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Here is part two of my little study I guess you could call it on Hare Krishnas. This post will mainly focus on what the group uses on their website to explain their religion. Such as some of their practices, a little history and so on. The website for future reference or just in case you wanna check it out during this post is www.harekrishna.com  All writing in italics is what I took directly from the website.

I will start first off with a page on their website entitled What is Hare Krishna?

What is Hare Krishna?

This page is a little explaination of what their basic philosophy is.

Krishna is a name of the supreme. It means "all-attractive" ;. Anything that might attract you has its source in the Supreme. Therefore the Supreme is also known as Rama (rhymes with "drama"). "Rama" means "the highest of eternmal pleasure". 

It goes on to say...

All of us are pleasure-seeking creatures. So you can say that directly or indirectly we are all seeking Krishna. Chanting Hare Krishna is a way of seeking krishna directly.

Im going to skip a little bit and go to...

...But when we place ourselves in harmony with krishna and krishna's energy, we return to our natural, pure state of counsciousness. This is what we call "Krishna consciousness."

One thing I negleted to mention earlier is that another name for this group is iskcon. International Society for Krishna Conciousness

Krishna consciousness is not something impsed on them mind...Chanting Hare Krishna brings out that natural, pure state of mind...

Krishna and His energy are fulle present in the sound of the mantra...

The chant is

Hare Krishna Hare Krishna  Krishna Krishna  ; Hare Hare  Hare Rama Hare Rama  Rama Rama Hare Hare

Hare Krishnas believe in reincarnation. We go from body to body higher in bodies and lower. We can escape eventually but only through good works and meditation.

For history I think it would be best to just go to the website. Next post I will give some websites that are outside of the organization that give more indepth history and beliefs.

The Hare Krishnas follow four main rules those rules are:

No gambling

No intoxicants (this includes coffee tea and ciggarettes)

No meat-eating (yes this means ALL meats fish chicken, everything)

No illicit sex (sex is only allowed within marriage and even then only to procreate)

That is all for this post. For this religion I will be posting 1 or 2 times more.

 Any thoughts?

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What I decided to do for this post was tell you a little about my personal experience with this group. I once went to one of their "love feasts" in vancouver. I went with about 10 friends of mine. At the time I was a christian (I am not a christian anymore) and we were going as a little bit of an experience and also frankly some of us were going to "plant seeds" Meaning to try and plant thoughts in their minds so they would question what they were following.

So when we got there a few went straight to a question tent. Some went to talk to some young people and others just walked around for a bit. I decided to just walk around for a bit. We observed all the tents they had on various things. They had many tents with info about their religion and things like that. They had a food tent with of course all vegetarian food. They had a tent where a bunch of them were chanting or you could call it singing I suppose and worshipping an idol of some sort. For a while I was transfixed on the chanting. I was just so pulled towards it. Probably because of the repetitevness of the chant. Eventually I snapped out of it and didn't get involved in the actual chanting. I'm glad I didn't. I don't think all my christian friends would have allowed it anyways.

 After walking around for a while I headed over to the question tent. I just couldent resist a good debate. A few friends of mine were already there so I decided to just sit down and eventually join in if I felt I had a particular point to well point out. The conversation was fascinating. Hare Krishnas will not deny jesus' deity. They believe he was alive and all that jazz. But they also believe in the other deities of religions and give them respect aswell. There main one is of course krishna. So the problem with trying to debate these people is that they acknowledge jesus but don't believe as christians do. There was a myriad of conversation while I was there on varying things. From jesus to reincarnation to our souls.

When we left I found out that one of the people who I was partly conversing with was one of the leaders with a high position in the group. No wonder he was dressed differently I thought. And no wonder I often felt compelled to agree with him. But I held my own pretty well without insulting. So my experience was a little odd at times but overall alright. I would like to go to one of these deals again but I just don't have the transportation to make it out to one right now. The one I went to was about 2 1/2 years ago by the way.

Soon I'll post a bit more about this group and what they believe and practice.

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Alright here we go part two. First thing that I would like to mention in this post is that everything in italics will be from the website www.mormon.org which is the main mormon website And everything that is in bold is from the institute for religious research at the website www.irr.org .

 So for part two what I have to share is basic beliefs of the mormons a little bit about what they have on the site about the book of mormon and some failed prophecies that were made.

So for the basic beliefs I will go straight to their website.

Basic Beliefs

God is our Heavenly Father. He loves us and wants us to return to him.

