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What's your religion?

Saffronsocks

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I lean towards Buddhism, but with a bit of paganism, daoism, and personal mythology thrown in for fun. Technically a Unitarian Universalist, too. (at least, I had their apple juice and crackers for a whole bunch of my formative years)
 
S

Sniffles

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Well, which are you saying?

I'm saying there are good reasons for one to reject Christianity and there are bad reasons. Your reasons fall under the latter category.

And yes, I suppose it's homosexuality, other gender issues, and women's rights. Oh, and slavery.
See that's the point. You're rejecting Christianity - which deals with issues of eternal significance - for reasons concerning issues of ephemeral significance. You further compound the situation by trying to piegonhole Christianity itself to fit into such a narrow perspective.

I know it's very hard for many people nowadays to understand this but the world doesn't revolve around homosexuals, womens' rights, or for that matter slavery. In the grand scheme of things, these are all rather trival matters. You certainly are not going to make much of a dent in Christianity, certainly not on any metaphysical-cosmological grounds.

If you reject Christianity on issues of more eternal significance, that's a different story.
 

EJCC

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Well, which are you saying? That people:

A. Shouldn't reject Christianity as a whole if they choose to disagree with some of it's teachings?

B. That people should accept all of the teachings if they find most of them valid, regardless of their personal feelings?
A. Very much A. The whole reason I'm an Episcopalian (besides what I mentioned before) is that Episcopalians believe that many parts of the Bible are simply fables, meant to give a lesson, and not to be taken literally. Also, for the most part, they/we believe that the Bible was written with the era it was written in, in mind, and therefore some of it (e.g. "you must be stoned to death if you wear more than one fabric at the same time") doesn't apply now.
(Side note, and I don't know how many other Christians would feel this way, but I don't believe that "Christ will come again". And see, if I told a fundamentalist that, they'd be convinced that I was not, in fact, a Christian, and that I would go to hell. And yet, I consider myself Christian. So, as you can see, Christians are a varied group, more so than many might think.)
Also, some of its "teachings" are contradictory. The Old Testament and the New Testament have very different moods; the New Testament is all about love and forgiveness and hope, and the Old Testament is heavy on the smiting. You HAVE to pick and choose, in a sense.
Did you see the "Proposition 8 Musical" on YouTube? There's a great quote aimed at Bible "literalists": "Well, it seems to me you pick and choose/ So why not choose love instead of hate?"

And yes, I suppose it's homosexuality, other gender issues, and women's rights. Oh, and slavery.
Whoa there, man.
This is definitely something I've heard before, both from friends and from famous people on TV (cough Bill Maher cough). This is assuming that all Christians are closed-minded bigots. We aren't. I personally am ashamed of those in the past who justified slavery with religion. Slavery violates the basic tenants of Christianity, and of many other religions. What happened to "Love thy neighbor"? What happened to "All are equal in the eyes of God"?
It was just a ridiculous, twisted mindset. Any Christians who still think that way are in the minority.

I've always heard a lot of Christians say that such people don't count as Christians because they don't accept all of the teachings, and that they'd rather people just admit that they reject Christianity than pretend to be something they're not. So I did thusly. I'm not sure what to make of that...
I see the issue here. Do you live in a conservative town/city/community?

That is exactly what I believe, and it's the reason I'm an agnostic. I believe there's a higher being, and a spiritual aspect of the world, but I don't believe there's a single philosophy about it that's true and falsifies all the others. Because there's a lot of overlap, and the things that do overlap seem like the more significant ones. The things that don't seem less important and more like they might have been artifacts of the culture or writer's perspective.
We have a lot more in common, philosophically, than I thought. :) I feel like I should note at this point that I, too, get really annoyed when people try to convert me, be they Christian or otherwise. Mostly, though, in my case, it's been atheists trying to convince me that religion is a crutch.

Yeah... I've never heard of anyone going to church for the atmosphere. I've only heard of people going in order to show service to God, since that was supposedly the purpose. I'm kind of surprised anyone would think of it that way.
Church services, for me, are a time to repent and think of others in their times of need. The atmosphere (which, in my church, involves a pipe organ and beautiful stained glass windows) is more somber than that in most other churches, and helps me contemplate. That's why I mentioned the atmosphere - it's so different from anywhere else I go, and it encourages religious thought in me.
 

Anonymous

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I'm saying there are good reasons for one to reject Christianity and there are bad reasons. Your reasons fall under the latter category.


See that's the point. You're rejecting Christianity - which deals with issues of eternal significance - for reasons concerning issues of ephemeral significance. You further compound the situation by trying to piegonhole Christianity itself to fit into such a narrow perspective.

I know it's very hard for many people nowadays to understand this but the world doesn't revolve around homosexuals, womens' rights, or for that matter slavery. In the grand scheme of things, these are all rather trival matters. You certainly are not going to make much of a dent in Christianity, certainly not on any metaphysical-cosmological grounds.

If you reject Christianity on issues of more eternal significance, that's a different story.

But it's rather difficult to take any supposed eternal significance seriously when it's built on such marred teachings (and such a marred history), and at the same time, claims that all of its teachings are absolutely true.

Anyway, I'm an agnostic atheist (the two terms are not mutually exclusive, as many seem to think).
 

Blank

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This has all been argued before.

Haha, now that I think about it, I suppose this post pointing this out to cause an indirect change is useless because it will always be argued over and over again.
 

EJCC

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This has all been argued before.

