i think religion is just something human created to answer the questions of the unknown....that's how i think of it, that's why i have no religion at this moment. but when i get old and am about to die...then i am pretty sure i will turn to god and pray lol. that's definately going to happen.
IMO any religion that believes in an afterlife such as heaven or hell makes life meaning less. For example if we went to heaven after our death here on earth wouldn't it mean that we will continue to live forever? So what is the point in cherishing life? It's like see you on the other side my friend. I feel that the reason you have to cherish life is because we only have one life to live. Once our time is over that's it. But i have nothing against any religion.
^ obviously, thats the simple mind's view on things. In Buddhism, they believe in the afterlife as the real life, not this one. What I mean is, we come to Earth (in this life) to learn lessons. Earth is merely a classroom. After we have learned our lessons required, or fail for that matter, we return to the afterlife, and continue the cycle of reincarnation, return to Earth to learn more things. It gets more complicated than that, but thats the simple way of putting it.
if you have the chance of becoming old. not to jinx you or anything; but I believe no one knows when he / she will die. and the whole idea of John 3:16 may not work for that person. my personal opinion ... I believe in the higher power. but yet, i don't believe in churches or temples, nor mosques! that is because when it comes to human beings; regardless of which religion they are in, there are bad apples. I have been in churches that tells me i need to spend time with that church members only and no one else. And if my parents are not members of that church, then i need to severe ties with my parents. I have been in temples where they tell you, the more you donate, the better karma you'll get. And of course, sex scandals amongst the Catholic priests. Needless to say, i did not severe ties with my parents but i did with the church. and needless to say i haven't been going to temples that believe in my money more than me. so now, i believe as long as i do not harm people, as long as I can sleep well at night knowing i have not done anything wrong / immoral, i'm happy to be without religion and be condemned by the religious fanatics.
Something you obviously haven't learned in your so call classroom is tolerance of peoples opinions. But yea you just helped proved my point. When there are no do overs and you only get one shot at life you will hold it to a higher value. The more rare something is the more it is cherished.
^ sorry but i dont even see your point. i fail to see how tolerance of people's opinion and religious afterlife are related.
I'm not really an atheist. My family's Buddhist and I usually do whatever I'm supposed to as a "Buddhist" but .... I've been given the choice to believe in whatever it is I want to believe in. My parent's tell me that if I do "believe" in religion though then I have to take it very seriously (obviously). Sometimes during New Year's I would just make up stories like "visiting the temple" to get off from school. *shrugs* hey, it even works in College! =) Yes I know it's a bad thing to lie about though...Dx
tbh..atm i dnt know what i am.... i dont want to call myself a catholic which ive been doing for all my life...its so fake... so many people do it....they determine themselves as "catholic" , "christian" , "muslim" etc but dont know much about it and dont practise their religion not long ago i have realized that i know too little about it to say that i am... yes i was raised with my father telling me that we are a catholic family and yes i did go to a catholic school where i had to pray every day but after i left primary...how many times have i been to church or practicsd my religion? so now that im more mature and can think for myself instead of having my parents/teachers telling me what i am..... it got me thinking how much do i know and understand about it and do i truly believe and agree with everything that the bible says? should i be calling myself a catholic when i know so little about it, hardly ever say a prayer and go to church a few times a year.... i dont think i should....hence why i stopped callng myself a catholic... do i believe in god? actually.... i do believe there is a god... and when i know enough, i believe and am convinced for 100% and feel ready to accept this religion i might call myself a catholic... when that happens i will feel that its real within my heart and i wont just be saying it because thats what ive been taught
ye theres a lot of ppl such as me who don't rele know that much about religion and don't think much about it though we don't say for a fact that there is no religion, so for us we like in no category cos we not rele athiest either lol.
you dont have to be catholic/christian/muslim to believe in a god. hinduism, believe it or not, is a MONOTHEISM, which means they believe in one God, not many gods. Buddhism states that there exists a God, but we (im buddhist) dont pray to the God as we do to Gautama Buddha (same level as Jesus kind of thing) what im trying to say is you dont need to be in a religion to believe in a God. Although im Buddhist (which in fact is NOT a religion, but a way of life), i incorporate beliefs i find interesting from other religions and incorporate it into my own. as a result, i share beliefs that are unique to Christianity, Catholic, Muslim, Hindu etc. believe in what you think is right, not what a number of other people think is right.
