How do I determine which religion is best?

durangodawood · Feb 26, 2009

FutureAndAHope said:
I know I am in the right relgion due to my experience and the experiences of other people who call them selves Christians. To explain this I will share a story of God directing me, then some stories of other people....

Thanks for the story.
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You sum up my take on spiritual discernment. It relies upon some kind of direct personal experience.
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ebia · Feb 26, 2009

durangodawood said:
I think most thinking people respect the various utilitarian tests for life-philosophies. What produces deepest and most lasting joy?...for example. The wise see beyond immediate gratification, and their findings earn respect over time.

Okay. I understand your question better now.

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I would not expect an objective test for spiritual truth. (Well, I think there should be one, if the spiritual intersects the material in any way, but we havent found it yet). But I'm surprised theres not explicit methods for a subjective test.
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Why? Even what we place value on (eg "deepest and lasting joy") come from our framework.

durangodawood · Feb 26, 2009

ebia said:
Why? Even what we place value on (eg "deepest and lasting joy") come from our framework.

What is outside our framework that I can rely on?
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ebia · Feb 26, 2009

durangodawood said:
What is outside our framework that I can rely on?
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That's the problem.

durangodawood · Feb 26, 2009

ebia said:
That's the problem.

So, is evangelizing a lost cause?
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And what convinces you that you have found the right religion?
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ebia · Feb 26, 2009

durangodawood said:
So, is evangelizing a lost cause?

But neither is it a sure-fire thing where I can apply a given algorithm and get the desired outcome.
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And what convinces you that you have found the right religion?
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What convinces me isn't something I can give someone else access to. I simply cannot not believe in the Christian God revealed in Jesus of Nazareth. I tried for a while, but couldn't sustain it.

durangodawood · Feb 26, 2009

ebia said:
What convinces me isn't something I can give someone else access to. I simply cannot not believe in the Christian God revealed in Jesus of Nazareth. I tried for a while, but couldn't sustain it.

Wait a second... it says youre an anglican, right up there^^^. That means you believe in the Christian God, right?
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durangodawood · Feb 26, 2009

If ONE religion among all was correct... and all the others false (at best), I would have thought there were some methods for determining the right one.
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ebia · Feb 27, 2009

durangodawood said:
Wait a second... it says youre an anglican, right up there^^^. That means you believe in the Christian God, right?
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Yes. Maybe you missed the intentional double negative.

durangodawood · Feb 27, 2009

ebia said:
Yes. Maybe you missed the intentional double negative.

Ooops. How can I have failed not to miss it?
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FutureAndAHope · Feb 27, 2009

durangodawood said:
You sum up my take on spiritual discernment. It relies upon some kind of direct personal experience.
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Personal experience is the only real thing you can rely upon, personal encounters with God himself. If God is real you would expect there to be some one inthe world who has had some kind of miraculous experience. But I do not discredit archeology, or church history, or any other thing in the bible. They are all important. Just there must be at least 1 person who has encountered God on a real level.

For years I went through times with no revelation of God at all, but I still believed in God, rather poorly though. Now I just have the added bonus of revelation, experience with God on a personal level, where he has communicated with me.

andreha · Feb 27, 2009

Well, for anybody that is genuinely searching, I would recommend this.

Just plainly ask the one true living God to reveal Himself to you, willing to receive an answer.

Ask, in this manner, if unsure "Lord Jesus, please convince me of the truth."

durangodawood · Feb 27, 2009

Thanks to everybody for the honest input. It looks like there is no way to tell which religion is correct aside from a completely internal validation.
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My problem is... people from all religions claim to experience that validation. And their claims are persuasive.
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Hentenza · Feb 27, 2009

durangodawood said:
Thanks to everybody for the honest input. It looks like there is no way to tell which religion is correct aside from a completely internal validation.
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My problem is... people from all religions claim to experience that validation. And their claims are persuasive.
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Actually, no. Most religions claim only appear to be persuasive simply because they appeal mostly to an earthly worldview and the potential of the individual to save themselves. What an elegant thought it is to think that we can save ourselves at will or attain a position equal to that of a deity. We naturally want to believe that simply attaining a higher plane of consciousness or that attaining the favor of our society by doing good deeds (or blowing ourselves up) or personal philanthropic goals can saves us according to deities that demand these. A honest study of the self revealed word of the Christian God proves its validity over all other religions.

