What is the true religion?

I said in this thread:

"Good in a relgion is that it says follow your conscience, not what a religion dictates!"

and Omar al Hashim replied:

I don't think any religion says follow your conscience. Your conscience may be mislead by the devil.

Do you agree with him?

"Follow the true religion which is your conscience (your godly nature), nothing can change it, that is the eternal and stable Religion (has ever existed) but most people don't know it!" (Quran 30:30)

Edited by Cyrus Shahmiri - 05-Nov-2008 at 13:15

In Romans Paul's epistle (chapter 2), he says that those who haven't had the Law (of the Judaic religion), meaning the pagans, will be judged by their conscience:

14 For when the Gentiles, which have not the law, do by nature the things contained in the law, these, having not the law, are a law unto themselves:

15 Which shew the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience also bearing witness, and their thoughts the mean while accusing or else excusing one another;)

16 In the day when God shall judge the secrets of men by Jesus Christ according to my gospel.




Also, in Eastern Christianity, the voice of the moral conscience is considered the voice of God in our hearts, that tells us what is good and what is bad, and that by repeatedly unobeying it, it dies, is no more accusing or stopping you from bad things.





Edited by Menumorut - 05-Nov-2008 at 15:27

Because some have been indoctrinated with man-made precepts, or have some mental disorders.

I add that some Father of the Church (don't remember who, maybe Augustin) said that the Christians have a stronger feeling of conscience than the non-Christians.

What is generaly accepted as good and bad by most of humanity is the natural conscience.

gcle2003 wrote: I don't see what else anyone can do.   Unfortunately not everyone has a conscience that prevents him doing harm to others. So crime and therefore punishment will always be with us.

Hava means whims, lust and immorality in Arabic and can be said to be the antonym of conscience, so everyone has also a Hava which not only doesn't prevent but also encourages him harm to others, it just depends on his knowledge of it.

Edited by Cyrus Shahmiri - 05-Nov-2008 at 19:38

I don't want to say Zoroastrianism, Atheism, Christianity or Islam are not good and you shouldn't follow them but I believe "bias" certainly relates to "hava", I mean you will follow your Hava, if you say all good things are here (in this religion or ideology) and nothing else can guide or help me to clear my conscience.

Christianity relates to the Christ and a Christian is a follower of the Christ, it can be said about Zoroastrianism & Zoroastrians, Buddhism & Buddhists, ... Judaism is also the religion of Jews, but Islam is not the relgion of the Arabs and there is no relation betwen Islam and Muhammad, so Muslims are not the followers of Muhammad, Islam (from the root Salam) means to submit to your conscience, not hava or any person or nationality.

Therefore Christians, Zoroastrians, Muhammadans, Jews, ... who follow their conscience are real Muslims, "Abraham was neither a Jew nor a Christian, but he was the follower of the true relgion, a muslim." (Quran 3:67), in Quran 42:13 we read that all true relgions are them same, there has been always just One Religion: Follow Your Conscience!

Of course many people distinguish morality and ethics from religion and do not consider that we (I'm an atheist) need a religion to guide us, rather we trust our own morality, common sense and ethics. So the responsibility is mine to determine the above and act accordingly, in conjuction with the society and I do not delegate this responsibility to an imaginary entity.

i would like to point out that you are confusing the words "morality" and "ethics" as having the same or similar meanings. the truth is that morality is a law code or a belief system based on majority vote. if 51 % of the pop;ulation say murder is wrong, the moraly speaking, murder is bad.

but ethics is a different kettle of fish. ethics is based on a higher law, set by a supreme omnipresernt all powerful diety. so reguarless of what mortal vote dictates, right and worng are not decided by our personal prefrences, but by the big boss up stairs.

Truthisnotrelitive wrote: with all due respect my freind, there is no room for ethics in an atheistic worldveiw.

Nonsense. Of course there is. Even the very beginnings of ethics as a studied subject was not directly related to religion. In fact there were discussions of ethics visavi religion long before Christianity was born.


Edit: by the way, "moral" is the Latin translation of the Greek "ethics". In the modern era the words are treated basicly synonymous, sometimes with the distinction that moral is applied ethics.


Edited by Styrbiorn - 06-Nov-2008 at 11:38

Cyrus Shahmiri wrote:   "Good in a relgion is that it says follow your conscience, not what a religion dictates!" and Omar al Hashim replied: I don't think any religion says follow your conscience. Your conscience may be mislead by the devil.