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I grew up in a catholic family but it never really "stuck" to me. I think one reason was that not even my dad really liked the church. It was more a chore you had to do. As I grew older it was more and more clear that I wasn't religious. Today I would consider myself as an atheist. Religion doesn't' makes sense to me at all.

However I don't really care in general what people believe as long as it's not infringing on others. Also state and church should be separate( a secular state ). History shows that religious states never work well in the long run and cause more pain and suffering for the people. We can see this even today in our world.

For a long time I didn't even know there was something like creationism. That's just wild for me and the people that usually propagate this seem like snake oil salesman or cult leaders. In my country the overwhelming majority (81%) think that evolution by natural selection is true however that doesn't mean that these are all atheists.

 

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@PetrichorDL

"For a long time I didn't even know there was something like creationism. That's just wild for me and the people that usually propagate this seem like snake oil salesman or cult leaders. In my country the overwhelming majority (81%) think that evolution by natural selection is true however that doesn't mean that these are all atheists."

Unfortunately in America it's a fairly common belief although in most other countries around the world it's not, even in countries where the population is religious. Even POpe John Paul II said evolution is true and that the Bible was more as metaphors rather than an absolute guide. Most reasonable people realize that the earth is not 6000 years old but America is not a reasonable country compared to a lot of the rest of the world. But outside of fundamentalist sects there are plenty of religious people who accept evolution is true and who aren't as rigidly against scientific facts as the fundamentalists are. But the fact that this belief persists at all is a monument to how human stupidity can continue unchecked for so long, and even in the 21st century we have people with medieval worldviews.

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@DesperateJill

"The Bible is pretty much entirely open to interpretation and I can't think of anything from the Bible that has ever really been proven."

 

Maybe not 100% proven, but there are plenty of historical events that line up with the timeline of the Bible, making it *technically* an accurate, historical document. Jewish historians wrote about the life of Jesus, which definitely gives the idea that there was a real person named Jesus in that time at the very least, and he had a large following. The story of Noah and the ark tends to align with the idea of an Ice Age, and gives an explanation as to why fish fossils have been found on mountain tops. There are certain genealogy accounts that, from what I understand, have lined up with other sources' accounts. It's still refutable evidence, as nobody from even the New Testament era is still around, but it's not so far-fetched or unbelievable to think that, at the very least, there is some truth to the Bible.

 

"To me God is basically just a genocidal dictator and I think it's been the most destructive belief in human history."

 

I completely agree that religion, especially Christianity, has caused a lot of pain. But I don't believe that God actually wanted us to do most of these things. Would Jesus have walked around saying He hates gays? Absolutely not, because He doesn't. So when I see Christians picketing things like that it makes me so angry because they aren't acting the way they should; they're trying to cover for their own hatred.

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@TimmyTrihard69

"Maybe not 100% proven, but there are plenty of historical events that line up with the timeline of the Bible, making it *technically* an accurate, historical document. Jewish historians wrote about the life of Jesus, which definitely gives the idea that there was a real person named Jesus in that time at the very least, and he had a large following. The story of Noah and the ark tends to align with the idea of an Ice Age, and gives an explanation as to why fish fossils have been found on mountain tops. There are certain genealogy accounts that, from what I understand, have lined up with other sources' accounts. It's still refutable evidence, as nobody from even the New Testament era is still around, but it's not so far-fetched or unbelievable to think that, at the very least, there is some truth to the Bible."

I guess I should have been more specific I was more referring to the miracles of the Bible and all of the supernatural theological metaphysical stuff like Jesus rising from the dead and Moses parting the Red Sea and all of this stuff. I do agree that it can be accurate historically and is an interesting historical document to ponder. Definitely the Bible even if you dismiss the supernatural elements does actually have a lot of real history mixed in with a lot of mythology. When I was saying that the Bible wasn't proven I was mostly referring to the mythological and metaphysical claims. But you are right there is plenty in the Bible that can be historically validated by the archaeological data, so it is an important historical document even if it's mixed in with a lot of mythology and theology and stuff that is most likely just a legend.

"I completely agree that religion, especially Christianity, has caused a lot of pain. But I don't believe that God actually wanted us to do most of these things. Would Jesus have walked around saying He hates gays? Absolutely not, because He doesn't. So when I see Christians picketing things like that it makes me so angry because they aren't acting the way they should; they're trying to cover for their own hatred."

