go to heaven? How could someone to fit every definition of what is a good person is in certain religions not reach the ultimate reward? Why is having faith so important?

In a world as confusing as this one is, it's hard to understand why faith is what gets you in. However, I do see faith as an important concept in general, but not necessarily in god par se.

In some ways, we all have to have "faith". If we were total skeptics about everything we would get nothing accomplished. We have to have faith that doing what's good is the right thing.

There really is no empirical evidence, aside from being raised a particular way or another, that doing "good" is right at all... so the concept of faith isn't totally unfamiliar.

See Leap of faith - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia . My philosophy teacher in high school totally broke the whole class down for a month. Made us all total skeptics, and then in the end... presented the "leap of faith" above and it blew us all away. I thought it was pretty cool.

No person can be 100% pure. It's impossible. That aside, I actually understand exactly where you're coming from. That's why I said my comments about grace in a previous post, and comments about "why do all the religions have the same common demoninator in God with several different saviors?"
I also look at it like this, if God loves us unconditionally, then why would he set us up for certain doom. Maybe, just maybe, the bible is a way of scaring us straight. Kind of like when you parents said "you'll get hairy palms if you masterbate (or go blind)", or "if you take a hit of marijuana, you'll die". etc. Their intentions are honorable, but they are trying to scare you from doing something that could hurt you.