Making a new religion thread because Saikou's isded. Do you believe in God? Do you believe a higher power? Why? I'm an atheist for quite a few reasons, the most prominent being that God cannot be tested, cannot be contained and can't even be theorized. While many folk of the faith praise this to be because God is too big to understand, I think that alone proves that something does not exist, let alone throwing that we are on a fast track to explaining everything around us without the need of interference of a higher power. The best response I've gotten is simply "How do you explain the wind?", which only increases my disdain as people like this seem to not understand how the atmosphere works and pretty much adds to the stigma that religious folk are rather uneducated. So yeah, I suppose this is the part where we sling things at each other.

Personally, this depends on who is asking. In this case, I'd have to say that I don't particularly care whether the human race was created by some sort of higher being (heheh, higher...) but if it's any of my religious friends, I have to say that I'm not really fixed to any beliefs. They're the same answers more or less, but I feel inclined to treat them differently to, say, a very close friend.

I'm an atheist now, though I don't really talk about it unless somebody asks me about religion. (i.e. this thread) I was born and raised as a Jehovah's Witness for 13 years, and during that time the church (or rather Kingdom Hall) was basically my part-time job which I didn't get paid for. My family and I attended four days a week, roughly 12-15 hours in total per week. The worst part of all was Saturday morning's "Out-In-Service" session, which the Jehovah's Witnesses are quite infamous for. (knocking on your door to talk about Jesus when you are trying to sleep or watch cartoons) 90% of the time we would just get ignored or yelled at, but there were a select few who would actually have conversations with us and accept one of our magazines. And to top it off, we also had to attend conventions twice a year, which was basically a total of 16 hours of church on Saturday and Sunday with hundreds of Witnesses at once from across the state. In addition to all my lost time that I could have been spending with friends or relaxing at home on the weekends, they also robbed me some of the greatest things that should have been part of my childhood: Christmas, birthdays, Halloween, Easter candy, Thanksgiving dinners, lighting fireworks on Independence Day, exchanging Valentines... Fuck, even Pokemon and Disney movies were off-limits because they had magic and psychics and ghosts and other nasty things of the occult which we simply could not associate ourselves with. I find it especially ironic that I didn't get to celebrate Christmas with my family until we weren't "True Christians" (as the Jehovah's Witnesses call themselves) anymore. And that's just the surface of it all. As Witness kids, we weren't allowed to partake in any extra-curricular activities because of the risk of interfering with our Kingdom Hall meetings. So no joining Scouts, no school sports, no academic clubs of any kind. We were heavily discouraged from participating in anything "worldly". (anything that didn't follow our strict guidelines on how to live without sin) After high school, we were also discouraged from attending college, and instead pushed to become "Pioneers" by dedicating our whole life to God, working only enough to sustain ourselves while putting in as much church time as possible. The only reason I was able to get out at age 13 was because my sister came out as bisexual to our parents, and they didn't want to excommunicate her from our family. (but oh man, did the local Elders want us to do that) So at that point we put in our formal resignations and pretty much quit religion entirely. The only one in my immediate family who identifies as Christian now is my father, who converted to Catholicism a few years later. The rest of us are all either agnostic or atheist, and don't have any interest in organized religion whatsoever. I've had enough God to last me a lifetime.

Wow.. and I thought I had it rough. Hugs CompaIsMyWaifu I'm agnostic. Or athiest. Or norse/taoist, not sure. I like the norse mythos though. But I guess in all actuality I'm athiest. So to the above questions: No. To some degree. Because even though wind is created by the atmosphere and the earth was created by... time, and... stuff, the time and stuff, and, you know.. Had to come from somewhere . Where? No fucking clue.

