Religion

[Wraithgirl]

AgentKeg

xMr.Neurotic

I am agnostic, because we obviously cannot prove a god's existence. But I also have some other firm beliefs about religion.

I believe that religion was created to bring hope to the people in ancient times. If they went into battle, they would have nothing to worry about, because God was on their side. However, this way of thinking has also caused many more people to die in religious battles than in both world wars put together.

There is also the Holy Catholic Church, whom I have grown a great dislike for, and I shall tell you why. The Catholic Church has taken many books away from the bible, due to their inability to coincide with one another. For example, there were dozens of gospels written about Jesus, but only four were chosen to be published in the bible, not only because some contradicted others, but because the four chosen were the ones that everyone wanted to hear as a Christian. Long ago, there were secret Christian meetings, due to massive slaughter of the people during a long period of time. During these meetings, gospels were read, and it just so happened that Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John were the most popular. More people knew the stories and enjoyed them, so the church had to make sure they had the most exciting and interesting tales for their elaborate storybook. But with all of these missing books, there is much "faith" left behind. If there is indeed one God, and he intended for these people to write the books, would the church not publish them all? Or was the church simply not encouraged by God to publish these books and instead followed his own will? Nonetheless, the Catholic Church is hold many stories back from its Christian people, so I decided to break away from the religion myself.

I also believe that these people who run the church are not influenced by God and are indeed using the religion to make money. In our church, we had offering every Sunday, and my mother would sometimes drop $20 in the plate as the sharply dressed Usher walked by, sometimes $5, sometimes a check for a much higher sum of money. One week, she had forgotten her pocketbook, and therefore could not offer that Sunday. Later in the week, we recieved a letter that told us that our donations were becoming slack and encouraged a monthly sum of offering. Does that sound like the work of the Almighty and Powerful God? He himself said not to offer your gold, but to offer your very lives to God, so then why would the church be so intent on recieving offering, especially a certain amount every month? Perhaps, if there is a God, then the people who run the church have closed their view of him/her from their lives and running the church on their own intentions.

Therefore, I believe that there is no way to know if there is a God, expecially in today's society, and I am against the Holy Catholic Church and its teachings.

I am very angry with the Catholic Church and their distortion of the Bible. I am not a Christian, but the Bible influence many people and because of this peoples ethics have been vastly changed over the centuries. I don't think Homosexuality, women's rights, or war would be as big of a problem if it weren't for the Bible. You can't just take what someone else wrote take it apart, rearrange it, and burn all the evidence. It just isn't right.

I agree with you about Church groups and their money. If I ever got a letter like that from my Church group (if I were religious) I would take it immediately to the Pastors, Deans, and Elders and tell them what they did wrong. Afterwards I would probably leave the Church.l

Well, I would like to point something out. First of all, the reason they threw out so called "gospels" was not because they had an agenda. What happened was that people were writing stuff that utterly contradicted the original manuscripts, known to have been written by eye witnesss and such, and giving it names like "the gospel of so-and-so" to get people to read it. it was a bunch of scams, most of which began after all witnesses were dead, so no one could say "Hey! That's not tru!" they looked at the evidence, prayed, scrutinized every detail, and finally concluded that a certin number of books were true. There are certin things that are uniqe to what I believe are divinly inspired writings, or if you like, "real" books of the bible: they constantly refer back to the old testament scriptures,
they agree with the teachings of Christ, as recorded in the known to be reliable eye witness acounts in the gospels,
they don't try to hide anything about themselves (notice that, if most people were to begin a religion, they'd try to portray themselves as perfect, instead, they are human, real, falible, and, frankly, honest)
and, though each has an extrordinairy level of quality, they all retain their own personalities:
Mathew, a tax colector, catogorized everything, and emphasized those teachings appealing to Jews, like himself
Mark, a Roman, always using strong verbs, emphasizing action and power, that apealed to Romans like himself.
Luke, a doctor, always threw in bits about medical conditions, detailing it from his own, scientific (yes, even before "science", they used such scientific techniques like observation and testing to discover things) point of view,
and John, who seems to speak to all of us together, and brings to the stage many things that are not revealed in the others.

