The following will be my personal view, reiterated once more, since I do believe that I've typed a post on it before.
I am, as what I've said for a very long time, a free-thinker who believes in everything. It's probably about 50% Christian/Catholic/branches that worship Christ, God and associated saints, and 50% every other imaginable faith... because I've mostly only stepped into churches, and because I agree with some parts of the faith, and yet I don't agree with others.
I abhor proselytising.
My take on things is this:
I live in a multireligious society, Singapore. So perhaps somehow, the messages got through to me and I'm a truly multireligious person. I pick up things I like from everywhere. I believe in Taoism, Buddhism, Confucianism because I am Chinese, and behind me is a very long history of Chinese people and their culture. I believe in not sticking my chopsticks and spoon in a bowl of rice to avoid attracting spirits and ghosts, because that is the culture of us Chinese and my best friend in primary school once scolded me for doing so. After all, better to be safe than sorry, no?
I believe that ghosts exist, yet I believe very strongly also in Science. Sometimes, when people walk past alleys at night, there is the tendency to rush and get into the safety of their home. This is quite normal; according to science, our ancestors learnt to fear the dark, with its norturnal predators that posed a severe danger to them. Science says that the ghosts we perceive are in fact brainwaves. Yet science also cannot explain everything.
How do you reconcile science and religion? Dan Brown, in his many books from the Da Vinci Code series, explores a little. One books says that the soul does indeed have a little weight; at the final point of death, when the last breath is exhaled, the body becomes infinitesimally lighter. Perhaps that's real research; perhaps it's fiction. Perhaps that's just the weight of the last ounce of air leaving the body (not very possible). What is certain is that both science and religion seek to explore and define our surroundings. Did man not invent gods to define what they saw as supernatural? Religion tells us that the wind is to some a god; it comes and goes at a whim, sculpts and shapes landforms. Science says that it's due to hot and cold fronts clashing to bring us weather patterns like storms and even bigger hurricanes, tornadoes, cyclones. They may differ, but to some, God is up there, and has created the world. We seek to understand His greatness through science; we worship for the moral values to apply to science so we do not go astray.
How do you reconcile religions in the context of the special type of free-thinker like me? I'm not an atheist; I believe in God(s), a devil, heaven, hell. What's all this to me? What is common, really, to all religions? Do not all religions teach morals? Religions let us believe in something greater than ourselves, mortal man. Religions put our faith in someone higher than us, someone who has transcended our beings, who has the ability to shape our lives. God(s) go by different names: God; the Egyptian sun-god Ra; Quetzacoatal (I don't know how to spell this); Buddha; Allah. Men of God preach to congregations and tell them to be faithful to their spouses; to rid themselves of sins and evils; to rise above Evil; to be loyal to friends; to love their children; to be filial. Hence, do religions not have a common goal? Whatever people believe in, they find real. I simply respect people's wishes because their religion is real to them; I have no power in deciding what is real or false for them. I may present them with my viewpoints, but if they want to adopt a different style of thinking after, then that is up to them. I will be glad that they have changed their religions if they do because they have found their route to walk; not because they have switched to something superior in my biased eyes. To me, all religion is equal, because all religion teaches values, except in different phrasing. If one interprets holy texts like the Bible and the Koran/Quran without twisting the words within for their malicious own purposes, then is not all religion similar?
Hell and evil, too, have different names for different religions. Dante (not a religion), in Dante's Inferno, has his view that there are circles of Hell and the devil lies in the icy innermost ring. The Chinese have their 18 levels of Hell. Other hells are infernos, with fires kept burning eternally. Hells are generally places of suffering where people who have sinned are judged and atone for eternity. Some hells, too, contain a nicer area, analogous to the heaven found in other religions.
Evil goes by different names. The Devil; Beezlebub; Saturn; a fallen angel. What all this means is that evil comes to you and whispers in your ear and sometimes wins over an angel of good from your other, better nature - think of the classic paintings and cartoons of a person with a devil and angel on either side. This simply represents the frailty of man - that nobody is perfectly good or evil, be it whether one believes that one is born completely evil or completely good. There is always a battle that rages inside of us. Religion personifies this, and helps us to find the good in ourselves. Buddhists believe in doing god deeds and altruistic acts - so, too, do Christians, who donate to their Church, to the society they live in. To give is to receive spiritual fulfilment.
What, then, do I not agree with?
Some religions practice barbaric acts, such as the sacrificing of people to appease their god.
God says to go to war, and he will help the Israelites win and triumph. I'm very much against war.
Perhaps I may not have read the Bible throughly, because at a young age I read that and decided that such a God went against my principles, but that has stuck with me. Perhaps I may have unconsciously formed a biasedness without realising it. But until I touch a Bible again, that shall remain.
