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Are you religious?

Discussion in 'Off-topic Discussion' started by Blackenglish2017, May 26, 2017.

  1. tendency14

    tendency14 Fapstronaut

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    Yes, i believe in god, christianity
     
  2. KSE_[1]

    KSE_[1] Fapstronaut

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    I'm kind of religious, but I don't know if I describe myself as exclusively following a certain path. I'm more spiritual I guess than religious. I love meditation and the positive effect it has on people, I also like to read different books on a variety of spiritual paths. All this to say, I go to a Conservative Protestant Christian church. :D

    As far as why I am religious, I honestly have given it some thought, and I think that it has to do with culture and upbringing. If my parents were Reform Jewish, then naturally I would have grown up around a synagogue and had a bar mitzvah around 13. That's what every Jewish person does. The same would be true if my parents were Muslim. I often wonder if people are doing religious things because they want to or because it's just what they do. As I think about it right now, I'm probably going to go to church tomorrow because I'm made to. Not because I want to. How do I know that any of it is true? The Bible, I mean. Saying that a person just needs to take a leap of faith when they have not observed any evidence of God is like leaving your keys with a car thief and being told to trust him. How do I know I'm not being used?

    That's really all I have to offer. Hopefully this carries the convo forward.
     
  3. Runtilmylegsdropoff

    Runtilmylegsdropoff Fapstronaut

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    The local Bahai group here puts up some nice freeway signs.
     
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  4. Duke of Gine

    Duke of Gine Fapstronaut

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    I'm Christian (Mormon)
    Very religious.
    but like, this kind of religious:

    37 Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind.
    38 This is the first and great commandment.
    39 And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.
    40 On these two commandments hang all the law

    Not this kind:

    God hates fags and masturbators go to hell
     
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  5. Spiff

    Spiff Fapstronaut

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    Love that last post, it gets to the heart of the faith. Duke's Mormon, I go to a Baptist church, but we are brothers in the body of Christ.

    As someone new to this forum... let me just say how refreshing it is that this thread has not devolved into mindless name calling and the usual I'm right your wrong stuff. It seems to me like any time religion comes up on a forum or comment section it immediately turns into a competition of who can most effectively put the human race to shame.

    The only explanation I can come up with is that there is a certain humility one has to have to be here, admitting a problem and failure in dealing with it. Humble people are much more likely to be able to have a civil conversation.
     
  6. PasterofMuppets

    PasterofMuppets Fapstronaut

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    My parents were atheist and (not because of them) I was exposed to the bad parts of life as a child, so I just can't feel it. I am open to the concept of God, but I just don't see a god anywhere, not even inside me.
     
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  7. HappyDaysAreHereAgain

    HappyDaysAreHereAgain Fapstronaut

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    I noticed that you didn't quote any verses for the kind of religion that you don't like. I don't read much of that talk in scripture, but it is more popular from pulpits, on the radio, and on TV. I find that troubling.
     
  8. Duke of Gine

    Duke of Gine Fapstronaut

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    I find it troubling too.
    Some bibles have all of Jesus' words in red, and those words are the best ones. They are the true gospel. Forgiveness, service, faith, redemption, hope, love, not judging. Those things are the gospel
     
  9. I don't believe in god but i believe in godliness goodness
     
  10. 3nigma

    3nigma Fapstronaut

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    I'm not religious but I've gone through religious phases. I was very religious as a kid. I was raised a Roman Catholic, went to Catholic school, Sunday school, got the sacraments, all that. I enjoyed religion although I always had my doubts. The first time I started to really lose faith was when my two year old cousin died of liver disease when I was ten or so. I loved my cousin and prayed so hard for my God to make him well. He didn't. I cursed God and really stopped believing. It just didn't make sense to me why a God who can do anything, perform miracles, heal the sick, give sight to the blind, etc. would leave my baby cousin to die.

    Gradually, as the years went on, I stopped going to Mass, stopped going to Sunday school. I became agnostic. I'd go through phases of religiosity over the years but finally I've settled on atheism. There's no evidence for a God and the God of the Old Testament is kind of a jerk. Jesus flips the script and makes him kind and loving but I believe this reflects the prevailing Greek philosophy in Palestine at the time. God, the angry vengeful tyrant is irreconcilable with God, the loving Father, in my opinion.

    Right now, I'm studying different religions and finding what works for me. I've been experimenting with meditation and studying Buddhism and also studying Islam and the non-religious spiritualism of Ralph Waldo Emerson.
     
  11. Everyone's religious and there are only two types of people that exist. Ones who believe a Church is infallible or ones who believe they're infallible.

    We all live according to our beliefs.
     
  12. HappyDaysAreHereAgain

    HappyDaysAreHereAgain Fapstronaut

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    I also found it interesting that you quoted from Matthew in the N.T., not from anything in the Book of Mormon. Was that to speak to the Catholics & Evangelicals here?
     

  13. It's pretty much the same to me, I was raised a Christian, but I was too curious, asked too many questions lol. I think Lewis Black kind of explains my point of view better than me haha.

