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- What Religion or Lack Thereof Are You?
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| What Religion or Lack Thereof Are You?; Yap. | |
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| Tweet Topic Started: Jul 29 2012, 08:43 PM (777 Views) | |
| Wallace | Jul 29 2012, 08:43 PM Post #1 |
Break out the L-word. The other L-word.
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This topic's been done before, but the last one was lasted posted in in 2010, so yeah. Here you go. Me, personally, I'm a pantheist/ Einsteinian religion. I like to think that, as Carl Sagan brilliantly said, "The cosmos is also within us; we're made of star stuff. We are a way for the cosmos to know itself." We give, with our consciousness, life and self-awareness to the universe, and the universe gave to us the matter and laws of nature for such consciousness to arise within it. In other words, we are in the universe, and the universe is in us. I'm eager to see what others think or believe, and hopefully we can constructively discuss it. ^_^ |
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| Lady CL4P-TP | Jul 29 2012, 09:08 PM Post #2 |
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Well personally I'm not overly religious but I do believe in God. But I'm also open-minded to other religious beliefs, basically I don't discriminate. ^^' |
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| [Mika] Gumi | Jul 29 2012, 09:10 PM Post #3 |
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I suppose I'm a Christian. But I believe in whatever I want. x 3 |
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| Devy The Mutt | Jul 29 2012, 09:28 PM Post #4 |
'Ello, lad!
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I'm Borderline Christian. I DON'T BELIEVE SHIT THAT IT SAYS IN THE BIBLE, but I do believe in a Jesus Christ or God. I just hate when Christians say "you don't believe that in the bible? You're going to Hell." "Nah, nah, f**k you, I believe in what I believe in!" I think the Bible is exaggerated a lot. For all we know, the Earth couldn't been made in seven days. It could've took over a million years to be made like what Scientists say. People just exaggerate and decide to put that. They try to explain the simple fact our week has seven days. Now, if you really look at it, we're just one out of millions of experiments that God has created and we're just being watched over time. God could actually be considered an alien if you want to be scientific. I'm just...in between on Atheist and Christian. All the saints that Catholics talk about? They could be considered one as two being sent here. Just like Jesus. I'm not saying I don't believe in shit, I'm saying that I'm in between. But, there is one problem. I honestly think who created us was an idiot and should've thought twice. I'm being blunt and into the point. |
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| Wallace | Jul 29 2012, 09:33 PM Post #5 |
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Break out the L-word. The other L-word.
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Which God? The phrase, "I believe in God" is highly ambiguous, because it does not specify which God you believe in, nor what you believe constitutes your belief. Do you mean that you believe in a creator, but not specifically any certain one? Do you believe in a creator in the common religious sense, a creator who created the heavens and the earth and humanity, or do you believe in a creator of the universe as a whole? Do you believe in God as not a spiritual being but of some broader, physical context? These are important questions you should ask yourself if you're unsure what it is you believe specifically. According to Christianity, all of the Bible must be treated as valid and conclusive truths. (However, the Bible is barely historically correct, and as such the supernatural events described are of highly questionable validity.) I've heard and used to be a fan of the whole "God is an alien" theory, but either those aliens have just fudgeed off and stopped trying to help or "guide" us, or they simply don't exist. I think of religion, historically, as a philosophy of ignorance. When someone could not explain something, they said, "It must be the work of God!" and stopped discovering new things, and started blindly worshiping their God(s) of choice. For a more in depth explanation of what I mean, watch this presentation by Neil deGrasse Tyson. And having posted that link, I think it shall segue into the next point well: It is not hard to see that intelligent design is kind of a stupid idea. Again, watch that video, closer to the end to find out my reasoning for that. If there was a God, and He/She/It created us, he had no clue what he was doing. We are certainly not extraordinarily beautiful (if you look at it from a nonhuman point of view) and a lot of our body's functions/systems are highly ineffective. A couple of examples: - We are warmblooded and, as a result, must constantly eat. Crocodiles, a coldblooded animal, can survive for a week with just one chicken. - Our orifice for breathing and our orifice for eating/drinking are the same orifice, which practically guarantees that some percentage of the population will choke to death each year. There are plenty of other reasons outlined in that video. |
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| Devy The Mutt | Jul 29 2012, 10:13 PM Post #6 |
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'Ello, lad!