The Bible also states, at one part, that Man is above all animals because he alone has something called spirit; the self-awareness to want to seek God, something you can never imagine any other animal doing.
But is not the duty of Man, who is self-aware and smarter than any other mammal, to not proliferate so much so that one endangers everything else on this Earth we call home? Is our duty not to live sustainably, among Nature, to appreciate other living things and landscapes for the beauty that they bring? To want to conserve the genetic biodiversity that is so evident, even on a single humble plant that you pass by every day and perhaps endanger through vehicle exhaust?
Why must we pillage and crave for so much? To see the destruction of other species while consuming as much as we can as something that may even be endorsed by the religion we believe in? Have we not gotten out of touch with our roots?
Why must religion contradict and refute empirical evidence that Science brings forth? Who dares to dispute the fact that we share a common ancestor as other primates when it runs in our very DNA? Are we not, perhaps, slightly smarter hominids, a product of evolution? Are we choosing to be blind in this case? Is such a religion, then, falling short of what we aspire to be?
My strategy is to pick the things I agree with for religion and indeed, life in general. From everything, there is always something to learn, be it good or bad. I pray to whoever is higher than me, a mere mortal, when I am in need - and hopefully someone listens and helps. I seek the help of friends and older people, when I see that I aren't imposing too greatly. I try to help myself, because whatever change has to start with the individual - who will help and what will change if we don't help ourselves?
I pick out points I agree with and try to stick to them as best as I can. Perhaps I'm still an immature person, but I have gone a long way since secondary school.
Perhaps I really am doing everything wrongly.
Perhaps there is a God above, punishing me now for the wrongs I seek in persisting in. That I'm abhorring proselytising. But how would I know? Have I been wrong thus far? Am I on the wide path that a pastor has recently spoken of, not the straight and narrow?
Indeed, is there even a heaven above, and a hell below to go to after death? Or will we perhaps be reincarnated into different animals based on how we have led our lives, in a complex circle involving life and death?
But for me now, as long as I have this strong moral compass within me, and singing songs to give me the spirituality I crave, is that not my religion already? To believe in Science, to believe in religion and the inherent tendency of humans to do good, to seek spirituality through singing. That is good enough for me, because as long as I have no regrets (I do), as long as I have dreams and goals towards which I work towards honestly, then to me, this is a life well lived.
I am, as what I've said for a very long time, a free-thinker who believes in everything. It's probably about 50% Christian/Catholic/branches that worship Christ, God and associated saints, and 50% every other imaginable faith... because I've mostly only stepped into churches, and because I agree with some parts of the faith, and yet I don't agree with others.
I abhor proselytising.
My take on things is this:
I live in a multireligious society, Singapore. So perhaps somehow, the messages got through to me and I'm a truly multireligious person. I pick up things I like from everywhere. I believe in Taoism, Buddhism, Confucianism because I am Chinese, and behind me is a very long history of Chinese people and their culture. I believe in not sticking my chopsticks and spoon in a bowl of rice to avoid attracting spirits and ghosts, because that is the culture of us Chinese and my best friend in primary school once scolded me for doing so. After all, better to be safe than sorry, no?
I believe that ghosts exist, yet I believe very strongly also in Science. Sometimes, when people walk past alleys at night, there is the tendency to rush and get into the safety of their home. This is quite normal; according to science, our ancestors learnt to fear the dark, with its norturnal predators that posed a severe danger to them. Science says that the ghosts we perceive are in fact brainwaves. Yet science also cannot explain everything.
How do you reconcile science and religion? Dan Brown, in his many books from the Da Vinci Code series, explores a little. One books says that the soul does indeed have a little weight; at the final point of death, when the last breath is exhaled, the body becomes infinitesimally lighter. Perhaps that's real research; perhaps it's fiction. Perhaps that's just the weight of the last ounce of air leaving the body (not very possible). What is certain is that both science and religion seek to explore and define our surroundings. Did man not invent gods to define what they saw as supernatural? Religion tells us that the wind is to some a god; it comes and goes at a whim, sculpts and shapes landforms. Science says that it's due to hot and cold fronts clashing to bring us weather patterns like storms and even bigger hurricanes, tornadoes, cyclones. They may differ, but to some, God is up there, and has created the world. We seek to understand His greatness through science; we worship for the moral values to apply to science so we do not go astray.
