dance, dance

If your religion tells you to perform acts that promote life and happiness, then there is some light of good in those teachings.

But what is it to be good? How can we determine what is ‘best’?

To challenge their beliefs is to challenge the lesson they have been presented, and therefore to challenge the divine creator.
…
My internal compass says that if your religion tells you to cause harm to others, it is tainted (probably by evil misunderstanding, if it is indeed holy).

When a homo sapien kills another homo sapien, it is considered bad, an act of malice, evil in intention. In the wild, animals kill for survival, but they are not seen as vicious. Our reasoning for the divide is cognitive thought processes. Since we can reason, we should be able to outweigh the desire to destroy with our decisions. But what makes killing wrong? A life is taken without permission? But then why at the scene of a natural disaster when an innocent person has died, the cry is risen to God to take care of the lost soul, rather than a shout of anger at the fairness? Is it because you cannot blame nature? Perhaps. But then why is blame placed on a person who kills or destroys with or without intention?

If God stops the breath of an infant, the general public (anyone who is not a parent/sibling) views it as a loss, but an acceptable one. Meanwhile, the immediate family will be upset, hurt and even angry at God (in whatever form he appears to that family in) for taking away that person. But what can say that they haven’t the right to be upset- that it’s God’s will- or that they should be mad, because it isn’t fair?

So how can we judge if something like that is good or bad? In a life cycle pov, the death is natural, whether it was by old age or another. In a societal view, the intentional demise of a peer is unnatural and, in some cases, unforgivable. In a third party view, where he/she is not affected, the attitude loses its emotion and becomes ‘So what?’

What is harm? When does the good intention cross the line and become a twist of the human psyche? If I mean you good will, but somehow mess things up and cause you harm, because I did not intend it, am I now considered evil? If I grow up in a place where killing you/your people/your religion is what God votes in favor of, who are you to tell me that my religion is tainted? Maybe yours is the misguided one, where you do not offer up the sacred sacrifice of a human soul, further tossing your own into the cataclysm of the mortal world, knowing that only true belief in Him will guide you safely through. But, if challenging our religions on opposite ends gives us more to think about or makes us to stop and ponder on something we hadn’t before and makes us more aware of ourselves, has the initial wrong of challenging my faith been eradicated? Will what you said to me always be wrong, even if it leads me to a brighter fuller path that is separate form yours?

I believe that the divine creator’s light shines in the name of good, which can be found through the intentions of all religions.

Is God good? Is there an acknowledgement of fair and good or is there only the reaction, spurred on by the first action of life? What is good to any one religion? Killing an infidel may be considered good in Gehad (sp), but in Christianity, it is one of the ten commandments; thou shalt not kill. Which one is ‘right’? Neither? Both? Just one? What if the intention for Gehad is purity through the sacrifice of those that don’t believe while the intentions of Christians are not to get involved because then you have to think about why you do or don’t want to kill? Would one still be correct over another?

“If God is God, he is not good. If God is good, then he is not God.” –JB, a play
~dc