I agree that Christians cherry pick the Bible and basically say that there's a lot of things that aren't even there as I don't think that homosexuality is even mentioned all that much in the Bible at all, it probably wasn't even an issue very much back then. When Christians bring up their opposition to abortion even their holy book says specifically that life begins at birth not conception, so even when they are trying to use their holy book to impose their theocratic beliefs even their holy book doesn't back up their BS.


But it also cannot be denied that there is plenty in the Bible that does support hatred texturally speaking. If you read the Bible God does flood the earth and mass murder every single person on the planet for displeasing him. God regularly asks people to sacrifice children, perform human sacrifice, murder children, slaughter villagers and commit genocide. So yes there is a lot of things that Christians just blatantly makeup and cherry picked in order to justify their hatred, but if you actually consider the Bible and accurate text of what God said and did God still is a major gigantic asshole and mass murderer. And if you believe the book of Revelation God has lots of terrible things he plans on doing yet to come.


That's I think where I ultimately parted with most Christian beliefs, when it comes down to it it really is an apocalyptic worldview, the idea that ultimately the fate of everyone is that God is going to kill everybody and sadistically punish and torture everybody who defies him. That's not interpretation, that's something you can get right from the Bible, God's actions in the Bible speak for themselves and they are monstrous.

And when you get to the whole idea of Jesus being sacrificed for the world sins that to me as a monstrous and horrible belief. Basically God could have just forgiven and redeemed mankind without necessitating some type of ritualistic sacrifice involving torture and brutality but no, when you get down to it the Bible has a lot of stuff that justifies brutality and sadism and has a very negative and cruel worldview when you get right down to it. The Bible wasn't written in liberal democratic societies, it was written in ancient kingdoms where authoritarianism mass murder and militarism were the norm of the day. Even the description of heaven is sort of militaristic with armies of angels and a final militaristic battle at the end of time in which everything is destroyed. The Bible is not a book of peace and love, it's a book that makes most action movies look pacifistic by contrast.

And the way I often phrase it if God was our holy father he is the kind of father who if social services got a hold of him would make sure that he never sees his children again. God is sort of like the ultimate abusive parent.

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@DesperateJill

I see what you mean with the mythology thing. Personally I find it hard to believe that a text that old could be so historically accurate, but have all those lies in it.

I only just woke up a little bit ago lol, but basically I mean I believe everything the Bible says, besides any translation errors, because it's such an accurate document that to me it's hard not to believe the rest of what it says.

"So yes there is a lot of things that Christians just blatantly makeup and cherry picked in order to justify their hatred, but if you actually consider the Bible and accurate text of what God said and did God still is a major gigantic asshole and mass murderer."

This is a whole can of worms for me — if you're interested to read, feel free, if not, I won't blame you, but this might end up pretty long.

 

The God of the Old Testament and the New Testament is the same god, but the rules changed, so to speak. Jesus came so that we'd be free from sin if we believe in what He did and accepted that free gift — it really is free, btw, bc we don't have to do a single thing to earn it, just acknowledge it and accept it.

But Jesus also came to abolish all the old laws. This is where Christianity defers from Judaism and even Catholicism. It's generally regarded in Christianity that we're not supposed to abide by Old Testament law anymore, but what the New Testament says. That's why guys like me can be Christian and have as many tattoos as I do, or eat pork, etc.

In doing this, God almost set the precedent that He's not going to do what He used to do anymore, because instead of directly laying wrath to people who go against Him, He gives people a choice:

Free will. This is where the can of worms really opens, sorry in advance for how long this is getting.

I think the idea that God gives us free will makes Him such a benevolent deity. Otherwise we wouldn't have full, conscious freedom to make our own choices and live our own lives. But, with free will comes all the bad things — death, murder, lies, etc. because people can wake up every day and actively choose those things. God 100% does not like to see those things happen, but humanity is innately flawed and again, He lets us choose whether to do good or not.

This free will carries over into choosing Jesus/salvation or not. I don't believe that hell is a literal lake of fire with lava and red demons with pointy sticks, but I think that it's just total separation from God. Even diehard athiests have never felt separation from God, which honestly sounds a lot worse than just being on fire. That being said, I don't believe God is saying "I'm directly punishing you and tormenting you for not accepting me". I tend to believe that He's saying, "you had the choice to choose me or not, and you chose to live without me, so you'll live without me for eternity" kind of thing.

