Religion and reading?

Question

To call oneself a chemist, a person must have a degree in Chemistry. To call oneself a student of statistics, a person must have had it at a certain level.
To call oneself a Hindu, Muslim, Christian or Jew, shouldn't one have experience of STUDYING its scriptures?
I have seen some comments from reasonable people wherein they attribute things to scriptures which are totally opposite to what's in there.
Should we just follow the religion of our forefathers and call all other religions wrong or should we study all of them?
How can a person be a follower of a religion without actually studying in detail its scriptures?

Answer 1

Dear Cynic,

i think your statement is very valid, and i commend you on an astute observation.

As a student of the Bible i can tell you that studying is important. Many people say Christians just have blind faith, but even the Bible instructs people to study to show themselves approved unto God.

We do need to understand that studying has its limitations (No Scripture answers everybody's questions). The Bible explains to us there are things that is beyond our understanding (So when people ask philsophical questions like "Who made God?" , etc. there has to be a level of accepting that God's wisdom is greater than man's wisdom. But what God wants us to know about Him most certainly can be discovered by studying His Word?

i don't need that you need to study every Scripture (Solomon talks about the limitations of knowledge in Ecclesiastes) to become a follower. For example i've never read the book of Mormon completely but when i read prophecies in there that are untrue and i see the next revised version excluding it- i don't need to read more.

I wholeheartedly concur with your last statement. Faith is not based on ignorance. Many people often get misled spiritually which is why it's so important for people to take personal responsiblity for their own sons.

Kindly,

Nickster

Answer 2

IMHO we have no choice but to follow the religion of our parents when we are young but as we become old enough to think for ourselves then we should investigate claims and statements. It took me a long time to realise that I was free to do this and I was surprised at some of the answers I came up with. Studying all the religious paths, including scriptures, is a good background to our research. There is wisdom in all of them but truth is what we find in ourselves. My truth is not someone else's. I respect that, but by the same token I would expect the respect to be reciprocated. That doesn't happen very often.

Answer 3

Not a religion, but a belief system: have you thought of humanism? Humanists believe in leading lives based on reason and compassion. They believe that morality comes from human nature (the product of evolution) and human critical reasoning: it's something we construct. The main point of humanism is that you do not accept things based on faith: you look for evidence and try to use your intellectual abilities to understand the world, without relying on a particular authority telling you what is the case or how to live your life. The two central things in humanism are reason and compassion. There is no deity; there are no sacred texts; there is probably no life after death. We endeavour to live good lives and understand the universe by building on what we have now, and love most definitely plays a part in that. Edit: I have to disagree with Bobby Jim. The agnosticism continuum is orthogonal to the (a)theism continuum. The first is about knowledge; the second about belief. I am an atheist, but inasmuch as I don't claim certain knowledge, I am also an agnostic. My mother, conversely, calls herself a Christian agnostic: she doesn't claim knowledge, but she believes in the Christian God.

Answer 4

That is such an excellent point - in order to have a decent religions debate one actually has to have cracked a book on the subject at least once in this particular lifetime!

to answer, I think that if a follower of a certain religion has Never read any of the texts, then that person is a fake.

Answer 5

I concur. And furthermore, I have seen athiests and agnostics who know more scripture than most of these folks. This is the part that scares me the most. I can maybe give people a lil room to believe and follow their religions and religous books but half to most dont even know what the books say. They simply know what their pastor says. But youre pastor is just a dude fully capable of evil or worng or manipulation. Believe your religion but keep a wary eye on your religous leaders as power corrupts.

Answer 6

Study

2 Timothy 3:16,17

Answer 7

I find it a very telling thing about someone. Are they really what they say they are or are they just going through the motions or is there even a qualification for their belief. I remember seeing part of "The View" and someone said ( excuse the spelling) Baruch attah adonai elhinu. and Barbara Walters said oh that is something we say at hannukah. As if it had no more meaning than her sorority pledge.

Answer 8

Seeing is believing - NOT
Knowing is believing!

The great man of Serbian past, bishop Nikolai Velimirovich, when he was imprisoned in Nazi camp in Dachau, replied to the question how can someone of his intellect believe in God: "I don't believe in God, I know there is God" (bishop was Dr. of Theology (University in Bern) and Dr. of Philosophy (Oxford)). Christian church, at least the early one and today the Orthodox Christianity, never saw God as some demiurg, but as a person who communicates to every single man on the level of his comprehension and possibilities. There are no signs - there are just feelings and knowledge. To be able to communicate with God, one needs at first to understand the Word of God - the Bible. Jesus is one hipostasis of God, and he spoke to us. We cannot believe Him if we don't know Him - and to know Him one needs to know the Bible. (Many other religions teach the same, That's why all these scriptures have prefix "Holly" - they are the word from "the above". However, in Christianism, it is not the word "from the above" but from right here, on Earth, said by the God Himself - from blessed Marry and the Holy Spirit born Jesus Christ!) Amen

Answer 9

They laughed at Einstein when he first started. You don't chuck it all because you don't have all the answers or you didn't get it just right. Granted they may offend some people but that's life, full of learning and growing and maturing, its a process.

Answer 10

Just as you won't believe me if you don,t like me, most people accept religion before, then they read. And it is not the same for Islam. Most revert/convert read get convinced then they accept.
But in any way science is so big that reading never ends.