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Can anyone explain this about religion

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venator | 10:21 Fri 28th Jan 2011 | Religion & Spirituality
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If you're born in Iran, you'll almost certainly be Muslim.
Likewise, in Dublin, you'll be a Catholic, a Hindu in Mumbai, and so on.

Many religions say they're the only true one, and everyone else is wrong.

I don't get it. Is it some sort of tribal thing?
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I think the only solution is for different cultures and beliefs to recognise and respect those very differences they have. I recognise and respect other peoples' views even if I don't agree with them. However, that's only little old me who can't change anything. It seems that the majority of people brought up in different cultures and religions have...
00:19 Mon 31st Jan 2011
All societies need some form of social control to keep everybody in step.An official religion is ideal for the job. The priests work for the establishment and that's why John Milton hated them.
Its as simple as that.
I agree it was a tribal thing, I don't think its now. Christianity in South America has nothing to do with any sort of tribal history, but with aquisition.

The most obvious tribal thing is Pakistan and India however Muslims remain in India.

It appears that very few religions are exclusive to a geographical area, despite the fact that the indiginous are basicaly of the same background.
Agreement for the sake of agreement is an attractive quality to those who would rather believe in the arbitrary edicts of the majority currently in power than to have their beliefs challenged or subjected to an objective review by those who realise the importance of seeking the truth at all cost and standing on their own convictions at the risk of almost certain ostracism.

In the face of a seemingly overwhelming established paradigm it is much easier to believe that to be believed. In a world were objectivity is no longer or has never been fully recognised as the sole avenue to truth, charisma and the ability to appeal to an emotional response remains the champion for the pontification of new ideas where appeals to reason by virtue of having been abandoned and never fully understood has ceased to be an option.

Sheep respond to cries of "Wolf!" by looking outside the herd, completely unaware of its presence among them cleverly concealed in sheep's clothing.
Religion, a belief that is, (not to be confused with man made religion / ceremony etc), can be tribal and localised geographically, but it is beyond the ken of science and psychology, anthropology, to come up with a one coat fits all kind of explanation.
The geographical and cultural thingummyjigs probably really do explain a very high percentage of religious belief, but certainly not all.
There is no Grand Unified Theory in the human sciences.
Theland, you can't be serious?
I would not say that it is a tribal thing. Then to answer your question that all of the religions say that they are the only true and the others wrong. I would say that in reality (we know or we don't) can only be one truth. Next stage is how do you find and more importantly recognise that truth. Being a Muslim I believe Quran has given a hint about that.

Quran3:64. Say: "O People of the Book! come to common terms as between us and you: That we worship none but Allah. that we associate no partners with him............

Now things are very simple if someone wants to work out who is right and who is wrong, all they have to do is read "THEIR OWN" religious books and there are clear verses talking about "JUST ONE GOD". In Islam "people of the book" are supposed to be Jews and Christians. So in Bible there are verses talking about one God only. However this same applies to other major religious books too. For example Hindu Vedas these clearly speak about one God but still today Hindu worship millions of different gods.

So to know who is right and who is wrong people just have to see their own books and see if they are acting upon them. And that is the starting point towards unification.
Yes, and you've made it perfectly clear how keen you are for unification, Keyplus. Sadly for you Muslim kids are born in and are infuenced by western culture now. Oops! ;o)
It's not a tribal thing Venator - it's called culture. A child adopts the religious practises of it's birth country in exactly the same way as it adopts that country's language and food. Children born in France think nothing of eating snails, horse meat and frogs legs, yet those things revile the British. The same goes for foods in Asia such as swallowing live squid in Korea, eating roast cockroaches and eating raw fish in Japan. Yet they find our eating cheese to be revolting (they call it rotten milk). The main religion of a country is instilled in it's people in the same way.

We think nothing in the UK of having time off work for Christmas. The schools close, the shops put up their trees and decorations (in October), millions of people gather together, TV programming changes etc etc. Even people who are not religious expect to have Christmas off. Muslims have Ramadan, Jews have Yom Kippur.

