What's your Religion?

[Fate_Aki]

Just asking because I have until recently I always avoided churches. I suppose you could have labeled me Agnostic. Yes, I do believe in a higher being, but never thought I should have to go to a special building to pray or the like. Well like I said until recently. I also wanted to know who else may believe as I do or as I once did. No sence beating around the bush and let Dasaria know I have decided to join the real LDS. I can honestly say I'm happier than I have been in a long time. Just curious what RL religion everyone follows.

[Oye99]

You know.. I honestly had to search up what LDS meant, I kept thinking the 'real ling' death squad', but that couldn't of been it hehe.. shows how much I know, eh? ;p

I used to be religious, really, but i'm more of an athiest than anything now. But hey, things change, eh?

[Redder]

Well....

I go outside for 15 mins every night and pray to Alinkahar so that he will claim my soul from them dang Nergies when I pass....

Scary, but true.... and why not? The ancient Babylonian/Mesopotamian people believed it was true and documented it, so why can't my RL religion be Ansharian? At least it would be better than what I put on the government survey thingie we had in Australia, of which under religion I wrote "Jedi" which is what almost 9% of Australians wrote!!

[Muletang]

*throws a cat into a bucket of pigeons*

I'm 100% Me'ist. I believe in the philosophy of Me. It has some budhism in there, but i don't meditate...why bother when you're already the enlightend one ( )? Its got some Christian in there...10 commandments are just common sense. I don't know enough about Muslim to comment, but I hear it has the basic line of 'don't be crap unto others' which I applaude. And the rest is filled with my ideas. I don't feel the need to prey, I don't believe in hell - how you gonna feel when you ain't got no glands and nerves to feel with anymore? I'd like to believe in an after life of some sort..but meh, if I'm honest with myself I just think its party time for all the little worms and thats it.

I also look at religion as the non biological cancer, what else has killed more people? Fair enough it makes some people happy, and has helped out a lot of others, but it is also responsible for imposing itself on millions of people and appears to lead to fear and intolerance...despite what it preaches. The problem is it is humans that hold it, and we are just animals with opposable thumbs and a voice, we're crap and don't deserve it and as such ruin it by having it.

I also don't like the church for what it has done, the hypocrasies, the killing, the lying and now most recently the covering up. Oh and to have to parts of a bible, some people take the old testament and some the new, whats that all about.

I also don't like the (not my quote this): "I used to pray to god for a new bike, then I figured I'd just go and steal one and pray for forgiveness instead". It completely removes any personal responsibility.

I recently read the DaVinci Code - great book. the points it makes, which I'm currently looking up (not about the grail so much but about the origins of church) to make sure it all ain't rubbish, makes so much sense. I thought all the above before reading it, and I sugest anyone interested in the subject has a goosey at it too.

[lankycheese]

I'm a Christian, Catholic to be more acurate, but I don't really follow it word for word. I wrote this a while ago expressing my feelings of religion and science and the likes... Read at your own digress.

I'm a Scientist, I'm a Christian, I'm a Human being.

Science, the rules in which God placed upon the world that we live and breath in. Most people seem to believe that these two concepts can not go hand in hand. The deeper I study into science, the more and more I believe that God is up there being proud of the complicated machine he has made called life. I just can not accept that such marginal intricisies have occured completely by chance and coincidence.

Today in Chemistry class we learnt about a group of substances known as 'Buffer Solutions', now these substances are used in many things around the place, both man made, and by nature. The most notable would be in our own blood. Buffer solutions are able to keep the pH of a solution the same no matter what other substances are added to it. It is able to abdsorb or release H+ ions and keep the equilibrium the same as before the substance was added. If the pH of our blood changes slightly up or down, we die. The fact that we have these substances in our blood stream amazes me. God's up there thinking, "hmm, this blood thing needs the stay the same pH what see, how about I add this little thingo etc." Another example are our tears. The area around our eyes is perfect for bacteria to breed and thrive, but because our tears are acidic they can not. A buffer solution in our tears prevents it from ever losing this acidity. There are millions of chemical reactions like these that make life what it is.

