The comparative religion thread

[Dark_Jester]

Not sure if this has been done before here, but if it has, who gives a damn?

Use this thread to tell us what makes you tick theologically. Do you have faith in any organised religion? Do you follow your own pagan way? Are you completely atheistic in your view point? How much have the events of your life shaped your belief system (if at all)?

I'm praying this doesn't degenerate into a 'omg j00 luv God fewl, j00 su><0rz' type flame-thread, but religion is one of those areas that gets people talking. And like a disembodied head floating through space in isolation for many years, this board needs to talk

So get chatting!

 

[rahvin]

ok, unsurprisingly i'm first...

i'm an agnostic with a tendency to think that the existence of a supernatural being is likely. i've been brought up as an atheist and learned most things i know about religion by myself. in a country such as italy, my status as an unbaptized, unschooled in the ways of catholicism guy is still very uncommon, but i must say for all the assumptions of religious intolerance on the parts of christian believers, it never ever caused to me any trouble.

the cultural background around here encourages a detachment from institutional religion and the church, while promoting "alternative" forms of spirituality such as wish-wash paganism and cults. while i don't belong to either, i have a little more sympathy for historically settled religions, whose proclaimed values are at least a little more sound that the idea that whatever you do comes back to you three times .

my relation with a deity is however non-existent, as i have no actual faith or belief in its existence, i merely consider it a rational possibility. i trace my thinking on the subject back to ancient greece philosophies and their ideas on alterity and identity. more on that on request.

 

[Wolfman Von Jones]

Well let me first start by saying me posting on this thread is to make Ben's ego grow by thinking I really care about his thread, and he is making me come back here .

I am an odd atheist. I dont believe in God or Satan, or any higher power for that matter. I think we as humans shape our lives through our actions, nothing is set in stone.

I remember when my Grandfather died. I was very young, only about 4 or 5, but I can remember him wasting away on my Grandmother's couch. He used to be a boxer, he wasnt a large man, only about 5'6, but he was built like a brick shit house. When he went from 160 lbs to 60 in a matter of 3 months I knew there was smth wrong. I was too young to grasp what it actually was, after all, what 5 year old can truly grasp death? Shit, what 21 year old can truly understand it? Anyway, I remember after he died I asked my mother why Grandpa had to go, and she said, "it was God's will." I hated God, hated him for taking away Grandpa Londi (Orlando). When I was abit older, I wondered how such a loving God could take away someone so suddenly and painfully for no good reason. So I stopped believing and havent believed ever since.

So that is basically the single event that shaped my views on religion. I call myself an odd Atheist b/c Im starting to believe that humans have a spirit. Not nessicarily in the classical sense of the word, but some energy in us that goes on after death. Where does the energy go? I havent the slightest.

Nick

 

[rahvin]

maybe someone might come up with a set of religion-related questions, such as "do you believe in predestined fate?", so we can have some idea about what the others think specifically...

aside from that and on the death of relative topic, i must say that i don't really think there is a god who's actively choosing to murder people. i can go all the way to imagining "god" has set general nature laws (no, that he is general nature laws) so that they work according to a plan, not necessarily one with a purpose, just an ordered system. in that case, i don't hate him or blame him for killing my grandma, in a similarly painful way as the one nick described. a painless set of rules is possibly not human, and i don't think it can be devised as long as it involves human beings, regardless of the nature of the one who creates it.

 

[Dark_Jester]

Ok, my turn.
I was born and raised a Catholic, but for various reasons I lost faith with the religion, and started looking for something else, reading the thoughts of the Romans and Greeks, the Buddhists, Islamic teachers etc etc, and began to turn towards the old pagan ways of thinking. Yep Rahvin, I am an unsound one!

My basic feeling is that there is some supernatural force out there, sentient or non-sentient. Not good or evil, just existing. I also believe that it has its equal opposite. I believe these forces are those of creation, and that of destruction, equally balanced, and both necessary to sustain the universe. Balance plays a big part in what I believe. I believe that everything has its opposite, and when one become unbalanced, the imbalance can be felt by living things. Ever have those days where something in your life is slightly imbalanced in some way, and you're left with a feeling that something's wrong, although you can't tell what?
I also feel that man alone, and woman alone, are also imbalanced. That is why society when women were oppressed did not function well, and why I fear the rabid feminists that declare men to be inferior; I don't think that humanity is truly balanced until man and woman are equally balanced. Both are equally as important, and key areas of thought that differ in each gender help to balance the other off. This idea of balance extends to many things. One such is religion and science. When they are imbalanced, society is negatively affected. When religion has the upper hand, and science is not tolerated, you have the dark ages, where people feared the dark and anyone with a different idea was punished severely. Where there is a complete absence of religion, which in some areas this is becoming apparent, morals begin to slide, people have no faith in anything more powerful than themselves, and this can lead to barbarous experiments and the cheapening of life.

