on religion….
this is a reflection on daryl’s blog on "Whoever is not a christian and who does not believe in Christianity will go to hell!"
i would like to borrow’s david hume’s idea on this. he’s a scottish philosopher who tried to explain the reasons of origin of religion philosophically.
according to hume, religion is a fairy tale which is profitable to church. Human who is under the influence of religion becomes dependant on superstitions.
according to Hume, "religion is opium for people". however, philosopher noticed that this opium was useful and nessasary for people—-if there’s no religion, people would never keep the principle and follow human’s principles.
i was asked to write some comment on the statement "religion is opium for people," and this is what i wrote….
"i agree with david hume’s statement that religion is opium for people. however i do not deny the existance of God and the powers beyond my understanding. David Humé’s statement is just a metaphore to describe religion as a source of spiritual relief. Human like to believe that there is a greater power above them to help them through the obstacles that they face in one way or another, which they know by their own power, it’s impossible to solve. in hard times, it is this belief in this so called "fairy talës"by Hume that could raise their spirit, enabling them to do the impossibles. this is, ironically, same as the effect of opium. religion, too, provides a space for people to think irrationally, temporarily escape from the world of reality, thus providing a kind of spiritual relief from the ‘pain’ they are suffering from this cruel reality. Again, it’s the effect of opium"
to make things clear, i do not object religion.juz looking it from a different view. and i stress that i DO believe in God.i think it’s funny to fight over which God to believe in because who knows in the end of the day,we might find out that we are All believing in the same God. probably we see Him in a different way but i see no reason to go to hell for that.
to add on, here’s some david hume’s statement on MIRaCLE
"One way to support a religion is by appeal to miracles. But Hume argued that, at minimum, miracles could never give religion much support. There are several arguments suggested by Hume’s essay, all of which turn on his conception of a miracle: namely, a violation of the laws of nature by God. One argument claims that it’s impossible to violate the laws of nature. Another claims that human testimony could never be reliable enough to countermand the evidence we have for the laws of nature. The weakest and most defensible claims that, due to the strong evidence we have for the laws of nature, any miracle claim is in trouble from the start, and needs strong supporting evidence to defeat our initial presumptions. In a slogan, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. This point has been most applied to the question of the resurrection of Jesus, where Hume would no doubt ask, "Which is more likely – that a man rose from the dead or that this testimony is mistaken in some way?" Or, more blandly, "Which is more likely – that Uri Geller can really bend spoons with his mind or that there is some trick going on?" This is somewhat similar to Occam’s Razor. This argument is the backbone of the sceptic’s movement and a live issue for historians of religion."
