THE ONE TRUE RELIGION IS OR IS NOT

Or rather, which do you believe in?

Artist : Mojo Nixon
Song : Elvis Is Everywhere

When I look out into your eyes out there,
When I look out into your faces,
You know what I see?
I see a little bit of Elvis
In each and every one of you out there.

Lemme tell ya...
Weeeeeeeeeellllllll...

Elvis is everywhere
Elvis is everything
Elvis is everybody
Elvis is still the king

Man o man
What I want you to see
Is that the big E's
Inside of you and me

Elvis is everywhere, man!
He's in everything.
He's in everybody...

Elvis is in your jeans.
He's in your cheesburgers
Elvis is in Nutty Buddies!
Elvis is in your mom!

He's in everybody.
He's in the young, the old,
the fat, the skinny,
the white, the black
the brown and the blue
people got Elvis in 'em too

Elvis is in everybody out there.
Everybody's got Elvis in them!
Everybody except one person that is...
Yeah, one person!
The evil opposite of Elvis.
The Anti-Elvis

Anti-Elvis got no Elvis in 'em,
lemme tell ya.

Michael J. Fox has no Elvis in him.

And Elvis is in Joan Rivers
but he's trying to get out, man!
He's trying to get out!
Listen up Joanie Baby!

Elvis is everywhere
Elvis is everything
Elvis is everybody
Elvis is still the king

Man o man
What I want you to see
Is that the big E's
Inside of you and me

Man, there's a lot of unexplained phenomenon
out there in the world.
Lot of things people say
What the heck's going on?

Let me tell ya!

Who built the pyramids?
ELVIS!
Who built Stonehenge?
ELVIS!

Yeah, man you see guys
walking down the street
pushing shopping carts
and you think they're talking to allah,
they're talking to themself.
Man, no they're talking to ELVIS!
ELVIS! ELVIS!

You know whats going on in that Bermuda Triangle?
Down in the Bermuda Traingle
Elvis needs boats.
Elvis needs boats.
Elvis Elvis Elvis
Elvis Elvis Elvis
Elvis needs boats.

Aahh! The Sailing Elvis!
Captain Elvis!
Commodore Elvis it is.

Yeah man, you know people from outer space,
people from outer space they come up to me.
They don't look like like Doctor Spock.
They don't look like Klingons,
all that Star Trek jive.

They look like Elvis.
ELVIS!
Everybody in outer space looks like Elvis.
Cause Elvis is a perfect being.
We are all moving in perfect peace and harmony towards Elvisness

Soon all will become Elvis.
Everything everywhere will be Elvis.
Why do you think they call it evolution anyway?
It's really Elvislution!
Elvislution!

Elvis is everywhere
Elvis is everything
Elvis is everybody
Elvis is still the king

Man o man
What I want you to see
Is that the big E's
Inside of you and me

That's right ladies and gentlemen,
The time has come!
Time has come to talk
To that little bit of Elvis inside of you.

Talk to it!
Call it up!
Say "Elvis, heal me!"
"Save me, Elvis!"
"Make me be born again
in the perfect Elvis light"

That's right!
You've got that Elvis inside of ya
and he's talkin to ya
He says he wants you to sing!
Everybody's got to sing like the king!

Like the king
Get that leg going now
Get your lip too.
Not no fool Billy Idol lip either
Everybody!
Yeah, we're rockin now!

Elvis is with us.
He's with us and he's speaking to us.
He says "Peoples!"
"Peoples!"
"Everybody!"
"Everybody got to sing!"

Elvis is everywhere
Elvis is everything
Elvis is everybody
Elvis is still the king

Man o man
What I want you to see
Is that the big E's
Inside of you and me

Elvis is everywhere
Elvis is everything
Elvis is everybody
Elvis is still the king

Man o man
What I want you to see
Is that the big E's
Inside of you and me

Elvis!

I voted for the Pagans. I know there are more of us here. But I agree with the last statement wholeheartedly!

HQ-tries to be a good pagan!

BUT I do not believe that it's the one true religion for everyone. It's what works for me! :-)

I wasn't taught to think in these terms.

It isn't so much a matter of "one true religion," as of "one true God." Fully 3 (and possibly more) of the religions listed in your poll worship the same God in differing ways. Only the actual God, if there is one, can answer the question of which if any meet with his/hers/its preference.

To substitute my judgement for God's in this matter would be to perpetrate the sin of Vanity, with some potential Anger and Envy thrown in for good measure.

or possibly 2 or 3.

Sorry, but the question is framed as to get an idea of what people's beliefs are. I don't see how expressing yours is vanity, and why would you be angry or envious in expressing your choice?

I really don't follow your reasoning at all, but then I'm an agnostic, and thus don't consider vanity a sin, just a waste of time and energy in most cases. If I were to say "one true god" in the header, that would automatically exclude all the people who believe in a higher power in another form, or believe in none at all.