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You are at the same line as me. I get everything you say. The bible is not historically correct so it remains FALSE. Yeah, honestly, creating us was just out of amusement, I'm assuming. God get's pissed, it decides to create something and play with us like a nerd with a magnifying glass and an ant. As you noticed, aliens have much more intelligence than us by FAR. You can tell that it was our creator's fault. Not the damn Adam and Eve myths I hear. For the whole, saints being aliens, theory. I don't exactly believe it, but it could always happen. Reason being, IT'S A THEORY. IT COULD OR COULD NOT HAPPEN. But anyway, I'm glad to see someone who agrees with me. My mother always tells me shit like "oh, my aunt survived from a brain tumor because of God." Uh, for one thing, shit happens when a doctor looks at an X-Ray wrong. Just saying. Second thing, explain our Grandmother. If we have a God, then why the hell did she die? If our aunt was close to God and our grandmother was close, then how come our grandmother died? Sorry, you're irrelevant and need to stop being an extremist. I'm not really saying that God isn't real in that situation. I was being blunt and saying that MIRACLES happen, don't expect it to always be from God. The universe is always expanding and yeah, as I think of it, God's just making matters worse. He's giving himself a much harder responsibility. There's a certain point where no one can multitask that much. Even if you could heal or kill 2,000,000 people in a snap. Hey, Hitler managed to kill about 20 people in a second with camps. Hitler can be considered as a God if you worship him. I also hate when people say that it's a Muslim's fault that we were attacked in 9/11. Think about it, it was Bush's fault. He brown-nosed into the Taliban's shit and we ended up getting a warning. Bush's fault right there. He wanted oil (because the middle east was rich of oil) from the middle east and he ended up fighting SOMEONE ELSE's war to get it. Jokes on us American. There is no true definition of Patriotism if they are just being a FALSE Patriot for a country that is almost the worst in the world. We have so many ignorant people (ignorant meaning without knowledge. Not the slang for "rude") in this country, that we are very low on academics, we don't know how to talk to people, and there is many people that deserve to die. Yes, I said it, I said that people deserve to die. NOT ALL, but most. Not that much people deserved to die in 9/11, but face it. THE NATURAL LIFE, YOU'RE BORN, YOU DIE. |
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| Lady CL4P-TP | Jul 29 2012, 10:14 PM Post #7 |
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Well I believe in the Christian God but I don't entirely agree with it's followers and their many over-dramatic beliefs of what you actually go to hell for. I honestly think religion isn't the problem, its the followers and their attempts to convert people or shove their beliefs down your throat. It's very annoying and it creates a lot of problems for people who don't agree with that other person's beliefs.  I usually don't chat it up about religion though because I know how sensitive a subject it can be, so it's nice to, for once, have a conversation about it and nobody's feelings are hurt. |
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| Katsuko | Jul 29 2012, 11:29 PM Post #8 |
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I'm a Catholic Confucianist, so I voted Christian.
I'm glad you have an absolute definition of Christian belief. The actual body of believers differs from your ideal.
I'm not into the "the Bible is perfect" idea. A perfect book requires a perfect reader. Still, I'm curious: are you talking about 7-day creationism and Noah's flood?
Zeus was clearly a God of the gaps; his function was to explain the cause of a natural event. He's made redundant by empirical Newtonian natural law. Plato's One is not a God of the gaps. He does not explain anything in the material universe, but acts as an integral part of a philosophy. The evidence for the One is from pure reason--just like the evidence for materialism and pantheism.
You assume God would make people highly effective Darwin machines--an odd assumption. Perhaps God wanted us to suffer. What you're really arguing is simply the problem of evil--non? Edited by Katsuko, Jul 30 2012, 02:36 AM.