So...in short, I'm a balance pagan Perfect balance between chaos and order

 

[Dark_Jester]

True. My grandfather is dying at the moment in a terrible way, one that makes everyone think it would be much fairer and humane for him to pass on his sleep. I don't blame anyone, I just think it's bad luck. I don't believe in pre-destination per se, but I do believe that some things are so purely coincidental, so totally and utterly random, yet so life-altering, to be considered fate. One of those has happened to me, and I can't help but think that luck becomes so good to become someone's fate, or rather, that luck is a force as existent as that of gravity.

 

[Child of Time]

I'm another one of these oh so rational atheists. I did actually read a 'children's bible' when I was a kid. But I had read better, so why would I believe in something that wasn't the best? I do also have thoughts about balance similar to Ben's, although I don't think there's a need for religion, rather secularized moral and ethics.

In what I call 'my weak moments' I'm leaning towards agnosticism. I do also think that people should try to replace religion with philosophy (but please don't ask me to expound this, I don't think I can explain it).

This might be a little off-topic, but once I read about a French philosopher who suggested that everyone should try different thinking experiments. One of the experiments was that for a whole day, watch mankind and the whole civilization as something small, unimportant and insignificant. And I became quite confused and thought: "But that's my ordinary view on mankind".

 

[Northern Lights]

I guess I'm what you'd call an agnostic, leaning towards in believing in something. That's the ultimate cliché of course, "I don't believe in God but I believe in something" - but it's true in my case I do think that there's some greater force somewhere that sort of pushes life onwards, but doesn't interfere with the smaller details (a form of deism, if you like).
My parents are atheists, pretty much, but I was part of this children's group in our church, which organised meetings, activites and excursions for us... and told us stories from the bible, and gave us the "children's bible" to read - I'm pretty sure CoT will know what I mean Anyway, for me that was just another place where I could play with my friends, I'm not entirely sure whether I ever accepted the bible and its stories as anything else than just stories.
As I grew older, I grew a lot more critical of these stories, however, and more critical of any religion. I don't believe in organized religion, where you have all these supposedly respectable and "Hi, I'm God's best friend thus I know best"-type high priests, who dictate rules that tell you how to live, and whose morbid fear of evolving kept the world from doing just that for a long time. I think so many people get lost in these ancient rules and regulations, "oh if I do this, God will love me", when it's really not about that.
Maybe that's why I'm much more attracted by some eastern religions, for example buddhism; where being good to others is good for you and that's why you're good, not because you fear punishment from some sort of higher existence. But I don't agree entirely with buddhism either... I think it's up to each person to find his/her way, and that is not about blindly following someone else's way. For example, being a mormon may have worked just fine for that guy who started, but why should everybody else follow him? Everybody has their own truth.

Ok that's my rant, it's over now

@Ben: by the way, I just wondered... how do you mean an equal opposite to something that is neither good nor evil, but just existing? Would that be non-existing?

 

[hyena]

As already stated in the past, I'm a church-going Catholic. The reasons: a mix of sense of trascendental order of things (I would be inclined towards the most extreme forms of nihilism, but it's just not reconciled with man's ability of feeling happiness or being constructive, on second thought), approval of the system of ethics, the only form of intellectual humility i know (i'm not good at metaphysics, so i'll believe what scholarly men have prudently concluded over the course of centuries), and being raised by a very consistent and persuasive catholic man.

 

[fireangel]

teh following is the short version


I am on my way of looking for something, but I am almost there that my interest in paganism and kind_of_nature-religion (no crap, only intelligent systems ) is highest and I wish I had some more time to start dealing with this topic in depth
Paganism also interests me because I was raised in that kind of "respect nature" and that nature is an alive organism which functions very well (also without mankind there) and every creature and plant has its place (read: my mama is a maniac in ecological gardening, and she was long before this topic became popular).

I of course know that there aren´t elves and flower fairies and such, but it is nice to believe in them! And those I found just some two years ago and the idea fitted very well with the nature-topic. And anyhow, of course there can be Goddesses. I like that Mother-Earth Idea

On the other hand, I used to be a (protestant) christian, and did youth-work in church for a long time, and I even held church-services for teenagers; we were a group of people caring for that, because the teens didnt come to the normal church service with the boring stuff....