Don't you think that you're unnecessarily overintellectualizing the question?

If there is a "true God" I imagine that he would welcome people of all faiths, as long as their hearts are good. If he were a vengeful, vindictive, jealous and petty God, demanding sycophancy of all his followers, he wouldn't be worth following IMO.

what the 'one true' religion is, you ask me to determine which are false.

I believe that no human being (scientists included) has the ability to determine which religions are true or false. It's the Argument from Ignorance.

The act of Vanity is in substituting our judgement or determination for that of God's. If there is a God, and he has a preference for one religion, he gets to make that call, not me. I don’t get to tell mankind (much less God himself) ‘how he ought to be’ and ‘what he ought to do.‘ I certainly don’t get to instruct mankind in what God’s opinions might be.

Moreover, my only yardstick for God’s preference would be the opinions of other people, who are similarly ill-equipt. Even if there is a God and any one religion has merit, we don't have the tools to determine whether other religions are equally true or true to a lesser extent. And we certainly don't have the tools to determine if other religions are false.


'Don't you think that you're unnecessarily overintellectualizing the question?"

You beg the question.

I have no wish to engage in discussion which might seem contentious on this issue, and yet I cannot agree with your suggestion that I've 'overintellectualised.' I do not accept any part of my faith blindly, nor do I allow it to progress unevaluated. I feel far too many people have under-intellectualised their religious belief. Your question touches heavily on that belief.

If the actual, intended question in your poll was "What religion if any do you practise and believe in?" then my response would be that I'm a Roman Catholic. My parents were Catholic, I was educated by Jesuits and at private academies, and I now teach at a Jesuit school.

What you’ve asked instead, violates both my belief and my personal ethic to chose.

to lure people in. The actual question was "which do you believe in". Nobody was required to dismiss anybody's faith.

You say that God has a preference among man's religions, but that we're ill-equipped to understand what it is. Talk about vanity! I think that it's much more likely that an all-powerful God would probably see little difference between the petty religions practiced by the insect-like people on this tiny world in the infinite universe.

But what do I or you know about it? Nothing other than what we've read in books and heard from preachers or other "experts", and ALL of that theology was created from whole cloth to explain things people could not understand. I'm treading dangerous ground by sounding like I'm didmissing people's faith, and that's not where i want to go with this. I just wanted a rough breakdown of religious attitudes at DU.

I suspect you misread the text of statments. (With respect your accusation of vanity).

I've patiently explained that your choice of phrasing does exactly require such a choice, or non participation. Thus my original statements. I can't make the determination you phrase without violating my sense of ethics.

"which do you believe in"

a completely different question than

THE ONE TRUE RELIGION IS OR IS NOT

?

I'm not sure what the poll is going to tell you, or what you think it will tell you.

IMHO...

And when it comes to metaphors, it's all a matter of taste.

Truth has nothing to do with it.

I believe that those of us who are believers, all worship the same entity. Yes, that goes for the multiplicity of gods in the pagan and Hindu pantheons too. I know people are gonna disagree with me on that. That's fine.

But, I do believe that we all touch the same universal spirit.

God, Allah, whatever... just different names for the same general idea.

Arguments over religion are about as useful as arguments over taste:
both involve very personal sensations, both build on past personal experience and neither is directly affected by anyone else's opinion.

I know what I believe and it works in my frame of reference.
Your frame of reference is different so your beliefs may well be too!

I'll willingly sit and chat about it with people who are interested (simply as a topic of friendly conversation, expression of opinions, etc.) but the "my god is bigger than your god" type of "discussion" just indicates intolerance, not wisdom.

Nihil

www.shatnerology.com

They're ALL true!

so I beleive he came to Buddha under that Banyan Tree, he came to Mohammed, he came to Abraham, he came to Krishna....

Sometimes the message was the same (do onto others) sometimes it was different (take your pick)

But the one common thread is that he is a force of change - much like the opening scene in 2001...

I could go on but that would take reams of bits.

Oh yeah, I'm a card Carrying United Methodist.

"Take your pick" was Michael Miles' message (and Des O'Connor's in the 90s version).

:-)

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(Obscure UK Gameshow joke - move along, nothing to see here)

really say what, if any, religion is the one true religion. Christianity and Islam both have billions of followers, and Judaism has about 11 million. I was born jewish, but i'm not observant any more. i was bar mitzvahed and all, i just kinda stopped going to temple. i'm agnostic, and i'm not sure if there is a god.

and apparently some being known as the Mega-Squid will be ruling for the next 200 million years... or something like that...

Oh, and Hail Eris. Fnord.

And want to rescue him from Pat Robertson.

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worship the "same" god.
i'm sure certain denominations and sects within each would debate that. however they are all abrahamic religions.

So, the answer is "yes!"