I was watching this movie last night and during one scene Kevin Spacey flames back to the other character in response to his quote from bible and says “Don’t you dare quoting religious scriptures to me”. I thought that was pretty interesting comment.
It’s my personal feeling that most of the time when people quote something from religious scriptures or words by an esteemed religious personality, it does not have it’s anticipated effect. As a matter of fact, I believe that most of the time the listner finds it quite boring but does not express it out of respect and fear of insulting both religion and the quoting party’s sentiments. And this itself makes this whole quoting business pretty superficial and phony.
Think about it, you don’t know where the listner stands on religious beliefs, or how he/she views this whole pep talk about religion, but still you go ahead without any consideration and present a quote from a scripture and expect the other to accept it wholeheartedly and change his view/acts in a jiff since it’s a word of God?
I think it’s a form of escapism in many cases. When people cannot come up with any solid arguments or convincing material, they solely depend on word of God. They fall back on it because they don’t know how to effectively support their point of view with general and mutual logic and/or beliefs that both of them achieved through their own perception and experience of the world and life.
I think it’s more important to establish your own beliefs based on what you have learned in life on your own than simply to take the word of God. Word of God (Those of you who are hung up on nitpicking the literary words, ‘God’ vs ‘Allah’, can conveniently subtitute ‘Allah’ for ‘God’ in every single instance of the word in this thread, for all I care) is a hint, a metaphor, a point to ponder, a maxim, or whatever else you want to call it, but it is not wholly the reasoned out belief that eventually stems out of it. And the consequent belifes (ie the beliefs formed based on religious maxims) may have so many variations in terms of interpretations or even inclusive importance among individuals that the maxim itself cannot constitute corroborative substance in most cases.
In my opinion, religous adages are good for inspiration, spiritual or moral, but they shouldn’t be taken as thoughtless, off-the-shelf doctrines that you would expect everybody to concede to with same emphasis and importance you may have for them.
Rom,
i agree, ppl quote religion very easy.
I think that relegion / believe starts where our logic thinking ends.
The first thing what came to my mind was that some people don't want to disturb their mind and take the short way.
Agree with you, and I always tried to preach it whenever I had a religious conflict or a debate ( which you know I am kind of use to now). It's realy hard to convey a message to somebody and if the message is a religious one, you need a heart of a Prophet to deliver that message. You just can't tell a christian that thats what Allah say in Quran and expect a believer coming out of him. That's the only reason whenever I had a debate, I never tried to proof my self according to my believes, I always tried to find a common ground between us but still was not able to send my message across.
Arch-Angel, yes - with the additional emphasis that quoting from religious scriptures is useless most of the time because if somebody is not convinced already, he/she is not gonna be convinced by the simple recitation of it either.
I think that what we (everyone) tend to forget is that people have different foundations for their system of belief. It does not matter what sect or religion one associates himself with, everyone will hve different reasons for believing in something.
Take Namaaz (salaah) for example. You can have one person who performs namaaz simply because he is commanded to do so by Allah (swt) in the Holy Quran, where as a second individual could be performing his prayers because he not only sees it as a commandment of Almighty Allah but because they feel it is a way of showing gratitude towards the Almighty for his favours and blessings.
A third person could be performing Salaah out of fear of going to Hell and no other reason. From a third-person perspective all one sees are three individuals performaing the same task. However from the perspective of each one of those individuals… the task has different meaning/value.
I suppose the point I’m trying to get across (doing very badly at the mo !), is that faith is much more than just a series of duties that one has to carry out and it is more than skin deep. It is something that should encompass your whole being and change you as a person (make you humble..) and this IMO, would only come about when you believe in something with total conviction, not because you are commanded to do so, but because you can see the beauty of faith for what it really is. And when you’ve developed faith with that kind of strength and depth, it takes much more than someones extrapolations from scripture to change or doubt your beliefs.
I hope that made sense, Appologies for rambeling on a bit
** but because you can see the beauty of faith for what it really is. **
And because you truly don't need justification for what you believe.....and i guess it is that which essentially fulfills the true definition of faith....of imaan.
If it ain't there, it ain't there.
Yep. I agree....you know Gfq smiles sheepishly there's a verse in the qu'ran that says the exact same thing Gq wonders aloud if she should post it