Jesus Christ is the Son of God. He is out Saviour. He redeems us from death by providing the Resurrection. He saves us from sin as we repent.

Through the atonement of Jesus Christ, we can return to live with God if we keep His commandments.

The first principles and ordinances of the gospel are faith in Jesus Christ, repentance, baptism and receiving the gift of the Holy Ghost. I would like to mention here that Jesus mentioned in the new testament that the most important principle was to love God first then love others and last love yourself.

The priesthood authority of God exists in His church today, just as it did in the original Church. Im not quite sure what that is exactly suppose to mean. They isent any elaborating on any of these little points on the website.

The Bible and the Book of Mormon are the word of God.

God reveals his will to prophets today, just as He did anciently.

There are a few more basic beliefs but you get the jist of it right? If you do want to check out the whole thing which isent too long go on over the the website.

So now on to the Book of Mormon itself. What exactly do they put on their website about it? Not too much...

They do not tell you exactly how they got the book of mormon. The first sentence in fact is just tooting it's own horn. So to speak. The Book of Mormon is another witness that Jesus Christ really lived, that he was and is God's son.

They go on explaining if you can call it that what the book of mormon is but not giving how they can prove that.

Now for the failed prophecies I will share just one here but I will give the link for the many.

Prophecy #1 - The coming of the Lord

President Smith then stated that the meeting had been called, because God had commanded it; and it was made knwn to him by vision and by the Holy Spirit ...it was the will of God that they should be ordained to the minsitry and go forth to prune the vineyard for the last time, for the coming of the Lord, which was nigh-even fifty years should wind up the scene. (history of the church, Vol.2, page 182)

This prophecy was spoken by Joseph Smith in 1835, and recorded by Oliver Cowdery. The fifty-six years were passed by 1891.

So there is the first failed prophecy on the website. Here is the link for it so you can take a look at the others. http://www.irr.org/mit/jsfalpro.html" title="http://www.irr.org/mit/jsfalpro.html" target="_blank"http://www.irr.org/mit/jsfalp...  That is all I have for this topic on the mormons. I have entirley too much info to share on this blog in full so go to the websites to check it out.

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Well it has been a few days since I said I would be posting this but since I don't think there were too many of you just itching to read it I didn't think there would be an uproar so I thought I wouldent offend by holding off on it. I have been a little sick the last few days and a little busy. So for the second religion in the religion series mormons. You may also know them by the name The Church of Jesus Christ of The Latter Day Saints. So who are these people? What exactly do they believe? You may have seen commercials by them on the television. They sometimes talk about the bible sometimes they also talk about their book The book of mormon. I think a good place to start with this one is how they got started and how they got their book. The following excerpt is from the Mormon website. Here is the link of the website itself incase you wish to visit it. www.mormon.org  

History of the Church

In the spring of 1820, a 14 year old boy named joseph smith went into a grove of trees near his home in Palmyra, New York, and prayed to learn which church he should join. In answer to his prayer, God the Father and His Son,Jesus Christ, appeared to him, just as heavenly beings had appeared to prophets like Moses and Paul in biblical times. Joseph learned that the Church originally organized by Jesus Christ was no longer on the earth.

Joseph Smith was chosen by God to restore the Church of Jesus Christ to the earth. During the next 10 years,Joseph was visited by other heavenly messangers,translated the Book of Mormon, and received authority to organize the Church. The Church was organized in Fayette,New York, on 6 April 1830, under the leadership of Joseph Smith. It has grown to an organization with members and congregations throughout the world.

So this is their history in their own words. It is quite vage quite short and doesn't invovle too many specifics. When I was navigating their website it seemed that they made an effort to at every turn encourage you to meet with a mormon to get more answers. They don't seem to want to divulge too much info on their website. And certainly they woulden't mention any of their beliefs that are controversial. I found another website out there on the web called Mormons In Transition. It is a website that breaks down the mormons history the falsehoods that are within the organization and what they really believe and practice. They are a large amount of failed prophecies. Often a way that religions try to explain away false prophecies are that they were humans who made the prophecies and humans are fallible. Well that is not a good way to put it. It does not really go with the notion that these organizations all claim to be the one true one. If they are the true one then would not their prophecies come true? Would not the God they worship make sure things concerning the future of his people were made clear?

I think I will leave it at that for today. Tommorrow I would like to look at contradictions between the book of mormon and the bible. Some of the false prohecies and just how exactly the book of mormon came about. And some of those hidden beliefs that the mormons hold aswell.