Altogether, the Bible has been assembled in the way we have it now for good reasons. try really looking into it before you judge.

Tell you what, why don't you try to prove your dropped gospels, and disprove the accepted ones?

and remember, be honest. What you find may not be comfortable, but, as C.S. Lewis said,
"You can't get to the comfort withouth first going through the dismay. If you look for the truth, you'll find dismay, but beyond it there may be comfort, but if you look for comfort, all you'll get is fluff, and ultimitly, dispair."

P.S.

I'm a Christian, being brought up as one, drifted severly, but somehow, I got back. All I can say is that I know there is a God, and because of this, I can say that all religions contain truth, but I know that Christ is true. He lived, died, and rose. We are created. Even if we can't "prove" creation and the flood, we can't prove evolution either. Science can only look at how things are now. It is only retrospective to a point, but whatever you believe, Creation, evolution, athiesim, panthiesim, dualism, or the idea that matter is an illusion, it is all faith.

Think of this: there are rules. Who made the rules?
If you believe there is no God, then you must disbelieve in "Good", for how can there be good without some standard of what is good?

read "Mere Christianity". it's easy. it's thought provoking. and, you just might enjouy it.  

[weats]

Here again, I hafta be Miss Middle-of-the-road.
The way I see religion is that God is a giant disco-ball. Everyone chooses their own facet of said disco-ball (making their own religion) and believes that.
Everyone's right, just ask them.

That's why there will never and can never be world peace. In fact, we don't want it to be peaceful. We would be bored out of our mind! Ever read a major comic book where there is no bad guy to overcome? Ever hear of a box-office hit movie that has no struggle whatsoever (even though in "Napoleon Dynamite" you really hafta search for it)?

My message is simple, some things aren't black and white. There'll always be grey. There's a balance, and on the teeter-totter of life sometimes I'd just rather sit in the middle cus that's how I feel. mrgreen  

[chessiejo]

What religion are you? i am a Mennonite.
we are like Amish with cars and computers.
w are like Catholics because we value good works above mere words
and like protestants because we have a simple worship style
and little hierarchy

How long have you been in this religion?
since i was 15 or so
we were encouraged to try all kinds of religion before choosing one, so i went to worship with jews and muslims, orthodix christians of different nationalities, pentecostals, baptists, everybody.

Why do you believe in this faith? it keeps a central focus on Jesus and his teaching, so it does not emphasize violence or judgmentalism but forgiveness and kindness.

What do you hate about other religions?
nothing, really.
just so they don't torment or kill us
(as has been done by presybyterians, catholics, episcopalians, and lutherans)

If you are agnostic/atheist please tell us why?
i still consider myself a seeker but do profess a faith in Jesus-as-God so i don't qualify for this question.  

[here_in_heart]

Oddly enough, I began to create my own religion when I was younger, and have been evolving with it for the past four years. I believe there are many Gods & Goddesses, one male and one female representing each aspect of life (many overlap), usually the opposing facets of it. There are some beneficial and some harmful dieties, as well as one all-powerful presence, much like people's normal "God." I belive this because it is based off of what I've seen in the world around me, and I've been trying to shape it to my own experiences. In Edith Hamilton's book Mythology, she says something about how the greeks were the first people to shape the gods in their own image (I don't have the exact quote). That's what I'm doing, except modifying gods in my mind to modern people and what they need and see around them.

I really don't hate anything about other religions, because mine is a mash between them and my own feelings. I don't like intolerance though.  

[Vedol]

im a christian cause i had no choice as a kid.im half way in the whole there is/isnt a god thing  

[Anabethe]

What religion are you?
im catholic
How long have you been in this religion?
i dont remember i was raised to be catholic
Why do you believe in this faith?
because of how i was raised and life experience
What do you hate about other religions?
theres one religion that i dont agree with, and i dont want to talk about it.
If you are agnostic/atheist please tell us why?  

