Do you have a religion?

[Ferdie]

I'm not sure if this was already brought up here. Got the idea from another forum. So let's hear it. You have a religion? How devoted are you to your beliefs?

I'm Roman Catholic. Practicing but not devout.

[EmptyneSs]

faith alone wont sustain us anymore

[MatthewAlphonso]

EmptyneSs, you're right, what good is Faith without Action? that's like believing in free speech and having a vow of silence. supporting the right to own a weapon without voting on related legislature.

I can tell you that I know many people, of various faiths that say they follow a religion but do not prove so throught their actions. a majority of these people happen to be X-Tian. This is in no way stating that a majority of X-Tians are weak of faith, just that I know more X-Tians than people of other faith. Of course the more socially liberal culture is partially to blame but it is also that Science has destroyed the faith of many people.

But back on topic. I am a solitary Druid. I am deeply dedicated to my faith and won't even change it for my gf of the past three years (preacher's daughter who isn't exactly devout in her faith) who would like me to become Baptist. Though I am relatively knew to this faith, it suits me well and allows me to practice it rather than just believing. Now every day is a holy experience. Every dew drop is a god, every blade of grass is my church, and every towering tree is my cathedral.

[Garland]

I'm a staunch atheist.
Funny story, actually, I used to be a hard-core Roman Catholic...Imagine going to Catholic school all of your life, and being groomed also as a potential obeliate order priest...
Needless to say, my own doubts and distrust in the Church, as well as all of organized, (and unorganized) religion bloomed at about junior year of highschool, when I gained enough real life experience to learn that, if there is a God, he's either a) in deriliction of his duties toward man, or b) a sadistic bastard, who enthralls himself in the suffering of the human race.

But...hey, now that I have enough convincing evidence (or lack thereof) for myself and to sustain my personal beliefs, I am now in the mindset, that there is no God, no afterlife, no reincarnation, no karma, nor any universal life force, higher being bullshit.

You, as I, will suffer, die and be buried, and unlike your farcical fairy tales, you will absolutely not rise on the third day...


















unless your a zombie.
In which case....zombies eat yo brains.........
aaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrrrrrr
zombie.

[zhorner]

my religion is zackism.

that is where i worship myself. sometimes i give myself visions and strange tasks to do, such as drinking windex until i pass out.

much like many religions, my god, (me), talks to me on a daily bases.

so far we only have one practitioner. i am very dedicated and attend at least every day. today we discussed the "gerbil" problem. these little critters think they can poo where every they want to. well a miracle is-a-comin! i shall sendith a lightening bolt down that will cast the defecate to the fires of no-fun land, (aka hell).

now it is time for my divine, self induced golden shower...

[Garland]

In fact....Jesus was a Jew...not a christian...
and also reading the "scriptures" one can see that Jesus, by the act of rising from his grave, is a zombie.


Jewish zombie son of God.

Jesus "Zombie" Christ.

man...eat my body and drink my blood....c'mon now, how much more does he need to spell it out for you guys. He's screaming ZOMBIE!

[Garland]

my religion is zackism.

that is where i worship myself. sometimes i give myself visions and strange tasks to do, such as drinking windex until i pass out.

much like many religions, my god, (me), talks to me on a daily bases.

so far we only have one practitioner. i am very dedicated and attend at least every day. today we discussed the "gerbil" problem. these little critters think they can poo where every they want to. well a miracle is-a-comin! i shall sendith a lightening bolt down that will cast the defecate to the fires of no-fun land, (aka hell).

now it is time for my divine, self induced golden shower...

Zach...why windex? Try Amyl Nitrate, if you can, or just huff enDust...should help to mess you up, without AS many immediate side effects (you still could die)...but they also help to loosen the scphincter, so you can play with your gerbil all you want, for I suggest a water based lubricant.

[Toudiyama[NL]]

Being an atheist, I'm always amazed how religious people from the 3 main religions always praise god for the good things in their life but when asked why god allows for so muchmissery in this world, Man himself is to blame because god gave nim free will
Or teach their kids to ask :"Where you there?" if someone talks about dinosaurs living millions of years ago but do not accept the same questiion when talking about the bible (where they there when is supposedly happened, where they when it was written down?)