The website Mormons In Transition can be found at a website called The Institute For Religious Research. The link for that website is www.irr.org

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I decided that today I would post on yes of course a drug bust. What a wonderful way to celebrate the love eh? I know I havent posted in a few days and I was going to post on a religion today but there are two reasons why I didn't. 1 I just havent done all the reading on the religion I want to post on and 2 this bust just happend yesterday. So yes as I mentioned in the title it was a neighborhood drug bust. It was next door in fact. About 100 feet away from my house is the neighbors house. So about 20 mins after I get home I hear my rather excitable mother who really has no life at all exclaiming in this wonderously henlike voice " Oh theres cars surrounding the house! Oh they have guns!" I really was not surprised. I mean this is bc after all. We do apparently have the best bud and well we have the most drug busts too. I didn't go running out of my room to look. I was a little curious sure but it isent exactly something that amazes me enough to get me out there watching it for 2 hours. I did take a look a little later on as I was making myself some sandwiches. There was quite a few unmarked cars surrounding the house and a sheriffs truck. They did arrest someone apparently. It was a rather small drug bust around 30 plants. But here is something interesting. Apparently the next door neighbor had a loaded gun right inside his door. I wasent really surprised at this. Though my henlike mother of course was. I remember a former drug addicted friend of mine telling me that once he was sent to where some peoples pot ring was and was given a gun and told to guard it and shoot anyone who came near. So a gun doesn't surprise me. Nor does it scare me. I wasent about to go and threaten their pot stash so they never had any reason to shoot. So yes there you go the friendly neighborhood drug bust. Wasent a very big one. I was surprised to hear that they were growing though. Didn't think their house was big enough. I knew they were smoking it constantly though.

 

So tommorow I should be posting again on a religion. I will lay off no the jehovahs witnesses for a while and I will be moving on to the mormons. Yes I know it is another off shoot of christianity but I feel like posting on them. After that will probably be the Hare Krishnas. After that well I am not too sure yet.

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So I have done two posts so far on this topic. I was kinda hoping that a jw would waltz along and start debating with me but I guess that will never happen. In fact I am not all that surprised. One thing to note is that jw's are basically not allowed to read literature that may be damaging to their faith. Meaning stuff by people who have found out there lies or people who use to be a jw but left. In most cases if someone who left the jw's was raised as one they will be disowned or treated very differently. Anyways I went and googled jw and the forth hit was a hit about recovering from being part of the jw's. Now what does that say about them? Go google them for yourself and see what you can find... See for yourself and judge for yourself...

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Here I am again posting on the JW's. So on the bill for today why jw's do not accept blood transfusions and why they do not celebrate holidays birthdays and other days.

I think I would like to start with why they do not accept blood transfusions. We would probably all agree that blood is a very important thing. I mean it carries important things that our bodies need. Blood is our lifeforce. When we lose blood we can get weak. When we lose to much we can die. So blood is important no one will dispute that. Now here are some things taken from reasoning from the scriptures a small brown book which jw's frequently use to carry on talks with about blood.

Christians are commanded to abstain from blood

they quote Acts 15:28 29 it says

"The holy spirit and we ourselves have favored adding no further burden to you,except these necessary things, to keep abstaining from things sacrificed to idols and from blood and from things strangled and from fornication. If you carefull keep yourselves from these things, you will prosper. Good health to you!"  One important thing to point out here is that they add in little snippets of their own explaination of the verses. 

They also quote Genesis 9 3,4 "Every moving animal that is alive may serve as food for you. As in the case of green vegetation, I do give it all to you. Only flesh with it's soul -s blood- you must not eat." Here they add in its blood.

They then say that animals should be properly bled and that strangled or animals that die in traps are not suitable for food. Also they mention that if there has been any blood added the food should not be eaten either.

Next they quote some scriptures about blood and sacrifices saying that only sacrificial use of blood has ever been approved by God.

Next we move on to a title actually focusing on blood transfusions.

Does the Bible's prohibition include human blood?

They quote Acts 15:29 "keep abstaining from...blood" It does not say merely to abstain from animal blood. Hmm clever way to put it I suppose.

Is a transfusion really the same as eating blood? is the next title.

They say "hen a patient is in a hospital sometimes they are fed through an iv tube. Now would a person who would never put blood in his mouth but took the transfusion be obeying the command to "keep abstaining from blood"?

