Originally posted by mind-googling
How do you know you're a Hindu? How do you know you're a Muslim? How do you know you're........
Same way I know I am a Gupta, Saxena, Parikh, Khan, or Horton.
Is religion something that can be handed down through generations? How is it that two people having nothing in common in their ways of life or morals can belong to the same religion?
Why can't it be handed down through generations? If two totally different people can come under the same umbrellas in the name of nation, political affiliations, education, profession and what not then why not religion?
From what I understand, essentially your religion is your way of life, moral code and how you, if at all, regard the supreme force/being.
Not just my religion. As far as I know, pretty much all religions teach the same thing. Only interpretations differ --- interpretations that are made by humans based on their vested interests.
How can anyone be born with a religious tag?! Shouldn't the process be that first you'll know the things around you through senses, experience, thought, reasoning, intuition, reading and other ways of cognition, and you'll be able to choose your way of life for yourself? It'll be up to you how you'll regard the supreme force/being, if you're interested in it at all. You need to be helped and guided by the the people around you, of course. Your genetic code, along with the above factors, will have a bearing on your moral code. And all these factors will keep changing all your life making you change along with them, if you don't close your mind.
Once again - when all religions teach the same thing then why is it a problem whether one follows their parents' religion or chooses the one they want to follow?
If you're doing everything yourself to find your path of life, where does a predefined stagnant religion come in? Logically, every grown-up individual has his/her own religion. It can be said that there are as many religion in the world as the entire human population minus the ones in their tender or formative years.
You are assuming here that no one lets their religion evolve. Not all hindus are equally hindu - know what I mean!
There are busy people, poor people and those unfortunate people who cannot read. They don't get the opportunity to go deep into the contents of "their" religions. They make do with mechanical observance of some rituals without knowing their meanings, their inherent insecurities, fears and desires making them do that. So, majority of people, even the most religious-looking ones, are not religious in effect. This makes religious tags all the more irrelevant.
Again, holding religion responsible for human shortcomings - aren't we😛
I cannot see the need of this prevailing system of grouping and tagging people as Christian, Muslim, Hindu, etc. This has proved to be divisive and dangerous time and again, and led to absurdities like a criminal and a scrupulous person belonging to the same religious group. Doing away with this system doesn't mean everyone is becoming an atheist, but rather it means widening of the scope of true religious knowledge, as different belief systems merge into one.
And the best thing that will happen, if we remove our religious tags, is many "religious" warmongers, rioters, terrorists and the like will be out of work.
Addressed in my previous post.