why is any other religion wrong?

[Jake_Ellison]

Hello Jake!

I am not beating up on you just pointing something out. Many people have done horrible things that made them happy.

The Aztecs slaughtered war captives. The Aztecs might have been very happy but their captives certainly won’t. So, it isn’t enough to be happy with yourself.

As far as good goes…what is good? What is right and fair? Who decides? It become arbitary if we depend on our own selves to decide.

Well your completly right. Even Hitler thought what he was doing was right and clearly a lot of people think hes one of the most evil people ever to live.

Heres what I think: Morals are very important to religious and non religious people alike. Both of these two groups have good and evil people, so having religion doesn’t automatically make you a good person and not havinging it doesn’t automatically make you a bad person. There has been a lot of terrible things done in the name of religon. A lot spread are due to hate but they didnt start with hate. For example, some extremist Muslims hate western culture and they want to kill westeners because they hate them. This is not Islam, its about as opposed to Islam as you can be. Greater Jihad is the stuggle within yourslef to find God. Lesser Jihad is the idea that Muslims should protect Muslims under attack for their faith. However, they should never hate those they fight and they should accept peace when offered. The Christians that first burnt non believers did it to save their imortal souls. That must have been out of love. But acting like that must lead to hate and recently we have have Catholics and Protestants blowing each other up in Northen Ireland.

So yes, we need morals, and they can not necessarily come from within us because people often make bad moral judgments on their own, which can take them on a path to hate. However, there are still all those good athiests. Their morals come from their culture and so they are not depending on themselves to deside.

I’m an atheist and I believe that abortion is wrong. This view comes in part from a Catholic back ground (my culture) but also from my personal view that a person exists as a unique individual from conception.

 

[RNRobert]

Hi Reborn!

C.S. Lewis (one of my favorite authors, even though he wasn’t Catholic) wrote in his book Mere Christianity (I book I highly recommend reading) that even though Christianity is true, that doesn’t mean all the other religions are 100% false- indeed, he said he would find it suspicious if that were the case (In another book (Abolition of Man) he used the term “the Tao” to describe the common morality that runs through most religions). He said that when you are doing sums, some answers may be closer to the truth than others, but there is still only one correct answer.
We believe Christianity to be true largely because his faith is the only one whose Founder claimed to be God, and who died and rose from the dead). Mohammed never claimed to be God, nor did Buddha, nor any others.

 

[Jake_Ellison]

We believe Christianity to be true largely because his faith is the only one whose Founder claimed to be God, and who died and rose from the dead). Mohammed never claimed to be God, nor did Buddha, nor any others.

Claiming to be God doesn’t make you God. I could claim to be God right now and no one would believe me.

Mohammed never claimed to be God and Muslims don’t believe he was God.

Buddha never claimed to be God and Buddists don’t believe he was God.

I’m not saying what you believe is wrong, I’m just saying the fact Christians believe Jesus claimed to be God dosn’t make it a more believable religion. It’s got to come down to blind faith. There is no reason why Chritianity is any more believeable then any other religion but you believe in it anyway. Thats real faith and I don’t think its necessary to justify faith by trying to explain why your religion is more correct then others.

 

[deb1]

Reborn_Pagan:

When I was about 15 I was confirmed a Catholic. At that point I believed that everyone could enter heaven no matter what their beliefs. The Preist who lead our confirmation preparation classes is one of the greatest people I know, and he told us that while Catholics are blessed by being on the best path to God, that does not mean others are wrong. All it means is that they are taking a different route. It might not be perfect but Jesus will meet them on it.

!

Your priest was discussing Invincible Ignorance. It is a wonderful concept but your priest seems to have explained it too broadly.

At some point a person becomes responsible to God for denying Christ. We don’t know when this occurs or what leeway a person is given. For example, if a person hears about Jesus but denies him because of past experiences with bad Christians. Is that person still responsible for denying Christ? We don’t know. That is why it is important to attempt to convert others. Besides, why would someone want less then the fullness of faith?

 

[estesbob]

okay this i’ve been putting off for way way to long.

why is any other relgion besides christianity wrong?

1. is it because you have been told this your whole life?
2. its cause the devil has created all of them?

those are only two examples i can think of right now…but please tell me why?

i may be just 15 but i know the line of good and evil and i stay on the good side. i know that what i do is right for me, i can feel it from head to toe…or is that just the devil playing tricks on me?

It is becuase they do not embrace the Son of God who is the way the truth and the light. All other religions are like the man in Plato’s cave-viewing the truth only as flickers on the wall.

 

[RNRobert]

Claiming to be God doesn’t make you God. I could claim to be God right now and no one would believe me.

Mohammed never claimed to be God and Muslims don’t believe he was God.

Buddha never claimed to be God and Buddists don’t believe he was God.