They then mention some alternative treatments. such as saline solution ringers solution and dextran. They call them plasma vlume expanders. There is more here on blood transfusions complete with the exact questions someone may ask and the exact way to answer them. Most of the alternative treatmets they mention are to basically bring back the amount of liquid to the body which it looses when it looses blood.

So those are some of the things that are mentioned on why they do not accept blood transfusions.

Now on to celebrating holidays birthdays and such. Only two birthdays were celebrated in the bible and they both had ''disasterous results" Birthdays are seen as a pagan ritual. They say that since no birthdays were really celebrated in the bible by christians that it is wrong to do so now. Now why they do not celebrate christmas. First jesu was not born on dec 25 but on a day when they animals could be outside at night. I don't see why that matters but I will move on. They then go on to say that jesus' birth was not celebrated (well technically at the time it was) but his death was to be remembered. They don't celebrate things like rememberance day either. Because rememberance day has to do with war and patriotism. And they believe true christians would not have any part in war.

So there ends my large second post on Jehovahs Witnesses. There is much much more I could go over. And I might come back to them. One thing I want to mention if I havent already is that their bible was translated by an anonomous comittee. There is no absolutley no way to know who interpretated this version of the bible and no way to tell if it is trustworthy. Look at all religions carefully and always think for yourselfs do not be pulled in by anything that seems bad or odd to you.

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***Disclaimer***

I have a small "disclaimer here before I am going to start off this post. While I am fairly sure that all that I will be posting on this topic is acurate it is good to keep in mind that everyone makes mistakes and that there are always exceptions to the rules. Meaning the information in this post isent the be all and end all. I encourage whoever reads this to read books on the topic aswell if they so desire to learn more.

Religion Series Part one Jehovahs Witnesses

Yes I realize that jehovahs witnesses ( I will be using jw's for the rest of the post) are technically classified as 'christians'. But they themselves believe that they are the only tru christians so for all purposes here they will be treated as a somewhat different religion because well thats what they believe.

Jehovahs witnesses have been around for a fair amount of time but relativley speaking they are a new "religion" They claim that they have been around since bible days and have always been around. But historically speaking there hasent been a group around that called themselves the JW's for very long. They believe that the disciples in the bible were jw's.

So what does the name JW mean anyway? Well the Jw's Believe that Jehovah is THE name for God. All the other names God Abba etc are just titles. Jehovah is Gods true name. They believe that Gods true disciples will use this name.

What exactly do they believe? Well they do follow the bible. They of course have their own interpretation of it. In fact they have there own translation. It is called the New World Translation. I fine one problem with this translation though the "scholar" are totally anonomous. And were not talking they are a proved scholor society or something just holding back the specific names we are talking totally anonomous translation. The JW's believe though that the "scholars" were right to do this so they don't get praise for it. Take that at whatever you want to.

There are big differences in how the JW's interpret the bible. They have many little books and pamplets that explain their interpretations. One main one they use when debating or just explaining is called reasoning from the scriptures. It is kind of like an answer guide to all the questions. This is fine im not against it or anything. What I am against is they generally wont go any further in a talk then whats in their books and pamhlets.

Now to what is actually in those books. What they actually believe in. Well like I said they follow the bible to their interpretation. They believe in God his real name is jehovah. They believe in jesus but jesus is not God meaning there is no trinity for the JW's. Jesus did exist before he was a human on earth but as a 'spirit person'. Now it gets kind of vague at this point. God created jesus as a spirit person and then jesus created everything else or had a part in it. Then later God put jesus into mary and there ya go you have jesus. The rest of the story is pretty much the same. Meaning jesus did still do miracles and so on. But when jesus was killed he didn't raise himself jehovah did. Oh yeah and there is a holy spirit kind of. The holy spirit isent a person though he is just "Gods active force" Again kind of vague and there really isent much mention of it in there bible or any other one for that matter.

Now I suppose we can move on to the end times stuff. Well we are in them. Ok at least according the the JW's. They started in 1914. And apparently before that generation passes on Jesus will be reigning over earth. They have set dates like this before and surprise they have come and gone with no jesus and no significant change.

Unfortunetly that is all I have time for at the moment. Tommorrow I will be picking up a bit more on the Jehovahs Witnesses. Like why they don't celebrate birthdays christmas and other holidays and why they don't accept blood transfusions.

