Friday, June 17, 2011

Which religion is the "right" one?

I am taking a class on the Foudations of ESL (English as a Second Language) and Bilingual Education.  The class has two professors.  Both are immigrants to the United States - one from India and the other from Malaysia.  The cultural discussions we get into during class are very interesting!  Last night we had two international students come as guest speakers - both from predominantly Muslim countries - Pakistan and Indonesia.  The guy from Pakistan was telling us all about how difficult it is to cook, to go to eat at people's houses or to go out to eat here since he can only eat meat that is blessed and butchered in a certain way.   I was sitting there wondering how he feels being in a predominantly Christian country.  Does he think about the millions of people here who do not hold the same beliefs about meat that he does and wonder who is right? 

Are people with strong religious convictions ignorant about other beliefs and how many people hold them, or are they just so arrogant that they really think their religion is the right one? 

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2 comments:

  1. Michael Goldsmith7/01/2011 01:11:00 AM

    A great question, within a question. What religion is the "right" one is laughable to US. We know they are all wrong.

    To answer your main question though... At one point in the not too distant past, it was indeed ignorance of other beliefs. These believers with very different dogmas didn't really know about each other. They were taught, indoctrinated, brain-washed into what was available to them, and that was bad enough. Now, we are a Global Community where information transverses the entire World in mere seconds! This fact, makes belief in "only one God" even more untenable, and undependable.

    One of the innumerable things that brought me to non-belief was knowing with the data available to me, that there were hundreds, perhaps thousands of Religions, all claiming they were the only "true" belief.

    In this day and age, this knowledge is available to almost everyone. Yet, a Baptist Pastor in the USA, for example, KNOWS that over 1.5 Billion Muslims are bound to burn in the fiery pits of Hell for all eternity. Of course the Muslims think the same about the Catholics, Christians, Jews, etc, etc, etc....

    Hard to imagine anyone can be that deluded, much less that most everyone is that deluded. ;-(

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  2. sarah7/01/2011 08:19:00 AM

    So true Michael! It is sad that there are so many people out there who can't claim ignorance, or at least have no excuse for being ignorant, but yet are still so sure theirs is the right religion. It is amazing to me how many people have just never even thought about it or done any research of their own on the subject!!

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