Should Faith/Religion Have Such a High Value In Our Society?

[lambsy_uk]

I'm not here to trample all over people's faith/beliefs but to ask if/why such beliefs should hold such high value in our society?

So where am I comming from? Well we can freely question almost anything in our society/lives; morals, political beliefs, actions and reactions, motivations, interactions, foreign policy, education, welfare, how we raise our children, law and order and so on..........

However we are positively discouraged from questioning people's faith/beliefs/religion! We are also actively encouraged to accommodate and allow for people's religious beliefs, and this is the bit that really irks me! Why is it that if something is done in the name of a religious belief/practice then we are expected to accept it with little fuss where if any other excuse were used we'd be up in arms?

We endure arguments of whether animal rights should take precedence over religion, whether saving the life of a child should take precedence over their parent's beliefs, should freedom of expression take precedence over religious sensitivities?

For me you may as well base stuff on the football team you support;

"I can't comply with the company dress code because I'm a United fan and therefore I must be allowed to wear a United shirt at work."

As far as I'm concerned this is no more ridiculous than anything done/not done in the name of religious beliefs!

So why do religious beliefs hold such high status and is it right that they do?

[saasher2012]

Don't think so Tommy!

[cee-dee]

Testing:-

Paddy goes into a John Lewis department store and asks the shopkeeper, "Excuse me sir, but do you sell potato clocks?"

The shopkeeper looks at him and says, "Are you taking the mick? We sell cuckoo clocks, carriage clocks, grandfather clocks, alarm clocks... what the heck is a potato clock?"

And Paddy says, "I don't know, but I start my new job at nine tomorrow, and the wife said 'You'd better get a potato clock.'"

[saasher2012]

Ha!Ha! Took me ages to get that!! lol.

[cee-dee]

I wondered if anyone would just look at it and not fathom it out?

[cee-dee]

I don't know why people never seem to look in to the origins of the various religions and see how some of them overlap, even intermingle.

The earliest known site which has been ascribed some religious meaning is at Göbekli Tepe in Turkey. It has been variously dated as up to 10,000 years old but most of the "findings" are little more than conjecture.

The Sumerians are much better known and have left behind a great deal of information about their beliefs.

Moving closer to the present day, the Yazidi are currently in the news and their religion is variously ascribed to pre-date Judaism.

No matter, all the religions have one thing in common and that is that they evolve over time, they're altered, edited, changed, call it what you will but it shows that due to the changes, none of them can be a true representation of what they all claim = THE true religion.

They can't be "true" because of the alterations, some of which are made to suit the impositions of those "with power" = "What I say goes".

[saasher2012]

When humans first had the brain that allowed them to think & reason did he look around him at natures power & from there did he think there must be a reason that when I was killing that deer, beating up my enemy etc the rain came down in torrents, the thunder clapped just at the time I was in the middle of the afore mentioned actions, who knows!. Along with this brain power came a conscience , in this world we still have primitive tribes who think we have captured their spirit if you take their picture, in all the old religions we have the equivalent of heaven & hell, was this the start of trying to control people to live a good life & if they didn't they would be punished, if you will laws of behaviour for the smooth running of people who by this time instead of living in small groups had begun to live in larger settlements, they had no means of writing & so spent their leisure times telling stories & this was passed down through generations being expanded on all the time.quite a few of these tribes had access to narcotics in it's pure natural form & many had the effect of hallucinatory visions, simple analogy I admit but it had to start somehow. I would like to hear others?

[cee-dee]

The 7th century bloke who's the cause of all the trouble in Africa and the Middle East was epileptic and some say he also took narcotics!

The revelations upon which the whole thing is based came during episodes when he was clearly afflicted by something, whether it was his epilepsy or narcotics isn't known for sure.

Anyway, looking at old physical "evidence" can be as misleading as taking the various "books" as read.

Really ancient writings only go back a few thousand years and just because it might have been written doesn't mean it was true either. The Egyptians often either defaced, altered or completely replaced earlier inscriptions and even Tutankhamun is a bit of a deceit because his Gold mask is of a very good looking young man, nothing like the King himself who actually had buck teeth.

Sooooooo, in th end it all comes down to what you want to believe..........

[bankhaunter]

And of course as people became more numerous and larger tribal groups emerged each would develop their own gods and then we have the My gods are more powerful than yours scenario.

