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What Religion Do You Practice/Not Practice and Why?

What Religion Do You Practice/Not Practice and Why?


  • Total voters
    131

Poki

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I think that whether or not a religion is accomodating of personal idiosyncracies or not there isnt any hive mind and it would be a bad thing is such a thing could exist.

Agree, we could pick any church if we all practice the same religion. We may read from the same book, use the same over arching name, but at the end of the day people choose a church based on whether they agree with it or not and if it speaks to them. Even within a church we have outcasts that are different.
 

Lark

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Agree, we could pick any church if we all practice the same religion. We may read from the same book, use the same over arching name, but at the end of the day people choose a church based on whether they agree with it or not and if it speaks to them. Even within a church we have outcasts that are different.

No, I meant that no matter how much consensus there is it can never be complete, you may have consensus upon sacraments, articles of faith or canon but I absolutely disbelieve that all believers can ever be of one heart and mind, there can be the semblance of it or symbolic appearance of it but unless it is a mere recitation of dogma if you did some sort of randomised interview of believers, setting up the prisoners dilemma or some similar principle, you are not going to get the exact same thoughts as though by telepathy.

I actually think this is a good thing, a positive thing, largely for the reasons JS Mill outlined in On Liberty about how debate and discourse and differences of opinion were a good thing, even if for a time it appears to result in the perpetuation of error.

I'm saying all that I believe in canon etc. myself, because I'm an absolutist rather than a relativist, but I dont believe that absolutism is anything but fallible and should be challenged, it should be able for any challenge if its correct after all.
 

Poki

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No, I meant that no matter how much consensus there is it can never be complete, you may have consensus upon sacraments, articles of faith or canon but I absolutely disbelieve that all believers can ever be of one heart and mind, there can be the semblance of it or symbolic appearance of it but unless it is a mere recitation of dogma if you did some sort of randomised interview of believers, setting up the prisoners dilemma or some similar principle, you are not going to get the exact same thoughts as though by telepathy.

I actually think this is a good thing, a positive thing, largely for the reasons JS Mill outlined in On Liberty about how debate and discourse and differences of opinion were a good thing, even if for a time it appears to result in the perpetuation of error.

I'm saying all that I believe in canon etc. myself, because I'm an absolutist rather than a relativist, but I dont believe that absolutism is anything but fallible and should be challenged, it should be able for any challenge if its correct after all.

Yeah, I think I just kinda walked into what you just said from the backdoor instead of the front door.
 

laterlazer

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Now let's assume God actually created the universe. "Universe" pretty much means "absolutely everything that exists".
If God created everything, there would have to be nothing before. Nothing includes God.

That means nothing could have created everything, because there would have to be something able to create everything, but if there is something, then that something is automatically everything, and there wasn't nothing in the first place.

That means God (irrelevant of its existence) didn't create the universe.

I don't think there was much philosophical thought on the phrasing of how God created the universe lol. The idea is that God was the only thing existing. Plus the bible never even said there was nothing, it said the world was formless and empty; so there was a world, but there wasn't much to it.

P.S. Yes this is a super late reply, I've only just logged into my account after a long time so that's why.
 

Chrysanthe

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Just read this and everything will suddenly make sense:

"Satak was First Serpent, the Snake who came Before, and all the worlds to come rested in the glimmer of its scales. But it was so big there was nothing but, and thus it was coiled around and around itself, and the worlds to come slid across each other but none had room to breathe or even be. And so the worlds called to something to save them, to let them out, but of course there was nothing outside the First Serpent, so aid had to come from inside it; this was Akel, the Hungry Stomach. Akel made itself known, and Satak could only think about what it was, and it was the best hunger, so it ate and ate. Soon there was enough room to live in the worlds and things began. These things were new and they often made mistakes, for there was hardly time to practice being things before. So most things ended quickly or were not good or gave up on themselves. Some things were about to start, but they were eaten up as Satak got to that part of its body. This was a violent time.

"Pretty soon Akel caused Satak to bite its own heart and that was the end. The hunger, though, refused to stop, even in death, and so the First Serpent shed its skin to begin anew. As the old world died, Satakal began, and when things realized this pattern so did they realize what their part in it was. They began to take names, like Ruptga or Tuwhacca, and they strode about looking for their kin. As Satakal ate itself over and over, the strongest spirits learned to bypass the cycle by moving at strange angles. They called this process the Walkabout, a way of striding between the worldskins. Ruptga was so big that he was able to place the stars in the sky so that weaker spirits might find their way easier. This practice became so easy for the spirits that it became a place, called the Far Shores, a time of waiting until the next skin.