So I definitely believe that, yeah God wreaked havoc on people in the Old Testament (it's also worth pointing out that in stories like Noah, where He drowned everyone bc they were wicked):

1. They were genuinely being wicked, awful people and

2. God gave them multiple chances to trust Him and Noah and board the boat and they refused until it started to rain

But, while He was wreaking havoc then, He hasn't had to do it in the New Testament + after because that's the whole point of Jesus 🙂

And I'm also kind of just realizing now how funny all this religious debating sounds to people who come here to cum to others peeing

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@TimmyTrihard69

"The God of the Old Testament and the New Testament is the same god, but the rules changed, so to speak. Jesus came so that we'd be free from sin if we believe in what He did and accepted that free gift — it really is free, btw, bc we don't have to do a single thing to earn it, just acknowledge it and accept it."

So if they are the same God the same God who was perfectly okay with mass murder and human sacrifice and everything in the Old Testament suddenly got wise about 2000 years ago and said you know what I've been kind of an asshole maybe I should change my ways. But he is all-knowing and all good he should have known that from the beginning. Why did he approve of genocide and mass murder and human sacrifice instead of opposing them from the get-go. Why did he have us be created so we needed to be redeemed in the first place. I'm sorry but this makes no sense to me. If it's the same God then it's the same mass murderer, it doesn't matter if he reformed his ways 2000 years ago, for the first couple of thousand years of history he was still telling people to mass murder everybody.

"I think the idea that God gives us free will makes Him such a benevolent deity. Otherwise we wouldn't have full, conscious freedom to make our own choices and live our own lives. But, with free will comes all the bad things — death, murder, lies, etc. because people can wake up every day and actively choose those things. God 100% does not like to see those things happen, but humanity is innately flawed and again, He lets us choose whether to do good or not."

I'm sorry but this guy doesn't sound benevolent at all. He basically placed us in a world giving us no real proof of his existence that is unambiguous. He created a world of plague and hunger and toil and violence and hatred and basically just left us to our own devices and then he blames us for the decision we make when he basically created a world that was designed to kill us at every turn. God could've said you know what I don't want to create a world where there is going to be famine and disease and natural disasters and old age and death and disability, but you know what I think I will to make things interesting and then if people in these horrible circumstances don't manage to be moral in spite of their circumstances I will punish them in the afterlife. I'm sorry but this is like the ultimate in victim blaming. God basically created the world so he created the conditions that lead to all of the suffering and misery that this world has brought. I'm sorry but any God who creates a world designed like this is a sadist and not the least bit benevolent.

"This free will carries over into choosing Jesus/salvation or not. I don't believe that hell is a literal lake of fire with lava and red demons with pointy sticks, but I think that it's just total separation from God. Even diehard athiests have never felt separation from God, which honestly sounds a lot worse than just being on fire. That being said, I don't believe God is saying "I'm directly punishing you and tormenting you for not accepting me". I tend to believe that He's saying, "you had the choice to choose me or not, and you chose to live without me, so you'll live without me for eternity" kind of thing."

You know based on everything I've heard about the guy if he's real I think that I will be content to never have to meet this guy. If he is the way he is depicted in the Bible I don't think I would want to be in the same room as him unless I was a judge providing over atrocity charges to have him condemned to death as a mass murderer and sadist.

"So I definitely believe that, yeah God wreaked havoc on people in the Old Testament (it's also worth pointing out that in stories like Noah, where He drowned everyone bc they were wicked):

1. They were genuinely being wicked, awful people and

2. God gave them multiple chances to trust Him and Noah and board the boat and they refused until it started to rain"

So you genuinely believe that all of the millions of people existed in the world every last one of them without exception was wicked except for Noah, every single person in the world was horrible. Well at least God was not discriminate, at least he didn't just say I'm just going to kill the Blacks or the Asians, I'm going to kill every man woman and child on the earth except for this one guy and his family so that he can repopulate the world through incest.
I'm sorry but this is just absolutely horrible. So you're basically saying that people are deemed wicked it's okay to commit mass murder. I mean don't take this the wrong way, I don't mean any real offense but if this is the way you view the world I pray to the God that I don't feel exists that you are never the person who has the nuclear launch codes, because you're going to pave a road straight to hell. That is one of my other big problems with this worldview, it's the people who believe in some type of hell or retribution who are most likely to inflict it on others.