I’m not saying what you believe is wrong, I’m just saying the fact Christians believe Jesus claimed to be God dosn’t make it a more believable religion. It’s got to come down to blind faith. There is no reason why Chritianity is any more believeable then any other religion but you believe in it anyway. Thats real faith and I don’t think its necessary to justify faith by trying to explain why your religion is more correct then others.

Would you consider Jesus a lunatic? Quoting C.S. Lewis again, he said many accepted Jesus as a good moral teacher but not God. Lewis refuted this, saying that no mere human who said the things he did would be a good moral teacher. He would be a lunatic on the level of someone who claimed to be a poached egg, or else the devil of Hell. Lewis called considering Jesus as merely a great moral teacher “patronizing nonsense.”
If someone came to you and claimed to be God, would you even consider taking his advice on moral issues, or would you be looking for a straitjacket? AFAIK, not even Jesus’ enemies considered him a lunatic.

 

[RNRobert]

It’s got to come down to blind faith. There is no reason why Chritianity is any more believeable then any other religion but you believe in it anyway. Thats real faith and I don’t think its necessary to justify faith by trying to explain why your religion is more correct then others.

Atheism is as much blind faith as any religion, if not more so. I recall reading about Emile Zola, the French writer who went to Lourdes to “prove” miracles did not exist. He said that a cut finger dipped in water and healed would be sufficient. Well there was a woman who face was eaten away with lupus and had a tubercular ulcer on her leg. After she returned from the baths her leg ulcer was gone and her face was healed, although her skin was still red (like new skin). This was not enough for Mr. Zola, who said “If I were to see all the sick at Lourdes healed I would still not believe.” Now **THAT **is blind faith.

Regarding the claims of one religion over another: assuming there IS a God who created us, and who expected us to behave a certain way, wouldn’t He make some way of making his expectations known? I highly recommend C.S. Lewis’s Mere Christianity. He makes an excellent argument for belief in God and Christianity.

 

[estesbob]

Claiming to be God doesn’t make you God. I could claim to be God right now and no one would believe me.

Mohammed never claimed to be God and Muslims don’t believe he was God.

Buddha never claimed to be God and Buddists don’t believe he was God.

I’m not saying what you believe is wrong, I’m just saying the fact Christians believe Jesus claimed to be God dosn’t make it a more believable religion. It’s got to come down to blind faith. There is no reason why Chritianity is any more believeable then any other religion but you believe in it anyway. Thats real faith and I don’t think its necessary to justify faith by trying to explain why your religion is more correct then others.

I would like to know what reasearch/studies led you to beleive there is no God? The reason I ask is i look back through history , especially Christianity and i see such Brillaint men and women of faith who spent their lifetimes studying religion and the come to a very different conscluson than you do. i have examined their evidence in detail in my 54 years and have come to a diametrically oopposite conclusion than you do. I beleive have seen Gods work in my life and others repeatedly during my lifetime. I am nuts? Naive?

If you have some research or special insight gained through study and experience to share with us I would love to hearit. Thus far all you have presented is a rather jumbled desription of what one pirest told you three years ago., Unless there is more you havent related I must ask, with all due repsect, what makes you so much smarter than all those who have come before us? Are telling me that C S Lewis, Thomas Aquinas, Edith Stein, Theresa,Augustine et all are a bunch of quacks? Who should one beleive?

 

[Jake_Ellison]

My description of what a preist told me three years ago had nothing to do with my belief in God, in fact it was one of the parts of Chritianity I really liked.

As for why I don’t believe in God I do have my reasons and it may take me a while to get them all sorted out coherently. I won’t do it now as I have a maths exam coming up and I have to finish a practise paper. I’ll try and get started this afternoon.

 

[estesbob]

My description of what a preist told me three years ago had nothing to do with my belief in God, in fact it was one of the parts of Chritianity I really liked.

As for why I don’t believe in God I do have my reasons and it may take me a while to get them all sorted out coherently. I won’t do it now as I have a maths exam coming up and I have to finish a practise paper. I’ll try and get started this afternoon.

Thanks! Personally I have never been comfortable with numbers so i am glad I dont have a math test tomorrow!

 

[Oneiron]

okay this i’ve been putting off for way way to long.

why is any other relgion besides christianity wrong?

1. is it because you have been told this your whole life?
2. its cause the devil has created all of them?

those are only two examples i can think of right now…but please tell me why?

i may be just 15 but i know the line of good and evil and i stay on the good side. i know that what i do is right for me, i can feel it from head to toe…or is that just the devil playing tricks on me?

Good question, and you can’t prove that one is right and another is wrong. I think the better question is why tolerance isn’t preached even if your religion says that it’s the only right one.

 

[nkelly]

okay this i’ve been putting off for way way to long.

why is any other relgion besides christianity wrong?

1. is it because you have been told this your whole life?