From that the gods belonging to the strongest tribe become the all powerful gods, Israel decided on only one which eventually became the god, had his 'son' not been adopted by the Romans, Christianity would no doubt have disappeared to all but a few in a fairly short space of time.

It is amusing to hear atheists challenged by Pascal's Wager, "What if you are wrong" from a person who is only a christian because of their upbringing.

The answer to it is "What if you are wrong, you die and find you are in front of Zeus (or any one of a large number)".

[saasher2012]

Then if I'm wrong my defence will be , if you made me you also gave me the power to question& you never gave me the evidence to believe , all I got was the ramblings of people who can't even agree amongst themselves which faith is the one & only true faith.
Then I'll go & put my asbestos suit on .lol.

[bankhaunter]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hrcQAYS9JtY

[saasher2012]

LOL! Absolutely fantastic!!!! Thank you !!!! LOL.

[tommy.irene]

Should i put this on the Jokes page..  http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-27140646  ..Pope John Paul II and Pope John XXIII are to be declared saints by the Catholic Church. The BBC looks at the steps required for an individual to become a saint in the eyes of the Vatican.

[bankhaunter]

It certainly seems like satire.

[tommy.irene]

http://www.irishcentral.com/roots/history/150000-on-pilgrimage-to-Knock-to-honor-mass-apparition-of-...    ..

..On the evening of August 21, 1879, fifteen local witnesses, young and old, adhered to having seen a miraculous apparition of the Virgin Mary, Saint Joseph and Saint John the Evangelist – beside them, an altar with a cross, the figure of a lamb on the altar, and angels. Two Commissions of Enquiry - one in 1879 and one in 1936) - accepted their testimonies as trustworthy. The organizers of the 38th annual Knock Novena have estimated that up to 150,000 people will travel from all across Ireland for the nine-day pilgrimage at the site of the 1879 apparition.

[bankhaunter]

Faith means belief without evidence, if you have that, you can believe anything.

I wonder how they knew the three apparitions were who they say they were, the Virgin Mary I suppose would be easy but who knows what the other two looked like?

[tommy.irene]

http://www.itv.com/news/2014-08-28/fish-walk-water-canada-mcgill-nature/

[**bustysinclaire**]

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@tommy.irene wrote:
http://www.itv.com/news/2014-08-28/fish-walk-water-canada-mcgill-nature/

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lol, Scientists clutching at straws.

A true example of the missing link would be remains of creatures at different stages of a change ie. gills in different stages of change through to turning into lungs. Something that has never been found or ever will be.

This creature in my opinion backs up the creation theory and not evolution in as much as God made each to its own kind ie a fish a fish, a frog a frog. etc. this creature was made with gills and lungs for the simple reason it most of it's life is was made to live in water and can live out of water for a while, nothing else, somewhere along in its life it has a need to be out of water. It cannot prove anything else but that.

[bankhaunter]

A true example of the missing link would be remains of creatures at different stages of a change ie. gills in different stages of change through to turning into lungs. Something that has never been found or ever will be.

Ah, the old lack of transitional fossils argument pops up again.

Unfortunately for the ignorant there are large numbers of transitional forms available for any one to see, in reality every group of living things on the planet is a transitional form moving from one to another, only the vast period of time required prevents it being obvious.

This creature in my opinion backs up the creation theory and not evolution in as much as God made each to its own kind ie a fish a fish, a frog a frog. etc

Then what was Tiktaalik? http://dinosaurs.about.com/od/tetrapodsandamphibians/p/tiktaalik.htm, incidentally the use of the word 'kind' is a biblical invention and not a scientific term.

However if you really want to learn something about evolution, which might be a good idea if you are going to criticise it, I would recommend this site, there you will find a complete refutation of your argument with examples.

http://www.talkorigins.org/

As I said before, don't blindly follow what your elders tell you, they have an agenda and it isn't for your benefit, learn for yourself, ignorance is not bliss.

[saasher2012]

There never would be evidence as gills & lungs are tissue therefore they would be amongst the first things to decompose!.

[bankhaunter]

In the case of Tiktaalik there are signs it had nostrils in it's head which suggest some sort of primitive lung.

The modern eel does not had gills quite like most fish, they are in a sort of compartment which is filled and emptied with water and thus by keeping it closed, the eel can make short journeys across dry land.

It's not too difficult to see how lungs could have evolved.