"But, while He was wreaking havoc then, He hasn't had to do it in the New Testament + after because that's the whole point of Jesus"

Okay so basically God was a mass murdering sadistic tyrant killing people for thousands of years and then by torturing and killing his own peace loving son that somehow makes that all right. Got you, makes perfect sense and isn't monstrously horrific to contemplate at all. So thousands of wrongs and atrocities don't make a right, but thousands of wrongs and atrocities plus one more act of sadism and brutality against his own son somehow makes it alright and makes it cool. And his son is also somehow also him, so he's kind of a masochist too?

"And I'm also kind of just realizing now how funny all this religious debating sounds to people who come here to cum to others peeing"

Okay with that I fully agree. And with that I think I am done with this thread. I said that I wasn't going to get distracted tonight and I was going to get right to my writing and what am I doing, it's hours later and I am debating religious principles that I feel are unprovable and irrational on a pee fetish forum. So I think I am done now and that is why I try not to get involved with these threads. That's why I feel debating theology is basically just wasting time and bullshitting. It's like whose invisible friend is real, we will now determine this on the basis of no evidence whatsoever!

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@DesperateJill

I agree with closing the conversation, but all I want to point out is that it's very hard to understand what religious people mean sometimes without being religious yourself. It's a whole new vocabulary and it means totally different stuff to people who don't believe what we believe.

Adam and Eve were perfect human beings, but they did the one thing God told them they couldn't do, and because of that evil entered the world. It wasn't some long list that was hard to stay away from, they just ate a piece of fruit, which was the ONLY thing they couldn't do and now here we are. But God recognized the suffering and gave a way out. That's all I had left to say

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@TimmyTrihard69

"I agree with closing the conversation, but all I want to point out is that it's very hard to understand what religious people mean sometimes without being religious yourself. It's a whole new vocabulary and it means totally different stuff to people who don't believe what we believe.

Adam and Eve were perfect human beings, but they did the one thing God told them they couldn't do, and because of that evil entered the world. It wasn't some long list that was hard to stay away from, they just ate a piece of fruit, which was the ONLY thing they couldn't do and now here we are. But God recognized the suffering and gave a way out. That's all I had left to say"

I agree this should end the conversation because religion is one of those things that's not really based on logic so arguing about it is kind of pointless really and that is why politics and religion never really end up well, so I'm not even going to get started on what I think about Adam and Eve and that whole story because an island of writing a novella length response to that. I honestly can't comprehend how religion and Biblical literal-ism even exist in the 21st century.


One thing though that I think is on-topic giving that this is a pee fetish board is the one thing that I actually did think when I was hearing the story of Adam and Eve as a child as I actually did wonder if the ease with which men were able to urinate compared to how difficult it was for women in regards to peeing was somehow a punishment from the Garden of Eden or something like that based on what that religious fundamentalist kid that I mentioned to me when I was younger, why now very strongly suspect probably did get kind of a kick out of seeing women suffering bladder pain.


But yes just like with everything else I have bathrooms on the brain in regards to that. Even as a young child for a long time I actually did believe that maybe the difficulties that women have regards to relieving themselves had something to do with Adam and Eve. Of course now I realize it's just a fable and a misogynistic one at that, but as a child you can get some pretty weird notions even in regards to something like going to the bathroom from something like religion and that to me just sums up why I feel religion is crazy in the first place!

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  • 3 weeks later...
  • 2 weeks later...
On 7/25/2022 at 8:44 AM, DesperateJill said:

I do agree that it can be accurate historically and is an interesting historical document to ponder. Definitely the Bible even if you dismiss the supernatural elements does actually have a lot of real history mixed in with a lot of mythology. . . But you are right there is plenty in the Bible that can be historically validated by the archaeological data, so it is an important historical document even if it's mixed in with a lot of mythology and theology and stuff that is most likely just a legend.

