Nico101

Religion. It's one of the most beautiful and yet horrifying things mankind has created. It brings people together and yet makes them mortal enemies. Those who have lost hope can find it in religion, those who have no energy to carry on with their lives might find it in religion and those who think they don't have a purpose in life are given one by religion. And yet it is one of the most frightening things you could imagine. How many million people have died because of a slight change in belief? How many have died because they were classified as 'evil'? How many billions of people had their lives negatively affected by religion? And I'm not just talking about a specific religion here, many, if not all religions have caused suffering. Open any history book on a random page. Chances are high it states something about a religious conflict. Just think about the crusades, how many lives of innocent people had been taken just because they didn't want Christianity to be forced onto themselves? And still today religion costs many lives. Islamic extremism, day by day bombings in Iraq, shootings in abortion clinics, and, and, and. But it isn't religion itself that causes people to kill and die for it. It's misinterpretations of the message religions try to spread. People who misinterpret it for their own benefit, people who twist the message in a way, their 'cause' seems reasonable. But what is that message anyway? In my opinion religion is a moral codex, which we should follow. I mean it states 'You shall not murder' in the bible, and nobody here can tell me that's wrong, but in this time and age, do we really need an old bearded man to come down from a mountain and tell us we shouldn't murder, so we don't kill each other? Aren't we in a time, after so many wars and so much suffering, that we should slowly see what is wrong and what we should and shouldn't do? Hasn't humanity come far enough, that everyone can set his morals himself? In my opinion, the day we treat each other the way we should, religion loses its meaning. Because now, it only gives hope to those, who are not treated the way they should be. Hope that everything gets better once they die. Any thoughts on this?

Well from personal experience I can tell you I had many good teachers and many bad teachers. But I have one particular teacher that I will always remember as the best on I've ever had. He was my Math teacher and was pretty young (around 25 I think), and yet had the authority to lead our class full of teenagers and keep us motivated. Looking back at it there was nothing special about what he did, but more how he did it. We saw him as our friend and yet our rolemodel. We could speak to him and laugh about anything, but yet he would be able to stop us from making jokes the whole lesson and make us focus on the Math. When we would get to loud he would just make us silent by saying a simple 'psh' or by saying 'alright now, enough joking, now focus' and we would simply shut up and get back to work. We looked up to him and respected him, mostly because he respected us aswell. I guess it's the fact that he treated us like 'adults' and spoke to us as such and still managed to keep us under control, that made us respect him.