Hi there Nbase, I doubt this thread will get many replies at all but why not make it.
Say that I'm an atheist, and I want YOU religious people to try and make be believe in God.
Or, say I'm a Christian, I want YOU atheists to try and make me convert to atheism.
Or, how would you make someone switch religions? Or would you even dare to do that?
That's what I don't like, even if I were to believe in god, people still try to make me convert religion, I find that quite rude to be honest.
Give me your best shot Nbase, I know we got some people who could do good.
You start by realizing that you can't make any other person think or believe something they do not want to.
Many religions have become a victim of their own founding. What separates Christians from Jews? Very little, really. I would even make the (heretical) argument that Jesus never intended to create a separate religion or to be seen as a divine figure, himself. He simply wanted to get things back to where they should be - with the people able to worship God without the Pharisee turning it into a giant profiteering scheme (recall the scene where he threw the merchants out of the Temple - there was a system in place where different animal sacrifices had different 'values' and, of course, if you wanted to be heard, you had to pay the merchants for the best sacrificial animals).
But, somewhere along the way, everyone but those who believed Christ was God incarnate were deemed unfit for heaven and would be sent to hell (or something).
And, of course, if you care about your neighbors, you'll spread the 'good news' that they have to believe someone thousands of years (or perhaps only a few hundred years, at the time) ago died - and that somehow none of the horrible things they have done in life can be forgiven unless they believe this guy died for them. Because, you know, God loved the world so much that you have to be sent to hell if you don't believe the tabloids from 2,000 years ago.
The real reason all of that logic came about was because Christianity needed not only to define itself from Judaism, but to also establish a completely separate identity. They weren't a 'division' of Judaism - they were their own distinct group and woe be you if you weren't one of them.
The same thing happened during the Protestant Reformation. History begins to resemble a revolving door, the more you look at it.
Now - that said, I still identify myself as being Christian - despite what some of the more hard-nosed would consider heretical beliefs/opinions (I honestly don't think God views our mortal lives as much more than a process of refinement - we are not here to be perfect people but here to perfect our humanity; the consequence of things like sin and attachment to the mundane physical world are less of a sentence to damnation than a disruption and retardation of the process/journey).
The problem is that too many people are convinced that there is some pressing need to get others to join in the same songs or align under the same belief system as them. People will discuss and develop spirituality as they journey through life (which I believe is a lot longer than this brief existence). It's more important that the discussion be honest and meaningful than hasty and coercive.
Because, after all, if I care about someone who simply doesn't find it necessary to believe Christ was a divine sacrifice and see them in some kind of mortal anguish over it in what lay beyond this life - why would I cease caring about them, then? Why would a God who cares about them judge their immortal life based on the conclusions they had drawn from the end of their mortal life?
I think God's judgment would be more about the content of one's soul than the specific actions and thoughts of a person in flesh. But that's just me being heretical. How dare I suggest someone could find peace with God without being a tithing member of the congregation.