The holy books tell that the omnipotent entity is the only one who is allowed to judge over life and death and still there are those who think they should help that omnipotent entity by killing certain people

Being an Atheist, I'm not interrested in making religious people stop believing, I do not want to interfere in their life, pitty that this isn't alway mutual and that some religious groups try to get rid of secular society and force their way of life on to me and other Atheist ( as well as those from other faiths)
Examples from the US, "One Nation, under god" in the classrooms and trying to get rid of teachings on evolution even from public schools

[EmptyneSs]

religion is fucking lame. bunch of people in a fucking cult who cant think for themselves, and cant stop looking down on others that dont share their views. they can all pray together, and have some douchebag or child molester tell them when to sit and stand, and recite phrases like fucking nazis. and i hate how they always assume their religion is the right one, and everyone else is wrong.

btw, weres our seperating of state and church when this fucker bush is on tv saying shit like "god sent me to kill the terrorists" . he sounds like a fundamentalist if u ask me. he wont let us study stem cells cause he says its against his religion, wtf. his religion is directly influencing the way he is trying shape this country, pushing his christian bullshit on us.

why are christians always trying to take over the world? wtf is up with that?

let your mind always be questioning and wondering. believe in nOthing.

[Ferdie]

Interesting responses.

It's quite a hasty generalization to say that Christians force everyone to be one of them. During early times, the Catholic church did want to spread Christianity (by virtue of following the teachings of the Bible) even by extreme methods. But everything during medieval times was pretty extreme if you ask me. In other words it was the prevailing norm back then. Nowadays, however, I don’t see any Catholic Christian forcing anyone who isn’t to become Catholic. I certainly don’t. The late Pope John Paul II even brought together different religious leaders in an assembly – not to convert them, but to discuss ways to get along w/ each other. As far as other Christian order is concerned, I can't speak for them.

As a Catholic, I think freely & look at things objectively. My take on it is that there has to be someone or something that keeps everything in order in the universe. It is a strong energy that none of us has yet to see. It just so happens that we call it God. Islam calls it Allah. The ancient Filipino pagans had Bathala. Buddhism guides its followers to be tuned w/ this energy. Science now has theories on Quantum Physics (I’m not an expert on this, but just had to point it out). And so religion is but an instrument or a path by w/c some us try to get to the same end.

Faith really isn’t enough to survive. Even the Bible instructs that we have to help ourselves. One of the “benefits” of faith is that it tells us that everything would be alright – helps us to become optimistic.

As for child molestation of priests, well, nobody said they don’t deserve to be punished - I wouldn't sound Christian-like if I say what I'd do to them. But let’s take that issue into perspective. The Catholic Church has more than 1.5 billion followers. With that huge number, it’s not surprising we’d have a lot of psychos, criminals, potential criminals w/in its community. This is a predicament no different from any other religious society or any non-religious society. Buddhism seems to be a more accepted form of “religion” as far as my reading of forums go & yet nobody counts the number of its followers that broke the norms of what is acceptable behavior in a civilized society. From the Atheists, do we have a count of how many criminals we have that are freethinkers?

Now, before anyone begins to say so, I'M NOT trying to convert anyone here. It really is interesting to hear these points of view because of the few people I've met who were atheist or agnostic, none of them shared these views. I'm genuinely learning from what I'm reading here.

[gregimotis]

and cant stop looking down on others that dont share their views.

i hate how they always assume their religion is the right one, and everyone else is wrong.

Let's look up irony in the dictionary, and see what we find...

btw, weres our seperating of state and church when this fucker bush is on tv saying shit like "god sent me to kill the terrorists". he sounds like a fundamentalist if u ask me.

It's not against the law to be a fundamentalist (whatever that is) and the separation clause doesn't mean only athiests can be president.

he wont let us study stem cells cause he says its against his religion, wtf. his religion is directly influencing the way he is trying shape this country, pushing his christian bullshit on us.

