So I was walking to the store to get my lunch and a thought popped up. I condensed this thought and would like to share it with you here. For the past couple of months I have turned by mind towards religious books because I felt that to have an opinion on it I should really know what IT is, i.e. know what the books are "teaching us". However, I'm not strictly comfortable with the internet as a medium for the discussion of such materials and so I'm hesitant about this but I wanted to put this up for discussion.
Assume religion A and religion B. They both rely on a "corpus" of teachings which some might call "the word of god", others might call it a "moral codex" and maybe it could just be called "reasonable guidelines for the survival of a population", whereby of course reasonability is subjective and pertains only to those teachings regardless of overlap between religion A and B. In fact, religion A and religion B will always be different regardless of how much overlap there might be and thereby a follower from religion A who eats rice on a Sunday because his/her teachings order it thus will still be a heathen and unbeliever even if religion B also preaches the eating of rice on a Sunday simply because he is a follower of religion A, and not B. (note that the eating of rice is simply a place holder for any ordained activity).
Now it appears to me that, no matter how peace and love preaching and adhering a religion might be there always seem to be reasons for the lawful, even necessary, annihilation of "the heathen" (or the wavering follower for that matter).
Assume then the following scenario. I'm a follower of religion A and you're a follower of religion B. We both managed to offend each other and our religion teaches us both that in order to save ourselves (and the well being of our society) the other needs to be wiped off the face of this earth, and that despite the fact that we operated completely faithfully to our religious teachings. So now I kill you, you kill me, order in accordance with our religious teachings is satisfied (accepting and ignoring the slight temporal and technical difficulty of simultaneous annihilation; who cares?!), and we're both dead.
This we had to do, for our religion demanded it, and following our religious teaching is, after all, what brought us here in the first place, is it not. So all is well then. Except, that we're both dead. Which leads me back to my initial question.
"How can whatever happens to us in the after-life be so important in the here-and-now as to make the here-and-now completely and utterly irrelevant?"
It's not a question I necessarily need an answer to. I'm not sure I am entitled to ask anyone that question at all, except for myself. But I think it's an interesting question to put out there and one everyone should ask themselves no matter the outcome.
"How can whatever happens to us in the after-life be so important in the here-and-now as to make the here-and-now completely and utterly irrelevant?"
Assume religion A and religion B. They both rely on a "corpus" of teachings which some might call "the word of god", others might call it a "moral codex" and maybe it could just be called "reasonable guidelines for the survival of a population", whereby of course reasonability is subjective and pertains only to those teachings regardless of overlap between religion A and B. In fact, religion A and religion B will always be different regardless of how much overlap there might be and thereby a follower from religion A who eats rice on a Sunday because his/her teachings order it thus will still be a heathen and unbeliever even if religion B also preaches the eating of rice on a Sunday simply because he is a follower of religion A, and not B. (note that the eating of rice is simply a place holder for any ordained activity).
Now it appears to me that, no matter how peace and love preaching and adhering a religion might be there always seem to be reasons for the lawful, even necessary, annihilation of "the heathen" (or the wavering follower for that matter).
Assume then the following scenario. I'm a follower of religion A and you're a follower of religion B. We both managed to offend each other and our religion teaches us both that in order to save ourselves (and the well being of our society) the other needs to be wiped off the face of this earth, and that despite the fact that we operated completely faithfully to our religious teachings. So now I kill you, you kill me, order in accordance with our religious teachings is satisfied (accepting and ignoring the slight temporal and technical difficulty of simultaneous annihilation; who cares?!), and we're both dead.
This we had to do, for our religion demanded it, and following our religious teaching is, after all, what brought us here in the first place, is it not. So all is well then. Except, that we're both dead. Which leads me back to my initial question.
"How can whatever happens to us in the after-life be so important in the here-and-now as to make the here-and-now completely and utterly irrelevant?"
It's not a question I necessarily need an answer to. I'm not sure I am entitled to ask anyone that question at all, except for myself. But I think it's an interesting question to put out there and one everyone should ask themselves no matter the outcome.