[EJ_Nova]

What religion are you?
I'm an atheist

How long have you been in this religion?
Well, I have not had religion for about 4 years.

Why do you believe in this faith?
I don't "believe" in "faith." I'd rather know or admit that I don't know something than invent solutions arbitrarily. Faith is a crappy word because it implies something which you accept with no evidence.

What do you hate about other religions?
I only hate individuals who trample upon my right to exist and my right to have no religion. I don't like the idea of hating vague concepts. That's when you get to things like a "war on terror," but that's another forum. redface
If you are agnostic/atheist please tell us why?
Well I used to be christian thanks to my aunt and uncle's scare tactics. My parents were both atheist, but they allowed me to learn from my own experiences with religion. What basically changed my mind was actually reading the bible. I was doing research for a paper in my freshman english class in college and the bible was one of my references. (I was using it as a reference trying to connect stories from the bible with historical events) It took me a while, but I finally came to the conclusion that this book was written by a comittee of bloodthirsty primitive human tribes.

In the bible are stories of mighty bloodbaths, rape, and incest. Formal confessions of horrific crimes from men who were probably dying when they wrote them. All these things attributed to god's influence. The story of Job alone is enough to send one in tears. Read about the good and just Lot and his daughters. Doesn't that story make you sick? How could an omnibenevolent god inspire people to commit such acts in his name? That's not even to mention the inconsistencies. There could be whole threads dedicated to biblical inaccuracies. There are three different descriptions of the creation event. Did god create man and woman at the same time out of sand, or did he create man out of sand and woman out of his rib? Did he create animals before or after man?

After reading more from secular sources I went from agnostic to atheist. A good read - The atheist debator's handbook. It explains a lot of the philosophical argument for atheism.  

[tatterkin]

I'm not good at explaining so please bare with me,

What religion are you?
I haven't really got one most of my family is Anglican , but religion pretty much gets left alone for kids to decide on their own, I was introduced to some aspects of Buddhism as a kid by my sisters god father. I sorta agree with some of the aspects as it's focused on peace and taking responsibility for you own actions and beliefs while tolerating others.
I don't subscribe to any one faith just values ,I don't think I can call my self an atheist because I still believe that there are supernatural beings / forces around.

How long have you been in this religion?
Honestly couldn't tell you, I don't know

What do you hate about other religions?
I like learning about other religions because it can alter the way I see and understand the world.
I don't hate religious period.

But I do get frustrated with some of its members
( I mean no offence with my opinions and I don’t mean to generalize, I just drawing from personal experiences of a few who infuriated me)
But I don't like people trying to force there beliefs onto me and not taking no for an answer.
Especially when there stopping people on the street or ambushing passers by at schools/universities where they can catch kids unsupervised to convert them to their way of thinking
(This has happened to me a couple of times)
On the understanding that because I don't subscribe to their perspective that I must be; at best a lost soul and ignorant.Or at worse being called immoral/ evil because I don't agree with them.  

[Noxes Kaj]

I am an Atheist and have been since I was about 11, though I briefly converted to Wicca during my Emo years in HS razz
I dont hate other religions, though I hate Fundimentalists as a general rule.
I became an Athiest after I realized that God cannot be defined or quantitized, and therefore has no place in our physical Universe. Though I realise now the weakness of that argument and have much better ones prepared for debates biggrin .  

[[ Mod ] James]

What religion are you?

I am a Satanist
((and if theres any of you that think satanism is about sacrificing stuff and worshipping the devil...you need to go do some research.))

How long have you been in this religion?

I started to follow Satanism about two years ago.

Why do you believe in this faith?

I am not very good at explaining things so i will just say that it just makes sense to me. My reasons i hate other religions would kind of explain why i am asatanist.

What do you hate about other religions?

I hate oh so very much things about lots of religions.

