Sasun

I disagree Vava, you can't blame people for being sensitive. I am sure everyone is sensitive to something, why is it that religious sensitivity is wrong? So you can insult someone and say, hey, its not my fault, you are too sensitive. That doesn't work that way.

Tolerance means that one tolerates other peoples' views, including wrong views. One can disagree tolerantly, but abuse words and anger show intolerance. Religion being a sensitive topic, intolerance with religious views is even more grave.

I have a question to you Djrak. How do you know that Armenians have so little faith? Why don't you worryt about your own faith first? Are you yourself honest with yourself and others? If you are not honest you discredit yourself and everything that you have said here. I thougth you had real faith, but I am having some doubts. So once again, be honest and answer, don't you find the contradictions that I mentioned above?

Djrak, are you talking to me? Am I degrading the Bible? Listen, there are contradictions in some details between the 4 Gospels. Before you jump to an outrageous conclusion that I have faith in anti-Christ maybe you need to be less fanatical and have more commonsense. For example, read again carefully how different Gospels describe the sceinario when it was discovered that Jesus' body was not found in the tomb. The details do not tie exactly to each other, as to who was there first, etc. Stop whitewashing the obvious. This contradictions do not mean that the Bible is full of lies, it only means there have been some errors as the scriptures have passed from age to age. "Lie" and "full of contradictions" are your words, not mine.

I don't think so.

Azat, St. John who wrote one of the books was a contemporary of Jesus and his disciple and witness. Now if you think Dan Brown or any of those authors know better then I have nothing to say. Having said that I don't think that the Bible records are 100% true, obviously there are some contradictions and can't be all true.

Phantom, it seems that you have read some fiction books. Or perhaps they are about the life of some guy whose name happend to be Jesus. The real, non-fictional Jesus Christ was not crucified because he was preaching devotion to family and children.

OK, let me ask you a question: what is truth?

Don't be so sure about it

Good observation. Let's continue this thought. People think differently and they like to think about different things, no two people think alike. People like to eat different types and amounts of food. People also like to read different subjects, different authors, even if they read the same book they understand it differently. Do you see that faith also cannot be the same for all. There are various religions and there is a very good reason for that. No single religion is the only right religion, they maybe right for their followers because they like that religion just like they like this food over another food. But because you like pasta you can't claim that sushi is a false food. God meant to have variety in the world so let's welcome variety in all aspects of life including religion. I hope this will help you realize that your religion is not the only true religion.

The reason holy books are holy books is because they talk about truths. Truth is an inner realization that everyone can achieve. People who truly think that Bible is a holy book do so because the messages in the Bible are intuitively appealing to them. It is not because they cannot think for themselves and are merely accepting what they are told. Yeah, there are also many in this category who accept the Bible because they were born in a Christian family, so they didn't think much about it.

Sip, there are different ways to view religion. I don't differentiate much between religion and spirituality, by that I adhere to a more general defnition of religion. Most people undersand religion by the way they practice, for example, attending to church services, doing rituals, and proclaiming their religion to be the only true religion. This is a narrow sense of religion, which I don't agree with. In this narrow sense religion really is the beginning of a spiritual journey. It is like a kindergarten step in spirituality. Of course, in kindergarten you won't expect a lot of independent thinking. My definition of religion: a framework of practices, scriptures and intuitively derived thruths for ones spiritual development and for greater understanding among humanity. To me Christian religion is much the same as Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaims and Islam. All these religions are fine and good to me because they are the same in essense. Why? Because I pay less attention to rituals, dogmas and superficial differences. To me Jesus Christ is in essense the same as Buddha or Krishna or Moses. Why? Because they all, in essense, have born more or less the same priceless message in different ages and places that will liberate the humanity. So, as you can see there is a lot of difference between my definition, your definition, and the definition of Seb, Djrak and others. We will never agree on anything unless we agree on a common definition for several key words such as "religion", "god", "spirituality", etc.

All holy books preach these qualities that you are mentioning and many other qualities that one needs to have. In other words, there ar moral codes or cammandments, known by different names to different religions. All these things make up the essense of all religions.