If you reviw the election results, you might notice that a majority voted for him, and for republicans in general. You don't have to like it, but you lost the election. A free country doesn't mean free just for you.

let your mind always be questioning and wondering. believe in nOthing.

Except that you clearly believe in something, and you don't ask a single question.

[EmptyneSs]

thx for replying to things i didnt even say

It's not against the law to be a fundamentalist (whatever that is) and the separation clause doesn't mean only athiests can be president.

hmm, never said it was against the law to be fundamentalist, nor did i say only athiests can be president. all i was saying was that its wrong for a president to let his religion directly influence our government. u want irony, u got it. this guy invades and levels an entire country because he claims they are a "fundamentalist regime" which is exactly what he and his administration are.

If you reviw the election results, you might notice that a majority voted for him, and for republicans in general. You don't have to like it, but you lost the election. A free country doesn't mean free just for you.

another great reply, sadly its a reply to something i didnt even say. i didnt say anything about the election now did i ? u did.

Except that you clearly believe in something, and you don't ask a single question.

i dont ask a single question? right, again not true either.

great replies greg, but ,mabye next time u can reply to actual posts, and not things u made up for yourself. im sorry if the reality of religion in todays world upsets u, it upsets me as well.

[gregimotis]

I spent some time as an atheist, but as I reflected, I had to admit a few things to myself.
One, I realized that I was really a sort of anti-christian. If the subject of religion came up, I did not speak about my religion (or lack thereof) so much as I made a point of speaking against christianity. The things Garland and Emptyness have said already in this thread were my standard fare - and some of it isn't wrong. Some of it is wrong, however. Stalin was an athiest in an atheist state - helped himself to twenty million of his countrymen; Chairman Mao the same. On the other hand - Ghandi, M.L.King, and Mother Theresa were deeply religious people who did way more good in the world than most. I didn't bring those folks up much, they got in the way of my dogma.

Two, I began to think that being an athiest was knid of depressing. I mean, you don't get to belive in god and that was alright but, you also don't get to believe in bigfoot, the loch ness monster, ghosts, spirits, hobbits, chi, or any other darn thing. You don't get to believe in mystery or romance. Art is just pretty colors and morality is for fools and the weak. Being an athiest sucks, in short.



So, to the first issue - I had to admit to myself that being angry at christianity was nothing more than scapegoating. Sure lots of evil has been done in the name of christianity, but lots of evil has been done in the name of everything, so the christians really can't be singled out.

The second issue is more interesting. From an atheist point of view, it really doesn't matter what anybody believes since there isn't anything out there anyway. If you think about that last statement, you might come to the conclusion (as did I) that you really can make your own reality. You can believe anything you like and it doesn't matter if there's any evidence for it or logic to it.
As an atheist, you might as well declare yourself an agnostic. Consider it, an agnostic gets to go through life wondering whats out there. He gets to hope for space aliens and philosophize about the nature (or lack) of the human soul. An athiest's view of the world is stark and grey - his holy word is Occam's Razor.
Consider, yon athiest, if there is no god out there to please, then why not choose a happier belief system for yourself. You don't have to join a church. Just allow yourself to believe that maybe you don't know everthying, and hope to be pleasantly surprised one day.

[gregimotis]

Also, I'm sorry for criticizing you, Empty, instead of sticking with the thread.



Also, George Bush is an ass.

[Garland]

I don't care what all you crazy bastards do...just DON'T FEED JESUS.
Do not feed the Jesus...he is a zombie, and he WILL eat yo brain.
Haven't you guys ever seen Dawn of the Dead (not the new one, which is shit, but the original George Romero one)....watch it and then watch the Passion of the Christ...back to back.....they's the SAME, man, (for a even creepier affect, put in Dark Side and play it backwards while watching BOTH movies at the SAME time....two screens...now THAT'S deep!) I'm tellin you...
That Jesus wants you to eat his flesh, he's preachin' zombisim, straight-up-word-homes! Yeah man, yeah.

And if you see your mother, give her word....Werd.
That's funny..."word", huh.