Religion causing society to regress

My opinion and I see it happen around me with friends and relatives, is that religion has a very bad influence on creativity. A lot of creativity like making music, painting and lot of more things are lesser importance when getting more fundamentalistic in religion.

Music is often, specially populair music, from the devil and has as only purpose to lead mankind away from God.

A lot of other creative activities are being judged as useless activities because man can better focus on God instead of creating things here on earth where finally all gets destroyed.

So I see people around me growing in faith and getting more and more colorless and more and more all the same (whats the good word in english?). As a creative person I notice that religious people are less interested or don't care for my artistic projects as non religiuos or lesser religious people.

At last God only was creative during six day's, after that he only destroys and kills.

Actually, I've spent the last 15 years doing nothing but studying Ancient History, Mythology, etmology, biblical history, and language. And I've come to one conclusion....when the miraculous miracles are taken out of the bible, and looked at logically, they very well could have happened, after all, in our modern day we've seen floods destroy entire cities and islands, we've seen civilizations melt away, we've seen volcanoes obliterate society, when looked at scientfically, to the ancients they would have been miraculous happenings, when in reality they were much like hurricane katrina to us today. There is nothing hard to believe in the bible. as for the supernatural, I find it very egotistical to think that any amount of education could put definitive proof that there is not something out there bigger than us, I find it very egotistical, to look at us as mere humans on one tiny tiny planet in this vast vast universe (which may or may not be one of many universes) and say..there is nothing out there supernatural. if anything my study has taught me is that I am just that..human, and I don't have all the answers.

Originally posted by badmedia

Superficial change is what that is. That is not the kind of change I am talking about.

The change I am referring to is changes that help people better understand the reasons why things were done as such, why they are important to follow, and how to best apply the understandings to life/society. In all religions.

I'm not in favor of a 1 world religion. Mainly because the only way such a thing could/would happen is through force or manipulation, and would likely just be a bunch of do as I say without much understanding. I am in favor of people understanding what things mean on a decent level. I don't hate other religions, what I understand of them they teach the same basic understandings.

first of i loved reading your response and view, it was very well articulated and stated

what i am curious of is what in your opinion are the basic understandings that they all teach?

not to say that you are wrong but in my opinion which is only based on my personal experiences and what i have seen is that each religion has severely different basics

now upon saying that, i am not a religious scholar, i attended a private catholic school until college so the majority of my religious knowledge is on that religion and in my opinion from what i have experienced is that the other religions for the most part arent very similiar, based upon the laws, rules, and beliefs of those religions

however i will not say that those are officially the correct views as perhaps the reason i think the way i do is because the things ive seen are the radical branches of these religions that we are discussing now that are causing the regression

i am curious as to what you feel the basic teachings are as in my opinion just the catholic religion alone has changed immensely in the past 20 years on which my knowledge is based

i understand that some of these changes may for the most part be just superficial ones like you stated, but even that goes to my point in that it has changed, as 20 years ago the catholic church in my opinion wasnt as concerned with their image or publicity and were much more demanding for a lack of better phrases then they are now, in my opinion that shows alot of the basic changes in the church

20 years ago, it was a dictatorship, im not positive but i have a hard time believing 20 years ago that editor would have had the power to make such statements regarding e.t.'s and the beatles, yet today there are those statements and many more

Originally posted by badmedia

The meanings of the text are for the most part the same through translations. Sometimes words get a bit mixed up, but the individual words aren't the important thing, it's the understandings in the stories that is important.

As I mentioned before, when I talk about change and evolving in the religion I am not talking about replacing this word with that word. Or changing what it believes. The things in the bible are correct when understood. As Jesus says - he didn't come to change the laws, but to fulfill them(following them and bringing understanding to them). For the religion to evolve it needs to take the existing truth and work and find ways to bring out the understanding in people better. The dogmatic ways of literal reading turns people off like crazy, not to mention the extreme things those people do as a result. These people do not understand Jesus who they worship, and as a result don't do the right things.

What the church does in terms of the beetles is not change, it's just superficial fluff for their image. They have a bad image and they are doing nothing more than trying to improve the image. Just like they came out with the stuff about ET's being brothers, agree or disagree it was really nothing more than a PR stunt to keep as much business as possible. When they stop with the dogmatic preachings which are only dogmatic because they don't understand - then that is progress.

i must say normally i do not find any middle ground with someone when discussing religion yet you are very articulate and make great points in your defense of religion, i dont think there is much here that we disagree with, and i look highly upon your views


what i do wish to say here though is that like you said, religion is mainly about understanding, and while i agree with you that the dogmatic doctrines and word for word scriptures turn many people off, and are responsible for these radicals actions, i feel that possibly instead of relying on our past translations that we have now, i think if we did a new translation and were able to more accurately translate the words we could find a way to come up with a better understanding of the religion at hand in order to interpret it to the masses

over time words change, meanings of words change, language itself changes, now today we are basing ways of life on the ancient words of scriptures and i think the reason for the problems in these religions is that these words are misinterpreted or misrepresented. This is why i feel so much is lost in translation and i feel that the basic ideas that you are speaking of would be more vivid and easier to understand with less lost in translation

i know its not possible but it would be very interesting to me to find out what our civilization would be if we could all read all the different scriptures in their historically written languages




as a side note this is a GREAT thread here on ats, Very high quality posts and I am Extremely happy to see such great communication here on ats as its been a while since ive seen a thread where people are so articulate and mature in their dialogue, i truly hope this thread continues this great pace

great thread and great ideas from all posters not a single frivolous post

[edit on 26-11-2008 by Dramey]