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 Posted: Sun Apr 18, 2010 8:40 pm
Personally, I find it puts things in perspective to examine the hypocrisy within the religion first, before you worry about contradicting beliefs. You may find that the belief system is contradicting all by itself.
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Posted: Sun Apr 18, 2010 9:02 pm
one's religion is merely a belief system given doctrine and ritual. it is a tradition, and often one shared with others. there have been many examples of people having multiple religions throughout history, mainly in the far east.
also, with the mingling of cultures and traditions in teh world now, many people are finding that elements of other religion realy speak to them. while in some cases you have full converts, in other cases you will simply see integrations.
myself, i am not religious, but i have alot of influences from a number of religions.
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Posted: Sat Apr 24, 2010 7:02 pm
Traditionally, Chinese are a mix of Buddhist, Taoist, and Confucian. Japanese, at least long enough ago, were a mix of Buddhist and Shinto. I think it's just harder for Westerners to grasp the concept of practicing more than one faith considering a good number of Westerners subscribe to an Abrahamic religion and anything else added to that would be considered heresy. (Probably a very old idea that formed in the Middle Ages so that priests would have complete control over their flock's moral and religious values.)
To be honest, I think it's all in interpretation as well. Anyone that takes their religion's scripture and translates it literally will have an impossible time trying to reconcile more than one religion. If the stories of any religion are taken more metaphorically, the importance being placed on the moral of the story rather than the events of the story itself, it'd probably be easier to reconcile more than one.
However interesting thought as well is how much of much, much older religions was actually integrated by newer religions into their traditions and such. An excellent example is just how much Christianity absorbed from pagan tradition. Also, when it comes to superstition and folklore you can often see older religious practices that are still practiced in conjunction with modern religions. Throwing coins in a fountain...for example. Sometimes you may be technically practicing more than one without really realizing it.
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Posted: Tue Apr 27, 2010 12:34 pm
I am a Unitarian Universalist. I've learned over time and with a lot of study and self inspection that my beliefs just don't 100% match up with one single belief system and never will. I am very spiritual and follow multiple paths. That's just who I am. I also don't think there's anything wrong with practicing multiple religions, as long as one understands what they're doing and are doing so for the right reasons.
I think those who can't wrap their mind around the fact that people can have beliefs that span over multiple religions or those that think things should be black and white, truth or untruth have never intensely studied religion and just don't understand how religious beliefs are made and grow or even how religion happens. I think they cannot see the forest for the trees.
The only religions that I think are truly incompatible are any belief systems that focus on the worship of god(s/esses) and agnosticism/atheism; Judaism, Christianity, and Islam; and Satanism and Christianity. These are about the only combinations that are truly at odds with each other. Most everything else can be reconciled with a little effort.
I refuse to put myself into a box labeled "X-religion" and it would be a lie to myself and psychologically damaging to do so.
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