Lokorfi wrote: VyraLove wrote: Wow.. and I thought I had it rough. Hugs CompaIsMyWaifu I'm agnostic. Or athiest. Or norse/taoist, not sure. I like the norse mythos though. But I guess in all actuality I'm athiest. So to the above questions: No. To some degree. Because even though wind is created by the atmosphere and the earth was created by... time, and... stuff, the time and stuff, and, you know.. Had to come from somewhere . Where? No fucking clue. Jeez, I've never really thought about it that much, but how did time start existing? Is it just an ancient concept? Maybe it's not even real?! UGHH hugs VyraLove Pretty sure there was an epsiode on this covered by Neil DeGrasse Tyson, I think it was either in Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey or The Inexplicable Universe, but it's been a while since I've watched either. They are both worth watching though if you're interested 😛 I think they're still on Hulu

I can not belive in it. I wish I could though. Would give life purpose.

Aoz wrote: I can not belive in it. I wish I could though. Would give life purpose. I find purpose in the little things that most people wouldn't appreciate - enjoying a sunrise, complimenting a stranger, donating spare change to the homeless. Things that basically remind you that you, and the people around you, are human. I was born Catholic, see myself as agnostic. I can see why people would and wouldn't want to adopt religion into their life, and I can respect both sides so long as one doesn't force itself into another.Â My family expects me to attend Sunday massÂ every week and volunteer at my church, but I live my life the way I want to: as a good person to do good things when I can.

I myself am a choirboy. You could even call me an acolyte judging by the time I've spent 'serving'. The thing is, I don't really believe in God. I'm some sort of agnostic, who needs to be proven that God does exist to actually believe it. I just find it really odd that people in this day and age are so fixated on the 'higher being'. We're no longer uneducated, unskilled beings, that praised fire because it gave them light and warmth. We know all sorts of things, we can tell where something came from, how it was created or what caused it (for example, wind is created by differences in the pressure on different heights in the atmosphere, causing air to move in bulk,Â being subject also to the Coriolis effect). We are not omnipotent and don't know everything, but the way things go now, I believe everything that goes on around us will get a scientific explanation. Unless some sort of miracle occurs and Christ does come back to judge us all. Very unlikely, but the chance still exists... at least according to the Catholic Church. Hell, I'm not even sure if me being an agnostic is caused by my own self or rather shaped by the country. You see, I live in Poland, the democratic country where for the past 20 years the ruling party has given church unlimited space forÂ growth and real importance to the country. The church holidays are seen as something unmissable by all means, a significant margin of the money the government gets from people goes to the church and renovations of said places. So yeah, I'm not sure if my state of mind is shaped by myself or rather caused by some natural resistance to what everyone else believes.

