Religion

[Shotgun Diplomat]

Just putting it out there but anybody else on the forums follow any kind of religion?

[Born Yesterday]

How do you find it hard to coalesce it with your belief?

[warpiper]

My god is a gorgon and I follow her serpentine omnipotence.

[Baby Brian]

I'm Augustic. That means I do believe in something greater than what we currently know or understand. That could be an omnipotent being, but I really hope not since any "god" that would encourage/allow us to suffer and continue on the path we have been taking as a race- well that's no god I would want to follow. I also believe that most every organized religion has gotten it very wrong (or mostly wrong) and isn't worth wasting my time following it.

[Repaid1]

I'm Augustic. That means I do believe in something greater than what we currently know or understand. That could be an omnipotent being, but I really hope not since any "god" that would encourage/allow us to suffer and continue on the path we have been taking as a race- well that's no god I would want to follow. I also believe that most every organized religion has gotten it very wrong (or mostly wrong) and isn't worth wasting my time following it.

My dad said: "You can't know something, if you don't know how to spell it" = Agnostic

[Baby Brian]

My dad said: "You can't know something, if you don't know how to spell it" = Agnostic

Well you got me there. I'd blame it on my phone thinking it was August, but when I changed it back I messed up. Sorry about that. (though it would be nice if it was august).

[feralfreak]

i use to have faith, but its dead, hell zombies are more alive that it will ever be, what i see with my own 2 eyes outweighs what people say

[AwakenEvil]

Hail Satan

[Born Yesterday]

My god is a gorgon and I follow her serpentine omnipotence.

[willnotwill]

I'm a member of no organized religion.

[Bettypooh]

I'm basically Protestant but I stopped drinking the kool-aid most "Christians" so willingly swallow I'm also a realist, give me the plain unvarnished truth over anything else any day; I can handle it The truth ain't nice but it's out there

[Dill_Pickle]

I find religion to be orthogonal to science.

[Baby Brian]

I love how everyone seems to be posting with some sort of rationalized logic to their beliefs. Awesome.

[willnotwill]

From ol' Pete Seeger:

[kevindhca]

Science rules!!!!

All religions have many beliefs that have been definitively proven wrong, yet they still insist past belief is indicative of truth.

Belief does not constitute proof, and ideological adherence leads many people down a self harming path.

Most religions could not withstand examination in court where provable truth rules.

Maybe one day people will reject controlling influences, and religions will be relegated to a footnote of the past.

One day I hope we get to the point where I never hear "we gotta kill/fight/punish THOSE people".

[Elfy]

I'm agnostic... I'm open to the idea of things but without proof it is a waste of time.

[Bettypooh]

Yet even science has gotten things wrong before. So who ya gonna believe when everyone has been wrong before?

[Dill_Pickle]

Look for those who seek the truth.

[kevindhca]

Betty, there is a difference between theory and proof.

Science has got it wrong in the past, but those were theories that couldn't be proved.

Science does not insist theories are true until the results are reproducible by others many times, then it becomes proof.

The whole basis of the scientific method is to never accept information from few sources to be accepted as proof.

When a concept is proved it becomes truth, no matter if the average person understands it.

We know so much about the universe around us that no one can have extensive knowledge about everything.

We need to rely on provable information provided by experts in their fields.

Dill, I like that quote.

Us vs. them is one of the reasons I dislike labels.

Divisions only encourage dismissal of others points of view.

Although violence in primates is not created equal. We seem to have taken it to new levels not seen in other primate groups.

As the species that should realize all life on Earth has a limited time frame, we really need to do better.

[Shotgun Diplomat]

How do you find it hard to coalesce it with your belief?

[Diapered Jason]

The interesting thing about science is with it, we actually can describe the reality that is in front of us through experimentation and observation.

[willnotwill]

I used to feel that my fetish was wrong and sick, but I came to realise that as I believe it God gave this compulsion therefore it is only right.

[TexasBabyBoy]

I don't see why there has to be a separation between faith and science. They both complement themselves perfectly. Science lets us explore our world amd universe, from leptons to black holes, from extemophiles to whales, it is amazing. Science helps us explain the world around us, but theology is not science.

Theology asks why? What is the purpose of the Universe? Why are we here, are we really just unimportant, insignificant, just more spects in the universe, arriving by mere chance. (The odds are astonishing we live in a universe that, thankfully, is able to keep the nuclear force in atoms very tight or else we would all disinigrate) I think that they can both love together, the Pope has a Masters in Chemistry for crying out loud.

I also think there is very strong support for Christianity outside the Bible. A 1st century Historian, Josephus, who was a Jew, documented that there was in fact a man named Jesus of Nazareth, who claimed to be the Messiah, and had some followers. That is within a few years, or so, after his crucification. For comparison, the earliest biographies we have for Alexander the Great are, at the earliest, within 600 years after his death. Yet we still hold them to high standards. If I remeber correctly. There was also a Roman historian, with a wierd name, but it started with a T. Pretty much the same thing.

I have come to a conclusion that religion is very essential, that science does not refute religion and vise versa. Just my two cents for the day.

[lilJester]

i use to feel i was wrong and sick, but then i took a long hard look at the world and said fuck it they're worse than i ever care to be. they as in the world in general. watch the news.

[Bettypooh]

So choose as you will but remember- it's your choice and nobody else has the right to push you to other conclusions I was given a mind to use and I use it. What it shows me is that the God I believe in is not anything like the kind old grandfatherly sort that most religions would have you believe. The more that you ponder it, the clearer it becomes that these religions are so far off base from the obvious truth that only fools and the misled will continue with them- and that concept is based on what those religions claim as truth. So if your truth and your beliefs don't match something is going very wrong here, and that's where the mind should start exploring what that is and why it's that way On doing that I found what I feel is true and I can now disprove Christianity by it's own stated beliefs and truths quite easily. Which led me to ask myself what would be the point in doing that? It would not create much happiness and it would cause much unhappiness as folks came to discover that they'd spent their whole lives on the wronmg path and in soi diond had sup[ported many truly evil things along the way So I don't push it and I go by "live and let live"