My Thoughts On Religion

Everyone has their own thoughts and opinions on religion so I thought I would share mine.

The people I seem to attract to myself seem to be, in terms of religion, either Christian or Atheist. I haven't met any people that were Hindu, Buddhist, Catholic, or any others besides Christian or Atheist. I know quite a bit about Christianity and Atheism from either my friends telling me about it or exploring it myself. I have read parts of the Bible, too.

I ask a few questions about religion over and over is: Is there a right religion? Which one is the truth? If I don't believe in the right one, what will happen when I die? Really though, how can we ever know if the one we choose is the right one that will take us to a happy place?

I have been an Atheist most of my life but have recently switched over to the in between side of Agnostic. If you didn't already know, Atheists don't believe in a God and don't follow any religion path. Agnostics are in between. They recognize that there could be a God, heaven, or other place to go after death but they don't look into it much further. Agnostics are constantly in limbo of believing. Maybe there is an afterlife and maybe there isn't. No one on earth can know.

But what about ghost sitings and the machines used to detect ghosts? If people have seen ghosts and they are able to be detected, wouldn't that mean that there is some form of after life? These ghosts could also be in limbo from our world to the next. You would think that this would clearly rule out the Atheism thinking, but the Atheist population seems to be growing more and more.

And what about Buddhism? I've looked into this one personally because I believe in reincarnation and this aspect is incorporated into it. In buddhism, correct me if I'm wrong, their are 5 or 6 kinds of forms you can come back to. They are Naraka beings (beings that live in one of the Hells), Animals which have contact with humans, Preta (ghosts), Humans, Asuras (demons, titans, antigods, etc), and Devas (gods, spirits, angels, etc). According to this, that means that our dogs and cats could have once been ghosts, humans, demons or any of the others. If this religion, which is actually more of a philosophy, is true then that means that their is some sort of afterlife or other place of existance. I also know that I have met a lot of people that are afraid of the Buddhists because they are from parts of India, but from what I have read about them they seem like they are striving for peace with themselves, the world, and everything around them, not to harm.

It is pretty obvious that their is sort of a religious war going on between Muslims and Christians for quite some time now. Suicide bombers from al-Qaeda boarded a series of planes, 19 terrorists hijacked them, and purposely crashed them into the Twin Towers and the World Trade Center in New York City in 2001 on September 11. This caused the towers to crash and kill all the people on the two planes along with people working in the buildings. The hijackers also crashed a few more planes into the Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia and into a field by Shanksville, Pennsylvania. Overall 2,973 victims and 19 hijackers died. I was about 7 when this happened and don't remember much more about it. Ironically this date of 9/11 is also the number you would dial for help from the police. This last Christmas of 2009 another suicide bomber boarded a plane going to Detroit and attempted to blow up the plane when it was going over detroit. A person ended up choking him out after he digested part of the liquid explosive. I'm not clear on which one killed him. Their is also a second part to the liquid explosive that I hear he didn't open properly causing it to start a fire but was soon put out. What I'm getting at here is that most suicide bombers, if not all, are Muslims. They not only seem to be attacking things that would kill a lot of people such as the Twin Towers, but also on days such as Christmas that would affect and devestate people of the Christian religion because that is one of their holidays. To me this is a war of religions, but from what I see Christains aren't fighting back in the same way.

Nobody knows which religion is the right one and no one can know. Maybe one day we will have the technology and facts to be able to detect and tell which religion is the right one to bring a person to the right place. Though I bet that even if people find out what the right religion is to bring them to the happy place they are looking for, they will still believe in whatever religion or philosophy that they want to. So, in conclusion, it seems as if religion just comes down to what you feel is right to believe in.