Quote:
Originally posted by homer:
I do not have enough information or personal knowledge about any particular religion, so I cannot argue specifics. In general, most of the people I know, who follow a religion, are good people. However, I believe they would be good people regardless of their religion. Do religions make someone a good person? Maybe, but if that were entirely true everyone who was religious would be a good person; I think we can all agree that this is not true. If you kill in the name of a religion, in most people’s opinion, then you are a bad person.
I believe religion and faith is not something that can be dictated. The first definition of faith in webster’s third is: unquestioning belief that dose not require proof or evidence. How can you teach someone about something without the evidence to back it up; in my opinion you cannot. You can teach someone why you believe in something or why others might believe in something, but you cannot teach someone to believe just because you do.
The argument about an after life is also something I believe cannot be taught. Again, there is no evidence to back it up. The only way to find out what happens when you die is to die. As such, it makes it difficult to then relate to others what has happened.
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I am a father and I teach my children to be good people. That includes being tolerant of what other people believe, even if you personally think they are wrong. I will not push any religion on my children, however I will support whatever decisions they make in the future.
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The first 2 paragraphs have been covered above. I made that point several times that you cannot push true faith onto anyone and this in fact gives a lot of weight to the sheer number of believers out there that they may be onto something.
About afterlife - technically there IS evidence. Well in a court of law a witness account is evidence right? Correct me if I'm wrong. Anyway, in the same way there are MANY accounts of people who have been diagnosed as clinically dead but their heart restarted minutes or hours later. I have read a book about this. They all give remarkably similar accounts of feeling at great peace and seeing a light at the end of a tunnel. This does not sound like there's nothing does it?
Well place as much weight on this as you want, just saying that technically there is evidence if you call 1st person accounts evidence.
Oh and another good post Cerek.
[ 01-22-2003, 01:38 PM: Message edited by: Vaskez ]