I hate how when people are little children with no free will and ability to decide for themselves, Parents will just take them and make them whatever the parents want them to be. People will babtize their children and make them believe in god, then they will shelter them from all free will whatsoever so they never have a chance to choose what they really want to be. Thats one of the reasons i Became a satanist is because i was a christian but after a while i started to realize that i never really accepted christ and believed in the first place, my parents did for me. And i hate how People that do this to their children will cry and condemn their own children when they decide what is right for themselves and not what their parents told them. Its just that Even though they are your kids you have no right to shove all of your beliefs down their throats and turn them into a religious fanatical zombie like everyone else.

Another thing i hate is fanatical supergroups. I ahve listened to some of the crap that peopel will spout over the T.V. and the radio and it makes me sick. Now i know lots of peole arent like this but then again there are lots that are. They will sit there and criticize and condemn everything they dont see fit, they will Hate and discriminate agaisnt everything thats not with their religion. They will sit their and call Homosexuality and all of that stuff blasphemy when in reality, they are more blashpemous than the people that condemn them. They have no right to choose what is right and wrong. And by calling people names and discriminating they are jsut worse than everyone else.

Another thing i hate is how people can blindly hate anything they dont undestand and do what someone on an altar tells them to do. People think satanists sacrifice animals and children to satan, when in reality satanist dont believe in satan, only fanatic cults do. They think anybody in black and eyeliner cuts themselves and wants to die. they believe that somehting is wrong because a dusty old book tells them it is. Its just stupid to follow a group blindly and have no say to yourself.

And the thing i hate the most involves mostly Christians and catholics. they will sit there and say that their religion is the ONLY one that is right. they think that just because they have a bible they can call every other religion wrong. Well they are wrong. they have no right to deny every other religion contrary to themselves. and its worse how they can just send out missionaries to other countries and go there to call their religion wrong and force them to become a different religion. And the wort part is when they condemn everything but someone condemn them, they will sue them or make a gigantic public ordeal about it because they are so ignorant. YOU CANT CALL SOMETHING WRONG THEN SUE THEM WHEN THEY CALL YOU WRONG!!!

Now remember im not targeting anybody in particular, just the mainstream fanatics that ruin everything in this world. Because i do have people that always go "Well i dotn do that so your wrong" but im not talking about them so it doesnt matter. I hope i didnt make craploads of spelling errors in my rantings above. and i hope i didnt accidentally contradict myself or somehting cus i just went off typing here.  

[Jiachi Kieln]

I am not seeking, in writing this, to place myself at the same level as Christianity's God. I simply am explaining the path of logic which their Bible itself even states, as I myself have come to understand. My writings are a combination of explaining the puzzle which I saw, which led to my leaving the religion.


I seek answers to questions which I ask. At times, and I already know this as being often, I continue to bother people beyond the time in which they had given an answer. I do this because I wish to (or am fascinated by?) discover why, of their choises, they had gone out of their way to pick the (presumeably) wrong one. Does not God do the same thing?

He creates Satan, the first being ever with free will, or, apparently, one of, since he is not the only angel. Satan is the only one which had ever turned against God, and if not, then he was the first, and the rest who did as well simply have faded from mention. God tries again, creating us humans, within a perfect world, free of corruption. Since it is free of corruption, then Satan had yet to have ever had any contact with it at all. Because we are given free will as the angels had been, then God must allow this choice to be presented to us somehow, and therefore would have to seed corruption within this perfect world of his creation. If this is so, and we follow the words written within the scriptures, he told us how we may err, and left us to make that choice.

To provide a test of our devotion and resolve, he allowed in Satan. Eve was the first to be tested, and chose to follow the path which God had spoken against. Adam was bothered by this when he had found Eve, but since God was absent, and left him to make the same choice, he also chose to follow the path that Eve had passed down. Having chosen other than his preference, God had thrown them away from himself, with little more than the clothes on their backs, the final provisions directly given unto them from him within his presence.