Anoushik jan, I know you can't. There are two types of criticism - constructive and destructive. Constructive criticism is when your criticism brings improvements and a better understanding of whatever the criticism is about. Destructive criticism is when not only there is no better understanding but also things get worse. When people criticise God that is destructive criticism. Not only it is the most foolish thing to do to criticise the creator of eveything but also it destroys ones potential to know God and so moves one further away from truth. As far as your observations are concerned, yes, we do a lot of evil things. Next time you see evil I suggest you think about yourself weather or not you have done anything wrong. Let's criticise ourselves with the same zeal as we do others. You are asking, where does God fit in all this? God made it possible for evil to exist because otherwise a world of variaty could not have existed. Our world is a mix of good and evil, and it will always be so. It was not meant to be otherwise. But to know God one has to focus on the good things, not evil things. God can be found everywhere but it is much more difficult to see God in evil things because even though every darkness will have some lilght parts it is much easier to look at light if one is looking for light. Anoushik jan, my sincere advice would be to focus on the positive aspects of life, such as music and all things beautiful, then perhaps you will see where God fits in.

Vava, mind definitely plays a role in healing, and I agree that it is mind over matter. At the same time, it is also soul over mind. There is no magic in healing. It is about life force which exists everywhere in the universe and in us. By our wrong actions we shut the ways of life energy into our system and get sick. Healing consists of sending life energy to the deseased parts of the body and so curing. The modes of how that can happen differs. You say the mind cures, yes, the mind can open the ways of the life force. Prayer also opens the ways of life force. But spiritual healing is done by controlling the life force. Spiritually advanced people have control over life force, they simply send the life force to the sick parts of a body. The degree of advancement determines the degree of success. However, the sick person has to accept the healing, otherwise it won't work no matter who is the healer. Jesus could not heal people in some places where people did not have faith in him and so could not accept the healing force. To sum up, there is no magic in healing, it is a science. It is however very little understood and known, particularly in the West because in dark ages the ignorant churchmen burned spiritually advanced people as witches and what not.

Anoushik jan, please suggest a better way to create the world where there is no evil.

Sorry Edo jan, forgot to answer. Yes, I understand what you are saying. That also happens. What I am saying though there is also spiritual healing.

Nah. Religion is a tool for liberation, not for submission.

Excellent post Seb! However, please be considerate with Anoushik, she is a very kind and respectful person, and as Vava was pointing out very patient (though I have to disagree with Vava that people are trying to convert her).

People who had God-knowledge wrote those books. But it does not matter who wrote, it is more important as to what's written.

That's just ridiculous. God created humanity (including yourself) at some point in the past, before that point humanity did not exist but God always existed. This is according to Christianity and all major religions. God gave you everything that you have, God also gave you the ability to accept or reject him (you have chosen to reject him). Let me remind you that your assumptions are based on simplistic interpretations of Christianity. I am sure nobody here will agree on how you understand Christianity.

Koan His Master told him "Go and seek the truth of the lie. If you find it , let me know - by clapping with one hand. He left his home and master to sit on the top of a mountain surrounded by a vast valley. Focusing on the meditative silence of his heart, hoping for answers of questions he never asked. Somewhere, lost deep inside himself, he had a vision of a beautiful child talking to him: "The reality of illusion which creates the illusion of reality still carries the truth even it's a lie. On the one hand are the things we need, on the other hand are the things we want- still buried under the shelter of relativity." Now he knew! - It was so clear. To reveal the truth covered by the lie, just want the things you need. Suddenly he heard his master laughing.He opened his eyes and saw his master standing right in front of him. The master smiled and said " Ah...I heard you clapping with one hand...."

I guess the question is, why would you want to insult someone, and then use humor to cover it?

Ed, In your case it may have been your mind that removed the pain. But that does not mean that prayer will not work. Both are possible.

My friend, this is a fine slogan but is it true? Christ's Body is where Christ's Spirit is. A church is a building or an organization. Unless there is true devotion to God there is no Christ's Body. And if there is a true devotion in a desert then there is Christ's Body. St. Francis of Assissi was so much devoted and in tune with Jesus Christ that he had unity in body, mind and soul with Jesus Christ. That is why he also had Jesus's wounds of crucifixion on his own body. This I call Christ's Body. As far as various churches of the world are concerned - no, in most cases they are not the Body of Christ, they are simply places to gather and listen to sermons without much devotion really.