Somewhat depends on where the Bible reader lives.  A mountain range running north to south divides my home state.  Item 1:  The taller mountains support glaciers.   Where glaciers have partially melted, they leave "U" shaped valleys.  Lower down the slope where rivers have carved the land for millennia, we see "V" shaped valleys.  Up the slope large rocks show scratches where glaciers pushed pebbles against them.  The scratches show the direction the glacier moved.  Further down around rivers we occasionally find scratches in firmly anchored rocks.  But instead of running east-west like scratches from "recent" glaciers, they run north to south.  Tree rings date these low-land scratches to 12,000 to 10,000 years ago.  Item 2:   The state contains a large inlet, indirectly connecting with open sea.  The inland end connects to a mostly buried river bed also connecting with the open sea.  The river deposited a large delta in the sea.  Tree rings date the river bed to 12,000 to 10,000 years ago.  To make the inlet overflow into the river bed something had to dam the inlet's usual outlet.  Tree rings date the river bed to 12,000 to 10,000 years ago.  The same area contains glacial debris.  Item 3:  On the other side of the mountain range a fair-sized river passes parallel to the mountains.  Geology shows the river experienced extraordinarily massive flooding.  But not massive enough to cover higher ridges.  The "bath-tub rings" remain part way up the ridges.  The floods date to the same period as the two previous items.  Item 4:  The lowlands either side of the mountains contain glacial-erratic boulders matching rocks hundreds of miles to the north (but not local rocks).  Item 5:  Volcanic ash overlays parts of these areas.  But no mega water events have left their evidence.

Geologists mainly attribute the first 4 items as evidence for a massive glaciation flowing down from the north and gradually melting away.  The glacier dammed the inlet and the river.  Details in the flood evidence indicates a possible 50 occurrences.  The lake behind the glacial dam eventually floated the ice dam and broke it.  After the lake emptied, a new glacial dam formed.  Repeat maybe 4 dozen times.

If as Bible literallists claim, a massive flood covered all the earth around 4,000 to 5,000 years ago, it would have overwritten the local geology.  

Admittedly, other areas conform more closely to Biblical accounts.

Raised Episcopalian until age 11 when I was expelled from Sunday school.

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@Stanley79

"If as Bible literallists claim, a massive flood covered all the earth around 4,000 to 5,000 years ago, it would have overwritten the local geology.  

Admittedly, other areas conform more closely to Biblical accounts."

Once again this is where I think that some type of real event happened that Ben became mythologized. A lot of archaeologists and geologists seem to agree that there probably was a raising of water levels throughout the world at the end of the last Ice Age, and it seems like throughout different cultures there is legends of the flood consistently. But most likely happen wasn't that the whole world was flooded but perhaps they lived in these River Valley civilizations and perhaps as the water level rose it ended up wiping out most of civilization, so from that perspective it would seem like it was the end of the world or the entire world being flooded. Then it gets passed down over thousands of years orally before it's written down and by the time there is a written account of this high mythology where some type of Creator God was responsible for flooding the entire world and where everybody died, when clearly plenty of people must have survived otherwise there would be no one to record this legend. So I think this is one of those cases where people are vaguely remembering a distant event in the past that actually happened and mythologizing it into something more monumental than it actually was.

"Raised Episcopalian until age 11 when I was expelled from Sunday school."

Curious as to why you got expelled?

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12 hours ago, DesperateJill said:

Curious as to why you got expelled?

A year earlier schoolwork had introduced my age set to ideas about orbits and interplanetary distances being much great than Earth-Moon distances.  Satellite orbits would fit what had been taught that year.

In spring 1957 children's magazines (Weekly Reader, Junior Scholastic, Buoy's Life, etc.) carried articles about the coming IGY (International Geophysical Year).  They emphasized Operation Moonwatch, fictionalized satellite radio reception and predicted space news.  I bought into the excitement hook, line and luxury yacht -- read all the children's articles.  When school closed for the summer, I grabbed the newspaper each day before my parents could get it.  May 1957 I had turned 11. 

Come September school newsletters resumed their forecasts.   Sunday school resumed with the teacher telling stories from Genesis.  Then October and the USSR's surprise arrived and renewed emphasis on space satellites. 

Meanwhile our Sunday-school teacher described god and angels standing on the sky and the sky having windows.  So I asked how that fit with what the newspapers told us about the X-15 (an edge-of-space aircraft) and satellites.  She had no coherent answer.

Then the Sunday-school teacher taught the Tower-of-Babble story.  She emphasized the builders violating the will of god.  Again I asked how that tallied with god allowing the X-15 and satellites.  Later that week she honed my mother announcing I'd have to stop asking such question or be kicked out. 

