My Favorite Religion.

I am a hugely sceptical man when it comes to religions, complete bullshit is how I would describe the teachings of everything from the christian to the muslim faiths. While I respect other peoples rights to believe in whatever fantasy they wish I believe the world would be a much better place without any of them.

Of course there is one religion on which I place a fair amount of respect.

Buddhism.

This religion focuses not on the devine but the self, it teaches inner focus and self control. It does not even mention heaven and hell, miracles or any of that bullshit. Of course mans incessant need for teh dive has spawned offshoots, the well known buddha was born of a lotus blossom has been mistaken by many westernised buddhists as a sign of a divine buddha. However most (Sane) people have remembered how poetic people can be and would like to remind everyone that lotus blosom, flower, rose etc have been regular names to compliment women. Rose is more western, where rosey cheeks have been the fasion for many years, jsut as in the past pale faces where revered along the eastern countries (Hence lotus blossom).

Buddhism is a religion which trains people to think, critically about the world, to ignore outside influences, and to focus the mind on one thing. It also provides guidence on meditation, similar to focused thinking but clearing the mind completely. These two are truely interlinked as one helps train the other, and with the state of mind provided by this some of the greatest philosophers, though relatively unknown have come from the buddhist faith.

What interests me is did any other religions start like this. Christianity, jewish and muslim faiths are very hard to disect, despite being the largest the are also basically the same religion, each twisted by its base countries to help their rulers control their populace.

The Jewish human christ, the Christian Divine christ and the Muslim Mohammed are but smoe of the differences in the scriptures. So what should I compare these to?

Paganism is out, its from paganism that these religions spawned

Wikka? was created in the early 1900's by a convicted sex offender, he created the wikka religion ina way that brainwashed hundreds of women with promises of power and magic andto performing deviant sex acts with and for him. There are now thousands of young girls, mostly 12-16 who claim to practice this, little knowing its history and following books made to make money from them.

Infact one of the most promising religions is that of the Hindus, very smiilar to buddhism in principles of yoga and meditation but the hindo religion reffers to three (As far as im aware) dieties. Vishnu, Shiva and Brahmā, which are described more as entities of the same god. In that respect it is one of the few branches of religion where people choose which to follow, and yet there is no competition between them. However, during the start of the religion however it is well noted that there was no God related to Hinduism, this school of thought was called Samkhya. Along with many indian religions the concept of Re-incarnation is central to Hinduism, quite a clever move, since in christianity heaven is far away and imagined, yet on earth you see daily people with a better life. Reincarnation offers you that life if your a good person on this one.

Hindus seem to me to be the best religious group to highlight the crossover from philosophical beliefs to religious.

Of course this does not cover how the Jewish>Christian>Muslim faith came about, since the Christianity and the Muslim faith sprung from a mix of pagan and Jewish religion, but Judaism itself is the first roots of a Monotheistic faiths ever recorded. It is hard to decipher where Judaism became a religion, it is in my opinion spawned from the Laws that where created when the Israelites fled from Egypt during the exodus, A time when their people would have been much in turmoil and in need of fresh hope.

I must make it very clear right now, in my opinion any belief in a Deity or religion is formed because of a persons lack of control in life, a religion is the base of the ignorant to feel the chains of oppression they encounter in everyday reality are insignificant, and that it is the divine powers that control everything equally that will make the final judgement. The religions are usually formed by men wanting to control a populace and spotting this weakness, it is human nature to take advantage of weakness in others, and religious doctrine distributed to the masses is no different.

I believe the human race does require some form of moral code, some kind of power to stop the known evils man can commit. However I don't think religion is the answer in our progressing world, Buddhism is an enlightened faith, one that relies on faith in ones self, once everyone opens their mind to the repercussions of their actions upon the world, and the actions this will bring back upon themselves I believe a lot of the human races problems will disintegrate.

Karma is a fantastic way of describing things, though a little too paranormal for me. While I do not believe in any guiding force, balancing everything out equally I do believe that people who lead good lives and influence the world in a positive way will always lead the happier lives. The world has suffered from many wars, much violence and abundance of hate. Wouldn't things be so much easier if the people doing this for themselves stood back, just for a few minutes and thought why?

If everyone stood back and thought, would I want this to happen to me?

One thing is for certain, the religions in the world are dieing, people are discarding god, but also discarding the morals provided. A new kind of religion needs to appear, not one based on divinity or deities, one based on people, morals and peace. Competition of course has to exist, but competition currently has left behind morals, if people slow down because of moral implications somebody else rushes ahead. The only way it would work is if everyone switched at once.