Lokorfi VyraLove wrote: Wow.. and I thought I had it rough. Hugs CompaIsMyWaifu I'm agnostic. Or athiest. Or norse/taoist, not sure. I like the norse mythos though. But I guess in all actuality I'm athiest. So to the above questions: No. To some degree. Because even though wind is created by the atmosphere and the earth was created by... time, and... stuff, the time and stuff, and, you know.. Had to come from somewhere . Where? No fucking clue. Jeez, I've never really thought about it that much, but how did time start existing? Is it just an ancient concept? Maybe it's not even real?! UGHH Time is a concept made by a human and if we were to disappear as a species, so would time. It's a hard thing to wrap your head around, but yes, time is not real and simply how we measure things. Every way you use time is a form of measurement and even the concept of stasis is a measurement. Time didn't come from anywhere. When you start to question the more fundamental constructs of how we function and think, religion or no, things start to get pretty dicey. mis wrote: Aoz wrote: I can not belive in it. I wish I could though. Would give life purpose. I find purpose in the little things that most people wouldn't appreciate - enjoying a sunrise, complimenting a stranger, donating spare change to the homeless. Things that basically remind you that you, and the people around you, are human. I was born Catholic, see myself as agnostic. I can see why people would and wouldn't want to adopt religion into their life, and I can respect both sides so long as one doesn't force itself into another.Â My family expects me to attend Sunday massÂ every week and volunteer at my church, but I live my life the way I want to: as a good person to do good things when I can. Just to extract a little something from your statement being completely aware that's not what you meant: The biggest thing I take issue with in religious thoughts is that they are the only ones who possess and created moral cores. Blah. Otherwise, yes. Leave me alone and I'll leave it alone. Nanashi wrote: I myself am a choirboy. You could even call me an acolyte judging by the time I've spent 'serving'. The thing is, I don't really believe in God. I'm some sort of agnostic, who needs to be proven that God does exist to actually believe it. I just find it really odd that people in this day and age are so fixated on the 'higher being'. We're no longer uneducated, unskilled beings, that praised fire because it gave them light and warmth. We know all sorts of things, we can tell where something came from, how it was created or what caused it (for example, wind is created by differences in the pressure on different heights in the atmosphere, causing air to move in bulk,Â being subject also to the Coriolis effect). We are not omnipotent and don't know everything, but the way things go now, I believe everything that goes on around us will get a scientific explanation. Unless some sort of miracle occurs and Christ does come back to judge us all. Very unlikely, but the chance still exists... at least according to the Catholic Church. Hell, I'm not even sure if me being an agnostic is caused by my own self or rather shaped by the country. You see, I live in Poland, the democratic country where for the past 20 years the ruling party has given church unlimited space forÂ growth and real importance to the country. The church holidays are seen as something unmissable by all means, a significant margin of the money the government gets from people goes to the church and renovations of said places. So yeah, I'm not sure if my state of mind is shaped by myself or rather caused by some natural resistance to what everyone else believes. I tend to despise when religion has a significant or any hand, really, in government since that's when it starts to interfere with people's lives, whether or not they believe. To make matters worse it may be a foundation for a person who is being raised within said country and should they have conflicting beliefs end up confused whether or not their 'compromise' is their real decision or a heavy influence. The brain is a tricky thing like that. It seems we want to believe in God because we start seeing patterns in nature, we begin to think things were put there for us to use. Though if that were true we would have far more access to hydroelectricity or some such earlier, no? I find, and feel free to correct me, that the 'non-believer' train of thought is that things were there and we turned those things into resources. The 'believer' train of thought (primarily the Christian one, if I may be so bold) things that those thing spawned as resources all along, ignoring that we had to purify or modify many a thing to even be able to give it any use, meaning it was not a resource before. Blah, might go on a tangent, but my little tidbits.

Time as a measurement was man made, yes. I know that. But... if we as a species go away, time does not go away. Just the label. Plants will still grow. Animals will still grow and breed and do things. It's not like... things freeze when we go away. That's what I mean. Where did it come from?

Waifu wrote: I tend to despise when religion has a significant or any hand, really, in government since that's when it starts to interfere with people's lives, whether or not they believe. To make matters worse it may be a foundation for a person who is being raised within said country and should they have conflicting beliefs end up confused whether or not their 'compromise' is their real decision or a heavy influence. The brain is a tricky thing like that. It seems we want to believe in God because we start seeing patterns in nature, we begin to think things were put there for us to use. Though if that were true we would have far more access to hydroelectricity or some such earlier, no? I find, and feel free to correct me, that the 'non-believer' train of thought is that things were there and we turned those things into resources. The 'believer' train of thought (primarily the Christian one, if I may be so bold) things that those thing spawned as resources all along, ignoring that we had to purify or modify many a thing to even be able to give it any use, meaning it was not a resource before. Blah, might go on a tangent, but my little tidbits. Well, I just tend to laugh it off in most cases. On one hand, the church is said to willingly 'give us the choice' whether we want to praise the God/Jesus/Holy Spirit, Buddha, Allah or any other deity at hand. On the other hand, it tells the parents to raise their children in faith and belief. So that's one factor that already sits within your head from the very start. As for that... I've been told that people believe in God because they want something to have faith in. They live cause they have faith in tomorrow, faith that the better day will come whenever they're down, things like that. In reality, though, church has turned this primal instinct of people into a weapon, a weapon to drive them to church and be the 'blind followers', regardless their opinions. Train of thought... it's more like, everyone believes in what they want to believe. In my opinion the whole 'god has given us resources' is bullshit. We have habitated the Earth for long, long milleniums. And we gradually found more and more use in what we found. We couldn't use trees to produce wood at first, but now we can. We couldn't mix the elements to create new substances, medicines and things like that, but now we can. It's all a matter of how long have we been exposed to the world around us, how much we've learned from it and how much we have adapted to it. Adapted . If we couldn't adapt to the surroundings, what good would it do? Would god give us the wood, the wheels or medicines just like that, cause we would be so stupid as to not know how to make them ourselves? Nope. We'd just die out, or at best, live like apes.

