Imprint

Magic-AI2,
Thanks, I appreciate your kind words. I would like to expand on a couple of ideas you put forth.
With regard to “believing in a god can really help a person” and the “placebo effect”.
Let’s take a child who believes in Santa Claus. On a certain level (one this child can cope with) this is a cool and reassuring thing. This child will get good things by simply believing and behaving; this is cool. And to know this will happen every year is very reassuring; continued good behavior and continued presents. Now, this works and is all fine and dandy for the kid but there is another benefit. The parents of this child are more likely to enjoy this sudden rush of good behavior (usually starts round Nov.). Now, lets take this concept and look at it on a much more grand scale. So let’s make the child a society and let’s make the parents a unifying body within that society. I think you can see where I’m going with this; how do you maintain order, growth, health and so on. Simple, create a system that provides rewards based on belief and good behavior; in short, a religion. Further you could expand the society by expanding this belief, sometimes called “war”.

Now, when most religions were created the understanding of mother earth was far from complete (believe me, where not that far along today) and things like a good crop season or an earthquake would simply be attributed to the higher power. And this would reinforce the whole concept. This reinforcement would become so great and citizens would believe so deeply that they would start to attribute everything to this higher power. “My headache went away, thank god”, “By the grace of god, I didn’t hurt my self in that accident” and so on. Those that believed would only see things through religious colored glasses. When someone was ill, all would pray and remind the sick person to not give up faith. Well, we all know the power of positive thinking; good things do tend to happen. Then as if touch by the hand of god this person recovers. Maybe they would have recovered anyway or maybe that positive thought would be just the thing needed to overcome the illness; a placebo if you will.

suede

And thank the entity from which it was created.
Now we have "weed and religion" right back on topic..!
b.s.


......................end world hunger.....................

__________________
End World Hunger

Imprint

Original topic = Is smoking weed wrong in terms of religion? Are we going to go to hell for smoking weed?
How does “Let's take a bowl,fill it to the rim,hold it to the sun” speak to the original topic?
Just wondering.

suede

My religion accepts smoking weed,as long as I go through the ritual of holding the precious herb to the sun and saying a few words of hope for the good of mankind........b.s.

..................End world hunger...............................

Scribble

schwadood said "I agree that to accept that you just don't know is a better view point than to just plain believe." But isn't the whole essence of religion faith? i.e. believing?

schwadood

Scribble, you're right when you say that religion is believing, bit I think I didn't articulate my point well enough. I was referring to the type of person that just believes what they have been taught without looking for some kind of proof, whether that be a religious vision or the feeling that god has helped you in some way, or any number of other things. I have looked for proof for my beliefs. While not all my evidence is what you could call concrete, its proof enough for me. And to point this back on topic, marijuana(along with a two other substances I'm not supposed to mention), or more specifically getting high, has helped me collect some of my proof. peace

P.S. I'm not trying to make it sound like I'm better than anyone else because of my beliefs. All of you seem like intelligent people who have gone through some serious soul searching to get to your beliefs as they are today and I highly respect that.

HappyMan

Since there is no 'correct' religion, it is impossible to say that smoking marijuana is inheriently wrong. Conservitive Christian and Islamic sects may believe so, but they do not represent the majority of the world's spirituality.

According to a puritian christian faith anything that is pleasureable is a sin, including dancing, sex, rest and injesting mind altering substances. While puritian christianity is influencial in American culture it's membership is tiny. There are Hundereds of millions of people whose religions couldn't care less about marijuana and their beliefs should be taken into account.

__________________
Bla.

and

Marijuana.Com Community Posting Guidelines

Imprint

is what we are talking about. To blindly follow a belief that has absolutely no evidence to back it up is dangerous. But to develop a belief based on evidence is enlightening; there is at least a chance to get it right. If you stand at a train terminal and wait for a bus you will never get it right. If you at least explore enough to find out you need to go to a bus terminal to catch a bus; you have a chance to get it right. That is what taking the journey of life is about, “do it with your eyes wide open not shut”.

Now to satisfy the on-topic folks. There is no heaven or hell so, toke up dude!

robb

all is about evidence! right
if you want evidence that God exists and that the things that happened in the bible are true you have to want to find it, if you just say well i've read the bible and it didn't do anything for me thats not right because you didn't leave space for anything to happen.

there is an experience in God that once you witness it and have yourself you cannot deny it, it proves itself. but you need to be opened to it. you keep saying "oh keep an opened mind to all the possibilities" let me tell you that once you taste of God's Spirit you quickly realize that He is the way, the truth and the life. I don't mean to be rude but some people make being a Christian alot more complicated than it realy is. Thats how i use to think I use to say "I believe in God or something but don't ask me to go to church" then i use to go and curse him in my talk. The bible speaks of this I'm paraphrasing "...having a form of godliness but denying the power therof" and its true i believed in God but as far as miracles and healing and such it was all magic or lies. But i just didn't understand what God could do.

and the only way I was able to know is when he sent someone to teach me his word and help me develope my own relationship with him.

later
robb

suede

So,anyone.!Holding the ceremonial bleubowl over my head and saying a few words of hope to the sun for the good of all mankind,doeth not my spirit soar to the mountain peaks and rest with God."b.s."

..................end world hunger..................