I was loosely raised with a typical Christian upbringing. I still consider myself a Christian, but there are a lot of little things about me that are different from most others who would also call themselves Christians.
I’m going to try not to write a book about this, but I’ll give you a couple of quick examples. I don’t think it’s necessary to go to Church every week, and I often don’t, but there are reasons for that. I dislike the fact that so many people are too caught up in politics and that they let it interfere with their personal relationship with God.
And I especially go out of my way to not judge others (and I should note, it irks me to no end when other people do). I don’t tell people that what they think is wrong and what I think is right (and again, it irks me to no end when others do this). I’m a firm believer in the inferiority of humans to God, and I think there are a lot of things we don’t know, many for good reasons. Hence, I’m not about to tell someone else that they’re wrong. Now, I’ll talk about it all you like…I love having these conversations with people, it’s very interesting to hear what people believe and why…and if for some reason you’re interested in hearing what I think and why, or just discussing…I’m all for that. I think it helps us refine our own theories.
religious belifes… what are those… is religion even around anymore… it seems like in todays culture there is no religion there is just hate and distain for the things we can’t understand… and then we also have the extremists who really piss me off who try to tell you how you have to live and that you have to believ in some invisable all powerful being that may or may not be there to begin with… religion i used to have one till i realized that it was brainwashing me into believing that i had to live my life one way or some vengful all powerful thing is going to be angered and bring down his vengence on me… so now days i am opposed to any religion… but i do belive… i belive in what i want to and i follow my own belifes… i have my own way of doing things i will stick to that… insted of being told how to live…
I am a non-practicing Catholic. While I believe the basic tenets of church doctrine, I strongly disagree on some laws - birth control being the first that comes to mind. I won’t bore you with the others.
I’ve always marched to my own drummer and that includes my consideration of religious beliefs. I accept the mystical elements of religion on faith. If you accept a Supreme Being, then it follows that what humans consider miracles are within that Being’s power to perform.
I believe that ultimately all believers pray to the same God. With one exception, I don’t question how others may observe their beliefs. That exception being zealot fundamentalists of every stripe who insist that any and every act they commit in the name of religion is justified.
And add my thanks for starting this thread. It’s interesting to read the varied responses.
Lsura - Regarding the Virgin - I know it can seem difficult to differentiate between revering Mary and Worshipping (with a capital W) God, I think of it like this - Mary, unlike God - even Christ, was purely human. She above all others accepted fully the will of God in her life. As we look to the saints for inspiration and example, we can see her life as a the epogee of service to God. And Mary, as sort of the uber-saint, continues to intercede for us, to hear our prayers and to care about us as a mother cares for her children. The best analogy I can think of right now is to imagine you’re travelling in a foreign land. You would like to make a request of the ruler of that land, but you don’t really know the best way. And there in the king’s court is this person from your own country. Not only does she want to help you, but she’s like an adopted daughter of the king. Wouldn’t you ask for help? That’s a poor example, but I’m not feeling very bright today.
I am an animist pagan. Sometimes I call myself a druid for simplicity sake because many of the beliefs I have overlap with the reconstructionist druid movement, such as revering nature (including basic animism).
I believe that everything is made up of the divine and thus has a soul/purpose. There are no individual gods just archetypes of gods that people make for understanding of a given concept (such as a god of flowers, or a god of daisies). That doesn’t mean that gods and goddesses don’t have power even though there is no manifestation of god. The power comes from associations and personal insight rather than from supernatural whim.
There is no part of my belief system that can not be explained through science, including the animist concept of a soul, psychic phenomena, and magick. I don’t want to argue it, but it basically boils down to semantic arguments and particular definitions that aren’t necessarily the ones that ignorant people will refuse to see. None of those three things I mentioned above contain anything supernatural. Generally when skeptics try to argue it with me, they don’t listen and automatically assign their own definitions which are rigid, false, and not anything close to what I believe.
I am an escaped Catholic who is free floating now.
I beleive the bible is a collection of stories that some may have actually happened, but the rest are just stories than can be teaching aids to the positive if used in the right context.
I believe in the good stuff of all major religions. (Help others, be nice, don’t kill, blah blah blah.)
I beleive in reincarnation and that there is no hell. Just a do-over until you get it right.
I don’t beleive God (Allah, Buddha and the rest of the Big Kahuna’s and assorted Female Deities) punish people with the death of their infants or terrible illnesses and tragedies. These things happen to a) to thin out the gene pool b) make us stronger c) help us learn compassion and d) learn to work together and help each other out in times of great crisis and put aside differences and materialistic things.
I firmlybeleive that God has no interest whatsoever in a basketball freethrow shots.
I’d define myself as a weak, but militant, atheist. A weak atheist is someone who doesn’t beleive in god(s) a strong atheist would be someone who actively beleives that there is no god(s) it’s a subtle but important difference. To eleborate a little more weak atheists, such as myself, are simply skeptics and have no religious beliefs period. A strong atheist is the type who have the religous belief that there is no god, these are the kind theists point to when they say “atheism is just like a religion.” Strong atheism has always seemed to be a bit oxymoronic to me.
A few months ago I wrote an essay on how I “became” and atheist if anyone cares to read the long version. It’s a similar tale to what many people have posted here already. I am rather more militant towards religion that that essay indicates though. I’d go into more detail about how I feel about people with religious beliefs but the rules say to be nice so I’ll stop here
I identify as an atheist, although that’s probably a little inaccurate. I am highly confident that the typical Christian conception of God as an Absolutely Perfect Being is self-contradictory and impossible, because any being who was knowledgeable about human suffering and has the power to alleviate it but chooses not to is neither perfect nor deserving of worship. Indeed, given all the suffering in the world, such a being would deserve contempt. This is regardless of whether such a being were the universe’s creator or just someone who happened to be around.