Sound anything like the story of the prodigal son yet? Unlike that story, though, they are shunned by him, and pushed away. The only means by which they could return into his graces would require that they die, that they may never err about him again. Why must death be required of us, that our 'father' might ever even consider truely forgiving us of our mistakes, which he gave to us in the first place to make?

Did God do these things out of curiosity? Testing their answers, even beyond their given 'yes' or 'no'? I do such things all of the time, and the results are negative the majority of the time. The few times in which I am answered in a manner which is satisfactory unto myself, even then, I can't help but be curious as to farther things, and to other answers they may give unto any questions I may present them with at a later time. Is God then a being of great curiosity as well? He is considered to know the answer automatically, and yet he still asks.


I cannot help but then think, that the question which he presents us with, is not 'good' or 'bad', but simply, 'yes' or 'no'. Such paintings of opinion are constructions of our own. mrgreen  

[acehawk]

What religion are you?
agnostic

How long have you been in this religion?
For a couple of years. Since I figured out that christianity dosn't make sense.

Why do you believe in this faith?
Because non of the actual religions make any sense. Yes I actualy thought about it (though I do still need to read up on a lot of religons), I didn't just go religon sucks or anything like that. An example of this is how the old and new testaments contradict eachother. The old testament shows a God that isn't very forgiving to sinners. It says that he even resorted to flooding the entire earth. The new testament depicts an extreamly forgiving God that would forgive the worst sinners.

What do you hate about other religions?
How a lot of people try to force theirs on other people. Also how they make a lot of people so closed minded. I used to have a friend whos mom wouldn't let him do a lot of things because she said that they were "satanic".

If you are agnostic/atheist please tell us why?
Because I don't believe in any of the actual religons but I do belive that there might be something out there. I think that it is kindof hard for everything to just come into existance and all that but also if there is a God were did he come from?  

[fantasier_xp]

Huh, kind of a trend here. Most people seem to be atheist. I can kind of see why though. I am atheist, but that's just because my family isn't religeous. I wish I knew more about religions, they are so fascinating! I am really interested in that Satanism that was mentioned earlier... have to find what that's all about.
Anyway, we (humans) just invented gods and religions because we felt alone in the world (IMO). And notice how personified gods are? We make them like us. Even aliens too we personify.
Haha, does anyone know who Bill Maher is? Well, he is a kind of political comedian... he said something like, "I think the Bible started out as a mad libs game... 'and He made..woman..from a..rib...'" It does sound like one too.  

[Aednit X.]

Religion is a tough subject, so please bear with me!
I choose not to follow any particular religion though I still consider myself to be a spiritual person. I was raised christian, but I think that modern-day churches are corrupt. They care just as much about money as everyone else. To be clear, I'm not criticizing christianity as a religion itself, but more in its application. The Bible is not an accurate historical document, though it was probably based off of true events. I've seen the Da Vinci code; I can't validate it, but it made a lot of sense in regards to how women have been supressed by the catholic church.

Ultimately, I believe Jesus had a purpose to live and have such an impact on humanity, but I do not consider him synonymous with "God." Jesus was human, the aspect of "God" is completely different to me.Is there one or many gods? I don't know. I do have a strong belief in a higher power; something has to be keeping the chaos of the universe in check. Science makes more sense to me than religion (evolution does happen), but life is self is such a miracle. We as humans know so little, how could any religion we formulate be anywhere near the truth of the cosmos?

I am very open minded, but I am a biology major, so most organized religions frustrate me. I like hearing about the founding of all religions and what they ultimately teach, but I'm certainly not searching for a religion to join. I think that every religion has a grain of truth among a field of BS.

Again, I have a hard time talking about religion briefly, and I hope no one was offended or confused.  

[shadow_alchemist92]

i am a christian and i believe in god, however i dont like christianity as a whole (what ppl have made of it, not the religion itself) ppl have gotten the opinion that christians are stuck-up and are often either too strict or too lenient, and rightly so. many christians are, however, i believe that the religion of christianity is correct