I believe there is another way.

A way that the world can be brought back into shape, where religion can be discarded and people can value a karma like system.

Maybe one day.

House Price Drop

Currently house prices in the Uk have started to drop, many people will argue this pointing out various facts and figures, however many facts provided are spurious, and leave out a huge array of variables, such as furnishings etc. The fact of the matter is that while the government is doing its usual job of throwing around random figures (nice round figure of 10% growth in December) many of the companies as a whole are reporting between-2.7% and .3% growth. Worse than that, some regional areas are reporting hose price drops of 7% in the last few months.

This is definately not a good sign for the economy, especially with rising inflation and interest rates. Of course the raise in interest rates, good news for savers bad news for borrowers, a rise in interest rates is a treasurers first defence against spiraling inflation, like at teh moment where most people are living beyond their means.

The inflation is, rather cruelly, designed to make a large number or people to default on their mortgages, spend less, save more, make houses and goods cheaper etc. Of course this will weaken the pound, but so would a full on depression that our government has to avoid, and at least this way we get to keep our jobs for a while.

The coming years will be bad news for anyone with a mortgage, especially a variable one, along with any investors in the pound in the currency exchange, for local savers though teh interest rates will keep your savings growing nicely! Gold will be a safe bet, foreign currencies if you fancy taking a quick risk.

God, where fore art thou?

The existance of God is something that has been the subject of many a furious debate. From the slightest classroom argument to fullscale wars across the globe the argument of both wether there is a god, and which god it infact is has been something that man has been unable to agree on since the dawning of our intelligence. Even though our intelligence has ascended and historians have pieced together the evolution of religion, from pagan through to its multitude today. The historians can state why changes occured in religion, why each religion came about at a certain time, usually down to war, or some new ruler wanting a tool to control the population. What amazes me is the fact that much of the world still believes wholeheartedly in these spectres created centuries ago.

Of course dispite the religious leaders claims of how many million/billion folowers they have, usually figures that have no factual backing, I have met many supposed followers who I wouldnt class as actual followers of their religion. Talking to several 'christians' many of them admit they dont believe in God, but do follow the principals, morals and the social interation which is being removed from our lives. This is in my eyes a failing of the very basics of a religion. A religion is quite simply a belief in a diety, anything else is purely doing what s/he says.

My first suggestion would be for all religious type people to go into some veriation of budhism, but god knows the country is in a bad enough state without those slackers about. Its all well and good talking about truth and beauty, but not if theres a depression so bad you have to eat a beautifully truthful dog.

I have to admit that I would be interested in seeing how a country without religion but instead a code of morals works. There are many of these about at the moment, since lets face it, all the moral countries that may have existed would have been wiped out by the religious countries a long time ago.

But back to the point at hand, where is God? does he exist?

I quite liked teh anology used in one of Dan Brown's book, where one of the main priesty characters compares gods allowance of ills in the world to a childs skatebaording. Would you stop the child skateboarding because he might hurt himself?

This, i think, is the kind of response you hear in the world, it sounds as though it relates to the point, it sounds like its allowing you to answer your own questions and it does seem to make the answer yes YES you would infact do that, making you feel ever so slightly better. Unfortunately it doesnt answer the question.

Would god let his child skateboard?

Probably.

Would you give your child and his mates automatic weapons and a fleet of apache gunships, then infect them all with terminal cancer.

Suddenly the the holymans explaination seems just a little less explanative.

Something I read a whileback (I think by Scott Adams, author of Dilbert) states something that I will endeavour to explain and expand on.

According to, for example christianity. God created everything, saw everything and loved everything he had created. God is also Omipotent, this not only means he is everywhere, but means he is everywhere And sees everything AND he sees everything from every angle AND from every possible perspective. So lets try and see a human from gods perspective. He not only sees an interesting person, he sees interesting organs, interesting atoms and interesting electrons. this means that to god a rock at most levels is as interesting as a person. A tree would probably be more interesting. The solar system a work of perfect geometry, would be the same as an atom with the sun being the proton, bplanets being electrons. The whole galaxy being a molecule of an organ of some infetesimal being mabey?

The point most notably being made here is that if god was realy omnipotent he would see nothing special in humans. Despite this the argument is actually FOR the existance of God, after all, it explains why god lets these things happen, he simply doesnt notice. With so many other amazing things going on, why would he?