The Physics world is just the same! All these rules and boundries that have been set up in time and space. We thought we knew them all, then Mr Eienstien came along with his theory of relativity which just rocked the whole house! God has set up these rules for his universe. When a computer programmer makes a game, he sets up rules. You walk into a wall, you stop, you jump up, you fall back down. While these rules are based on our own, they can sometimes be entirely different. Last time I checked I can't cast magic missle.

God took his lego blocks (atoms) and made the universe what it is. Of course it took him more then 7 days to make it all. Hell it took him billions of years to get the place to what it is now. I do not take the bible literally, to me it is a book of symbolism to preach the word of God and to form a basis of law and how one should live their life (doing good etc.) Through the rules of both science and the bible itself, society has formed into what it is today. Divided perhaps about that universal question of why? (42 you nitwits!) Science, God, and society itself. Suprisingly I have faith in all of these things. Yes even humanity. Foolish and niave probably, but people are what God has put here into his giant lego set/computer game, and some of us are good people ^^

So at the end of the day, I am a Scientist, I am a Christian, I am a Human being.

[El Pantezo]

Well....

I go outside for 15 mins every night and pray to Alinkahar so that he will claim my soul from them dang Nergies when I pass....

Scary, but true.... and why not? The ancient Babylonian/Mesopotamian people believed it was true and documented it, so why can't my RL religion be Ansharian? At least it would be better than what I put on the government survey thingie we had in Australia, of which under religion I wrote "Jedi" which is what almost 9% of Australians wrote!!

True, these historical civilizations worshipped some of these gods, but how did that turn out for them? I can't say I see the country of Babylon around today. It'd be much more logical to worship an ancient civilization like the Egyptians' gods, because Egypt is still around today, which could be a sign of divine favor. Assuming any divine figure(s) is benevolent, (s)he wouldn't wipe out his/her civilization, like what happened to the Babylons and Mesopotamians, right?

[Muletang]

Nicely put Cheese, and I agree at the wonder of things, but I just don't have the faith that these are driven by the one, but rather nature and its pig headed will to survive, and adapt to do it.
I just don't get the idea that it is more likely that instead of one big ball of chance puffed out into the universe it is actually a being that was around always and forever, knowing everything, decided to create it all. I mean, if he knows all anyway, then before he did creation he knew how it was going to end, so why bother? Now I don't expect an answer to that, but its that kind of thing that turns my thinking..I just can't accept there is a god.

[El Pantezo]

Nicely put Cheese, and I agree at the wonder of things, but I just don't have the faith that these are driven by the one, but rather nature and its pig headed will to survive, and adapt to do it.
I just don't get the idea that it is more likely that instead of one big ball of chance puffed out into the universe it is actually a being that was around always and forever, knowing everything, decided to create it all. I mean, if he knows all anyway, then before he did creation he knew how it was going to end, so why bother? Now I don't expect an answer to that, but its that kind of thing that turns my thinking..I just can't accept there is a god.

You've never seen a movie twice, or read a book twice, even though you know what happens? If you're trying to understand everything about God and his/her motivations, no wonder you have no faith. I mean have you never heard "God works in mysterious ways." before? You can't just say 'if I was completely omnipotent, why would I make a universe?' because you're not God. One, the mind can't grasp true omnipotence. It's like a squirrel wondering what it's like to be an asteroid. Two, if you believe in a perfect, omnipotent deity, then you can't believe that God has the personality/attitude/pleasures/vices/etc... that you do, because to believe that would be to believe you're as good as God, minus the power.

Yes, there's nothing amazing about us evolving how we have. The laws of probability make it a near-certainty that something we'd consider amazing unique life/evolution would happen somewhere in this massive and mostly barren universe. It's like if everyone in the world was flipping coins all day long, eventually someone would get 4,000 heads in a row, and they'd think it was a miracle or something, even though it was going to happen eventually anyways. If you must know, I'm Catholic. I won't give my reasons because that's like trying to explain why energy is conserved. Just won't happen. You believe it or you don't. People can try to explain it to others, but it's a waste of time, which is the reason I don't like discussing it in forums with more posts than neccessary to say it's a bad idea to discuss religion in forums.

