Religion Discussion

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I grew up Baptist. Went to a private Christian School from kindergarten to 8th grade. Once out, I started to explore other beliefs, as I never really felt a strong connection with Christianity. I appreciated the basic tenants of the religion: do unto others, judge not lest yet be judged, help the needy, the Ten Commandments ect... But I never could put 100% faith in believing God actually existed. Doubting Thomas was always the apostle I identified with most. I wanted to believe, but I needed more than just blind faith.

Being an idiot teen, I had a Wicca phase that I look back on with embarrassment. I looked into LaVeyan Satanism, liked a few things about that philosophy, and disliked others. I went into a militant atheist phase in my early college years that is even more embarrassing to look back on than my Wicca phase. I still feel horrible about some of the things I said to my religious friends and family.

Ultimately I consider myself these days an agnostic. I think there may very well be something greater than ourselves out there, but I just can't fully accept it with a 100% certainty without some sort of proof. I'm no longer an anti-theist, some of the most wonderful people in my life who have helped me through some very dark times have done so in God's name.
 
L50LasPak said:
There's an arguement out there that faith provides a sense of comfort and its simply incorrect. While faith itself may be the comfort for some people, its the structure and solidarity it provides that is the important part
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I think the structure and solidarity have importance, but I think you discount the comfort of faith too easily; even the word comfort undersells in my opinion the strength that faith can offer.

I think it's to some degree comparable to the aristotlian perception of virtues (where you follow a disembodied ideal outside of yourself) or the way top athletes mentally prepare themselves by focussing on seeing themselves succeed (they'll assume they have the strength and focus to navigate every challenge).

In some sense that is what christian faith offers, the assumption that if you follow the right disembodied virtues, that everything will work out in the long run (by extending the long run beyond what we have capability to verify).

I think of people like Desmond Doss, who in the worst of situations draw strength from their faith to serve virtues outside of themselves. He is also a good example, because he specifically did not have the structure due to his faith (he was often at odds with both his brothers in arms as military leadership for both his refusal to pick up a rifle and insistance to go to church on saturday). Although I suppose you can have outliers in any field, I think the faith is part of what helped him do so exemplary.
 
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Meat Poultry Veg said:
I am a religious person. I won't beat anyone over the head with it (which is evidenced by the fact that I post on KiwiFarms and make fun of exceptionals just like everyone else here). There was a period of intense doubt where I thought I was becoming an atheist, but strangely enough, my faith grew in a secular university. In California. That might convince a vanishingly small minority of your that God is real.

The reason why I rejected atheism was because I quickly realized without God (and not only that, an immutable and just God), all things are permissible. That BTW was the selling point of Aleister Crowley's Thelema cult: "Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law." However, in such a paradigm, there is absolutely no recourse for anyone to correct wrongdoing because right and wrong does not exist. There is only the strong willed and everybody else.

Even Richard Dawkins is rolling back his euphoric atheism from the heady days of the mid 00's as he is watching his country turn into a burning shitpile right before his very eyes.
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I have a hard time understanding this line of thinking. Godless regimes such as Revolutionary France and the USSR were bloody but there are also numerous religious conflicts and religious tyrannys that were arguably worse.

L50LasPak said:
Basically what I'm trying to say is that despite being outside of the machine, I understand that it has real merits and offers solutions one cannot often find on their own. Atheists and agnostics are so often dismissive of religion just becuase they don't believe in it, but I think that is painfully shortsighted.
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Religion does offer a community and those communities can be good but alot of the time those communities are based upon ostracism and pyramid-scheme-like practices.

Alot of Euphoria is people wanting to be victims or raise themselves up above other people but alot of it is people losing their entire family group due to the pyramid-like model or due to their former communities intolerance. Raped by your priest? The Bishop has his back. You think your community is accepting and tolerant? Tell them that you have doubted god and become an atheist but still want to hang out with them.
 
