Religion and Duty

We've discussed in class several things relating to duty. Christians have a duty to follow Jesus' teachings and help attain the Kingdom of God, Confucius taught the duty related to human ritual and Muhammed taught a duty of submission to Allah.

Regardless of our own religious beliefs (or lack thereof) duty is something that we can all accept and implement into our lives. What, therefore, should be the duty we should have in a secular 21st century society?

The Three Faiths

I find it interesting that Isalm, Judaism, and Christianity all claim to come from the same source and often times use the same stories and people. However, at the end of the day they all believe radically different things. How does something like this happen? The Qur'an as well as the New Testament mention Jesus and the Virgin Mary, yet there are different beliefs in both religions.

More so, why do you think that in Christianity's sense first, then in Islam, the already-established stories were changed, yet accepted by large groups of people?

I'm not really sure where I'm going with all this, but I find it interesting!

Common Culture

This blog is more of an open-ended question considering what we talked about in Tuesday's Class.

What do you think should be some of the factors of a common culture, if we were to have one in America? I'm pretty skeptical of the notion, as you heard me ranting about in class, so I'll spare you most of the argument. Basically, I'm just concerned that having a common culture will lead to the erosion of cultural practices of other groups. As a person who values language, religious identity and expression, and above all food, this worries me.

If something is taken from one culture and incorporated into the unified, then it loses its meaning for that culture. I'm just scared that people will lend things to the idea of a common culture that we'll never get back.

However, what benefits might this have overall?