Abolish Religion So We Can Stop Fighting Over It.

I majorly freaked out in RS today. At this rate I'll scrape a C and then my hard earned A* (100%, by the way) from last year will be a total waste.

So here I am on Pancake Day revising RS. Oh well, at least I can write oh-so-sarcastically about Revelation and Enlightenment.

Lets hypothesize. If God did exist, and if he was the ultimate creator, how would we know? If God were as high-and-mighty as he's made out to be, it's pretty fair to say that humans wouldn't know about him unless God wanted us to. So religious people rely on revelation to know that God is up there somewhere. There are two types of revelation - special and general.

General revelation can be seen all around us. For example, if we want to find out about a dead painter like Van Gogh, we look at his paintings. From those paintings we can tell that he was a tormented man. But Van Gogh was probably more than just a tormented man. He might have enjoyed strawberry ice cream and watching America's Next Top Model, but we don't know that from his painting. Van Gogh can never create a painting greater than himself. Likewise, God can never create something greater than himself.

So when we look in awe at nature and all it's glory, I can see why these uber-Catholics might assume that God is all of nature and greater. Nature is a good way to look at God. Nature is intelligent, interlinked, beautiful. Maybe you could argue that those are some of the characteristics of God. But you could also argue that nature can be evil and dangerous... are those characteristics of God too? Maybe, maybe not.

But God can also reveal himself through his other creations, like people. Some people are compassionate and loving, like religious people claim God to be. Other people can be spiteful and evil... once again, shouldn't these be characteristics of God too?

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Special revelation is a whole different subject all together. Rather than being able to look at what's around us to determine what God is like, we have to rely on direct messages from God.

A pretty obvious example are sacred texts. Most of them are apparently written by people who have had direct contact with God. Some religions obviously value their religious books more than others, like the Sikh Guru Granth Sahib is treated like God itself; it's fed, put to bed and carried above the head.

Here's a short note on the sacred texts of the six main world religions -

• Hinduism, The Vedas - these books have no human authors, as the stories in them were heard/seen in visions by priestly seers, who in turn wrote them down when it was feared the meaning of the tales was being changed.
• Judaism , The Torah - contains the laws given to Moses on Mount Sinai. Since these laws came directly from God, Jews follow the Torah very exactly.
• Buddhism, The Tripitaka and The Sutras - the Buddha taught many great lessons, which were gradually collected and written down. These books aren't so much worshipped, they just contain the teachings of an enlightened man.
• Christianity, The Bible - was written by prophets, gospels...etc who had direct contact with God, so it's followed very exactly.
• Islam, The Qur'an - is the word of Allah revealed to Muhammed, which means the book is treated with utmost respect.
• Sikhism, The Guru Granth Sahib - contains the teachings of the ten gurus (and some Hindu and Muslim teachings) and is treated like a human.

Although some religious books contain the direct words of God and some do not, there is a LOT of confusion over how the words should be interpreted.

Some people known as fundamentalists believe that every word in sacred texts should be taken literally, as the words come from God and God wouldn't mislead his people.

Others, known as liberals, believe that since the sacred texts were written so long ago, they're not very relevant to current times, so we must derive meaning from the texts and apply them to current day situations.

Finally, there are even some people who question the validity of scared texts. They question their validity because they believe sacred texts are just expressions of other people's beliefs that gained value because other people could relate to them. So, although the sacred texts might not be completely accurate, they do show us how people like to express their faith.

Wow, I'm tired after all that. I might post more on other ways of spiritual revelation tonight or maybe tomorrow :)