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| VlaDDrakkeN | Jul 30 2012, 02:11 AM Post #9 |
The Jester
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You have a Shintoist choice? If ever someone actually says they are, I'll be downright surprised. Though often I feel like the only reason Japanese ever associate with Shintoism because of nationalistic pride and do not really believe in it(Save for the handful that are actually devoted). But that's just me being really jaded on the subject. I personally like Shintoism. Ok, as for me, I was tempted to put Polytheist, but I figured I sorta more belonged in the Hindu category, since a lot of my belief comes from Hindu philosophy and spirituality(preferably the Shiva and Mother Goddess/Durga/Kali parts). I tend to be very Universalist with faith(As in, seeing all faiths as true), even having drawn a picture of Jesus having his birthday party with the Buddha, Amaterasu, and other beings from different religions as my final project for art class(it was around Christmas). Also as a side effect of having a spiritual teacher who perfers Chaos over Order, Ive begun to lean that way too. |
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| Pedruben | Jul 30 2012, 02:48 AM Post #10 |
Currently attempting to return.
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Well lets see I went to Catholic school for about 10 years, spent the two last thinking a lot about religion and decided to stick with atheism. I usually go with raw science when I want to explain stuff. The whole idea around religion just doesn't make sense to me. Now I usually don't like to discuss religion because it can get ugly. And people are entitled to there opinion, in the end religion is about beliefs and there's have has much chances of being right has mine's. Now, if there one thing I don't like is when you get dumb people and religion together. I don't really want to go to deep because i think everyone has seen an example of what I'm saying. A very recent one was during the discovery of the Higgs Boson. Or has some call it "The god's particle". People from around the world just took the name literally and said it prove the existence of god, without even having the slightest idea what it was. I'm all up for discussion but watching that happening was pretty sad. |
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| [Mika] Gumi | Jul 30 2012, 04:50 AM Post #11 |
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Politics and religion. Two of the most controversial topics in history. ; P |
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"I never felt truly alive unless I was staring death in the face." -Solid Snake ~All Art Belongs to the VG Cats Comic by Scott Ramsoomair~ | |
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| Wallace | Jul 30 2012, 07:55 AM Post #12 |
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Break out the L-word. The other L-word.
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When you are talking about something such as creationism, or divine/alien intervention, or intelligent design, it is vital that you use the scientific definition of theory, not the common language definition. The scientific definition is not synonymous with "hypothesis." The scientific definition is "a well-substantiated explanation of some aspect of the natural world, based on a body of facts that have been repeatedly confirmed through observation and experiment." Since you are talking about creationism, you are seeking to explain a natural phenomena (the creation/generation of life, the Earth, or the universe). When you are trying to explain natural phenomena, you must use the scientific definition of theory. Miracles are not impossible. Miracles are merely what we call that which we do not understand, and once we understand it, we no longer need to regard it as miraculous. There are two things you are assuming here incorrectly: 1) that such a God is not omnipotent and has his limits (if he does have limits, they are likely beyond human comprehension), and 2) that how many people one can kill in the shortest amount of time is a qualifying factor for godhood. The middle east is the place of the largest and richest known oil reserves on the planet. So, would you rather have had to pay $10 a gallon or attempt to strike a deal with Saudi Arabia? You've really got little to no evidence to support these claims, that it is exclusively Bush's fault and that it was not the terrorists' fault at all. The belief that someone, anyone, deserves to die is not a good belief to have. Trying to excuse human-caused disasters and tragedies by saying that "they probably deserved to die" is abhorrent. THE NATURAL LIFE: YOU'RE BORN, YOU DIE NATURALLY. Being killed by members of your own species for reasons such as war or religious hate is not a natural death. The Bible says that all of its word is to be taken literally. That is what I am saying, and if that was not clear then I apologize. I'd like to apologize again for making that claim despite having little to no evidence to back it up. Though, of course, events such as the 7-day creation and Noah's flood are not historically accurate in the slightest. I tried to find information on Plato's One, but could not, so forgive me if I am misinformed. But it seems to me, that if you say it is based upon pure reason (I am assuming you mean completely undiluted and uncorrupted reason) like pantheism and materialism, Plato's One and pantheism are very similar if not the same. Note that when I say, "religion," I mean non-Einsteinian religion. If such a God that deigns to call himself both omnipotent and benevolent wants his children to suffer, I want nothing to do with him. I'm not sure exactly what you mean, since I've not mentioned evil in any form (to my knowledge) in my post. |
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| Devy The Mutt | Jul 30 2012, 08:42 AM Post #13 |
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'Ello, lad!