     

  14. I don't think religion is the problem, it's fundamentalism. It leaves no room for doubt, for change or improvement. If a group of people or an individual thinks their ideas are infallible, then there's nothing you can do to change their minds. If we are humble and we understand that we are human, flawed, and can be wrong, then our minds can change and improve. This is why I value science. Science is not a doctrine based on faith or beleifs, it's all about the evidence.

    It's true some scientists fall in love with their ideas, like the scientists of the past who fell in love with geocentrism. But in time the evidence was overwhelming and we knew the earth wasn't at the center of everything, therefore scientists change their minds and accepted the new evidence.

    Religion and other forms of fundamentalist beliefs have no room to change, all they can do is reform it every few decades to try and keep up with the evidence. They keep saying the bible "meant to say" this and that, 7 days creation is suddenly an analogy of billions of years, conveniently, but sadly, other denominations take it all literally and have no place to change their minds.

    Religion sadly has the loophole of an all knowing all powerful god which makes it hard to oppose or to question, especially if a book written by ignorant people thousands of years ago is claimed to be his word.
     
  15. Feel free to try out atheism buddhism. It is like a lifestyle without believing in something higher.
     
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  16. Duke of Gine

    Duke of Gine Fapstronaut

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    No, I just think that particular scripture sums up what I believe and made my point best.
     
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  17. HappyDaysAreHereAgain

    HappyDaysAreHereAgain Fapstronaut

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    @Duke of Gine, the 4 gospel accounts are interesting on love. All 4 speak of loving, but who and how we are to love changes. In Mt. & Lk. Jesus command us love our enemies. In Mt, Mk, and Lk., we are commanded to love God with all our selves, and love our neighbors, as we love ourselves. John has none of that, but Jesus commands his followers to love one another as he has loved them; he says it is a new commandment. John expands on that command in his first letter.
     
    Last edited: May 30, 2017
  18. Spiff

    Spiff Fapstronaut

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    As someone who has a background in science and is a protestant Christian, I'll admit sometimes reconciling the two can be difficult. In the past, when I had some sort of vague belief in God but hadn't really studied the Bible yet, my belief in God was at least partially based on how science magnified the awesomeness of nature. I would look though a microscope, read about the human immune system, contemplate the vastness and age of the universe and be amazed that God had designed such a thing. For whatever reason, I never doubted that God was behind it.

    It seems to me that those who want to push young earth creationism want to take away from the glory of God. The picture they draw of history seems so much less awesome than the one that science has revealed to us. I don't think that the purpose of Genesis is to give us an accurate scientific picture of the creation of the cosmos.

    I know my views are not orthodox, and I love my creationist and naturalist brothers and sisters, and am content that my faith does not require a perfect understanding of the creation of the universe. I choose to be awed by science and redeemed by the blood of Christ.
     
  19. nginx2

    nginx2 Fapstronaut

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    My parents attempted to raise me as a christian. However I never got any solid faith and I am happy about that. From my childhood, there used to be tiny left overs of an anxiety of getting into hell. What if this bible stuff was real and I would get into hell and suffer for eternity, because I neglected god? I used to be a bit afraid of this. So as I got older I found, that there are many paradoxons and oxymorons in the bible. The perception of the world wouldn't fit to the science, for example the flat earth, the decline of the evolution theory, one bread, that magically multplies its mass to feed thousands of people, splitting seas, people getting like 900 years old, and so on. Also in my country, it would be highly illegal to live the way the bible suggests it. It says children must be whipped and beaten to prevent, that they become rebellious. Women would have less rights than men, their only purpose would be to work at home, raise children and cook food.

    And I hate, that the church members used to execute scientists, who attempted to figure out the world in the middle ages. But instead honour and respect for discovering physical laws, diseases, stars and planets, the true origin of human beings, and so on, they were laughed at and burned on the pyre. If the church hadn't countered science so badly back then, our science would be far more advanced today, because many smart people would have had a chance to do research back then.

    So if I would compare science and religion next to each other, and I had to decide between logical nature laws, which fit together perfectly like gears in a gearbox, rather than a wrong worldview, evolution, which is far more plausible than the first six days, where god created the world, I would of course believe in science.

    And last but not least:
    If god existed, he would have created me. If he created me, he would have wanted me to be christian. As I am not christian, there is no god. Because if there was a god, he would have made me christian. But he didn't make me religious, so he doesn't exist.
     
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  20. Resurrectinglogos

    Resurrectinglogos Fapstronaut

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    I've come have evolved my views on religion, due to a Canadian clinical psychologist (Jordan Peterson) who become very famous recently on youtube. I got pretty disillusioned during a series of failure in life and family insisting that praying to goddess would make me improve my life. Found Christopher Hitchens, Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris . I respect religion from a psychological framework it offer, yet disappointed as it takes a lot of cognitive effort to assimilated all that cultural knowledge into a livable MO for life. I try to be religious by the value systems I want to build for my life and those I am responsible for.
     

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