What are your personal beliefs?

[Xeno_Lich]

There's something I've wondered for quite some time now. This isn't your typical Wiccan or Christian question. Instead, it deals with all religions. I don't know the answer, and honestly, I don't know if anyone does. However, here is some food for thought.

We all agree that a person's religion is a personal choice and matter. However, if everyone has different beliefs, who is right? Before you think that "everyone is right...it just depends on what you belive in" wait. Clearly there is either no god, one god/goddess, or many gods/goddesses. Different people believe different things in just this topic alone. How can everyone be right? Either, there is no god and we just have a god or gods for our own sanity and hope. Or there is a god or gods and we have to figure out what's going on.

Probably even more important than who or what we worship is...the goal of worship. For most religions the goal is to please their god/s and enter into heaven, nirvana..etc. when they die. (or be reincarnated) Here again, we can't all be right.

Now here's the real brain teaser...how we achive our goal. Many different beliefs here. How can we all be right? Perhaps....you believe what you feel you should...and do what you feel you should...to reach the goal that you feel you should. This sounds really nice, but...in that case...I could make my own religion based on doing whatever you want to please yourself, and you will go to heaven or..wherever you want to go (for example.)

Is everyone wrong? Is everyone right? I don't know...I don't even know if the universe truely goes on forever. For all I know, we just say it goes on forever, because we haven't been to the end. Maybe it's like a pac-man game..where we loop around to the other side?...hmm...dunnow...Final thought for now...humans have been wrong before, they will be wrong again. We used to think the world was flat...it was just a fact...hmm...not flat. Feel free to either ponder or post any message in the form of thoughtful response, wisdom, befuddlement, or whatever you want.

[GenevieveDawn]

Hmm, I see we got a deep thinker here. Actually, I was just thinking about basically the same thing today. I mean for the most part isn't the religon you choose (for the majority) depend on the country in which you just happen to be born in? I mean if we were born in the middle east then we would think Islam is the true religon. For most of the world it just depends on where we grew up. I was thinking about Christians today and yes I grew up as one. Well, aren't they always trying to convert people to Christianity? However, do Buddhist, Wiccans, etc. go around trying to tell everyone that they are wrong in there beliefs and try to sway them to see there point of view? Not really I don't think. You are right that there is no way to know the "absolute" truth. Maybe we aren't meant to, I dunno. It does seem to me that almost all relgions believe that there has to be some "higher power" of some sort. To be honest with you, one of the things that drew me to witchcraft is that I felt that I had somewhat more control over my life. Instead of just praying and leaving it all in the "one' God's hands, I am more or less asking for God or the Goddess, or Hecate, Aphrodite, whoever to assist me in helping myself. I feel much more in control of my life in that aspect. Well, maybe I'll ponder with you more on this another day, I'm just SOOO tired tonight.

[_Snow_Falcon_]

Is everyone wrong? Is everyone right? I don't know...

I think that it dosen't matter what you have faith in, as long as you just have faith. After I stopped believing in Christianity my basic belief was that you should just believe in what you want to and let others believe what they want. I think that's why Wiccanism was so appealing to me, because your allowed to do whatever you want as long as it doesn't harm anyone.

[dread_pirate_steele]

I used to ponder some of the things that were brought up here:

Are we meant to know the absolute truth? Is there one?

Wiccan gives me control over my life. Is that right?

Whose wrong? What happens if I'm wrong? What happens if I'm right?

Well, I thought about this and I looked at the two religeons that most people I knew were into: Wiccan and Christianity. Well, with the absolute truth thing, I know there has to be one. If there is no absolute truth, how do I know that saying that (there is no absolute truth) is the truth? So I concluded something out there is the right thing.

Alright, early in my search for what's right between Christianity and Wiccan I thought that I should just be Wiccan because I can control my own life, I can do what I want and I'm not exactly wrong and I'm not going to hell. Well, if I control my life that would make me my own God, and obviously there is a higher power. Look at the world, this is not coincidence. If the world was created, as everything was (Christian belief) then this power should help me not mess up ect.. which kind of brings me to what if I'm right or wrong. Well, if I was a Wiccan and I was right about being one, I wouldn't end up in hell. If I was wrong as a Wiccan I would go to hell, according to Christianity beliefs. And from what I understood, hell is no party. That whole concept never made sense to me. So, I decided that I didn't want to end up in hell forever. Forever's a long time in my book, so I ended up being a Christian. Also, if you think that Christians are supposed to try to convert you all the time and shove our religeon down your throat, we aren't. I'm sorry if it's happened to you, as im sure it has.

Feel free to make me ponder.

[GenevieveDawn]

Didn't King Solomon practice magick? I'm pretty sure that's in the Bible. Also, many wiccans read Psalms and use them in their magick. Not everyone who isn't christian is ANTI christian. More to ponder...

[dread_pirate_steele]

I have not read the bible all the way through but im almost positive that King Solomon never practiced magic and also, just because many Wiccans read Psalms for thier magic does not mean that it is Christian to do so. And lastly, I do know that not everyone who is not Christian is not Anti-Christian, but there sure are a lot of people who are Anti-Christian.

So, what do you think about my conclusions that I left in a previous message?

[moonlit]

plus I mean doesnt it say in the Bible that Jesus healed people and cast out demons and stuff?? How can Christians NOT believe in magic? I think you believe what you are ment to believe.