The God Thread

COUPLED

holy shit i was fucked up when i typed that LOL

Saikou

Waifu wrote:
Saikou wrote:
Waifu wrote:
In the words of Fry, if God does exist, there can only be one proper response;

“I’d say: ‘Bone cancer in children? What’s that about? How dare you! How dare you create a world where there is such misery that is not our fault. It’s not right. It’s utterly, utterly evil. Why should I respect a capricious, mean-minded, stupid God who creates a world which is so full of injustice and pain?’ That’s what I’d say.”

This quote is flawed; a quick read of Genesis 2 and 3 would explain why.

Feel free to explain how the current state of affairs of our world can be justified in any way shape or form under the rule of a presumably benevolent God.
Ultimately either God ignores us ( Apathy ), doesn't exist ( Fantasy ), or he torments us ( Malice ).

The Bible contradicts itself on multiple occasions, so as a source it can also be stated as flawed because, religious or not, discrepancies/inconsistencies must always be met with scrutiny.

My point was that suffering came to the world through Adam and Eve's sin (and additionally our own, as not a day goes by without someone sinning).

A few helpful links:

http://www.gotquestions.org/Bible-suffering.html
http://www.openbible.info/topics/suffering
http://www.new-life.net/growth/other-articles/eight-explanations-for-suffering-found-in-the-bible/

Should you present these contradictions, I would be pleased to refute your claims.

Waifu

Saikou wrote:
Waifu wrote:
Saikou wrote:
Waifu wrote:
In the words of Fry, if God does exist, there can only be one proper response;

“I’d say: ‘Bone cancer in children? What’s that about? How dare you! How dare you create a world where there is such misery that is not our fault. It’s not right. It’s utterly, utterly evil. Why should I respect a capricious, mean-minded, stupid God who creates a world which is so full of injustice and pain?’ That’s what I’d say.”

This quote is flawed; a quick read of Genesis 2 and 3 would explain why.

Feel free to explain how the current state of affairs of our world can be justified in any way shape or form under the rule of a presumably benevolent God.
Ultimately either God ignores us ( Apathy ), doesn't exist ( Fantasy ), or he torments us ( Malice ).

The Bible contradicts itself on multiple occasions, so as a source it can also be stated as flawed because, religious or not, discrepancies/inconsistencies must always be met with scrutiny.

My point was that suffering came to the world through Adam and Eve's sin (and additionally our own, as not a day goes by without someone sinning).

A few helpful links:

http://www.gotquestions.org/Bible-suffering.html
http://www.openbible.info/topics/suffering
http://www.new-life.net/growth/other-articles/eight-explanations-for-suffering-found-in-the-bible/

Should you present these contradictions, I would be pleased to refute your claims.

Yet Adam and Eve have never sinned themselves. You can see why the supposedly stringent rules that apply to us now but didn't apply to our primordial's seem ridiculous. Especially since we're afflicted with a sin we had no part in. For a creature who most consider the father of humanity, that is unnecessarily cruel in setting up every individual to fail, considering that even some acts of benevolence are 'sins',.

The explanations just can't live to the impracticality and injustice being inflicted upon us. No scripture or writing can say what is being done to us is just, which means either your benevolent lord does not exist or he's petty and capricious, making him borderline malicious in nature.

I worship no capricious god, so even if I had doubts, I still wouldn't believe simply out of that standard. My inferior in maturity does not deserve my respect, let alone worship.

The other reasoning is that mayhaps he goes by another moral code we're not aware of and just seems to be psychopathic which, honestly, most bibles seem to imply he is anyways.

๖ۣۜDemon

I really don't like religion at all because I was basically forced to be a Christian, so I basically despise it, but I don't have problems with people that actually have a religion, because to each his own.

But I'm basically Agnostic, if I was to try out one religion, it would definitely be Buddhism. The whole religion is about inner peace, and being calm and relaxed.

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