Religion

i am not a parent or a teacher, but have faced & seen some horrible things personally & believe all should come forward to stop these. i think corporal punishments is required to be banned due to the fact that people are putting their frustrations on kids in the name of corporal punishments & parents are trying to pressurise them for being the topper in schools......... a friend of mine when i was in school had got beaten by her mother with a rod on her head for not being 1st in the class but third. a teacher from our school killed a kid of 8years for not doing her homework. she got away by paying rs 2000 fine. a fathe killed his 14yr old kid t…

I have a quick question that I think may lead to an interesting discussion. As the title sayd, it is the connection between atheism, moral relativism and hypocrisy. First, I wonder with it is possible to be morally hypocritical as a moral relativist. I would argue it is not since morality is relative, a person need only have an explanation for their personal contradiction and internally they are again morally sound. Second, I wonder what effect atheism has on moral relativism and individual moral course corrections. I realize that the first most obvious discussion would lead toward humanism, which is a secular moral philosophy. But I do wonder how much sway…

All Christian altars have a piece of 'different' stone in it. From what I learn decades ago, it is a stone taken/sourced only from a certain mountain in Israel? Rome? and all churches use one when building the altar. Where is the exact source of such Ara (in spanish) stone ?

Speaking politically, when someone has absolute faith in a religion and it's moral authority, is it amoral for that person to use their political influence to (via voting, position of office, etc) towards coercing others to live in accordance with their view of absolute morality without considering they could be wrong? I am not saying that to support the same morals politically that one holds religiously is de-facto amoral - you can still oppose abortion, assisted suicide, premarital sex, stem cell research, theft and the coveting of thy neighbor's ass on moral grounds... but when we impact the freedoms that other people get to exercise in their brief time on this planet…

The title is a bit misleading, perhaps to draw some more folks in. What I'm looking for is more along the lines of how you judge which religion has the right answer for your spiritual questions. Do you just believe the religion you were raised in is the right one? Is the religion with the most followers the right one? Do you study as many as you can and choose the one that represents your beliefs best? Do you think there is something basic to all of them that is generally correct and the rest is just scenery? Or do you have another reason why your faith is in the right place?

Given the interest on this forum of the interplay of science and religion, I thought you might appreciate this blog post I found: http://ill-conceived-rant.blogspot.com/2010/04/richard-dawkins-is-enemy-of-reason.html I will make a confession right away - although this blog is not written by me, it is written by a friend of mine, who I have discussed this subject with at great length over coffee and beers. So you may see some 'influences' of ideas I have previously stated in this forum, but I think the blogger presents these ideas much more coherently and systematically than I ever could. As such, I find myself in complete scientific agreement with the blogger, tho…

I tend towards agnosticism these days. For the first time in my life, I'm considering not fasting for passover (this basically involves not eating leavened bread products, though the rules are much more complicated). Is it worth following cultural tradition based on religious principles you might not agree with? Perhaps even to test your self discipline and the Buddist/hindu concept of avoiding attachments. I know it's just a week, and why not give up something that's really not that hard to do (putting things into perspective) especially since i've been doing it my whole life anyway. Before you answer, keep in mind that beer isn't kosher for passover.

Assuming that no gods actually exist, is there any benefit that people gain from their belief in a god or from the religious moral codes? (I think its pretty clear what the benefits are of believing in the correct God should one exist as described). That is, what earthly secular benefits does religion bring? For example, Catholics discourage the use of condoms. Given our evolved nature (sex is pleasurable, people are lazy), this results in plenty of children. While bringing up lots of children can be a pain, it also makes you evolutionarily successful. Thus an irrational belief can be evolutionarily beneficial.

In another thread the word "perfect" was being thrown around a lot and it led to a thought. I'll make it clear from the start that this is not attempting to push or validate in any way, any religion or way of thought. I am however postulating a rather amorphous "designer". What I find interesting is that many declare the Universe, or humans to be "bad" design. How do we define a design as bad if we don't know what it was designed to do? A Jumbo jet is a reasonably good design if we want to move hundreds of people and some tons of cargo long distances, it is a very poor design if we want to move 500,000 tons of crude oil. So, if the Universe had a "desi…

The need for some sort of legal definition of when life begins is necessary when considering abortion, but that's more of a political discussion. I'd like to know if your religious (or simply moral) views allow for abortion at any time after conception. When does life begin according to your beliefs and can that ever be reconciled with the laws that need to exist to allow for abortion? And if your spiritual answer is, "Life begins at conception," then how can we deal with that legally when, under that definition, any miscarriage of a pregnancy might potentially be investigated as a murder?

This might not fit into the evolution thread, but I had no where to put it. I recently picked up a book called "I don't believe in atheists" bu Chris Hedges In it he makes some very crazy claims. "is a critique of what Hedges perceives as a radical mindset that rages against religion and faith. Hedges states the book was motivated by debates he had with atheist authors Sam Harris and Christopher Hitchens whom Hedges feels excessively demonize religion, particularly Islam, in ways that Hedges believed were eerily similar to the thinking of Christian fundamentalists." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Hedges#I_Don.27t_Believe_in_Atheists_.282008.29

Is the death penalty allowable within your religion, or your belief system? Is it considered murder? Is an ultimate judgment like that reserved for your deity or can man hand out capital punishment? Is your religious/spiritual stance at odds with your political stance on this issue?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/8577740.stm I, personally, think that this was a very half-hearted attempt at an apology really. For starters, the Pope didn't even give it! How do people feel about this affecting the Church's reputation?

Well think about it: a Christian disbelieves in almost as many gods as an atheist does. This website has descriptions of almost 3000 gods, and I'm sure there are thousands more -- maybe millions, especially if you count prehistoric tribal gods. Now, Christianity is a monotheistic religion, and most sects profess not just a lack of belief in the other gods, but outright disbelief. On the other hand, most atheists are agnostic atheists, and so they do not express a disbelief in the various gods, just a lack of belief in them. So for most gods, a Christian would have less belief in them than the average atheist. With, of course, one exception. But what's that one excepti…

Unyielding faith, a belief so strong and unswerving that it provides comfort and guidance in the face of life's trials seems to be the cornerstone of many religions. But wouldn't that seem to suggest that faith taken to the extreme is the best faith of all? Where does faith cross the line into extremism?