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1. Theory - I wasn't saying anything about a theory being a hypothesis. I was just saying simply, it could or could not happen. Even with facts that prove IT COULD, doesn't mean it will. 2. I never said miracles weren't impossible. Things happened and we can't control ALL of it. 3. Exactly, it's the whole matter of being smart and knowing how to manipulate your audience. Adolf Hitler was, well...I'm not saying he was a good man, but he was a very talented, smart, and great speaker. To be able to take control of people OUTSIDE of his country, team up with Benito Mussolini of Italy, it takes someone with a God hand to do that. He controlled more people than Jesus Christ SUPPOSEDLY, did at his own time. Jesus Christ managed to get only about thirty to fourty people in the matter of the time he began miracles. Hitler managed to get a whole three countries by his side it the matter of a couple months. Not even the devil himself would be able to do that. 4. Think about what BUSH did to get the oil. He got into their shit. Wasn't minding his own business. He thought if it benefited his country, he could get it. Not to mention both him and his father were WAR MONGRELS. They had to fight to get what Americans needed. Instead, Bush got what we needed, but it cost a couple thousand people. What I'm saying is WHAT DID YOU THINK BUSH DID TO GET US THE OIL? HE DIDN'T JUST WALK INTO A COUNTRY AND TOOK IT. HE GOT INTO SOMETHING HE WASN'T SUPPOSED TO. A WAR OF RELIGION THAT'S BEEN GOING ON FOR OVER A THOUSAND YEARS. 5. Not a good belief to have? I believe in what I believe in. There is just some people in this world that deserve to die. People thought George Zimmerman deserved to die. People thought Osama Bin Laden deserved to die. People think James Holmes deserves to die, but no one's saying that's bad. I never said that ALL people deserve to die from a tragedy like that. You got to face it. Not all people in the WTC was innocent. I believe that most of the people there should not have died. I hope they rest in peace and enjoy their afterlife. BUT, there is a small percentage. That tiny little 2% people don't bother looking at that ended up doing something stupid before that event happened. 6. You still die, therefore, still saying my statement. People have a past, present, and future. Unfortunately, we can't change the past, and we don't know the future so we cannot alter our future. People die. Being killed by your own member of species is unnatural? Oh, so Meerkats attacking and killing their own species of animal is unnatural? Because they're the same territorial species they're SUPPOSED TO BE. Our creator gave us a purpose in life. You have to realize, we're Overpopulated as it is. Pretty soon, this Earth will be sucked dry. Sounds familiar? Almost sounds like...oh yeah, the saying I always say to my friends at school! Mankind is a festering parasite, relentlessly draining it's own host dry! You got to face it, we NEED another plague. If we don't Earth will go away soon. It might take several thousand years. It may take only two years. It all depends on what happens. Nuclear wars, viruses, plagues, and drought. Anything could happen. Enough said. ~~Bottom line is, I'm not really fretting over this. You believe in what you believe in. I believe in what I believe in. I'm not afraid to support my own beliefs. I'm still friends with Muslims, Christians, and Buddhists. I don't stereotype in what people believe in. I just love to piss off extremists who say I'm going to Hell for such nonsense. It does say "Do not worship any false idol," but I laugh at that. False Idol? How, in this Earth are we going to know the who REAL GOD is? He's not going to just appear us, slap us and tell us he does exist!~~ |
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| Katsuko | Jul 30 2012, 09:03 AM Post #14 |
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No it doesn't. If I'm wrong, show me where it says this.
Not historically, no. But hermeneutically, people have been advocating non-literal interpretations since ancient times for textual and philosophical reasons irrelevant to science. The problem with interpreting the Bible in general is not that it's inaccurate necessarily, but that it's unclear how passages are meant to be read.
I'm using pure reason in the Kantian sense. Pure reason is thought abstracted from empirical experience with reality. Plato's One is not important specifically; his God is just one of many that serves to meet a metaphysical necessity in a system of philosophy. Hinduism, Catholicism, Aristotle, and Descartes use similar gods. My point is that these aren't "gods of ignorance" in the way Zeus is, so your broad treatment of historic religion passes over most important religions.
What you're stating here is the problem of evil. And I'm not saying God wants us to suffer; I'm just pointing out that it's an intentionalist fallacy to assume it would be better from God's point of view for people to be perfect Darwin machines than what we are. Edited by Katsuko, Jul 30 2012, 09:08 AM.