[dread_pirate_steele]

yes the bible has many accounts of Jesus healing people, raising them from the dead, casting out demons, preforming miracles ect.. but it was through the power of God, not through magic. the bible has a lot of anti-magic things in it (things saying you shouldn't partake in it) and if it says that why would Jesus do a bunch of magic tricks?

[liquid_metal20]

i have so much to say about that. but it's just not worth it. any explanation anyone here can apply to jesus' alleged miracles is just as valid as one presented by some guy decades after the fact.... the men who wrote the gospels. for the sake or it, i propose that jesus was an alien and his abilities are due to advanced technology. the "father" is the biological engineer who created all life on earth. what's the difference ? my theory wasn't augmented, adulterated, and forced upon the masses through tyranny and brainwashing. the fact is, jesus probably didn't do any of those things. he was just an exeptional man who people created legends about. similare things happened with muhammad and more recently, rasputin. ignoring occam's razor if jesus did do those things, magic(k) is just a plausible an explanation as any.

great... now i'm back in the bitter, pragmatic, analytical, sarcastic atheist mode.

i think it's some sort of allergic reaction to circular logic.

[liquid_metal20]

Oh and... as for the OP... Technically, everyone is wrong. Science doesn't explain everything. but no supernatural explanation is any more effective at filling the gaps than another. i think people should just believe what they like to believe for the sake of believing in something.

[dread_pirate_steele]

alright, Jesus was real according to the bible and secular documents. a lot of things that are in the bible show up in secular documents. So, if the Bible and other non-christian documents how can the Bible not be real, also if the accounts were wrote by many other people over a long period of time without contradictions it has to be true. think about it.

[Comus]

I once read a book called 'The Flying Goat'. It really opened my eyes. basically, if a man came up to you on the street and proclaimed "I am the Son of God" or " I have had a vision: Here are a set of rules to live by-follow them-I can hear god's voice!!!" most people would think him unstable and or ignore him.

Then why do so many believe in similar things said by someone they've never met or seen thousands of years ago? Perhaps it's all to do with the ideaology of religion-which, if you boil them down to their elements are quite similar-"love thy neighbour, The threefold law etc. It gives people a code to live by. Regardless of whether their beliefs in god are true or not.

Well put Dread-how do we know if anything is real?? There is a saying by a chinese man it goes like this: One man says to his friend:"every night I go to bed and dream I'm a butterfly" And his friend says "How do you know you're not a butterfly who dreams he's a man?"

I don' think magic gives me control over my life, but it gives me a code to live by and helps me to deal with crises that crop up. I mean, I was in a car accident a while ago-magic can't control fate, but it can help with other things. Rene Descates came up with the philosophy "I think, therefore I am"--What he did to arrive at this conclusion was to shut off his senses-he put wax in his ears, a blindfold, nose peg, gloves everything to shut out the world. Because he reasoned-you cannot be sure the world is real-it could be 'Maya'-all an illusion. And as he sat, the normal thing happened to him (apparently when your in sensory deprivation it is normal to halluiciate aurally)--he heard his name being called. He thought about this and thought "I think this voice is real-but I know it can't be real--so all that I can be sure of in life is the fact that I THINK that its real. I think-therefore I am.

Yes people-it is the fact that we THINK the world is real--that is all we can be sure of--anything else we can't prove.

[dread_pirate_steele]

Alright, well I could say I have a million dollars in my pocket. Some people might believe me but a lot of people would want the evidence. Jesus gave plenty of evidence with the miracles he preformed. Also, so much of the Bible was written over huge timespans by many different people whom probablly never met eachother yet the Bible never contradicts itself. In fact, many prophesies (pardon my spelling) were fulfilled that the chances of someone guessing that (which they would have been doing if the Bible wasnt true and they weren't getting things from God) and then the things coming true is the same as filling texas about knee deep with silver dollars, flying overhead with one silver dollar and dropping it in at random, walking in there blind and finding it on your first try.

well i suppose that could all just be an amazing coincidence, eh? or maybe something greater is at work here..[/quote]

[Dubh Barin]

We will and are always going to be at war with this topic... who's right, who's wrong.. what does it matter.

We are all children of our own universe and what happens after is not clear and never will be.. That is why people over centuries have pondered what will happen if I do wrong or right, and how will it impact me after I am gone.

You must be open to everything, and nothing. all at the same time. If a retarded person,let's say kills someone, and doesn't understand what he/she has done, does that mean they go to hell, heaven. ? The answer is yes/no. and I don't know.
There are so many ways to determine a person's fate that reality is in the mind of the beholder and nothing more. One person's heaven may be another person's prision or hell. So just like you like Barry White or White Zombie may make another culture or society scream with fear and hate.

That is why wars are raged everyday because of the ideas and viewpoints of one society / culture against another. I suggest all people be open to all things.

If everyone believed the same thing, life would be boring..

So enjoy yourself, your life and don't worry so much about after life... It will be what it will. Change is inevitable.

Live life today for tomarrow and forever.

[dread_pirate_steele]

well, according to what I believe: the handicapped guy that killed someone won't go to hell because he killed someone. its not really in what you do, more in what you believe. *also* you said:

So enjoy yourself, your life and don't worry so much about after life... It will be what it will. Change is inevitable.

I will enjoy my life, but I will also worry about the after life, I dont feel like hangin out in hell. But, if that what you're gonna live by, I suppose thats alright. I'm not gonna try to force you one way or another.