Do you have religious beliefs that are viewed as odd by many

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AngelRho
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06 Jun 2011, 10:14 am

bradt4evr wrote:
You see, the christian bible says man isnt perfect. I feel that he created all the different religions so that his perfection could still be on earth, but in seperated chunks so that the human race would be able to take it in.

This can't be true, though. The Christian Bible says one God created everything, that there is no God but Yahweh, and worship of any other God is forbidden. For God to create various religions with conflicting views would be contrary to His nature.

You can see this as a variation of "all religions are true." If all religions are true, then you have to accept, for example, that Christianity is also true. Christianity, though, asserts that Christianity ALONE is true and all other religions are false. So logically you have to either side with Christianity OR with all other religions EXCEPT Christianity (because Christianity cannot also be true if all other religions are true). Either way, whether all other religions are false or whether all religions are true EXCEPT Christianity, it's impossible for all religions to be true.

And God wouldn't create false religions, would He? No, because God would only create a true religion. And because God is ONE God, it doesn't make sense that He'd make more than one religion to relate to Him--at least not more than one religion that conflict with each other. It's possible that God would create multiple religions that do NOT conflict, but in real-world experience this does not actually happen. Multiple religions, then, are a creation of human beings due to a misunderstanding of God's original intentions.

I think at one time God had revealed this proper relationship, but as people spread out and lost contact with each other either that original idea was lost/forgotten or corrupted. Most religions have common elements, such as morality, explanations of life origins, cycles of sin and destruction, some program for the salvation of humanity, predictions of the end of the world, the relationship of mankind to mankind, etc. There's no doubt in my mind that this stems from a common tradition, that of the one "true religion." And I think because of the nature of mankind that tradition has been irrevocably lost and that God revealed Himself to key people throughout history in order to establish the truth--those we refer to as the patriarchs. And hundreds or thousands of years later, it is no surprise that God would manifest in other ways at key points in history when a restored faith is eventually lost or corrupted. And if this later coming is the fulfillment of the former religion, there is no reason to think that the new religion God establishes for all mankind is intended as a permanent replacement for all that has come before, solidified by an established canon of scripture and confirmed personally to each believer through the actions of God in each believer's life.

I don't believe that it can be lost or corrupted, though I don't doubt that there are those who misunderstand or purposefully corrupt the fundamentals of that religion to create their own new religion. I think the best understanding is through a literal interpretation of the Bible (with the caveat, of course, that the Bible doesn't always interpret ITSELF literally and a Bible student must take care in knowing the difference. For the most part, with obvious exceptions that are wisdom-based or poetic writings, it should be interpreted literally. One must understand, of course, that Biblical characters made use of sarcasm, humor, hyperbole, and other figures of speech that may not be so easily understood in today's language). Given the faithful transmission of the Biblical text over nearly two millennia, we can get a fairly clear image of what the desired relationship of man with God ought to be. Though you don't need the Bible to understand the plan of salvation, it is useful in determining what teachings are true and what is false and is an indispensable tool for examining the faith.