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| Wallace | Jul 30 2012, 09:11 AM Post #15 |
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Break out the L-word. The other L-word.
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1. If you cannot prove that it could happen, it is foolish (according to me, because I know people will attack me for saying this) to believe that it could regardless. 2. I never said we could control all of what happened. I never said we could control most of what happened. As far as getting things done is concerned, humanity is by far inferior to the universe. 3. It seems to me that you are associating the unknown with religion. Which is fairly typical of most religions. Hitler was a very bad man. He was a very good speaker, and he got a lot of people to be okay with him killing millions of people. That does not mean that he is divine, or that he was influenced by any kind of divine intervention. 4. You're not doing a very good job at giving evidence to support these claims. I really don't have much to say about it until you stop arrogantly stating them as obviously true without any evidence to back it up. 5. There is very little distance from a stance that holds that any person who you deem to deserve to die does and a stance that holds that any person who you deem to deserve to die is at your disposal. In other words, thinking that any person deserves to die is almost the same as thinking that you can kill whoever you think deserves to die. It is a very pessimistic outlook on humanity and, regardless of what said person may have done, it is an immoral perspective. No person deserves to die. If someone has committed such grievous acts of terror or evil as the people you have mentioned, it is up to a rational court of law analyzing the situation through objective laws to determine whether they are guilty or innocent, and delivering appropriate punishment in the case of their guilt. The appropriate punishment for such evil acts is a life's sentence, with the guilty person being allowed to choose to be executed if he does not wish to live out the rest of his life in prison. It is not up to anyone whether anyone else deserves to live or to die. 6. As I said, the stance you hold is dangerously close to a genocidal one. Do you truly believe that another plague should come upon us to kill off most of us? Then what is the difference between that belief, and the belief that it is okay to kill whoever you deem to be below you and evil, without proper due process of any kind of law? The fact that, on top of this, you equate Hitler with divinity, is, in my eyes, deeply troubling. It should be self-evident in the fact that it is called the Word of God. If it is the Word of God, then it should be the law above all else, no? I was raised in a Christian family, and I was raised to believe that every single thing that happened in the Bible actually happened, from the 7-day creation to Noah's flood to the virgin birth to the resurrection of Jesus Christ. These are, of course, scientifically impossible. So, I was raised to interpret the Bible literally, and every church I have been to has said that it ought to be interpreted literally. Of course, there are other interpretations that go with that literal one such as philosophical and textual ones, but the literal interpretation is one I have never seen disclaimed by Christians. Yes, I know that Zeus and the other gods of his nature were used to explain specific parts of nature. I understand that. But it's the idea of intelligent design inherent to most traditional religions that promotes ignorance. Take Isaac Newton for example. He was brilliant. He discovered the laws of motion and of gravity and he invented Calculus (practically on a dare to explain why planets orbit on an ellipsis), all before he turned 26. When he was confronted with the problem that not only did the Sun "tug" on Earth, but so did Jupiter, and that because of this the orbits must be incredibly unstable and that for some reason, the orbits were still working. It was at this point that he claims, "Oh, it must be the work of God!" and stops discovering. Whenever you say that, "Oh, it must surely be the work of God and beyond our comprehension, we shouldn't worry about how it works," you are putting off discovering and knowledge in favor of ignorance. Not just Christianity, either. There was a time in the early 1000s AD in the Middle East where Baghdad was the intellectual capitol of the world. They were discovering stars and naming them, they were creating things like algebra. And then some bright Islamic imams began saying that mathematics and science were the work of the devil, and that period of scientific enlightenment shuts down, and has not recovered since. If you want more examples, watch the Neil deGrasse Tyson video I linked to earlier. Perhaps, then, I am speaking of the problem of evil. I cannot understand why an omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent being would create such imperfect beings and systems and then allow them to fall into evil, something that he abhors and must turn away from because it is by nature so in opposition to him (he created it, too, so for some reason he created that which he hates). Also, the fact that he is supposedly omnibenevolent is contradicted in the Bible, especially the Old Testament, where he's constantly jealous of gods that don't even exist, and highly insecure about himself. Oh, and all the people he killed. Worth noting that the commandment, "Though shalt not kill" only applied to not killing people within your tribe, and that anyone else was fair game. Oh, and that commandment doesn't apply to God at all. |
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