Nowadays I am somewhere apart from that, and have no further interest in church, besides that I like the music there! I believe in somekind of God, though. Just with less rules than are in organized church...

I was once interested in buddhism, and looked around at the other religions, but if you think in them, that the next life is everything, and fate is given in detail... it didn´t please me. And there was something in buddhism (sorry that I can´t remember exactly, but_it_was_there) that makes the people desinterested to change something in the current world they live in, and that didn´t please me either.


So I wanna turn into a christianic pagan one day

 

[Malaclypse]

i am an atheist with a strong belief in science. this does not mean i condemn anything "supernatural", since what people now call trivial was magic hundreds of years ago, and eventually magical things will be explainable some day. having said that, i'm quite open to unexplained things like for example psi powers or telekinesis, but at the same time i'm very sceptical towards it because there is no proof (yet?). we just didn't dig in the human brain long enough to be certain if there are such things or not.

but back to religion, this is one thing i really despise, because the vast majority of them claim things which are totally unproven. that in itself is not such a bad thing, but leading people along the nose with these theories is. the christian god for example was invented because of things people couldn't explain (evolution for example: "where did we come from?" "dunno, there must have been a higher being who created us"). and it has happened in every culture around the world that people worship nature gods or what-have-you because of the lack of knowledge. seemingly they couldn't bear to live while they were utterly ignorant about the happenings in their world.
i despise religions because they slow down progress, lead to hilarious arguments and even fights and war, because they often contradict themselves as new research results are available, because they tell people how they have to live. ok, various religions adopt common sense in their "laws", such as the deadly sins in christianity, and to some extend religions even help people to get along. but this is far outweighed by the problems they cause and the way reality is altered. if everyone would just think for himself, there would be many many problems less in this world. so maybe this is my religion: think for yourself!

 

[His Divine Shadow]

I'm an agnostic who usually leans towards the atheist end of things. But I don't call myself an atheist because I believe that in the infinite reaches of time and space and existence there could be God. I simply cannot say for sure (for myself) so...there you have it.

My parents (who believe in God but were not strongly religious) let me decide if I wanted to go to church when I was growing up. So as a child I went to a Baptist church with a friend for a couple of years. I went on and off to the Church of Christ later on with another friend. Religion was something I had never really thought much about; I just believed whatever I was told to believe.

It wasn't until I was 17 years old that I questioned my beliefs. I met an openly atheist person who basically shocked me with his lack of belief in God. It opened my mind for the first time to something other than what I had been told all of my life. Then when I went to college I began to investigate such things as humanist beliefs, critical thinking, scepticism, etc... which seemed to me a much better way (for me) to conduct my life than just believing in...whatever religion I could pick or choose.

About 7 years ago I tried to go to church again because my brother wanted me to go. I wanted to be open minded enough to at least hear what they believed, as an adult and with a critical mind. But that was the experience that finally turned me off on organized religion once and for all. Quite frankly those people scared me. Many of them just seemed like sheep that recited the things that they were told without questioning any of it.

To me that is one of the most dangerous things in the world: people who stop thinking for themselves and who are afraid to question because it might shake their belief system. I know that not all religious people are like this, and I do respect other people's beliefs as long as they aren't hurting other people with them. I realize that some religious people do question, and come to their own conclusions without simply following the herd. But unfortunately a lot of the people I saw in that church seemed to be almost brainwashed or something. I dunno, maybe I'm just totally fucked up myself. But I don't think organized religion is the place for me.

I tried to talk to God, problem is I don't feel like there's anyone really there listening. At least I've never felt it. Yeah I do wonder about this alot so maybe I still need to question and search for the answers...

 

[Lina]

I wish the posts on this thread represented society as a whole.

I'm an atheist. As has been stated, that doesn't necessarily rule out a belief in some things considered supernatural.

But I believe that the societal acceptance, in itself, of a belief in God, in the religious sense, is horribly damaging to informed, intellectual policy debates. (Meaning, no one can discern what God wants, therefore any debate in which God supposedly chooses sides will lead nowhere.) So for that reason, my frustration with believers is not limited to those who actively push their beliefs on others.

