| I agree with you lullaby. Especialy about the hell thing.
My dads an atheist, and I when I was little and being taught religion at school it terrified me that he will spend eternity in hell.
I see god as a bully - threatening people to be good, otherwise you will go to hell. Its a religion based on fear.
But, because I still refuse to believe that life is just science I turned Buddhism.
Ok, I don't know any of the intricate details or teaching of buddhism, but I do know the basics. They believe in reincarnation, and they belive that every soul has the chance to eventualy reach nirvana.
Basicly, throughout your life you build up good karma or bad karma - either will afect your life as you are living it, but when you die, if you had bad karma you go to a temporary hell, before being riencarnated as a lesser being (a dog or something..). If you have good karma you go to heaven for a little while before being sent back to earth as a higher being (a millionare.?).
Soo yeah, its about choosing what to believe. Believing that we die and our soul doesnt exist depresses me, Believing that if I do some things wrong I will be sent to hell- and believing that my unreligious family will be sent to hell also depresses me. So I choose to believe that every soul has a chance for redemption.
Also - life doesn't realy have a definitive evil and good. Its like in western tv shows - generaly there will be a bad guy, who is just evil. There isn't realy a reason for it - his just bad. Life isn't like that - no one consideres themself 'evil'. Everyone has a reason for their actions. I think this trend is a result of the christian religion - it doesn't promote understanding of your enermies at all, it promotes people to assume they are just evil.
In anime we generaly see much more balanced bad guys - who actualy have a reason for being bad, and who are normaly pittied because its completely understood why they turned out that way. Sometimes people even take the bad guys side - sometimes the bad guy isn't even clear - its just a clashing of two perfectly reasonable opinions and values. The dominant religion in japan is buddhism. |