Religion: Yes? No? Why?

[MaryAnnKilledGinger]

1. What do you believe?
2. Why do you believe it?

Let me say up front that I'm not looking to get into a debate on the existence or lack thereof of God/Jeusu/Allah/Whatever. I don't care about dueling Bible verses. I'm not seeking to question anyone's faith, debate their personal experiences, etc. I can't speak for others that might post in this thread, but I sincerely have no intent to challenge anyone's faith or lack of faith.

Since joining this board it's become obvious that there are very distinct camps on religion and faith. As someone who feels personally ambiguous on the topic, I'm always curious about why people with strong feelings one way or the other have those feelings and what happened to inspire them.

For those that don't mind sharing, I'd like to know if you believe in God, what brought you to this position? Family? A close friend? A personal moment where you felt the touch of a higher power? Some other experience?

Likewise, for those who don't believe, what has brought you to that camp? Is there anything that might change your position? How sure are you?

Again, I'm not looking to argue issues of faith. I'm just interested as to what has motivated and generated the faith of those in this particular message board community.

I personally do not have any concrete faith. I don't subscribe to any established dogma. My beliefs are derived from what makes sense to me. There have most certainly been times in my life that I have felt the sense of something greater, but I cannot say with certainty that it was a "burning bush" moment that led me to embrace one faith over the others, or to believe 100% that it wasn't all just imagination.

As such, I believe that my purpose/destiny/whatever is to be skeptical, but open to possibility until something happens otherwise to convince me. I feel a personal responsibility to be fair and charitable to others, but I don't necessarily believe that is the pull of an immortal soul over the lessons gathered from social interactions with those around me. I am, of course grateful for the ability to love others in my life and for the opportunity to be loved, but I'm not entirely certain where that sense of thankfulness for my good fortune is aimed. Likewise, when I've experienced tragedy I've felt a sense of resentment, but I'm not certain where that was aimed either.

I've encountered many people of faith, indeed they surround me in everyday life, but none of them have ever shared with me a belief or experience that felt at home in my head.

[baseline bum]

The lack of any kind of evidence for the existence of a god is the main thing that pushes me to atheism. The idea of the Christian god who watches our every move and listens to our every thought is craziness to me. The arrogance of man to claim we are formed in god's image is baffling, and it's far more likely that god has been created in man's image by our cultures. I find it extremely arrogant when Christians want to take credit for the system of morals that humans are born with, while ignoring the evidence that it comes from natural selection. Faith is in complete opposition to rational thought. "Just trust me, I'm right" is something no one in their right minds would believe from a used car salesman, but everyone's quick to suspend the disbelief for the guy in the collar who asks 10% of your income every Sunday when he says it. The idea of the soul, spirits, and the supernatural is also ridiculous to me, as any kind of information needs some physical manifestation. For me to believe in god, I would have to see it. To believe in a theistic god like the Christians, Jews, and Muslims do, I would have to see the god(s) perform an unquestioned miracle. Nothing else would do, with the ugly history religion has of exploiting and killing people. As for my certainty, I think the existence of god is pretty improbable. Maybe along the lines of my atheism with respect to Bertrand Russell's hypothetical teapot.

[Duff McCartney]

I guess I could call myself a believing non-believer. I would considering myself if this was the Divine Comedy and we were in , to fall somewhere in the first outer circle where the virtuous pagans live. I may never accept any religion but I still live my life with truth, peace, love, and reason like every religious doctrine says to.

I personally don't subscribe to any religion but I do find them to be fascinating as evidenced by my quotes in my signature. In fact my second signature is an example of why I know why religion has such a profound and fascinating effect on people.

I think if I was a religious person I could NEVER follow one doctrine or one religion. To me if there is a God, then he/she does not just appear to one group of people or in one way. He/she appears in many different ways to many different people and in my view all religions are correct. All religions at their core preach about love and peace of God, and that to me makes every religion genuine and true.

[DarrinS]

Believe in a creator (how could you not?), but don't believe in organized religion.

[Findog]

The Flying Spaghetti monster will rise again on the third day.

[CuckingFunt]

To start off with the meat and potatoes of the question, I am an atheist. Despite a strong affinity towards spirituality, I'm ultimately too skeptical and too science based to be anything but.

That being said, while I despise fundamentalism (at any level), I actually really like religion. I find it fascinating, and always have. If you look at all religions, from the "big three," to Native American/Greco-Roman multi-god religions, to tiny little tribal religions, etc., you'll see a common thread of a prehistoric peoples trying to make sense of a world whose various systems and relationships far exceed their comprehension. There's a sense of mystery there that I like. That very primitive naivety is something that, sappy as it may sound, I find quite beautiful.

We are no longer those primitive people, though, and that's where the disconnect begins for me. Science has explained a lot of this planet's complicated systems, and I'm in no hurry to discover the answers that have yet to be found -- I don't need that sense of completion. I'm okay with the idea that there are things I don't yet know and am, perhaps, not meant to know during my lifetime (the great afterlife question, for example). Furthermore, while I do consider myself to be spiritual, I've never been okay with the idea of picking one religion to believe in and excluding all others. Perhaps this would be different if I'd been raised in the church, but I wasn't. My parents specifically raised me with the intention of letting me make up my mind when the time was right. At age 30, however, the idea of letting my faith be determined by conscious choice seems silly to me -- I can't help but feeling that if one specific religion was meant for me, the faith would come naturally. The belief would be automatic and unavoidable. At this point, it hasn't been.