ebia · Feb 27, 2009

durangodawood said:
Thanks to everybody for the honest input. It looks like there is no way to tell which religion is correct aside from a completely internal validation.
.
My problem is... people from all religions claim to experience that validation. And their claims are persuasive.
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I'm not sure that's true. Obviously I haven't tried any others from the inside, but some would appear to me to be sort of falsifiable. For example, much as I have huge respect for many of the Muslims I know, to me the Koran simply does not look like the sort of thing it claims to be. (It's supposed to be eternal and timeless yet it's clearly embedded in Mohammed's arabia, it's supposed to be divinely dictated yet it relies on later verses overriding earlier ones and contains statements of fact that are in error (and one can see how Mohammed would have made those errors), and so forth. Islam's foundation revelation doesn't to me look like it ought to if it were the sort of thing it claims to be. Christianity, by contrast, isn't founded on a book but on a person (Jesus of Nazareth) and an historical event (the Resurrection).

There are others that I simply wouldn't want to be true. It strikes me that the Christian hope of a good but broken world to be put right and a god actively engaged with us to do that is a lot more optomistic than most of the alternatives. It's certainly one of the things that made it attractive over most of the pagan religions it was competing against in the early days. That doesn't prove truth, but if I were looking for the truth I think I would take what is on offer into consideration.

packermann · Feb 28, 2009

durangodawood said:
Among all the various religions that are viable in the contemporary world, how do I determine which one is best for me?
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(Please note, I started the same thread a couple weeks ago, but the posts came in all out of chronological order. There was no way to follow the conversation that had only just begun. So I'm starting this again.)
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I would suggest to read "Victory of Reason" by Rodney Stark. What Stark showed that it is only in the Christian culture that science and charity started. If it was not for Christianity, we would still be in the dark ages.

Take science. Only the belief that God created order in the universe could have made science possible. Before Christianity, you had polytheism. That belief system was not very conducive to science. People believed that lightning was caused by the god Zeus throwing lightning bolts from heaven - not much there to study. The East believed in monism. Everything is god. The material is merely an illusion. Again, if everything is an illusion, there is really nothing to study. Islam was not very conducive to science, neither. Islam taught that things happened because it was Allah's will. Again, if this is true, there is not much motivation for scientific study. Science could not have started under atheism, neither. Atheism ultimately denies then existence of absolute truth, that life is absurd. Science requires the belief in truth. It requires the belief in order in the universe.

This does not mean that today other cultures are not using science and technology. They see how successful science has worked in our culture. The proof is in the pudding. They are being very pragmatic. They pursue science because it works. It makes life better. They pursue it even though it conflicts with their world view.

But a thousand years ago, this was not the case. Science was too much in the infant stages to show people how science would better people's lives. It would take centuries for that to happen. It is doubtful that the earliest scientists had any idea at all how the study of science would make our lives better. That was not why they studied science.

They studied science for this reason - they wanted to know God, and they believed that one of the ways to know God was to know
His creation. And they believed that since God created everything, everything would have order to them that a person could study. The earliest scientists were members of religious orders. For instance, half of all the craters on the moon were named after Jesuits, because it was they who discovered them. Cathedrals were also used as observatories.

They studied science just to know God. People outside these religious communities were too busy putting food on the plates of their family members. It was only these monks who had the time and the inclination to gaze at the stars. They did not do this because they knew that eventually this would give us cars, telphones, trains, planes, computers, etc. They simply did this to understand God and his creation better.

But without this foundation laid down by these earliest scientists, none of the gadgets we have today would have been possible. This was only possible because centuries ago people wanted to understand God through His creation.

So the majority of religions turns out to give us the wrong view of the world where science is possible. Only theism made that posible. There are only three theistic religions in the world - Islam, Judaism, and Christianity. I already showed how Islam has too much of an extreme view of providence for science to start from it. That leaves only Judaism and Christianity, of all the religion out there in the world have the proper environment for which science started.

I did not mention much of charity. But charity did originate as a Christian concept. Without Christian charity, I doubt we would even have the welfare system we have today. Our society has securalized charity - so that now we have compassion on the poor without any Christian underpinnings. But before Christianity came, compassion on the poor was a completely alien concept. If Christianity never entered this world, society would have been a lot colder and crueler than it is now.

So Christianity has given the world science and compassion for others. No other religion gave us those, and, because of their world view, could never have given us those things. Of all the religions, it is only Christianity that could have taken the world out of its darkness.

durangodawood · Feb 28, 2009

packermann said:
I would suggest to read "Victory of Reason" by Rodney Stark. What Stark showed that it is only in the Christian culture that science and charity started. If it was not for Christianity, we would still be in the dark ages.