AnOminous said:
Religion is fucking gibberish. It's impossible to be sane and believe in it.

The absolute meaninglessness of existence is also fucking gibberish. It's impossible to recognize it and not go insane.

So there are two choices for being utterly insane, and in one of them, you get to be happy.

Ever wish you could believe in God?
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I think that religious belief, or at least something analogous, is a necessary part of a healthy psyche. Not saying you have to believe in a god necessarily, but you can't stay sane without believing that existence has some kind of superordinate structure to it.
 
I was raised Pentecostal, albeit mildly so. We went to a church filled with the stuffiest fundies you'll ever meet, like the kind of people who listened to Christian music only and thought Pokemon and Harry Potter were evil. Our church had this program for girls called "Missionettes". Now, for those of you who don't know, Missionettes is a very watered-down version of Girl Scouts for Bible-thumping crazies who think Girl Scouts isn't Christian enough. Case in point, my "classmates" were all stuck-up homeschooled girls who I could not relate to because their parents forbade them from liking any of the things I liked because they were "satanic". The leaders of the program were members of the church who had a grudge against my parents because they weren't fundie enough, but since I was helpless, they took it out on me by getting after me and shaming me for the most minor offenses (including spacing off for a few seconds and not being "proper" enough). The shining moment of bullshit was when I went to a weekend sleepaway called "Stars Retreat", where I had to spend most of my time sitting in a church for hours, The ladies who took us there got after me for no reason, and they forced me to sit and watch everyone else play in the pool because they took away my pool time for acting like a normal kid. We stopped going to that church after that. We had another program for boys called "Royal Rangers" which was way cooler than Missionettes. Rangers taught boys life skills alongside Christianity in a vein not unlike Boy Scouts, whereas Missionettes was just Jesus without any of the practical skills that would come with Girl Scouts. My dad helped out with Rangers, so my sister and I got to go to one of their events one time. It was so fun, way more fun than anything we ever got to do in Missionettes. I was so jealous after that.

Another dumb little story from that church: some crazy lady found a DS in a parking lot with some games. Instead of being a good Christian and finding the owner so she could give it back, she instead declared that it was a "gift from God" and gave it to her daughter, but not before throwing away all the Pokemon games.
 
hyperfujis said:
Another dumb little story from that church: some crazy lady found a DS in a parking lot with some games. Instead of being a good Christian and finding the owner so she could give it back, she instead declared that it was a "gift from God" and gave it to her daughter, but not before throwing away all the Pokemon games.
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Pentecostalism and prosperity gospel is just weird.

"Blessed are the poor" became "God hates the poor, I, the pastor am only rich because I do not sin and do not want money".

This is also the fastest growing Christianity oddly enough.
 
Not really going deep into my own religion other than saying I'm a Catholic, but I kind of like the idea of successor religions. The big one being Judaism to Christianity to Islam. Another one my dad told me was Buddhism (whether it is one or not is up for debate) being the successor to Hinduism. I just find these ideas more or less fascinating.

Also how our creation stories more or less being similar as well as having compatibility with either other religions or science based on personal interpretation.
 
Robo Sonichu said:
Atheist forever. Religion is basically a big cult.
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You can have faith in God and not follow religious doctrine. Humans are flawed and would obviously give a warped perspective of what might be expected of us, if anything is expected at all. Pope Francis is a good example of how even organizations based on upholding traditional values and beliefs can quickly succomb to outside influence. Personally I never really liked the church as a lot of it's teaching were hypocritical. For example calling a priest "Father", praying to a saint instead of God, or being granted forgiveness for your sins are all blasphemous.A lot of the so called "christians" you see once every Sunday rarely practice what they preach once mass is over. Only the truly devout pray in privacy, even less act on Gods will when it presents itself. I don't really care that you're an atheist and I won't try to change your mind as I was once one myself. Know this also, there is an influence acting outside of our perception that affects us all, whether you want to refer to that as a "God" is your choice to make.