No. In fact I fell away from the catholic faith in my teens and started beleiving in new-age and easter religions. I was after a trip to Lourdes that I started to see just how satan had deceived me!

1. its cause the devil has created all of them?

No.

those are only two examples i can think of right now…but please tell me why?

i may be just 15 but i know the line of good and evil and i stay on the good side. i know that what i do is right for me

This is where I would respectfully disagree with you.
Paganism breaks the first of the ten commandments - “I am the Lord your God and you shall not have strange gods before me!”. There is only one God! If you had multiple gods, you have to ask the question, which came first and which one made the others? I’m sure you do your best to be a good person, but honouring false gods is not pleasing to the one true God.

i can feel it from head to toe…or is that just the devil playing tricks on me?

I’d say probably, yes. The devil can appear as an angel of light.

2 Corinthians 11:13 For such false apostles are deceitful workmen, transforming themselves into the apostles of Christ. 14 And no wonder: for Satan himself transformeth himself into an angel of light. 15 Therefore it is no great thing if his ministers be transformed as the ministers of justice, whose end shall be according to their works.

The way I look at different religions is this. God being a good and merciful God wants us to know the truth and so He revealed His nature and His truths to us first through the prophets and then through the apostles. If we looks at the different religions in the world, it’s clear that there are serious conflicts in what they teach. Of course God can’t contradict Himself so you would have to conclude that all religions can’t have come from God. Assuming that God wants us to follow a true religion, we would have to conclude that they’re either all wrong or that there is one complete and true religion. I believe with all my heart and soul that the Catholic faith is the one true religion as revealed by God Himself in the person of Jesus Christ. The other’s are man-made.

Let me just give an example of how Paganism conflicts with Christianity. The example is re-incarnation. The theory of reincarnation supposes that we re-incarnate through successive lives until we reach a state of perfection and enter a state of nirvana. It also teaches that we achieve this through our OWN EFFORT. Christianity on the other hand teaches that we only have one life in which to decide whether we wish to reject God’s will or accept God’s will. We are saved only through the death of Jesus on the cross who atoned for all our past and future sins thus obtaining forgiveness. So it is only through the GRACE of GOD that we are saved! The contradiction is quite obvious!

God bless,
Noel.

 

[Scottgun]

I think the better question is why tolerance isn’t preached even if your religion says that it’s the only right one.

Another good question. The answer is it IS preached:

2106 "Nobody may be forced to act against his convictions, nor is anyone to be restrained from acting in accordance with his conscience in religious matters in private or in public, alone or in association with others, within due limits."34 This right is based on the very nature of the human person, whose dignity enables him freely to assent to the divine truth which transcends the temporal order. For this reason it "continues to exist even in those who do not live up to their obligation of seeking the truth and adhering to it."35

 

[KarenNC]

the only one whose Founder claimed to be God, and who died and rose from the dead).

Factually incorrect. Many have claimed to be gods over the centuries. Many have even claimed to be (or been acclaimed as) the Messiah of the Jews. Google “failed Messiah” if you are interested.

Other gods have been said to have risen from the dead. Osiris, Tammuz, Baal and Dionysus are examples. Others are Aray (war god of the Armenians), Okuni-Nushi (Japanese), Adon (Phoenicia), and Attis.

www.pantheon.org (Encyclopedia Mythica)–search on “resurrection”
or “resurrected god”

 

[KarenNC]

Would you consider Jesus a lunatic? Quoting C.S. Lewis again, he said many accepted Jesus as a good moral teacher but not God. Lewis refuted this, saying that no mere human who said the things he did would be a good moral teacher. He would be a lunatic on the level of someone who claimed to be a poached egg, or else the devil of Hell. Lewis called considering Jesus as merely a great moral teacher “patronizing nonsense.”
If someone came to you and claimed to be God, would you even consider taking his advice on moral issues, or would you be looking for a straitjacket? AFAIK, not even Jesus’ enemies considered him a lunatic.

The Bible indicates otherwise:

Mark 3:20-22
20Then Jesus entered a house, and again a crowd gathered, so that he and his disciples were not even able to eat. 21When his family heard about this, they went to take charge of him, for they said, "He is out of his mind."22And the teachers of the law who came down from Jerusalem said, “He is possessed by Beelzebub[c]! By the prince of demons he is driving out demons.”

Look at my previous post regarding “failed Messiahs.” It is entirely possible that he truly considered himself to be what he claimed to be and in the context of that culture at that time it does not automatically make him insane, just wrong. Whether he was a god or not, he did not meet the criteria for the Jewish Messiah. There were others who made similar claims at the time.

conncoll.edu/academics/departments/relstudies/290/judaism/jesus.html

jewsforjudaism.com/jews-jesus/jews-jesus-index.html

Now if you want to argue that Jesus is the God of the Christians rather than the Jewish Messiah, that’s an entirely different argument.