Take science. Only the belief that God created order in the universe could have made science possible. Before Christianity, you had polytheism. That belief system was not very conducive to science. People believed that lightning was caused by the god Zeus throwing lightning bolts from heaven - not much there to study. The East believed in monism. Everything is god. The material is merely an illusion. Again, if everything is an illusion, there is really nothing to study. Islam was not very conducive to science, neither. Islam taught that things happened because it was Allah's will. Again, if this is true, there is not much motivation for scientific study. Science could not have started under atheism, neither. Atheism ultimately denies then existence of absolute truth, that life is absurd. Science requires the belief in truth. It requires the belief in order in the universe.

This does not mean that today other cultures are not using science and technology. They see how successful science has worked in our culture. The proof is in the pudding. They are being very pragmatic. They pursue science because it works. It makes life better. They pursue it even though it conflicts with their world view.

But a thousand years ago, this was not the case. Science was too much in the infant stages to show people how science would better people's lives. It would take centuries for that to happen. It is doubtful that the earliest scientists had any idea at all how the study of science would make our lives better. That was not why they studied science.

They studied science for this reason - they wanted to know God, and they believed that one of the ways to know God was to know
His creation. And they believed that since God created everything, everything would have order to them that a person could study. The earliest scientists were members of religious orders. For instance, half of all the craters on the moon were named after Jesuits, because it was they who discovered them. Cathedrals were also used as observatories.

They studied science just to know God. People outside these religious communities were too busy putting food on the plates of their family members. It was only these monks who had the time and the inclination to gaze at the stars. They did not do this because they knew that eventually this would give us cars, telphones, trains, planes, computers, etc. They simply did this to understand God and his creation better.

But without this foundation laid down by these earliest scientists, none of the gadgets we have today would have been possible. This was only possible because centuries ago people wanted to understand God through His creation.

So the majority of religions turns out to give us the wrong view of the world where science is possible. Only theism made that posible. There are only three theistic religions in the world - Islam, Judaism, and Christianity. I already showed how Islam has too much of an extreme view of providence for science to start from it. That leaves only Judaism and Christianity, of all the religion out there in the world have the proper environment for which science started.

I did not mention much of charity. But charity did originate as a Christian concept. Without Christian charity, I doubt we would even have the welfare system we have today. Our society has securalized charity - so that now we have compassion on the poor without any Christian underpinnings. But before Christianity came, compassion on the poor was a completely alien concept. If Christianity never entered this world, society would have been a lot colder and crueler than it is now.

So Christianity has given the world science and compassion for others. No other religion gave us those, and, because of their world view, could never have given us those things. Of all the religions, it is only Christianity that could have taken the world out of its darkness.

1. I'll bet Mr Stark starts with a favorable disposition toward Christianity, as opposed to ending there.
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2. The polytheistic Greeks did more for science and mathematics (as far as we know) than ANY contemporary monotheistic culture. This is backed up by texts, and not mere speculation about how worldview affects scientific curiosity.
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3. The Islamic world carried the torch for science and mathematics for a number of centuries, while the Christian world carried the torch for witches, and Galileo. Allah's will didnt preclude rigorous scientifc and mathematical exploration, esp in the 11th through 13th c, which outpaced anything in the Christian world. Of course today its the other way around, which convinces me that there's more culture than religion at work here.
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4. Today, fundamentalist Christianity blinds millions to sound scientific reasoning. Witness the evolution "debate".... though I wouldnt be shocked if similar ignorance prevails in the Islamic world too.
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5. Stark amplifies medieval science and seems to diminish the explosion of science that occured during the enlightenment, precisely when the authority of the church and respect for orthodoxy diminished considerably.
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6. Atheism does not make life or the workings of the universe absurd. Thats complete nonsense. We are still here. The universe still operates according to principles we can discover. Thats the same with or without God.
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7. Charity originating as a Christian concept? Thats laughable false, and so easy to research on your own that I wont even bother rebutting. I will certainly agree that Jesus preached compassion, perhaps more vigorously than anyone prior, although you might want to see what the Buddha said 500 years before. If Stark thinks that charity has its origin in Christianity, then I can only conclude that his book is a mere polemic and not an honest investigation.
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8. I think the natural inclination of man is toward both compassion and knowledge. Any religion that blocks those tendencies will ultimately be changed or ignored. But meanwhile, desperate people cling to fundamentalism in both Christianity and Islam.
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durangodawood · Feb 28, 2009

ebia said:
I'm not sure that's true. Obviously I haven't tried any others from the inside, but some would appear to me to be sort of falsifiable. For example, much as I have huge respect for many of the Muslims I know, to me the Koran simply does not look like the sort of thing it claims to be. (It's supposed to be eternal and timeless yet it's clearly embedded in Mohammed's arabia, it's supposed to be divinely dictated yet it relies on later verses overriding earlier ones and contains statements of fact that are in error (and one can see how Mohammed would have made those errors), and so forth. Islam's foundation revelation doesn't to me look like it ought to if it were the sort of thing it claims to be. Christianity, by contrast, isn't founded on a book but on a person (Jesus of Nazareth) and an historical event (the Resurrection).

