Here's the problem - Religious Fanatics
If you take it from an evolutionary point of view, those who had religion survived and reproduced. It seems to give us something to fall back on when our own morality fails us. It also brings the whole community together and helps build a shared morality that everyone agrees on. Every religion uses itself as a foundation for morality, although over the years religions have changed and the morality has become obscured and outdated.
I consider myself a loose Irish Catholic. I believe that we should take everything from religion and decide ourselves whether that morality makes sense. We should not allow religion to take our identities and our freedoms. We should not have to take the whole package of one religion. We should be able to accept parts of all religions and dismiss the out dated parts.
Its nice to have objects that show our belief of morality, an object which we can hold on to or feel when our morals are being pushed. However these objects should not be forced upon us. Catholicism has rosary beads and the cross, Jewish men wear a skull cap and Muslim women have to wear a veil to hide their face. There is a certain point where you are no longer using religion to bolster your spirituality and morality but religion is being used as a tool to remove your freedom.
There is no doubt in my mind that all religions were made by people like you and me. Most of morality is timeless like 'treat others as you would like to be treated' but some of it needs to be updated to a more modern look on human values. As a world, our governments change dramatically to keep up with societies value on human freedom and morality yet our religions stay decadent.
Some people have tried to update religion like Moses and his 10 commandments yet we can see today that these commandments should not be as black and white as they appear. I would consider 'Thou shalt not kill' out dated as there are many reasons someone could morally justify killing another such as self defence.
Religious fanatics try and justify the bad parts of a religion based on the good parts. It is because they feel like every person can have one and only one religion associated with themselves. I am sure if they had the freedom to accept values from more religions they would see how wrong parts of their original religion was.
It is not easy to change and modernise a religion but nothing worth fighting for is and morality is definitely worth fighting for.
P.S. I am a firm believer of keeping religion and state separate. We have enough problems with both of them and if you join them together, it will just cause more.
I consider myself a loose Irish Catholic. I believe that we should take everything from religion and decide ourselves whether that morality makes sense. We should not allow religion to take our identities and our freedoms. We should not have to take the whole package of one religion. We should be able to accept parts of all religions and dismiss the out dated parts.
Its nice to have objects that show our belief of morality, an object which we can hold on to or feel when our morals are being pushed. However these objects should not be forced upon us. Catholicism has rosary beads and the cross, Jewish men wear a skull cap and Muslim women have to wear a veil to hide their face. There is a certain point where you are no longer using religion to bolster your spirituality and morality but religion is being used as a tool to remove your freedom.
There is no doubt in my mind that all religions were made by people like you and me. Most of morality is timeless like 'treat others as you would like to be treated' but some of it needs to be updated to a more modern look on human values. As a world, our governments change dramatically to keep up with societies value on human freedom and morality yet our religions stay decadent.
Some people have tried to update religion like Moses and his 10 commandments yet we can see today that these commandments should not be as black and white as they appear. I would consider 'Thou shalt not kill' out dated as there are many reasons someone could morally justify killing another such as self defence.
Religious fanatics try and justify the bad parts of a religion based on the good parts. It is because they feel like every person can have one and only one religion associated with themselves. I am sure if they had the freedom to accept values from more religions they would see how wrong parts of their original religion was.
It is not easy to change and modernise a religion but nothing worth fighting for is and morality is definitely worth fighting for.
P.S. I am a firm believer of keeping religion and state separate. We have enough problems with both of them and if you join them together, it will just cause more.
Comments
Post a Comment