Ultimately, I pick and choose bits and pieces of various religions to adhere to, but I do so without calling those choices a belief. And I tend to do it situationally. For example, while I don't believe in heaven, I know that my grandmother did. So, when she passed, it gave/gives me comfort to imagine that she was right and that's where she is. But I don't literally believe it. Instead, I recognize that it is a coping device. Aditionally, I like the eastern idea of karma, so I use it as motivation to be a better person. Emphasis: I like the idea, I don't necessarily believe it. Same with the idea of reincarnation. I don't necesssarily believe that we come back over and over in different forms, but I like the idea of continued (endless?) learning and growth. I don't believe in prayer, or praying to a specific deity, but I like the idea of power in positive thought. And so on.

[balli]

After a lifetime of studying theology, agnosticism is the only religious theory that I can honestly say I subscribe to. I'm working on forming a very existential and philosophical view of Christianity, but wrestling with God can really be a of a time.

If by odd chance anybody wants to spend hours and hours of their lives buffing up on Dostoevsky's Christianity, this link has a series of downloadable UC Berkeley lectures on The Brothers Karamazov. They're pretty heady, but , life's good when you're learning.

http://webcast.berkeley.edu/course_d...sid=1906978306

[CuckingFunt]

NOTHING IS GREATER THAN MAN.

Ghey.

[LnGrrrR]

1. What do you believe?
2. Why do you believe it?

1) Nothing.
2) Why don't I believe in anything? Lack of proof, mainly. Lack of motivation as well.

I've already said what would convince me in another thread, but I'll share again. Jesus coming down in the middle of Times Square, being recorded by multiple different witnesses in a variety of formats, performing some miracles (breaking the laws of physics would be good ones), and then coming back to do it two or three more times.

I find that my proof for outrageous claims is itself outrageous.

[LnGrrrR]

Believe in a creator (how could you not?), but don't believe in organized religion.

Easy. The same way you don't believe in Santa.

[SnakeBoy]

morals that humans are born with

And what morals would those be?

[dg7md]

I think babies are born knowing how to walk, too!

[baseline bum]

And what morals would those be?

For example, working together in groups instead of killing each other. If you want to argue that comes from religion, then please show me the bibles that chimps use.

[kwhitegocubs]

I grew up in an astonishingly Catholic household (at least when with my father). He still has approximately 5 tall bookcases that espouse various aspects of Catholic dogma, Church history, apologetics, rebuttals to use against persons of other religions or Christian sects in order to convert them, etc...

So, as you can guess, I was once a very devout Catholic. I was the kid who excelled in CCD (Sunday School) and would answer other kids questions with robust and rigid theology. My morality WAS The Church's morality. My logic WAS The Church's logic.

As I got older and my ability to consider evil all those whom my Church disagreed with waned, I was forced to question the merits of the Church's teaching. Gay people weren't evil, Atheists and Agnostics weren't unfettered epicurean perverts, and so on.

But I was unable to give up my religion, but instead gradually retreated from it. When I was in Yellowstone National Park, I was a youth minister for the non-denominational ACMNP (A Christian Ministry in the National Parks). I and several other persons my age would hold small church services at various ampitheatres and gathering places around the park.

I kept shedding layer after layer of dogma and teaching - seeing that its self-evident truth was increasingly not so. Pretty soon I was at the old Unitarian Universalist level, then Deism.

Now, I would pretty much consider myself a Hard Determinist Agnostic. I believe in the POSSIBILITY of prime-mover Deism, but likely nothing else.

That being said, I have always been very interested in ghost hunting and the paranormal (and continue to be), simply because it would give me some sort of shapeless hope of an afterlife. I love living to the extremity of my (poetically speaking) soul, and I am afraid of death to an astonishing degree.

I want to believe, but I cannot at this point.

[SnakeBoy]

Working together in groups is a moral?

Chimps are highly territorial. The males form groups to go kill neighboring groups. Is that a moral?

[baseline bum]

Working together in groups is a moral?

Chimps are highly territorial. The males form groups to go kill neighboring groups. Is that a moral?

Sounds like maybe they have found religion then.

[SnakeBoy]

Are solitary animals immoral?

Seriously, is anything moral or immoral from an athiest perspective?

[CuckingFunt]

Seriously, is anything moral or immoral from an athiest perspective?

Of course.

[lefty]

I don't believe in Bonner

[beefanus]

my queston is how can u actually say ur an athiest r u not blind to the fact the theory of evolusion contridicts the laws of the universe that have already been established and acredited (i can spell worth sorry)

[kwhitegocubs]

Please explain, O wise Beefanus! (Your name....oy)

[baseline bum]

my queston is how can u actually say ur an athiest r u not blind to the fact the theory of evolusion contridicts the laws of the universe that have already been established and acredited (i can spell worth sorry)

u cant argue worth either

[kwhitegocubs]

At least he said, "I CAN spell worth ". He gives himself the benefit of the doubt and elevates his spelling to the value of manure.

[MaNuMaNiAc]

my queston is how can u actually say ur an athiest r u not blind to the fact the theory of evolusion contridicts the laws of the universe that have already been established and acredited (i can spell worth sorry)

dude doesn't believe in evolution and evolution doesn't seem to believe in him

[BradLohaus]

I believe in God because I have a hard time believing that a single atom existed forever somehow and then exploded into the universe we know today, or that an atom appeared out of the void somehow and then exploded and created the universe we know today.
Of course, an eternal God is impossible as well. So really, I don't see how anything can possibly exist. But here we are, so I go with what makes the most sense to me: a single, eternal and total intelligence that we will never be able to comprehend. And I'm a Methodist for the record.