Both Christians and Muslims make outrageous claims for their texts. The Koran is clearly a product of 7th c. Arabia. The Bible is clearly a collection of diverse texts by multiple human authors and editors, which cannot be neatly harmonised as if it were the word of God from start to finish.
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Were I to adopt either of these faiths, It would be in the knowledge that the text points toward God. The text itself is not an object of ultimate reverence. I believe that Islam reveres Allah (God). Islam is founded on Allah, as Christianity is founded on Jesus (and God). The texts are the map, not the territory.
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ebia said:
There are others that I simply wouldn't want to be true. It strikes me that the Christian hope of a good but broken world to be put right and a god actively engaged with us to do that is a lot more optomistic than most of the alternatives. It's certainly one of the things that made it attractive over most of the pagan religions it was competing against in the early days. That doesn't prove truth, but if I were looking for the truth I think I would take what is on offer into consideration.

I agree. What Jesus said about "the kingdom of God" is especially optimistic. Very here-and-now. How that became the craving for war and end-times among so many modern Christians....? I blame the history of Israel... the yearning for a final end to series of upheavals. Its a product of history.
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DerSchweik · Feb 28, 2009

durangodawood said:
Among all the various religions that are viable in the contemporary world, how do I determine which one is best for me?

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To be honest, I'm no proponent of religion. For me, the matter is more about relationship than religion.

Religion is more a method for man to make himself feel right with God (or god(s)). Traditions, practices, rituals, etc. Do the methods properly and you feel good and accepted by others doing the same.

Relationship is different - it's a relationship with a living, responsive being. In a relationship you interact. In a religion you act. In a relationship you converse. In a religion you do.

So if you're more interested in methods, behaviors, DOing - and that's what you believe will satisfy you - research the various methodologies (and there are gazillions out there) and find the one that suits you.

But if you're more interested in a relationship - you need to spend time with the one to whom you wish to relate - and allow them to spend time with you.

The questions I would consider asking are these, "Is there a being in your religion with whom I might develop a relationship? And if so, whom? What manner of [personal] being are they? What are they like? How do I get to know them and vice versa? Is that even possible? Where do I find this being? How do I get in touch with them? Are they approachable? How approachable are they? Will they speak to me? Can I speak to them?" But the most important question to ask, imo, is "Is this the right being to whom to develop a lasting relationship?" And, "How long will this relationship last?"

As Will Smith asked Tommy Lee Jones in Men in Black - "Is it worth it?"

ebia · Feb 28, 2009

durangodawood said:
Both Christians and Muslims make outrageous claims for their texts. The Koran is clearly a product of 7th c. Arabia. The Bible is clearly a collection of diverse texts by multiple human authors and editors, which cannot be neatly harmonised as if it were the word of God from start to finish.

There's a distinction in what it's supposed to be. The bible is supposed to be the work of a diverse range of human authors working over a long period, writing in and in response to their particular contexts. The harmony coming from the overarching meta-narrative. The bible as we have it is congruent with what it's supposed to be (at least in mainstream Christianity). The Koran is not, IMO.
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Were I to adopt either of these faiths, It would be in the knowledge that the text points toward God. The text itself is not an object of ultimate reverence. I believe that Islam reveres Allah (God). Islam is founded on Allah, as Christianity is founded on Jesus (and God). The texts are the map, not the territory.

For Muslims the Koran is the ultimate revelation of God. For Christians Jesus is the ultimate revelation of God. Maintream Islamic and Christian theologians are agreed on that difference and it's significance. Both revere God/Allah, but because the Islamic vision of that God is distant (virtually deist) their only knowledge of him is through their text - it is his revelation itself, where as the Judeo/Christain tradition has seen the revelation as being God active in the world and the text as documenting that revelation - the revelation being made complete and perfect in Jesus of Nazareth.
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I agree. What Jesus said about "the kingdom of God" is especially optimistic. Very here-and-now. How that became the craving for war and end-times among so many modern Christians....?

Many especially American Christians have an appallingly bad understanding of eschatology, and that has dreadful implications for their understanding of what should be happening now.

How do I determine which religion is best?

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