Your Religion / Beliefs

[Spaz The Great]

You just treat Niko like a real person... A lot.... It almost creeps me out. And that's just an idea that a lot of people have stated. A lot of real people.

[Huckleberry Pie]

You just treat Niko like a real person... A lot.... It almost creeps me out. And that's just an idea that a lot of people have stated. A lot of real people.

Sorry about that dude, I can't argue with that, though.

[Bear]

I would have liked to learn about the other religious holidays in the winter. It would have been nice, then again we never learnt much. We learnt about Muslims and then watched the Terminator. Its very strange.

[Spaz The Great]

I would have liked to learn about the other religious holidays in the winter. It would have been nice, then again we never learnt much. We learnt about Muslims and then watched the Terminator. Its very strange.

Talk about your conspiracy theorist and hidden agendas...

[helloonurse]

Well, when I was little I understood very little about the options I had when it came to believing these types of things. My family is Christian, so I just went with that for the longest time.

However, I eventually stopped believing anything in the bible because there is no actual proof of any of that. I don't believe, but I don't not believe. Meaning I do believe there's someone or something out there, but I don't think it's anything or anyone anybody could have thought up. I still do kind of believe in a God though. Being raised Christian did that, but I won't want to change that small belief I have on "God" because it's comforting to think about.

Anyways, if someone brings something religious up, I never disagree and I never agree. I just nod my head and listen, but I don't believe.

[Atrapos]

I don't have any religious beliefs.

[Red_Squirrel_UK]

I would have liked to learn about the other religious holidays in the winter. It would have been nice, then again we never learnt much. We learnt about Muslims and then watched the Terminator. Its very strange.

Talk about your conspiracy theorist and hidden agendas...

Are you saying terminator causes terrorism?

I dont have any religious beliefs.. Religion is just an excuse for us all to kill each other in war's!

[MrLanceVanceDance]

I am a Protestant Christian, and I am proud to call myself one.

[kokane]

It has become a permanent battle between theists and atheists. Each trying to prove they're right. Those that don't believe are satanists and those that believe are fools. It's not about being a good person anymore. It's more important proving you're right, which is something you will never be able to prove anyway, and will end up wasting your life with this nonsense.

Yes, I believe this fight over who's right is foolish and useless. There is no way to prove a god exists or not.

What is God anyway? They say it's the "creator" of the universe, the "supreme being". But what form and chemical composition does it have? I know the Bible says it is a supernatural being with the appearance of man. But you know, the dictionary says that fairies are also supernatural beings. The dictionary defines the spirit and soul as principles and immaterial entities. You can't physically prove their existence. They're like ideas. So I consider "God" more of a title than that unique god the christians worship. It's a title like mother, president, creator. It can have many and any form. It can be energy or a fairy.

I don't believe in a creator. But I also don't hate or judge people who do. They are free to believe in whatever they want as long as it makes them better persons. You don't have to share my ideas, but don't try to make me be like you and don't judge me for being different.

Before I continue I would also like to express my opinion on how some christians consider atheists satanists. If you are a satanist you worship Satan. If you worship Satan you believe in Satan. If you believe in Satan you are a christian. So therefore, you can't be an atheist and a satanist at the same time, you have to be a christian.

I believe in science and the laws of nature. I have my own philosophies and ideas on life and spirituality. I discovered they are compatible with Buddhism and Taoism so I decided to follow this path. I would like to think of it more of a philosophy and way of life than a religion. Even though it's nontheist, most still consider and practice it as a religion.

"To turn the Buddha into a religious fetish is to miss the essence of what he taught. (...) The wisdom of the Buddha is currently trapped within the religion of Buddhism. (...) While it may be true enough to say that Buddhism is not a religion, most Buddhists worldwide practice it as such, in many of the naive, petitionary, and superstitious ways in which all religions are practiced."

I selected the following quote from an article I read because it says it better than I would.