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Alright I realize that I posted yesterday that I was going to start a little series on religions today but I just couldent pass up some political news. If you live in canada and actually pay attention to your politics you will know that yesterday stephen harper and his government was sworn in. New people took over minister positions and everyone is settling into their new roles. I would like to mention that my local MP Chuck Straul is a minister this time around. The minister of agriculture. Anyways new people are forming this government. And heres the interesting part. David Emerson was elected in his riding as a liberal but he was being sworn in yesterday as part of the conservative government. Wait a second!!!! Did I miss something? I thought that when you were elected as a liberal or conservative or whatever you uh had to stay that way unless your public was informed first? Don't you have to ask your public? I thought that moves this sneaky were not allowed??? I must say that I am quite pissed off at this. I know he is not my MP but he still is a MP and he was democratically running as a liberal he won his race as a liberal but because he was offered a job on the winning team he can just ditch the loosing one that he was democratically elected to??? I will be writing angry letters asking for answers on this one. It takes into question our very democracy. Shame on David Emerson! We can't just blame stephen harper on this one either guys. He may have offered the job(I do not know the exact details) but it was emerson who took it without thought for his people he is suppose to be representing. Any thoughts?

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So I thought I would like to do a little series on religions... I'll be starting tommorrow. I havent decided which ones I will cover or how long this will last but it should be interesting...

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I went to see the movie King Kong on saterday night. Had to drive out of town to see it. Was a 45 min drive about. The movie just isent playing in my city anymore. Anyways... So I wasent expecting it to be so long! I enjoyed it very much but I kept on wondering how long is this gonna be? I thought that the movie was quite lord of the ringsish. The giant spiders just the scenary in general. Also the natives on skull island bared quite a resemblence to orcs. The characters were farley well done and the so obvious cheeseness in them was done in such a way as to draw me into it rather then make me go "this is horrible". At some points however I must admit I wanted to burst out laughing at some of the seriousness. One part of the movie I really enjoyed above most parts was the giant leeches or at least that is what I call them are eating the guy from the boat. Another high point of the movie is when ann is making kong laugh by her dancing. Peter Jackson succeded in making another epic film. This one was far more well done then I expected it to be and the characters were all amazing. I highly recommend you all to go running after it like apes after a banana before it is out of the theatres.

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 Appearances Part 2

Appearances are Deceiving

What we see isent always all that there is. You can't see what a person is thinking and rarley can you tell for sure how they are feeling. People can hide inside themselves. They can be a sweet kind and caring seemingly happy person on the outside but harbour depression and hate on the inside. Or the other way around. It is hard to always keep this in mind. Many people are extremly good at hiding their feelings some do it their whole lives. Some keep secrets about their past until they die. How many times have you remembered  about someone who treated you "badly" and thought "maybe something awful is going on in their life" Sometimes people are inherently rude for no apparent reason sometimes there really is no reason and they really are just rude people but we can never tell for sure because we can never really know a person fully.

We judge people everyday on how they act what they wear where they work how they talk and on a million other things. Absolutley everyone does it. All I am saying is that we need to do that more objectivley and less on the spur of the moment.

Appearances are important to a certain point. To say that appearances are fleeting so I just wont try to make a good one is just as bad as someone judging you on just one meeting. If you don't put out your best self no one can see it.

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Appearances Part 1

The First Impression

Appearances are very interesting. Often we see what is right in front of us and think that that is all there is. We see something or someone we assume the way they are at the time is the way they will always be or the way that they always are. Rarley do people think that what they see isent the full person. We may see someone acting extremly rude to someone else at a restaraunt or at a movie or some other public place and we assume that that person is a jack ass or and idiot and thats the end to it. We don't think "hmm what did the other person do to maybe deserve that?" What we automatically see hear etc is what we take to be all that there is. When we first meet someone we think "I hope I make a good impression on them" or "a first impression is a lasting impression." When you first meet someone you judge them we all judge them based on what they look like how they act how they talk and how they stand sit or whatever. If someone doesn't seem to interested in this first meeting often they are branded idiotic rude or just a plan jack ass. But why do we assume that this person cares two hoots about us anyways? And why do we assume that this person is a jack ass just because they don't shake our hand or say what we want them to say or react the way we want them to? First immpressions suck. They don't show the person as a whole. They don't show what the person is like 24-7 and they are rated far too high on the social importance list. Our first impressions of people are always flawed. It is unfortunate but true. Rarley do we think about what we are not seeing during a first impression it is always what we are. Tommorrow appearances part 2.

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