What you believe matters to you...What you believe is irrelevant to the guy in Papua New Guinea who believes in the cosmic tortoise. You,however, find his cosmic tortoise belief irrelevant. As general principle what is believed is only relevant to those who believe it. To those who don't, the belief is irrelevant. provided of course your belief or his belief does not incense you enough to kill him or he you.
Yes, but in most cases, religion deals with more earthly matters. And, as you pointed out earlier, faith can sometimes give justification for mayhem. (see Islam).
So in practice it does matter and is relevant to others what a person believes.
When that milk truck driver savaged those Amish girls, the Amish responded with an act of charity towards the deceased killer's family. This was intentionally done to demonstrate to the world that they are absolutely non-toxic to their neighbors. If they can forgive that, they can forgive anything.
In knowing what they believe we have to realize 1) That the Amish are no threat to us. And 2) If they are to survive, they must be protected from others who are a threat.
Even if we don't believe in a bearded god in the sky who commands us to be pacifists, it is good and practical to have neighbors who do believe because we won't have to worry about defending ourselves from them. People like the Amish also produce a lot of excess nontoxic children who are a net benefit to society.
not true sir- what I beleive IS relevent to thos in new guinne precisely because the Holy Spirit is at work in everyone's life giving testimony to the fact that the God of my religion is the One True God- to put it bluntly- any other religion follows false Gods that do NOT have the testimony of the Holy Spirit at work in EVERYONE'S life- that 'still small voice' that convicts EVERY person is the work of the Spirit regardless of where they are located OR regardless of their knowledge of God. In order to beleive in a false god, one MUST stifle and go against that still small voice of the Spirit- shut it out completely- because the conviction goes directly against whatever religion they choose be it the cosmi turtle or whatever-
As proof of this- God has sent missionaries directly to those who KNEW that their religion was false, and these people became saved- God has promissed to do just this- & indeed talks about the man in the bible far removed from the Christian religion who called out for hte truth and was answered by an apostle who travelled and met hte fella.