Some suggest that God does the best he can – if that’s true, and if also he did not create sentient life, then I’m grateful to him, but while this deserves gratitude, it does not deserve worship any more than Superman would – doing what you can is admirable, but not divine. If, OTOH, this same non-omnipotent God did create sentient life, then we’re back to contempt, because by his act of generation he’s responsible for all our pain, no matter that he manages to alleve some of it.
(For these purposes I’m defining sentient life as anything aware enough to perceive its own suffering – maybe all life qualifies, but at the very least I do.)
The above assumes that God (whether omnipotent or not) is still omniscient – if not, and if he acted with good intentions gone awry, I suppose I may be able to forgive him, but I’d need a much greater appreciation of the circumstances than mortal man will ever get.
As to creation generally – as I said, I’m highly confident in the non-existence of the traditional Christian God. It may be the case that the universe was created by a sentient being, but I doubt it – if so, where did he come from? In the absence of strong evidence, it doesn’t make sense to posit a creator. (Carl Sagan called this the skip-a-step argument.) Of course, were it to turn out that someone did create the universe, I’d find that interesting, but no more interesting than learning the truths about the Big Bang and ambiogenesis whatever they may be. Regardless, he’s still not deserving of worship.
Thanks for starting this thread. I have enjoyed reading your LDS thread.
The background on me is that I was raised in a highly religious household (my mother is a minister) which was both good and bad. Being a child of a church staff member allowed me to see the hypocricy that rampantly went on behind the scenes, which ultimately shaped what I belive today, which is…
I don’t generally go worship at a church, but I do believe in God, I believe in prayer, and I believe in a very liberal interpretation of the Bible. I believe that there is an energy to the world and that people can choose to manipulate it in either a positive or negative way. It is important to me to have people I respect, both of my faith and others, that I can go to for religious debate, discussion or q&a.
I’m always trying to find a balance of being spiritual, being religious, and being scientific that is right for me. I’d say I’m more spiritual than anything else (due to my rejection of organized religion), but I wholeheartedly endorse believing and doing what is personally right for any given individual. It has been fascinating to read about others’ beliefs in this thread. Thanks for sharing everybody.
I am one of those non-committal, wishy-washy, fence-straddling agnostics. (Dante put us in the vestibule of Hell. We didn’t even make it throught the front door.)
When asked, I tell people I am an Agnostic Secular Humanist Social Darwinist. Something to offend everyone: “Agnostic” ticks off both the religious zealots and the militant atheists; “Secular Humanist” ticks off the right-wingers; and “Social Darwinist” ticks off the left-wingers.
Basically, I do my best to be a good person (or at least try to be the lesser evil). If God exists, He will understand. I believe that behavior is more important than faith.
I believe that morality consists mainly of recognizing two principles:
The choices one makes have consequences, and one is responsible for those consequences.
One’s own needs and desires are no more important than one’s neighbors.
I actually don’t identify myelf with either church.
But you make a great point.
The true word Satanism did start as identifying a religion around the 60’s with good ol’ Mr. LeVey. A lot of people would argue that it started earlier with either the philosophies of Crowley, or even Dr. John Dee.
I’ll try to tie up some loose ends here by why I think the term Satanism is preferred.
I call myself a satanist because there is basically no other term that really closely fits what I believe. I don’t worship nature, pagan gods or anything other than myself and my self preservation. Studying just about anything also makes me very happy (we give lots of credit to Satan, aka garden serpent, for giving us the chance to have the knowledge of good and evil, because we find everything interesting, no matter whether we like it or not)
The term is used in the right way, in my opinion, more as a thank you to him for bestowing that knowledge upon us. But I’m also one of the ones who believe in both but worship neither.
Lots of people use it in the way, I’m sure, to irritate Christians. Then they can use the whole shpiel about “look, we’re just doing are own thing, and the Christians are picking on us” This is the kind of thing that most satanists I know HATE, and we have no respect for at all. Believe what you want, and do what you need. That’s no reason to pick on someone, but it’s also no reason to try and pity trip everyone into feeling bad for you. I believe all religions do this to some extent.
Back to #2, a lot of people also identify Lucifer with Prometheus (some actually call him the modern day Prometheus a lot) This goes along with the apple theory, applying the same formula to the bringing of fire to man, with the nice guy who did that wonderful thing for us being punished by some mean, stingy god who wanted everything for himself. Some satanists actually prefer to be called Luciferians. But, Lucifer is a seraphim, where as Satan is the title of the office that some being or another holds (satan is Hebrew for the adversary)
Are you getting confused yet? I sure as hell am!
So basically, with all these arguments, I’m not so sure we’ve cleared much up, so I’ll leave with these last thoughts.
There isn’t that great of a reason. So I’ll identify with some of my Christian friends, who say the following:
“I hate God (aka JHVA). I think he’s one of the biggest assholes ever. But I really love and respect Jesus. I think his teachings and the things he did were great, and he was just an all around nice guy. So for that reason, even though it doesn’t fit like a glove, I call myself a Christian.”
I try to avoid believing things, but narrating the presence of an immanent, panentheistic, er, presence has “the sound truth makes when it’s said” to my inner ears.