@ dann....lol...its sorta what my mother says... when i asked her about it she said to me she believes in all what she thinks is really good n that dif religions have their own thing that she thinks is right.... i think i agree to that....
so you treat "buddhist" as like a philosophical view that you live by or what. so you don't pray to the symbol (buddha) of the "religion." I don't really know why you said that though. I think if you have to follow beliefs and pray, then you are in fact following a religion, but i'm pretty open to explanations why or why not it is/isn't.
first reason: my religion prof said so. lol a religion is defined as a belief in supernatural powers. the correct word is "divine". Islam, Hinduism, Christianity believe in such a divine power, and that divinity is a monotheistic being, God or Allah. Gautama Buddha is NOT a god, as people mistaken him to be. He was a human being just like the rest of us. He is not God, and nor is he a prophet, like Jesus and Muhammad. Jesus and Muhammad both have worked miracles through them, which is the definition of prophets. All Gautama Buddha did was spread his teachings. Buddhism is a way of life and not a religion, because there are no divine beings involved. Perhaps there are divine beings such as the Celestial and Cosmic Buddhas, but Buddhism focuses on Gautama Buddha's teachings, and not the Celestial and Cosmic Buddhas. As for the praying part, you can still be a Buddhist and skip all the praying. What makes you a Buddhist is not revering a divine being, but the way you live your life. I rarely pray to Buddha. I see him as a teacher, not a prophet nor a God. So if there is no prophet nor God, there is no divinity, and thus it doesnt satisfy the definition of a religion. I pray so for the traditions and customs that my family set out. But I incorporate Buddha's teachings into my life. oh man... this is like a review of my course... hope i did well on my exam...
^hahah but if ya just follow their teachings and not believe in him as a divine being then i guess your not treating him as a god then. But then in most versions of buddhism, everyone believes that he's a divine being, like theres a heaven and hell, u have to do good, then the buddha will save you. But anyways you don't take him as a divine being but many people take him as like an asian version of jesus basically, he sacrificed himself for the life of others/something and he's a savior. But you don't take him as the pure symbol of the religion right. you just value his teachings like he's a teacher i guess. Cause if someone thinks everything revolves around buddha, like most christians think of jesus, then that's definitely a religion. But yea from what u say i can understand why you don't think your religious. But when you said Buddha is not a god like jesus and mohammed. i think that's just your opinion though, many people believed buddha worked miracles and such, it's just your interpretations i guess. It's just like i can say that jesus or mohammed is not a god and what people said of him are not true. I didn't believe they did any miracles, they were just similar to what you think of buddha, they were just regular human beings with alot of good influences. I can also say that the bible is just a way of life and not a religion, they use it as a basis for their life's path. It think that all this broils down to an individual's opinion on what is/isn't a relgion..
k uh.. these two sentences confused me.. lol remember, i study religion at university... i have never heard of Gautama Buddha being a sacrificial object. None of the readings which WOULD have this fact included it.. as for miracles, no miracles were made because he is not divine, thus no miracle powers.. im telling you now that these are not my interpretations.. i had to do research for an assignment on this.. not to mention for an exam.. not to mention ive had discussions with my prof and some monks on this matter.. they all agreed with my opinions.. so do you still think academic sources are my own interpretations? anyways, btw, this leads to an offtopic issue.. it all boils down to human nature.. its natural for human beings to want to have conflicts on beliefs.. Buddhism sort of veered off course, because people tend to make exaggerations of stuff.. so people obviously exaggerated the divinity part in order to compete with, say Christianity, where its stories were also somewhat exaggerated over the centuries..
lol if you read his posts, he's been doing it for quite a while.....either something like "hmmm i don't know what is that" "I don't have time to do that" "oh thats nice" "thats pretty gd" or many variations of it....tried to stop it for a while, but i failed. lol i guess studying religion at a university would give off a different view, but i gathered the "teachings" of buddhism from what my parents taught me, so it was very different. I guess if you study religion from a down to earth point of view, then it might seem that a religious symbol such as buddha, was nothing really divine or miraculous. But when your parents teaches you to accept the guy as like a shrine figure, then you would think differently. Simply you think the way you're taught to think. And also i think christianity is over exaggerated, so i think the idea of both religion is pretty much the same. They're pretty much the same thing actually. I guess your studies point you to the un-religious parts of buddhism and i think that every type of religion can have that section, where it's not you worshipping a god, but just following the teachings.
lol that is partly true, and only partly, because my parents taught me Buddhism just like your parents taught you, AND in addition, i took religion. so i have BOTH perspective on things. and being the heir of my family, i have no choice but to adapt ALL Buddhist traditions. its my duty to know and understand our way of Buddhism. anyways, even though i learned Buddhism from my folks and grandparents, i maintain that Buddha was not a symbol of a superpower or omnipotent being like God, but rather, a symbol of nirvana, enlightenment. two are different things. you can say i have the benefit of both worlds. i have the perspective of both views on Buddhism. im not going to bother arguing whether Buddhism is a religion or not, because all i really care is the application of the teachings into real world situations. how we define ourselves is not based on what religions we follow, but by how we act our lives. so if one thinks Buddhism is a religion and still better his/her life, great, call it a religion. and if one doesnt think Buddhism is a religion, but still better his/her life, great, dont call it a religion. believe in what you want, just dont act wrongful. i think thats the essence of Buddhism. wheres B-rain. she needs to chip in to this. itd be good to hear her views on things.