"Ruptga was able to sire many children through the cycles and so he became known as the Tall Papa. He continued to place stars to map out the void for others, but after so many cycles there were almost too many spirits to help out. He made himself a helper from the detritus of past skins and this was Sep, or Second Serpent. Sep had much of the Hungry Stomach still left in him, multiple hungers from multiple skins. He was so hungry he could not think straight. Sometimes he would just eat the spirits he was supposed to help, but Tall Papa would always reach in and take them back out. Finally, tired of helping Tall Papa, Sep went and gathered the rest of the old skins and balled them up, tricking spirits to help him, promising them this was how you reached the new world, by making one out of the old. These spirits loved this way of living, as it was easier. No more jumping from place to place. Many spirits joined in, believing this was good thinking. Tall Papa just shook his head.

"Pretty soon the spirits on the skin-ball started to die, because they were very far from the real world of Satakal. And they found that it was too far to jump into the Far Shores now. The spirits that were left pleaded with Tall Papa to take them back. But grim Ruptga would not, and he told the spirits that they must learn new ways to follow the stars to the Far Shores now. If they could not, then they must live on through their children, which was not the same as before. Sep, however, needed more punishment, and so Tall Papa squashed the Snake with a big stick. The hunger fell out of Sep's dead mouth and was the only thing left of the Second Serpent. While the rest of the new world was allowed to strive back to godhood, Sep could only slink around in a dead skin, or swim about in the sky, a hungry void that jealously tried to eat the stars."
 

Coriolis

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Just read this and everything will suddenly make sense:

"Satak was First Serpent, the Snake who came Before, and all the worlds to come rested in the glimmer of its scales . . .
This makes about as much sense as anything else, and even more sense than a flying spaghetti monster. Interesting how many creation myths feature snakes, dragons, and their ilk.
 

Forever

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I don't think there was much philosophical thought on the phrasing of how God created the universe lol. The idea is that God was the only thing existing. Plus the bible never even said there was nothing, it said the world was formless and empty; so there was a world, but there wasn't much to it.

P.S. Yes this is a super late reply, I've only just logged into my account after a long time so that's why.

Welcome back! I was wondering when I'd see your cute face again. :D
 

Mole

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All religions give an account of the origin of the universe. I am interested in origins so the extraordinary measurement of the background radiation of the big bang gave me the opportunity to examine the origins of the universe.

And we have analysed the background radiation, evaluated it, and integrated it into known facts, and so far there is no fingerprint, no signature, and no message in the big bang.

So far neither God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, show any sign of creating the big bang; Allah Himself seems to have no hand in creating the big bang; and the Rainbow Serpent of the Australian Aborigines does not show any indication of creating the big bang.

Of course it is possible the Trinity, or Allah, or the Rainbow Serpent did create the big bang, but it is highly unlikely.

We have been completely successful in discovering the origin of species, and this encourages us to keep looking for the origin of the universe. And we make a good start by ruling out unlikely contenders.
 

Lark

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All religions give an account of the origin of the universe. I am interested in origins so the extraordinary measurement of the background radiation of the big bang gave me the opportunity to examine the origins of the universe.

And we have analysed the background radiation, evaluated it, and integrated it into known facts, and so far there is no fingerprint, no signature, and no message in the big bang.

So far neither God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, show any sign of creating the big bang; Allah Himself seems to have no hand in creating the big bang; and the Rainbow Serpent of the Australian Aborigines does not show any indication of creating the big bang.

Of course it is possible the Trinity, or Allah, or the Rainbow Serpent did create the big bang, but it is highly unlikely.

We have been completely successful in discovering the origin of species, and this encourages us to keep looking for the origin of the universe. And we make a good start by ruling out unlikely contenders.

Can you tell me more about how you and your scientific team of researchers did that?

I didnt know you were in that line of work.
 