My mother put that to me as a choice.  I told mom when the Sunday-school teacher's teaching didn't tally with newspapers and my weekday classes I insisted on answers.  My mother considered this reasonable.  In a way the whole family had been expelled from church.

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@Stanley79

Awesome, that story made me smile. I think that that's pretty typical, religion doesn't want people asking questions because they will realize that the religious leaders are just basically making it up as they go along. It's astonishing that even in the 1950s in a technological society with space travel like that people still believed such ridiculous things.


In fact I tend to think that that is what drives a lot of modern-day fundamentalism. They can only continue to exist by rejecting all of the facts of reality that science is revealing. They know that if people question it that their answers won't hold up to scrutiny. So the only thing they can do is say that Satan planted those dinosaur bones to trick us or that all scientists are in a conspiracy against us. But I think that as the world becomes more rational and scientific we will see a growing number of people abandoning religion as we have seen happening faster than at any other place in history. Maybe we'll even come to a state of reason before we destroy the planet, maybe…

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  • 3 weeks later...

I'm athiest, was never babtised or Christened. My mum was methodist, but doesn't really have a faith now. 

14 minutes ago, Mary127 said:

I’m atheist but was born catholic, went to catholic school and all. I though my parents would crucify me if I told them I was bi so I didn’t for many years, but after coming back from college I was surprised to learn that they abandoned religion as well. 

What turned your parents off religion? If you don't mind me asking.

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@Mary127

"I’m atheist but was born catholic, went to catholic school and all. I though my parents would crucify me if I told them I was bi so I didn’t for many years, but after coming back from college I was surprised to learn that they abandoned religion as well."

Supposedly people get more religious as they get older in a lot of cases but I think the opposite is often true as well, I think that people just sort of outgrow it. But neither of my parents seemed like they had any firm opinions on any kind of religious issue, where sometimes it seemed like they believed in God and other times that they didn't or that they had weird ideas that were constantly changing. I think for the average person religions just not a big part of life. There are plenty of people who are atheists and plenty of people who just don't follow organized religion in general or don't even really think about it at all.


But I have noticed that among younger generations more and more people either just don't believe in God or don't find religion to be a big part of their life and I think that as we go forward into the future that trend is likely to continue and that that is a good thing. In Europe they can't even get enough people to fill the churches and that's why the only place where religion seems to be growing now is in third world nations. In most Western industrialized nations nonbelief or non-affiliation at any rate is the growing norm. Maybe not everybody is a committed atheist but most people don't regularly go to church or list themselves as spiritual but not religious. The nonreligious in the nonaffiliated are now the fastest growing demographic in the world where the number of people who listed themselves as nonreligious pretty much doubled in just the last decade, at least in the United States anyway.

I would fall into that category and that I do believe in reincarnation and life after death and psychic phenomenon but I don't follow any real religion or believe in a personal deity of any kind and these beliefs don't really influence the way I behave towards others, I'm basically a humanist even if my opinion of the human race is quite low. I feel science will eventually uncover the truth of life beyond death eventually. I reject the idea of faith-based beliefs as I feel that if something is true then it is provable.


I do think that one thing that is driving a lot of polarization in society right now is that you have very little middle ground. Most people are gravitating away from religion but those who are holding on to attend to be the more fundamentalist brand, in the United States it's evangelicals who want to force their views on people politically, in the Middle East it is Islamic terrorists and theocracies. I think that the fundamentalism among those who are still believers is probably going to create more nonbelievers than anything else, I think one of the things that is driving people apart is that the religious fundamentalists realize that their way of life is collapsing and they have to become more extreme just to hold onto followers, but in most cases extremism will drive away most reasonable people altogether.

@Ms. Tito

"I never got my communion."

I was baptized in at the first Communion and the confirmation and all of that but I never really thought about religion when I was younger. Although looking back considering that now I'm sort of militantly anti-religious it's actually funny because I remember when we were supposed to get our first Communion we had like a practice session where they would give us some of the communion wafers to eat and I ended up spitting mine up because I didn't like the way it tasted. Looking back a kind of doesn't make sense because if our first Communion was supposed to be our first, if we had practice wafers before that wasn't that technically the first time? At any rate I think that even at that age religion left a bad taste in my mouth, and at any rate Jesus goes straight to my thighs!

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  • 2 months later...

I find it amazing how this off-topic thread from 6 years ago is still managing to be ongoing as of just 2 months ago. Just shows the power of some topics.