I was baptized and confirmed as a United Methodist. I went to Sunday School, was in the youth group, sang in the choir, rang in the handbell choir, was an acolyte, and played piano for services. My congregation was quite liberal, so the sermons weren't difficult to swallow. But on the eve of my confirmation (age 13) I told my minister that I didn't really buy into it all. He sympathized and told me that he, too, had his doubts, but that there was much to learn from religion regardless. So I was confirmed.

I went through the stage of, "I believe in God, I just don't like organized religion." Around age 19 I realized I didn't have to believe in God at all. Then I had the stage of, "I don't believe in God, but I respect people who use their religion to do good." And now...well, now I have little patience for any of it. I acknowledge the many acts of kindness that flow from religious belief, and I acknowledge the comfort it provides many people, but I firmly believe the intangible "intellectual" bad outweighs the good, and that those positive effects can just as easily be derived from common sense and community engagement.

Neither of my parents were rabidly religious. They, probably like the majority of church-goers, did so out of tradition and familial respect. My dad now considers himself agnostic, but is still trapped in tradition. My mom is now an unsteady atheist -- she's an atheist when discussing the matter with me, yet she easily reverts back to tradition when in the presence of believers.

 

[Naku ist krig]

Another religion thread :Smug:
What ever I´ve post, they just represent my emotional growth to my present religional status. Today´s truth:

My mother is christian, my father seems to be fed up with christianity. I dont know for sure.

I am a member of Evangelical Lutheran church, i´ve went through confirmation camp and confirmation.
I maybe to resign from the church when I turn 18.
I was 15 or so my image of god started to fade. I´ve started to dislike religions, but those who are in faith - at least not so much that they would notice
I´ve noticed myself thinking that Finland would be better place to live if state and the church were totally two different things.

Nowadays I dont believe in God, I dont belive in natural powers. I think that even that I dont believe in them i doesnt mean they dont exist.

If had to point out a god I would say "coincidence", In my view it seems that all things turn out fine unless they dont.[Remember me saying that i am god-hating,i doesnt have anything to with god but with this] You live just happily and try achive something and then the ""G O D"" throws a dice and decides if you fail.
Other option for god would be LIFE. I try to worship it as much as I can.
Religions doesn´t serve persons or life, they seem to serve something else.
I have never seen a dead person "live" but seeing for example a halfeaten babylamb lying on gound doesnt have anything godly in itself.
I hate those who romanticize death or think that "in death" things will turn out better. I my view things wont happen when you are dead.

And though I try to respect other peoples ideas I have some problems with "I am a philosophical person". That is automatically for me: I am so fucking-wise-person who likes to think unearthly things.

 

[Malaclypse]

one more thing concerning fate: often i come to think that fate has to exist. and it's even explainable to a certain extent. if we take the "big bang" theory for granted, then every single particle, avery atom was unified in a singular spot, then it exploded and began to shape our universe. so, if we would be able to (which we are not) to note down the weight, velocity, position, rotation (and all other data one single particle has) for all particles in our universe, we would be perfectly able to calculate what is going to happen if we know all the laws which affect these particles, and how they are affected. this would obviously require a computer structure as big as the universe itself, but in theory this leads me to the point that future, in some way, is perfectly predictable, although no human could possibly foretell it.
of course there's the statement: "right now i can decide wether i want to post or not", but in fact, you can't. your genes, your education, your surroundings, everything leads you to your own "opinion" that you should post right now. in fact your opinion is just a mass of electrons floating through your brain. and if i knew all that data i spoke of before, i would be able to exactly determine the position of these electrons in your brain and foretell what you will do, to post or not to post.
but personally, even i like to dig in theories like that, i don't live my life as it were fated. maybe there's no need and no possibility to alter fate, but if i just resign and do nothing, life would be too boring and then there are still instincts i can't be free of.

 

[rahvin]

while fascinating, i think your theory has some loopholes, vc.
predestination clearly implies the presence of a will at some point, for starters. like, things are meant to go a certain way because. if they were simply meant to go a certain way without any reason, the reason would be the fact that they do itself, which is more or less equal to saying that things happen because they do happen, and this sort of nullifies the effect of a theory involving any form of prescience.
in much the same way, when you say that from the first moment on every particle of matter can (potentially) be followed through a pattern by knowing its characteristics, the line between what is fated and what is a mere description gets thinner by the minute. it seems to me the map and the territory tend to coincide: it was written in my braincells that i'd be posting this here now, but the only way of telling is by verifying afterwards that i have posted this here now. a system of foretelling that doesn't allow any actual prediction is perfectly circular and perfectly static: the only element that tells us there is a movement of fate is the time coordinate, as is perceived by the human mind. in the classic quasi-fantasy novel "the neverending story" - yes, i know the original was in german - there is this line used to explain away circular time: whatever happens i write, whatever i write, happens.

