Main Themes in the Religion Unit

In class we started debating and discussing the main themes that we thought would go into the religion unit.  The main themes and thoughts brought up were mostly ideas about discrimination and respect issued between religions.  I think that those are the two building blocks to all the other issues.  If a community does not accept someone because of their personal belief, that can lead to all the other issues brought up.  For example terrorism, political discrimination, and government unfairness.  People act upon impulse and they will take to heart what people say about their belief.  Sometimes, action for people is started by their opinion on their beliefs.  Other times their actions are shielded because of other people's beliefs of their beliefs.  It puts you right back where you started.  The foundation of the issues is the lack of respect people will have to other people.  That doesn't seem like a very big issue and that is why no one addresses it.  If people of a certain belief think that everyone should believe in their belief, would that help and prevent any more issues?  Constrictive worldly views need different beliefs to create actual progress in the world.  The main issues that i think that should be brought up the most this semester are effects through government, bordering religion values between tradition and modern ideas, action based from religion, views upon which religions are discriminated, and history relationships between  religions.  The idea of learning where religions are connected interests me.  I think it would be interesting to go into not why the community of people go against religions that are not like their own but learning how religions and political leaders of both sides handle it.  Overall the idea of figuring out what changes views between religions interests me.

Reflection on Star wars movie

In the scenes we watched from star wars, i though the points that were connected to religious factors were very true.  Some people said that there were no religion points made in the movie, but i definitely saw some of those points come to light.  I think the idea of having a evil and a good side isn't too religion related because thats pretty much the plot to every good story.  The symbolism starts to come out when the good side comes out in the story when Luke SkyWalker starts to speak about his beliefs of the force.  Also Darth Vader talks about his beliefs in the force.  The whole idea of having this argument between the idea of science and the idea of belief is a roll found a few times in this movie.  One of the earlier scene shows Darth Vader at a meeting and a member makes a snappy comment about doubting Darth Vader's beliefs.  Another obvious moment is when Han Solo is watching Luke Skywalker practicing with the force, and observes that he thinks Luke is running on pure luck.  The movie is split in half creating two opposing sides in many ways.  One could be one side being evil, and the other being good.  One being believers in the force, the others being believers in science.  While we were discussing these topics in class another scene and addition from another unexpected movie sparked my memory.  In the movie Nacho Libre, with Jack Black, his side kick in the movie believes in science.  Jack Black's role was born to a church.  This concept of science and beliefs comes up a lot in this movie.  Overall, Star Wars was a good choice to create a foundation for our Religion Unit.