 

[KarenNC]

**I would like to know what reasearch/studies led you to beleive there is no God? The reason I ask is i look back through history , especially Christianity and i see such Brillaint men and women of faith who spent their lifetimes studying religion and the come to a very different conscluson than you do. i have examined their evidence in detail in my 54 years and have come to a diametrically oopposite conclusion than you do. I beleive have seen Gods work in my life and others repeatedly during my lifetime. I am nuts? Naive? **

Personally, I also am not an atheist. As a polytheist, I am more than willing to grant that you have seen your God’s work in your life. I have also seen the work of my Gods in mine. Millions of people have said they have seen the same from their Gods. Brilliant people of all faiths have spent lifetimes studying and devoted to their faiths. Some of them have come to a conclusion similar to yours. Many have not.

Unless there is more you havent related I must ask, with all due repsect, what makes you so much smarter than all those who have come before us? Are telling me that C S Lewis, Thomas Aquinas, Edith Stein, Theresa,Augustine et all are a bunch of quacks? Who should one beleive?

I would not say that I (or many) would consider that Lewis, Aquinas, Stein, and Augustine were necessarily “smarter” than Plato, Aristotle, Marcus Aurelius, etc.

 

[Mommyof02green]

okay this i’ve been putting off for way way to long.

why is any other relgion besides christianity wrong?

1. is it because you have been told this your whole life?
2. its cause the devil has created all of them?

those are only two examples i can think of right now…but please tell me why?

i may be just 15 but i know the line of good and evil and i stay on the good side. i know that what i do is right for me, i can feel it from head to toe…or is that just the devil playing tricks on me?

Wow… I’m just taken back by your age. I’ve seen the other thread.

There was no way I could make that kind of commitment or want to the age of 15. I just remember who I was then, and my “opinion” on things changed with the wind.

Of course you are a different person then me. Everyone can be and is different. Good Luck to you.

 

[KarenNC]

**If you had multiple gods, you have to ask the question, which came first and which one made the others? **

Why?

** Of course God can’t contradict Himself so you would have to conclude that all religions can’t have come from God. **

This only becomes an “of course” if you accept that God is singular, omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent, and incapable/unwilling to do so. That is not the beginning premise of a polytheist, so that is not necessarily an “of course” or compelling argument for the polytheist.

Let me just give an example of how Paganism conflicts with Christianity. The example is re-incarnation.

I do agree that reincarnation contradicts the teachings of most Christian churches (there are so many different ones that I cannot presume to know the intricacies of all of them ]. If you google “Christian reincarnation,” however, you can find those who consider themselves Christian but who disagree with you.

I would like to correct one apparent asusmption in the above statement as it seems to be a common one. It is not clear to me whether you are using the term “Paganism” to refer to all non-Christian religions, all non-Abrahamic religions, all non-monotheistic religions or the group of religions frequently described as Neopagan or Pagan in America/Western European culture currently.

If you mean the latter, there is not any monolithic religion of “Paganism.” There are a wide variety of different religions who are frequently grouped under the umbrella of the term Neopagan, but they all have very different beliefs, practices, pantheons, etc. They can be even more different from each other than Christianity and Islam or Christianity and Buddhism. Reincarnation may figure in some, but does not in all and not necessarily the same way in all of the religions that do include it. Even within a single Neopagan religion, some groups may not agree on something like reincarnation.

If you mean any of the other possible definitions, those religions all also have a wide variety of beliefs and practices. Reincarnation figures in some, but certainly not all, and not the same way in all.

In order to compare beliefs or practices, we really need to narrow it down to what specific form of Christianity is meant and which specific Pagan or Neopagan religion (as well as its specific form) are being compared. An example that may help–if I want to argue that something contradicts the Christian understanding of the Eucharist, I really need to define which Christian understanding I mean. The Roman Catholic one? The Presbyterian one? The Anglican one? They differ widely.

 

[Ahimsa]

Let me just give an example of how Paganism conflicts with Christianity. The example is re-incarnation.

I do agree that reincarnation contradicts the teachings of most Christian churches (there are so many different ones that I cannot presume to know the intricacies of all of them ]. If you google “Christian reincarnation,” however, you can find those who consider themselves Christian but who disagree with you.

Yep, many Christians (though by no means “most”) see no contradiction between reincarnation and Christianity.

 

[RNRobert]

Other gods have been said to have risen from the dead. Osiris, Tammuz, Baal and Dionysus are examples. Others are Aray (war god of the Armenians), Okuni-Nushi (Japanese), Adon (Phoenicia), and Attis.

%between%

Fine. Can you inform me where and when these gods were born? AFAIK, Jesus is the only one whose time and place were known. have there been “failed messiahs” or folks claiming to be God. yes, but how many of them are followed today. Jesus took a bunch of illiterate fishermen and swept the world with His faith. How many people claiming to be God have done that?