"Incompatible religious doctrines have balkanized our world into separate moral communities, and these divisions have become a continuous source of bloodshed. Indeed, religion is as much a living spring of violence today as it has been at any time in the past. The recent conflicts in Palestine (Jews vs. Muslims), the Balkans (Orthodox Serbians vs. Catholic Croatians; Orthodox Serbians vs. Bosnian and Albanian Muslims), Northern Ireland (Protestants vs. Catholics), Kashmir (Muslims vs. Hindus), Sudan (Muslims vs. Christians and animists), Nigeria (Muslims vs. Christians), Ethiopia and Eritrea (Muslims vs. Christians), Sri Lanka (Sinhalese Buddhists vs. Tamil Hindus), Indonesia (Muslims vs. Timorese Christians), Iran and Iraq (Shiite vs. Sunni Muslims), and the Caucasus (Orthodox Russians vs. Chechen Muslims; Muslim Azerbaijanis vs. Catholic and Orthodox Armenians) are merely a few cases in point. These are places where religion has been the explicit cause of literally millions of deaths in recent decades.

Why is religion such a potent source of violence? There is no other sphere of discourse in which human beings so fully articulate their differences from one another, or cast these differences in terms of everlasting rewards and punishments. Religion is the one endeavor in which us–them thinking achieves a transcendent significance. If you really believe that calling God by the right name can spell the difference between eternal happiness and eternal suffering, then it becomes quite reasonable to treat heretics and unbelievers rather badly. The stakes of our religious differences are immeasurably higher than those born of mere tribalism, racism, or politics.

Religion is also the only area of our discourse in which people are systematically protected from the demand to give evidence in defense of their strongly held beliefs. And yet, these beliefs often determine what they live for, what they will die for, and—all too often—what they will kill for. This is a problem, because when the stakes are high, human beings have a simple choice between conversation and violence. At the level of societies, the choice is between conversation and war. There is nothing apart from a fundamental willingness to be reasonable—to have one’s beliefs about the world revised by new evidence and new arguments—that can guarantee we will keep talking to one another. Certainty without evidence is necessarily divisive and dehumanizing."

My point is, whatever your religion is, what matters is you being a good person, not harming innocent others. Even thought I hate violence and promote peace, I do hate evil people and I would torture and kill without regret those evil bastards.

[MrLlamaLlama]

I like the way you think kokane.

My point is, whatever your religion is, what matters is you being a good person, not harming innocent others.

When a country (such as the US, but not exclusively) have entire infrastructures of power, laws, morals and standards inexorably linked to Christianity, and claim that they are a Christian nation, and then proceed to rape and pillage and murder in the pursuit of money and power over peace, it becomes hard for me to legitimately believe that religion has a place in modern society. Especially when it is a factual and blatant breach of not only the ten commandments, but international law defended by the pursuit of Christianity.

Now I understand not every Christian is a military strategist funnelling men into the middle east in pursuit of money. What I don't understand is how a god supposedly so mighty, so benevolent, and so irrefutably mighty would allow the slaughter not only of millions of men, women and children, but of every moral fibre he entrusted the first human beings with. He called one man to a mountain to sacrifice his son as a test of loyalty, but will not so much as call out those refusing to fund legitimate cancer research because it won't profit, or feed the hungry, or allow the racial barriers that plague this earth to be broken. All men were created equal.

The meek, instead of inheriting the earth, lie downtrodden, dead broke, and tied to systems that will perpetuate their own misery for eons to come.

That's why I can't come to terms with religion (mainly Christianity - I'm the first to admit I don't know enough to comment on any others) it just seems to me that we have wagered an awful lot on the Bible being right, and the longer the play goes on the more grim the reality gets.

I'd also like to note I don't have a problem with someone being openly Christian / Catholic / Muslim / whatever, but do lose some respect for those who refuse to think critically. The longer and more passionately someone argues with me (outside of predictable and circular logic) the more I respect them. Was arguing with one of my close friends on the vices and virtues of capitalism, which I'm pretty passionate about, and he managed to shut me up about it. Beers followed.