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(Source: howcultswork.com)
World religions are not cults.[/FONT]
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Aren’t all religions the same?[/FONT]
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People that teach all religions are the same claim that religions “differ on the minors but agree on the majors”. In other words all the religions may have superficial differences but where it really counts they are the same.[/FONT]
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Surprisingly, this well intentioned idea is a religious view itself. It is a belief about reality. The adherents to this belief system are often kind hearted people who think that by making all religions the same they will help eliminate wars and other types of suffering. Unfortunately, as nice as the idea sounds, it is not supported by the evidence. For example, one belief system claims that God is outside of the universe and not part of it, another religion claims that God is the universe. These statements can not both be true since they are contradictory. Either the first belief is true, or the second belief is true, or neither of them is true, but they cannot both be true at the same time and in the same way. While a number of beliefs are shared between some religions, the reality is that most religions differ significantly from each other. And they differ in vitally important areas of belief. Just peruse the World Religion’s subsections if you doubt this.[/FONT]
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It is intellectually dishonest to claim all religions are the same. It is more honest to recognize their differences and compare them to each other, with the purpose of figuring out which one, if any, is most likely to be correct.[/FONT]
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Does it really matter what I believe?[/FONT]
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If there is life after death then it probably matters a great deal.[/FONT]
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Imagine you are in a jet plane over the ocean. This plane has an amount of fuel left. You do not know how much fuel, but you do know for certain that there is not enough to get you to land. [/FONT]
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If you do not find a way out then you will die when the plane plunges into the sea.[/FONT]
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Inside your plane is a whole bunch of parachutes. Each parachute has been designed by different people and reflects their thoughts on how a parachute should work. [/FONT]
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Some designs are clearly suspect, like the “Acme Anvil Parachute” which on pulling the cord ejects an anvil attached to a rope. Others seem more likely to work; like the one which promises to sprout feathered wings and flap you gently down to the ground. Then there are those which seem really good, a few of them claim to eject a wing of silk attached by hundreds of strong threads, and as a bonus they even claim to have a life raft attachment. [/FONT]
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However on investigation you find one of these great sounding parachutes is actually made of tissue paper![/FONT]
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Clearly in the time you have left, before the jets engines suck the fuel tanks dry, you will invest a lot of effort in discovering which parachute is most likely to work.[/FONT]
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Now all of us are, metaphorically speaking, in a doomed plane.[/FONT]
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At some finite time in the future you will die. [/FONT]
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At some finite time from now the blood will cease flowing in your body. You will stop breathing. Your brain will shut down. No longer will your body repair itself, instead it will fall apart. There will be a definite point when you cease to have life. [/FONT]
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If people are able to see your eyes when you die they will be able to tell the point at which life leaves you, it’s like a light being switched off.[/FONT]
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And that is going to happen to you. It’s inevitable. It’s only a matter of time.[/FONT]
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In general people are scared by the prospect of death, and as things go it’s a pretty worthy thing to be afraid of. Even people who joke about death, or say they are not scared of it, when the time comes are petrified. [/FONT]
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“It is hard to have patience with people who say ‘There is no death’ or ‘Death doesn't matter.’ There is death. And whatever is matters. And whatever happens has consequences, and it and they are irrevocable and irreversible. You might as well say that birth doesn't matter.” – C.S. Lewis, A Grief Observed, 1961. [/FONT]
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Now while death itself is scary, what is even more frightening is the prospect of life after death being a reality and you having the wrong parachute.[/FONT]
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So does it really matter what I believe?[/FONT]
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Yes it does. [/FONT]
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Ask yourself, are you prepared to take the risk of believing the wrong thing? Because in the end you’re the one who must suffer the consequences.[/FONT]