I believe…

You all know I am active on Facebook. Several great writers and actors as well as many good friends are on there too. Anne Rice, a very famous writer, is busy on research for her new books. Her old books dealt with vampires, the new ones deal with belief and religion. And she uses the internet a lot to check out people’s views on things. One of her questions got me thinking (ow ow Anne, what did you do???).

The following is what I know, how I experienced it. I haven’t done any research before writing this blog. I did put a lot of links in it to files at www.wikipedia.org. So if anyone wishes to know more about a topic, just click on the link.
I don’t mean anyone any harm! I know that religion can be a delicate thing for people and it is not my intention to look down on any religion. Everyone is in my opinion free to believe in what makes them happy. As long as no one pushes his/her religion to others. In many religions, as far as I know, is one of the main “rules” to harm no other living being. That’s what I believe in: believe what you wish but harm no one with it.

I have been raised as a Christian. I’ve been baptized, did the first communion and went to a Christian school. But after a while, more religious views were coming to the Netherlands. Of course, in the 70’s already many people from Turkey came to live in the Netherlands. And later on, many people from Morocco immigrated to the Netherlands. All the people that came to live in our country took their own religions with them. In the Netherlands, the main religions were Roman Catholicism and Protestantism. There were also people who survived World War 2 and stayed in the Netherlands after we were freed from the Nazi’s. These people were Jewish. So that was yet another religious believe that people in the Netherlands had. So the Catholics,Protestants and Jews followed the Bible in their own way, the Muslims followed the Qur’an.

As long as there has been religion, there have been religious wars. And that is one of the things I dislike about it. I know the Bible has a Golden Rule which works in two ways. It exists in both positive (generally structured in the form of "do to others what you would like to be done to you") and negative form (structured in the form of "do not do to others what you would not like to be done to you"). While similar, these forms are not strictly the same; they differ in what to do with what you would like to be done to you and the other party would not like to be done upon it. The negative form, known as the Silver Rule does directly not contain this while the positive form can exclude it indirectly with that you would like from others to check if you really like it, which is an example of using the golden rule in a context which makes it self-correcting, as argued in the criticisms section. This Golden Rule is also seen in other religions, though under another name and said with other words. In the Jewish Talmud this can be found: “That which is hateful to you, do not do to your fellow. That is the whole Torah; the rest is the explanation; go and learn.” This is a quote from Hillel. These are just some things I have found using the wikipedia site. Of course, if you believe in a religion, I guess you already know how the “Golden Rule” implies to your religion and faith.

And in my opinion everyone is entitled to their believe, faith and religion. But WHY do people still have to fight? There have been reports on-line and in newspapers and you can also hear it when you talk with friends: many times a fight/war is based on religion. But why can’t people see Jesus and Allah as one and the same person. When you read the Bible or the Qur’an, it comes down to people believing in one “leader” of their faith and their followers. I have no problems with people who believe in any of the believes and follow their “rules”. But how come that people sometimes claim their wrong behavior, often dealing with pain or even death inflicting incidents, to their faith? Since their faith tells them that they are not allowed to hurt themselves nor others… If people think they should fight for their believe, I don’t think the best way is to fight with their hands and weapons. Since the faith doesn’t allow any violence… Or did I misunderstand it?

I believe there must be someone or something that makes the world go round. But I don’t really believe in giving him/her/it a name. I hope that others will let me live my life as I am with my belief and I will let others live with their own chosen religion. Don’t try to force any religion on me and I won’t interfere with theirs. Seems like a simple but good plan, right?

Let me know what you think. And again, no offence to any religion at all! If your religion/belief makes you happy, I am happy for you!

Well, that’s it for now folks!