Anyway, if any of you have read my stories, you might imagine I'm interested in culture and religion, and you'd be right. My character Kanu worships a divine mother called Anakketta, the dominant deity of his native country of Jalabhumi.

In my personal life, I also worship a divine Mother, albeit a different one, whom I call Maa Kali.

So I guess you can call me a Hindu 😊

Jai Maa.

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I was once Christian, and extremely devoted, but could only convince myself that no amount of talking to thin air ever changing anything for anyone was 'working in mysterious ways' for so long. It's a longer, more eventful, more personal journey than I'm making it sound, but, well... it's personal. 

I have come to believe in reincarnation (though not the complete text of any belief system that involves it) after reading the work of researchers like Ian Stevenson. If you've heard of a boy named James Leininger, whose memories of being a fighter pilot matched a real person in a great deal of detail and no amount of research could find some alternate way of him knowing... Ian Stevenson and others like him have researched many such cases, and it's very interesting. (That's not one of his, but it's like that; investigating the claims, the lives of everyone involved, and striking out many stories that sounded good but had too many ways the person might have otherwise known about the life they claim to remember or other flaws.)

Sometimes I think about what my next life might be like, if I'd be very different. Mostly, I'd hope that I'd remember this one just enough to not worry as much about death as I did when I was totally sure that my eternity was going to be horrible because I couldn't make God love me back, or when I was totally sure that we just disappeared. 

Of course, now I add to it the hope that if I'm ever female, I'll find myself in a long bathroom line being gently teased by @DesperateJill about having it easier when I was a boy, and having a flash of recognition...

Edited by trekkie (see edit history)
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@trekkie

"I was once Christian, and extremely devoted, but could only convince myself that no amount of talking to thin air ever changing anything for anyone was 'working in mysterious ways' for so long. It's a longer, more eventful, more personal journey than I'm making it sound, but, well... it's personal."

I always thought that God works in mysterious ways was always like the ultimate copout saying we don't know, this doesn't make any logical sense, don't question it. Also God works in mysterious ways is sort of another way of saying God is jackass just accept it and don't question the injustice of it. It reminds me of that story I wanted to write were a woman gets a job as God's personal assistant who makes his mysterious ways manifest only to be disheartened when she realizes it mostly involves her giving children leukemia and causing natural disasters.

"I have come to believe in reincarnation (though not the complete text of any belief system that involves it) after reading the work of researchers like Ian Stevenson. If you've heard of a boy named James Leininger, whose memories of being a fighter pilot matched a real person in a great deal of detail and no amount of research could find some alternate way of him knowing... Ian Stevenson and others like him have researched many such cases, and it's very interesting. (That's not one of his, but it's like that; investigating the claims, the lives of everyone involved, and striking out many stories that sounded good but had too many ways the person might have otherwise known about the life they claim to remember or other flaws.)"

I have come to similar conclusions. When you look at the reincarnation evidence from researchers, the really serious researchers who tried to verify and validate everything that the people remember, the evidence is fairly consistent and impressive in contrast to most religious and New Age philosophies which don't back up their claims with any real evidence. And most of the evidence for reincarnation, the best evidence anyway, tends to suggest that reincarnation is a natural process, reward and punishment do not seem to be a factor and that we just tend to continue and learn or not but nothing obligating us one way or another.


Also I have probably more past life memories than anyone I've ever come across so I'm pretty damn convinced!


Another positive compared to organized religion is that nobody has been murdered by reincarnation researchers were ethnically cleansed yet, so it also has that going for it. Reincarnation is not inconsistent with science, materialism or a rationalist worldview, even Carl Sagan himself admitted such.

"Sometimes I think about what my next life might be like, if I'd be very different. Mostly, I'd hope that I'd remember this one just enough to not worry as much about death as I did when I was totally sure that my eternity was going to be horrible because I couldn't make God love me back, or when I was totally sure that we just disappeared."

I hope that my next life is very different from my current life, preferably a life as an Asian cat lady exploring space. And I hope that I do remember this life so that I can find myself and my personal records and pick up where I left off.

"Of course, now I add to it the hope that if I'm ever female, I'll find myself in a long bathroom line being gently teased by @DesperateJill about having it easier when I was a boy, and having a flash of recognition..."

Don't worry I am sure that several lifetimes into the future the bathroom lines will still be with us!

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