To them, if there is a good side to the world and a bad side to the world, then there must be two gods to keep track of it all. Gnostic believers even present “evidence” defending their position through information found in the secret books of the gnostic gospels (29). Though this argument seems sound, orthodox Christianity is the more popular belief on this subject because the Gnostics were considered ignorantly dualistic; God clearly sent his word through the Bible stating that he is the one and only God that ever was and ever will
McCloskey contended against the three mystical verifications, which are the cosmological argument, the argument from design and the teleological argument. He called attention to the presence of evil on the planet that God made. He likewise called attention to that it is irrational to live by trust or faith. As indicated by McCloskey, confirmations do not essentially assume a fundamental part in the conviction of God. Page 62 of the article expresses that "most theists do not come to have faith in God as a premise for religious conviction, however come to religion as a consequence of different reasons and variables."
Calvin’s idea of predestination suggests that some people are God’s ‘elect’ and that, after death, these ‘elect’ will join God in heaven. Believers in predestination claim that our actions, whether ‘elect’ or ‘damned’, are predestined or decided by God; meaning that we have very little, if any at all, free will in our decision making or actions. This theory of predestination often leads people to believe in a God ‘who favours some but not all of his creation’, which would be intrinsically linked to miracles in the sense that, regardless of what we do, God has already decided whether he will interact with the world or perform a miracle. Miracles, in this sense, are seen not as unsystematic breaches of natural law but rather as the eternal intention of God for the world. For this reason, people who agree with Calvin in believing in predestination often find it difficult to understand why miracles aren’t common occurrences.
CHRISTIANITY VS. JUDAISM Christianity and Judaism are religions that are each very unique. Although they both have plenty of differences, they also have similarities. In fact they probably have more in common than some of the other major religions in the world, such as Hinduism, Buddhism, and Islam. Although both Christians and Jews believe God to be their creator and controller; Judaism has no founder, as opposed to Christianity whose founder was Jesus Christ. In Christianity it is believed that Jesus Christ was the savior to all humanity and was sent to Earth by his father (God) to pay for the sins of all mankind.
While most religions see the cross as a holy symbol, Jehovah’s Witnesses do not believe that Jesus died on the cross but on a punishment stake and therefore they see the cross as a pagan symbol. They state that all war is wrong and that the laws of the people should not be followed when they conflict with the Church's religious principles. Unlike most religions they do not believe in the existence of Hell. They do not
Many people believe that morality is dependent is religion and morality is based on the religious scholars and holy books. There is no point in morality of God hadn’t set the moral values in the first place. However, some also say that humans only behave morally because they’re scared of God and any punishment to follow. There are several approaches that are taken when attempting to work out the relationship between religion and morality. ‘Is what is pious loved by the gods because it is pious, or is it pious because it is loved?’ In Plato’s Euthyphro dilemma, Plato is asking ‘is x good because God loves it or does God love x because x is good?’ An example of this is murder; is murder wrong because God says it is or is murder wrong because it is wrong morally?
Often the term "myth" is being misused to mean a supposedly dead religion and its teachings along the lines of saying that Zeus is a myth and Jesus is not, when Zeus is just as real to his worshippers as Jesus is to his. It has become a way to say, your religion is less valid than mine. I guess it's the way someone looks at religion in order to say all religions are a myth. No, I don't think all religions are a myth, because one has to be the truth. I'm catholic, and I really hope mine is true religion.
Many religions, whether they believe in resurrection such as Christians and the Islamic faith or in reincarnation like many forms of Hinduism and Buddhism, believe that the status of an individual's afterlife is the reward or punishment, for how they have lived their life. Reincarnation is the idea that after biological death, the soul begins a new life in a new body. Alternatively, resurrection is the belief that after the body dies the soul ascends up to heaven, in a state of being with God. The debate of what happens after the body dies is widely debated amongst religion, however only one can be true. Therefore, which of these two concepts is more logically coherent?
Jesus is acknowledged by the Islamic faith as a prophet. They do not believe that Jesus was executed, but rather taken away from the situation by God, or Allah, before any harm was done. The crucifixion and resurrection are not part of their texts. Now, because of the opposing views on the two different religions, Muslims and Christians have been in disagreement for many, many years. The main disagreement being that Christians believe that all men are created equal and Muslims believe that they are the chosen ones and all others are considered infidels.
One of the most common critical issues within a religion is their scriptures. According to Molloy and Hilgers (2010) “Sometimes the texts of the scriptures were incomplete, or the translations that scholars might need to depend on were not accurate.” Incomplete text means that there is room for error within the translation and in most cases; the scriptures could in fact translate to something different, leaving too much room for interpretation depending on the scholar translating it and the people reading it. Molloy and Hilgers (2010) also mention, “Another large area of concern involved the study of religions that did not have written scriptures but had only oral traditions.” This leaves room for too many questions and again, a large margin for interpretations. The lack of resources in the early years meant that scholars did not count with historical accuracy to reference as far as translating some of these