 

[Kovenant84]

My turn, I guess.

Was baptized and raised Catholic, and went to Catholic elementary and high schools. Currently though, I'm not a big fan of it all. For one, I hate the institution the church has become and the mindless ritual the mass has been perverted into. I could explain farther on this, but I'm off to class in five minutes, so I'm gonna be brief. Basically, if you're going to say you're Catholic, or even simply Christian for that matter, be educated in what you believe. I have the utmost respect for religious people who know what they're talking about. But if you don't, and want to argue with me about some trivial point in a gospel that you're interpreting as fact, when its a metaphor, then just leave me alone.
<end rant>

Sorry. In any case, I'm somewhat torn right now. I find it hard to reconcile the Catholic belief system with how I envision God. I'm not gonna go on about how 'this is the way God is, and if you disagree you're stupid'. I just think this way - I took a course senior year of high school about the study of God and how we can reconcile pain and suffering with a kind and just God. (dubbed by the students "studies in atheism"). Anyway, at the time, I was reading just about every work E.A. Poe had ever written, and I came across one story that basically spelled it all out for me. The short story was called "Mesmeric Revelation", and was basically about some sick dude who gets put under hypnosis by his doc while dying and basically narrates his passage into the afterlife.

Now, that seems kinda random, but its not. He at one point is asked the question, "What is God?" His response is that, much like air is exceptionally rare (opposite of dense), it can pass through things that are denser than it, (molecule by molecule, kinda), God is the rarest thing there is. It permeates everything in existence and is basically the fiber that holds the universe together. And the kicker - It is sentience. I thought this was damn cool, and a great way of explaining it all. Now, I probably botched it explaining right now, and I'll notice it and correct it later. For now though... off to class.

~Kov

 

[Malaclypse]

while fascinating, i think your theory has some loopholes, vc.
predestination clearly implies the presence of a will at some point, for starters. like, things are meant to go a certain way because. if they were simply meant to go a certain way without any reason, the reason would be the fact that they do itself, which is more or less equal to saying that things happen because they do happen, and this sort of nullifies the effect of a theory involving any form of prescience.

surely enough, there is no will as we might define it, and a big bang surely isn't totally random as well. i know my theory is far from bulletproof, but instead of defining god=random or randomness=will, i simply admit it
about randomness i have my doubts in general. for example a computer isn't able to generate truly random integers. and surely everything in the world is far from random. so my statement is merely that there is fate, but je are just too underdeveloped to recognize and predict it. in a way of saying, yes, things happen because they happen.

in much the same way, when you say that from the first moment on every particle of matter can (potentially) be followed through a pattern by knowing its characteristics, the line between what is fated and what is a mere description gets thinner by the minute. it seems to me the map and the territory tend to coincide: it was written in my braincells that i'd be posting this here now, but the only way of telling is by verifying afterwards that i have posted this here now. a system of foretelling that doesn't allow any actual prediction is perfectly circular and perfectly static: the only element that tells us there is a movement of fate is the time coordinate, as is perceived by the human mind. in the classic quasi-fantasy novel "the neverending story" - yes, i know the original was in german - there is this line used to explain away circular time: whatever happens i write, whatever i write, happens.

you got it, to have all that knowledge about every particle unit in the universe simply means to be universe itself. a map which represents the landscape in every single detail simply is the terrain.

it was written in my braincells that i'd be posting this here now, but the only way of telling is by verifying afterwards that i have posted this here now.

that's not true as i see it. if i had all the knowledge lets say of the 01.01.1400, i could, while appying all possible laws of chemistry, physics and so on, calculate states of the universe prior or past my present date. i could even follow the very atoms that lead to your creation, and see how part of them form a thought in your mind: "that's complete bullshit" .
but if i could do that, you might probably call me a superhuman being or even - god.

let me close this one with a quote:

Present is the time including all times,
each second is eternity
as eternity is now,
and now, now is forever

samael - jupiterian vibe

 

[Naku ist krig]

And after writing that ^ I saw a documentary of how catholic church destroys lifes by banning abort and sexual education. I want the present Pope dead. Now.

 

[rahvin]

I want the present Pope dead. Now.

aww, poor figurehead. i think he might be dead already, in fact.