The three main monotheist religions worship the same God whose simply known by a different name (Jehovah, Allah or Yahweh).The only differences in the religions are the methods of worship. Other religions worship different gods or spirits such as in Shinto or African religions. It's a shame the world's religions are so aggressive towards each other and don't readily accept each other side-by-side instead.

It's all called culture.
"It's not a tribal thing Venator - it's called culture. A child adopts the religious practises of it's birth country in exactly the same way as it adopts that country's language and food. "

Children are brainwashed from the moment they are born in for many years to the daily rituals of their parents. It's surprising that any can escape.
But surely the bottom line is culture is a tribal thing. It must be, Follow my leader.
Isn't there a real difference between belief and custom? If you didn't go to the kirk in parts of Scotland you might be ostracised. If you didn't go to Friday prayers in Afghanistan when the Taliban ran things you might have had problems. How many believed who attended?
Who knows? - but it's a relevant thought.
It was the same in the UK 300 and 400 years ago Sandy. Everyone had to attend church on Sunday by law unless they had a very real reason for not doing so that the clergyman accepted. That was following the custom of attendance - not follow my leader.
as AndyVon says, getting your religion from your family and your neighbours is no more odd than getting your language from them.
Exactly.
As a Scouser born and bred in Liverpool, I am old enough to remember the tribalism of the R.C. / Protestant divide that on the 12th July and 17th March could tear my city centre apart.
Then there was Northern Ireland from about 1967 and certainly from 1969. Maybe as far back as 1920 depending on your stamina!
Yes, man made religion and deviation from what the Bible teaches causes people to fall smack bang into the trap of religious divide. But, anybody with an ounce of sense could see that N. Iraland was more complex than a simple religious divide, and that such labels were only a broad brush stroke to polarise the people. Not every Catholic was a Republican, and not every Protestant a Loyalist.
By the way, my wife was born in Belfast so I have some knowledge of this.
Theland, you are selectively aware of the need to prune the bush but remain in denial of the need to exterminate the root from which its poison is derived . . . the belief in an divisive incomprehensible overseer of reality to which every twig and leaf swears its unquestioning rationally unsupportable and mutually incompatible allegiance.
There is a common thread running through all religions and all other mystical forms of belief. This thread from which these beliefs are stitched and which binds them all together exists only in the mind by virtue of a presumption of its existence and the mystical virtual power bestowed upon it by belief. This belief, predicated on faith and promoted by fear, is that reality is subject to our beliefs and that our beliefs need not be subject to nor conform to reality to be justified. The loose end to this thread when pulled by the reality it denies unravels to reveal the naked truth that there is no emperor beneath the clothes with which the illusion has been so carefully and painstakingly attired without bothering to measure the validity of the truth they obscure or the consequences of denying the unreality they were fashioned to hide from eyes which refuse to see that which is not real.

Religion is the alchemy of moral philosophy, designed not to discover and reveal truth but to divine and prescribe its own version of select truths in terms amenable to the hidden and often undefined agenda of it purveyors by blinding you to your own ignorance and exploiting the guilt they have instilled in you by virtue of the ignorance they promote and the knowledge they deny you of your inherent right to seek.

Those who have forfeited their right and relegated their responsibility to examine and stand on their beliefs have made themselves unwitting sheep being lead to the slaughter of a meaningless war against reason with no other purpose than to fight on behalf of a nameless cause while wearing the uniform of a king that does not exist. Such is the true and just reward for seeking the empty promise of an unearned mindless carefree immortality.
Dear Mibs - I really vdocregret not following up Sanctuary Mark 3. So sorry and my loss.
Oh dear forgive me, so late and lost rack of what I was thinking.
Time for bed I think.
This reminds me of a question I once read...

Q. As we all know, there is only one true religion. What is the one true religion in each of the following circumstances?

A. You are born in Karnak in 3000 B.C.
B. You are born in Bombay in 300 B.C.
C. You are born in Baghdad in 900 A.D.
D. You are born in Mexico City in 1956 A.D.

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