Haha, now that I think about it, I suppose this post pointing this out to cause an indirect change is useless because it will always be argued over and over again.
QFT. +1.
Seriously. No sarcasm. Thank you. :nice:
 

Athenian200

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See that's the point. You're rejecting Christianity - which deals with issues of eternal significance - for reasons concerning issues of ephemeral significance. You further compound the situation by trying to piegonhole Christianity itself to fit into such a narrow perspective.

Well... I kind of have grown up thinking it was narrow. That there were only two kinds of people... ones that went around trying to insist that everything in the Bible was something everyone should live by no matter how ridiculous or unfair it was, and ones who were totally opposed to religion. I chose the latter.
I know it's very hard for many people nowadays to understand this but the world doesn't revolve around homosexuals, womens' rights, or for that matter slavery. In the grand scheme of things, these are all rather trival matters. You certainly are not going to make much of a dent in Christianity, certainly not on any metaphysical-cosmological grounds.

Trivial? Then you're definitely not the kind of Christian I'm used to hearing about (but then you're not an Evangelical). Some of them consider that to be the whole point of Christianity... God's way of telling them to purify society of people like that. I personally couldn't figure out why a being as infinite as God would care so much about things like an individual's sexual orientation or enforcing fixed gender roles, but they insisted he did. I thought those were awfully petty fixations for an omnipotent being, personally. Less mature than Q, honestly.
If you reject Christianity on issues of more eternal significance, that's a different story.

So you agree that there are different levels of significance within the context of religion? Okay, then. The only higher-level reason I might reject it is because of the teaching that Christianity is the only correct depiction of God. Mostly because I see a lot of overlap between it, and several other religions trying to grasp at the same essence. It seems to me that such an eternal being could easily have many faces, and that since Christianity only became known in some areas recently, then it only makes sense to believe that the same God revealed themselves to different cultures in the form they most needed at the time of the original revelation of said religion. It seems more reasonable to me that an omnipotent and omniscient being that valued all of humanity would do this, rather than only allow a particular culture to know him for so long.

This could be supported by the sheer amount of overlap in the more significant principles of major religions. The disagreements are almost always around social issues, names of things, specific events, and rituals. Things that people shouldn't be fixated on in the first place when thinking about religion, IMO. Those issues are about the material world... religion is supposed to be focused on the spiritual world. The problems always start when religion gets used in an attempt to control how the physical world operates, rather than get people to focus AWAY from it.

This may sound arrogant, but I've actually tended to think of myself as more spiritual and reflective than American Evangelicals are. Mostly because they seem extremely materialistic and focused on success, promoting conformity, "compassionately" sticking their nose into other people's business and telling them the right way to live their lives, etc. While I could usually care less about what other people do, and am mostly interested in tolerance, compassion, meditation, and asceticism.

Though I have been provoked by the behavior of these Evangelicals to the point of being frenzied into defending innocent people against their oppression. Which bred a certain kind of contempt and anger towards them that's out of tune with the kind of person I want to be.

So my higher-level disagreement with Christianity would be the idea that God only has one face and one form. Which technically makes me agnostic, though I would say many of the Bible's teachings are valuable... but so are those of many other religions.
 

BlackCat

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Since I last posted in this thread I've realized I'm a Gnostic. I've been thinking that way my entire life, but didn't even know that there was a faith that described this way of thinking. I don't believe in their deities or that god is evil... but other than that I very much agree with the general philosophy of it.

PS: Thanks Peguy for the assistance. :newwink:
 

EJCC

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Congratulations on finding out!
... although it's "an Agnostic", not "a Gnostic". (You pronounce the G.) :)
 

phthalocyanine

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Gnosticism is a religion! :D

Gnosticism: ancient and modern Kinda goes over it. If you read that keep in mind that I don't believe in the deities nor that god is evil.

gnostic tradition was mostly orally passed on and with the rise of christianity kind of died out.
i know there are surviving written gnostic written works in the nag hammadi library and such, but that's theology..as for the religious rituals/traditions..those have long since passed, i think.. (correct me if i'm wrong)

i guess i identify as a(n) agnostic fideistic mystic vedantic pluralist. or something.
"theos ein agape"
 

Cronkle

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i don't believe in god for the same reason i don't believe in other things that don't have evidence for them.

like unicorns. or flying spaghetti monsters. or angels down the well.

still, the possibility is out there, i suppose, that they exist. so technically agnostic(?) It all depends on perspective, for me.
 

Nonsensical

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I don't know.

I don't do religion. I create my own beliefs based off of life experiences, perceptions, and values.

I'm stuck between dropping everything I've been taught, and having a defined religion of my own.
 

Lark

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My worldview very much coincides with Zen Buddhist/Taoist teachings. Although, like wyrdsister, I would not label myself as such.

I think that describes me too.

Then again there's mystics and trappists within my faith community who pretty much practiced the same things under a different title, I'm a practicing Roman Catholic in reality. :coffee:
 

Qre:us

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None.

I see teachings of different religions as interesting, and often, insightful philosophies about life, but, none that I would perscribe as my "way of life".

"God" was birthed by the human mind, not the other way around. If anything I "believe" in the potential of the human mind (of which, we don't yet fully know the limits).
 

Mad Hatter

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Agnosticism. I don't know, I probably can't tell, and essentially I don't care.
To me personally, all the metaphysics involved in discussing the supernatural are largely academic and I'd rather think about other things. I don't really know how it's like to be religious because that's something very alien to me (and sometimes alienating). However, considering that a lot of people are, it is an important phenomenon.
 
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