@Cerberus Are you saying that some people will perform the ceremonies of a religion without believing its tenets? For example, one might make regular visits to a mosque, pray five times a day, fast during Ramadan, learn Arabic in order to read the Qu'ran, maybe even go to Mecca, but yet not seriously believe in Allah. Why would someone do such things? It seems fundamentally dishonest to me.
Well, what if all that matter to you is that there is kind if friendly God, and people should be nice to each other, and some kind of rituals are a nice way to honour her/him.
It may not matter to you whether you call her Gaia or Allah.
The exact acts of the rituals may not matter to you, as long as they are respectful, since you know that any kind of ritual is necessarily arbitrary and determined by historical coincidences. You are aware of the fact that "Catholicism" has included radically different rituals and creeds over the millennia.
So it would seem silly to you to place too much worth in kissing the Saint's toe twice or thrice.
Especially since the worship of Saints was abomination in the Catholic Church until a certain date.
Yeah, I understand what you're saying. But if I read the Bible, I see very specific entry criteria for Heaven, and I end up thinking that the exact parameters of my belief might be vitally important.
OK, but if I'm a Muslim, surely that means that I believe that the Quran, in the original Arabic, is the literal word of God. If I find a single contradiction in it, then I have to abandon all of my beliefs.
My issue with the Quran isn't any specific contradiction, but more an inconsistency of tone. Early on, it's all very nice and forgiving, particularly towards non-Muslims. Towards the end, it's less so.
It is, but plenty of Christians don't take the Bible to be the literal word of God. I think Muslims are different in this regard.
The Bible maintains that the "Scriptures" are inspired by God, but I don't know exactly what is meant by "inspired" here, and it's not clear whether "Scriptures" includes all of the Bible, some of it, or none of it.
Oh, the road to Hell is paved with good intentions; but if you genuinely believe that the Quran is the word of Allah, then you'll try hard to explain them away.
@DavidWallace Right, people who call themselves Christians often say they feel freer to interpret the Bible a bit less literally than those who call themselves Muslims.
Still, Muslims cherry pick their quotations and use free interpretation just like Christians. It's hard to quantify, of course; it may be that Muslims do in fact use more literal interpretations on average, but...that is very hard to measure. Don't be misled by what people claim to be doing.
So St John says that anyone who believes in Jesus goes to heaven. St Paul says that homosexuals never go to heaven. Since there clearly exist homosexuals who believe in Jesus, this implies that either John or Paul is not speaking the word of God.
Cerby, you spoke about my Protestant prejudice (or former Protestant). But it seems to me that all the Semitic religions place a high value on exactly what you believe.
Maybe the Eastern religions are different. But I have some friends who are Hare Krishna followers, and they frequently argue about the exact meaning of things in the Bhagavad Gita.
One of the coolest thing about this series of documentaries is that the presenter is not afraid to mock the handicapped people and joke around, and ask the awkward questions.
Now the boy's arm is going to be taped onto the racket. And the presenter is having his racket taped to his hand too, so he can experience a bit of what it is like.
here i am little bit confused with this kind of sentences.i can not understand to be + p.p type sentence use and meaning.i also confuse for "by" ,it is used for passive voice :
In many parallel algorithms, communication operations need to be restricted to certain subsets of processes. MPI prov...
In sign languages, the position for content questions is clause-initial, clause-final or both. For instance; TİD (Turkish Sign Language) licenses both.
When there is topicalization in the sentence, the content question occurs post-topic position in some sign languages; like Finnish Sign Langua...
I am interested in languages that are used as first languages.
Does it have to do simply with population growth/sustenance of the speakers of those languages? What are the theories put forward to explain this?
Given a large number of sets of historical documents that are each divided into two subsets: each subset advocating a position in a legal dispute (i.e. one set for a plaintiff and one for a defendant), and the outcome of the dispute is known: What are the linguistic qualities that one could use t...
here i am little bit confused with this kind of sentences.i can not understand to be + p.p type sentence use and meaning.i also confuse for "by" ,it is used for passive voice :
In many parallel algorithms, communication operations need to be restricted to certain subsets of processes. MPI prov...
In sign languages, the position for content questions is clause-initial, clause-final or both. For instance; TİD (Turkish Sign Language) licenses both.
When there is topicalization in the sentence, the content question occurs post-topic position in some sign languages; like Finnish Sign Langua...
I am interested in languages that are used as first languages.
Does it have to do simply with population growth/sustenance of the speakers of those languages? What are the theories put forward to explain this?
lɪŋˈgwɪstɪks
lɪŋˈgwɪstɪks