How do you reconcile religions in the context of the special type of free-thinker like me? I'm not an atheist; I believe in God(s), a devil, heaven, hell. What's all this to me? What is common, really, to all religions? Do not all religions teach morals? Religions let us believe in something greater than ourselves, mortal man. Religions put our faith in someone higher than us, someone who has transcended our beings, who has the ability to shape our lives. God(s) go by different names: God; the Egyptian sun-god Ra; Quetzacoatal (I don't know how to spell this); Buddha; Allah. Men of God preach to congregations and tell them to be faithful to their spouses; to rid themselves of sins and evils; to rise above Evil; to be loyal to friends; to love their children; to be filial. Hence, do religions not have a common goal? Whatever people believe in, they find real. I simply respect people's wishes because their religion is real to them; I have no power in deciding what is real or false for them. I may present them with my viewpoints, but if they want to adopt a different style of thinking after, then that is up to them. I will be glad that they have changed their religions if they do because they have found their route to walk; not because they have switched to something superior in my biased eyes. To me, all religion is equal, because all religion teaches values, except in different phrasing. If one interprets holy texts like the Bible and the Koran/Quran without twisting the words within for their malicious own purposes, then is not all religion similar?
Hell and evil, too, have different names for different religions. Dante (not a religion), in Dante's Inferno, has his view that there are circles of Hell and the devil lies in the icy innermost ring. The Chinese have their 18 levels of Hell. Other hells are infernos, with fires kept burning eternally. Hells are generally places of suffering where people who have sinned are judged and atone for eternity. Some hells, too, contain a nicer area, analogous to the heaven found in other religions.
Evil goes by different names. The Devil; Beezlebub; Saturn; a fallen angel. What all this means is that evil comes to you and whispers in your ear and sometimes wins over an angel of good from your other, better nature - think of the classic paintings and cartoons of a person with a devil and angel on either side. This simply represents the frailty of man - that nobody is perfectly good or evil, be it whether one believes that one is born completely evil or completely good. There is always a battle that rages inside of us. Religion personifies this, and helps us to find the good in ourselves. Buddhists believe in doing god deeds and altruistic acts - so, too, do Christians, who donate to their Church, to the society they live in. To give is to receive spiritual fulfilment.
What, then, do I not agree with?
Some religions practice barbaric acts, such as the sacrificing of people to appease their god.
God says to go to war, and he will help the Israelites win and triumph. I'm very much against war.
Perhaps I may not have read the Bible throughly, because at a young age I read that and decided that such a God went against my principles, but that has stuck with me. Perhaps I may have unconsciously formed a biasedness without realising it. But until I touch a Bible again, that shall remain.
The Bible also states, at one part, that Man is above all animals because he alone has something called spirit; the self-awareness to want to seek God, something you can never imagine any other animal doing.
But is not the duty of Man, who is self-aware and smarter than any other mammal, to not proliferate so much so that one endangers everything else on this Earth we call home? Is our duty not to live sustainably, among Nature, to appreciate other living things and landscapes for the beauty that they bring? To want to conserve the genetic biodiversity that is so evident, even on a single humble plant that you pass by every day and perhaps endanger through vehicle exhaust?
Why must we pillage and crave for so much? To see the destruction of other species while consuming as much as we can as something that may even be endorsed by the religion we believe in? Have we not gotten out of touch with our roots?
Why must religion contradict and refute empirical evidence that Science brings forth? Who dares to dispute the fact that we share a common ancestor as other primates when it runs in our very DNA? Are we not, perhaps, slightly smarter hominids, a product of evolution? Are we choosing to be blind in this case? Is such a religion, then, falling short of what we aspire to be?
My strategy is to pick the things I agree with for religion and indeed, life in general. From everything, there is always something to learn, be it good or bad. I pray to whoever is higher than me, a mere mortal, when I am in need - and hopefully someone listens and helps. I seek the help of friends and older people, when I see that I aren't imposing too greatly. I try to help myself, because whatever change has to start with the individual - who will help and what will change if we don't help ourselves?
I pick out points I agree with and try to stick to them as best as I can. Perhaps I'm still an immature person, but I have gone a long way since secondary school.
Perhaps I really am doing everything wrongly.
Perhaps there is a God above, punishing me now for the wrongs I seek in persisting in. That I'm abhorring proselytising. But how would I know? Have I been wrong thus far? Am I on the wide path that a pastor has recently spoken of, not the straight and narrow?
Indeed, is there even a heaven above, and a hell below to go to after death? Or will we perhaps be reincarnated into different animals based on how we have led our lives, in a complex circle involving life and death?
But for me now, as long as I have this strong moral compass within me, and singing songs to give me the spirituality I crave, is that not my religion already? To believe in Science, to believe in religion and the inherent tendency of humans to do good, to seek spirituality through singing. That is good enough for me, because as long as I have no regrets (I do), as long as I have dreams and goals towards which I work towards honestly, then to me, this is a life well lived.