CitizenErased

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I voted "atheist" because I don't believe in something/someone that is bigger than everything I know. I don't believe in the invisible. I choose not to believe in a certain "entity" such as the Christian god that makes you suffer before giving you the pass to the VIP zone. Iblessbelieveblessthatblessifblessthere’sblessreallyblessablessgodblessoutblesstherebless(orblessin here) and has the power to create stars, a complex system of organs and that kind of stuff, he's a selfish entity, letting species disappear or humans die from starvation... Or is that or way of avoiding overpopulation? I also don't like all the advertisement "I'm all love" and then goes killing inocent people like the firstborns.

Anyway, I consider myself pantheist, because I believe in Nature being a wise force that creates everything the most beautiful and useful way possible, but not like a god I have to pray to. I'm so in love with Nature, the world and space that everything looks perfect to me... except for humanity, but that's another story.

PS: Forget my rambling.
bless
 

Kullervo

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I practice no religion, and consider myself an atheist.

I feel there are sound arguments against the existence of a god - any god - and I am yet to see anything to the contrary. Further, I feel that Christianity in the West has lost its purpose. Religion no longer has an active role here, politically or culturally. It is all about personal development, exploration, faith. These are modern values which conflict with the doctrine that truth should be self-evident.

I would question whether we even celebrate Christmas as a religious event as much as a traditional festival like Yuletide.
 

Mole

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I Become What I Worship

We know there are many different religions and many different Gods. Yet we find that most of homo sapiens worships.

It is as though we have the ability or the instinct to worship, just as we all have the ability or instinct to learn one of the many languages in the world while we are still babies.

So we have been selected to worship, just as we have been selected to learn a language as babies. We start off by worshipping our parents, which becomes ancestor worship, and we go on to worship celebrities as role models, and to worship deities like Ganesh with the head of an elephant, or the Trinity with three heads.

But how does our instinct to worship fit us to our environment? Worship is a powerful activity of the psyche as worship enables us to become what we worship. So we become our parents, our ancestors, our celebrities as our role models, or one of the myriad Gods, who derive from natural forces, or who derive from social forces, or forces within our own psyche itself.

So worship is a powerful way of learning, not of course without its dangers.
 

Lark

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I found a couple of quotes which I think are good generally in an old notebook and I think they apply to this topic actually:-

What holds true for religions holds true for faith in its secular forms...ideas...deteriorate...once they are not based upon the productive experience of each individual. - Erich Fromm, man for himself, faith as a character trait, problems of humanistic ethics.

Rationalisation is not a tool for penetration of reality but a post-factum attempt to harmonise one's own wishes with existing reality - Erich Fromm, Escape from Freedom.

I was also struck by something from as mundane a source as a recent episode of Dr Who (I dont rate the newer Dr Who writing at all anymore, I used to like it, I used to hope that it was going to improve and I think a couple of interesting actors carried it well but its nothing at all within the kind of league of the former series) in which a character stated something along the lines "the universe isnt ending you're just middle aged" and I've begun to think that you could almost say something along the lines of "God isnt dead you're just adolescent", since I'm finding that this is incredibly frequent, abandoning everything you've been bequeathed within the family, community only to adopt it after the passage of time. I even think the same kind of thing has happened academically or intellectually with the Virtue Ethics vs. Enlightenment/Kantian Ethics in academic moral philosophy. Although I dont think its reflected in pop culture at all and may never be. I think the most popular religion of all is infact apathy.
 

ZNP-TBA

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I don't practice a religion. I'm atheist.
 

Mole

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I believe the Bible is the living, breathing word of God. I believe God is love. I believe in Jesus and the forgiveness of sin. I believe most people are going to heaven. I believe love, it always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres for all people, even in the darkest places, because God loves and believes in their potential that much. (1 Corinthians 13:7).

Dear Lonestar, why not believe in the Koran? It was dictated from Allah and written down by Mohammed. On the face of it, it would seem the Koran is the more authentic word of God.
 

jcloudz

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Dear Lonestar, why not believe in the Koran? It was dictated from Allah and written down by Mohammed. On the face of it, it would seem the Koran is the more authentic word of God.

why not bend your knee for satan? less people have died in comparison to both your religions?
 

jcloudz

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Wouldn't you rather rule in Hell than serve in Heaven?

And gosh, the Devil always gets the best lines.

But the greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was to convince us He doesn't exist.

Meet Him by clicking on https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4OAFtr-ciQE

just as lonestar cowgirl would prefer to serving under her true lord, the true god an you serving under your allah who answers to god.
 
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