The ancient Greek residing in the city of Alexandria practiced mathematics because they believed it was the language of the universe, it can be observed in the harmonious tones of music, the orbit of the planets, algebraic formulas, and other schools of thought. This formed what we now refer to as neoplatonism. The idea that the universe is governed by numbers and abstract mathematical concepts isn't so far fetched today. If AI can predict the video you're most likely to click on through a formula, doesn't that translate to every other part of your life as well? I can't tell you to what degree this sort of "God" plays a role in our lives and to what extent it determines our actions, but it's ever-presently there. Waiting for an opportunity; a chance. The universe isn't purely chaotic, everything follows some sort of system of order. Otherwise, how can a phenomenon such as Benfords law exist? It might not be a bearded man in the sky, but something abstract and just out of our reach of comprehension. How does this affect my life and/or faith? Well, I don't really care if an afterlife exists. I'm totally indifferent to the idea. I just want to live my life with enough meaning to make it at the very least entertaining to watch from above. That doesn't mean abandon all morals; actually quite the opposite. If you can uphold the values that you believe to be right in the face of impossible odds, maybe you can become someone to root for.
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I grew up Baptist, but never believed much in it. Just felt like a chore. I felt like I was given a handful of verses to throw out like pokeballs and cast out into the world.

In late HS-early college I studied Laveyan Satanism that progressed further into occult. Basically the most edgy shit I could find. It gave me a sense of importance and freedom that I thought would drive my career, but ultimately an unearned sense of worth almost ruined me when I realized I had led myself into severe alcoholism and almost dropping out of my degree. Almost like a labyrinth - the more I read, the less I feel I learned anything at all.

Ironically I started ACTUALLY reading the bible when I wanted to debate Christians and felt like "knowing your enemy" was the best method, and now I'm Christian again. I think having that religious drive of a higher power really helped bring me back up to a good point in my life. In today's day and age, we are almost always forced to partake in anything and everything the internet provides. FOMO. It's simply not mentally healthy, look at the crazed and rabid mindset of many people who wedge themselves into every argument or situation online. The bible taught me to focus on myself & my community and let God handle the rest.
 
Most of our religions work on the presumption of benevolant monotheism in terms a human would get, there doesnt appear to be much evidence that is true. So the abrahamic faiths can be dismissed out of hand and hinduism is on shackey ground. I also think rejection of the material in persuit of a hiden highter world to escape too is a bad idea.
We need more life affirming rather than escapist religions. Either return to older primal faiths or maybe build new ones working on either to build something less socially awkward and closer to the truth.
 
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Personally, I'd rather believe in God, find out there is no God, as oppossed to not believing, finding out that he's real once I'm already dead, and thus spend the rest of eternity burning in a lake of fire, but hey, to each their own. Either way, this world is clearly living on borrowed time.
 
I believe in a monadic creator God but I do not believe it is the jewish god YHWH. I think Christianity is a jewish trick to get you to worship their god instead of the supreme one. If you study Kabbalah you find that Jews themselves do not believe YHWH is the supreme deity, and that there are other deities above and beside him. The idea that they are monotheists is an elaborate ruse. They, and their descendant religions, deliberately avoid using their god's name, in order to obfuscate the fact that he is an identifiable specific being. The allegations that that being exists and that he is the supreme god of the universe are entirely separate claims, but they choose to blur things and make everything as unclear as possible.
 
The Crow said:
Personally, I'd rather believe in God, find out there is no God, as oppossed to not believing, finding out that he's real once I'm already dead, and thus spend the rest of eternity burning in a lake of fire, but hey, to each their own. Either way, this world is clearly living on borrowed time.
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Pascals wager doesnt work since God will know you don't really believe. Also you might back the wrong horse which might piss of Zeus/Tengri/Mukuru/some guy we don't know about more than simply not believing.
 
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