This Sunday I went to the my last diversity event, World Religions 101. For this event there was a board which was run by students of different religions which included Christianity, Atheism, Hinduism, and Islam. Each student then stood up introduced themselves and the religions they were representing. Afterwards then they went through and talked for about 10-15 minutes about what their religions was about and why they believed or didn't believe. While they were talking if you had a question for anyone concerning the religion or anything at all you were able to text in a question for everyone or just one person.
I can't remember names, but the first guy talked about how he was raised a Christian and how he was never very serious about it until college and he started believing more and getting involved with church things. The next guy talked about that he was Atheist and he was raised a Christian all of his life and when he got into high school he really liked science. Yet, since science is built off a lot of proving things he couldn't believe in something that couldn't be disproved or proved. While he would like to know the answer to if there is a God or not, for now he doesn't believe in anything. The third guy was a believer in Hinduism. He explained how Hinduism has four types, like Karma, and how as a religion it accepts all religions and thinks they are all right and trying to get to the same God, just in different ways. He explained that it is more important that you are trying to get to God rather than how you do it. The last guy explain Islam, he told how he came from Kuwait seven years ago and that he wasn't a hardcore Islam at first. He then told how he deals with having to pray five times a day on campus and explain that just because your Muslim doesn't mean your a terrorist.
I think the board did a really good job for the time that was allowed of them to explain things. While I think that one of its faults was that if someone had come there for real questions, they probably were not answered because of the lack of experience. Yet if you wanted to know just a little bit about it then it proved well worth it. Overall it was a good opportunity to broaden my outlook.
Cory,
ReplyDeleteI went to that panel thing too, I didn't even see you, dang! I think you are right in that the panel was very young and they probably don't have the depth that maybe a more experienced panel would have had. I do think that when it comes to beliefs it's important to know that unless we are talking about theology than it is determined by the individual. I think if we wanted to learn more about doctrine then we would need more credible sources, but if we are just looking at the beliefs of one person from one certain group, than this was a great discussion
This sounds like it would have been interesting. I took a religion class last year and it's amazing how many different ones there are and the similarities and differences in them all. As both you and Zach said, there probably wasn't a lot of expertise or experience there, but it was probably still good to at least introduce the different religions, especially to anyone who's never heard of some of them before. Great post and see you in class tomorrow!
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