[Muletang]

I dunno, I rekon discussing things helps you keep and open mind, helps to see whats going on in the world around outside of the confines of your own little world. I don't think anyone is expecting missionary work from you, but it is an interesting topic to roll around with and I think everyone here usually manages to keep civil and amicable *ducks the stones*.

More posts than necessary?

Two, if you believe in a perfect, omnipotent deity, then you can't believe that God has the personality/attitude/pleasures/vices/etc... that you do, because to believe that would be to believe you're as good as God, minus the power.

Haven't I been created in his image?

If you're trying to understand everything about God and his/her motivations, no wonder you have no faith

Thats exactly it, I have no faith, I dont believe in it and I have not found anything that motivates me to do so that I cannot happily accept as nature, luck, chance, fate, whatever, and if it is all about faith, what makes one persons better than anothers?

[Kell]

I just can't accept there is a god.

Weeeell... I never believed in some guy sitting upon a cloud with a long beard and a wooden stick either. But I did try to find out what -was- important to me then and what I could believe in.

My idea is that the God, or the Goddess, whichever you prefer most, is in you. You are part of a world that is so much bigger then you and it's a miracle that through all that happened, this world is still turning all by itself. There are so many truly odd critters walking around, did you ever look at a horse through the eyes of someone who never had seen a horse before? I'll tell you this; damn, that's one scary animal!
There are so many things here that we do not understand, but it's part of this world anyways. We are not bigger then life. We -are- life. Just like everything else around us.

With the risque of going to sound cheesy or maybe scary, I'll admit that the religion I relate to most is Wiccan or Paganism. I believe that there is a balance to everything, that there is a God and a Goddess. There is no pure good, there is no pure evil, there is only different shades of grey in this world. Neither the God nor the Goddess are good or evil either. They are everything all together, like the Sun who gives life but burns as well, the water that you drink but can also drown you. There are always two sides to a coin, that's the balance of things. I try to live up to the Wiccan Rede "An ye harm none, do what ye will". I grew up with that saying as my mother told me very often, it's common sense to me. Also do I believe in the threefold law, what goes around comes around and thrice as bad. I've seen it happen often enough.
When I began to read about paganism I read all these things and to me it just all fell in place.

I'm not very religious, I don't go to buildings to worship some guy on a cloud smirking down at us. Neither do I like following the rules from a book that's written centuries ago and nobody is even sure on whether they should follow it literally or if it's written to be read as "symbolic". There are so many wars in this world over religion, people can be so defensive where it comes to their faith and their gods. Why? Why can't we just discuss something like that? Why can't we just leave each other to believe in peace, when all the big books preach is merely common sense and decency...

Religion is a difficult thing for people to understand and we all understand it in different ways, thank the gods.

You know, I saw the movie the Mists of Avalon a few days ago. In the end of that movie, I believe it's said that the Goddess never dies, she just transforms and goes along with time.. Then you see, whoever it is, cast a meaning full glance at a Holy Virgin statue.

That was such a strong image to me... Most people who do believe believe in the same thing, we just give it different names.. And we're free to do so. I think that every time I'm seeing a holy virgin statue now, I'll be thinking about how things can be different too. And I'll be remembering to think outside of the box and to keep in mind that other people are -allowed- to be different.. but that I'll still keep true to my own faith, principles and heart.

[Starkwolf]

Do I have faith....yes.
In God....for lack of a better term...yes.
Do I have a "Religion"?...well thats a seperate issue is it not? Organized religion? No. Religion as in I have faith in something higher than myself....yes.

I think it is put best this way....

"On the sixth day God created man....a week later man returned the favor."

[Rowan]

[Muletang]

haha

[Brigadier Syndir Isendur]

According to the Belief-O-Matic™, I'm a Unitarian Universalist. Never heard of 'em. It's probably some sort of tax scam.

[Redder]

True, these historical civilizations worshipped some of these gods, but how did that turn out for them?

They all killed each other - funny how history repeats....