What's your religion?

[teachopvutru]

Originally Posted by Gemstar

Why do people pray when nothing ever happens or the prayer doesn't get fulfilled ? When it is fulfilled how come they don't think it is coincidence and not God's doing...

1) It's because they want to and would rather do that. (i.e. it feels better and more secure to have something of the unknown to hope for)
2) We like to seek pattern. (eg: I prayed and it happened, therefore it must be due to prayer) And if it didn't work, they might think they didn't pray enough.

In the end, it depends on which way you see it. I'm pretty sure all people grow up assume at least once about something.

[ZeosX]

I'm an atheist. I was raised in a Christian environment until I formed my own beliefs based on available information concerning Religion.

[Vexx]

There are different types, schools, and flavors of Buddhism, so its a bit difficult to make sweeping statements about it. Theoretical Buddhism requires no gods or spirits, no ancestor worship, no kami, etc. It is basically using a variety of paths to achieve the goal that that "Siddhartha" is said to have reached when he 'became the Buddha'. As Buddhism spread, it organically took on aspects of local worship habits (animism, ancestor respect, other interpretations of the stories, etc) that our other posters are describing.

In Japan, Buddhism integrated with Shinto to the point that the two are so swirled that it almost makes no sense to separate the two - and even there we have three major schools of Buddhism (and Shinto has almost uncountable variations in local forms).

[ApostleOfGod]

Enlightenment.

Just happens to be my favourite word (I'm not Buddhist though )

[i8o]

I don't believe religion, but I believe all Gods.

[aka Providence]

I am now officially a Deist, yay me. Oddly enough, this more apparent to me by the reason that it is holy week, and since you can't eat meat during holy week (for catholics), and because I dislike vegetable only meals (half a joke, still part of my reasons). In any case I will still spend time to go to church with my family.

edit: however, i shall still introduce myself to other people as a cthulhuist.

[escimo]

Haven't found a religion fitting to my twisted view of the world. At least yet. Well haven't really been searching either.

[Girl_who_cried_gnome]

Originally Posted by Thentus

It's right next to the quote button.

well i realize that now.....

[Icehawk]

Originally Posted by Ledgem

Of course Athiests do not require proof that God doesn't exist to believe that God doesn't exist.

Christians don't need any proof that God exists to believe that God exists.

Understand? Nobody has proof. Both are chosen beliefs. Neither is superior to the other, neither is more rational than the other, neither is more grounded than the other.

Atheism itself is a LACK of belief in gods. It is a state, not actually a "belief" contrary to what you may think. Just like baldness is not just another hair color style, its a lack of hair.

Even evidence is subjective. You dismiss mass personal claims as admissable evidence in the same manner that people dismiss records and videos of the lunar landing as proof of the fact that man was on the moon. No evidence should immediately be accepted, but in this case you're not even bothering to examine it further to find out whether there's even a hint of truth in it.

Personal claims to the divine are generally rejected outright precicely because many of them have been thoroughly investigated over the years and they never produce anything the scientific community can properly test any further. The moon landings on the otherhand have loads of testable and supporting evidence beyond the personal claims so the comparison is not valid. People who reject things like that are just ignorant.

[Ledgem]

Originally Posted by Icehawk

Atheism itself is a LACK of belief in gods. It is a state, not actually a "belief" contrary to what you may think. Just like baldness is not just another hair color style, its a lack of hair.

From Dicionary.com:
Belief
1. something believed; an opinion or conviction: a belief that the earth is flat.
2. confidence in the truth or existence of something not immediately susceptible to rigorous proof: a statement unworthy of belief.
3. confidence; faith; trust: a child's belief in his parents.
4. a religious tenet or tenets; religious creed or faith: the Christian belief.

I have bolded the first three because they pertain to this. I'm pretty sure I understand what you're saying, though. You're saying that in terms of believing whether God (or any gods, perhaps any supernatural) exists or not, the belief that God doesn't exist isn't the same type of belief that God does exist. There's no religious notion to it, no desire to believe or not to believe, but rather the person simply doesn't believe that there is a God or gods.

If that were the case then I'd classify those people as agnostics leaning toward the idea that God/gods doesn't exist. I say that because it'd mean that these people were still open to the possibility that God/gods could exist, but based on current evidence (or lack thereof) they were closer to thinking that God/gods didn't exist. Once they reached a conclusion they'd cease being agnostics.

This doesn't seem to be the case with many Athiests, especially not the ones here. Many of the Athiests I've encountered have clearly made up their minds that God is a hoax, God doesn't exist. So I ask, where is the proof? There is none. If you're so certain that God doesn't exist yet you don't have proof, your disbelief in God is still a belief - it either isn't founded on anything, or the facts that it is founded on are questionable. This is the exact same situation that the Thiests are working with.

Personal claims to the divine are generally rejected outright precicely because many of them have been thoroughly investigated over the years and they never produce anything the scientific community can properly test any further. The moon landings on the otherhand have loads of testable and supporting evidence beyond the personal claims so the comparison is not valid. People who reject things like that are just ignorant.

I brought up that point because it shows something very important. You are dismissing people who reject the lunar landing as ever having happened as being ignorant. I'm not one of those people, but consider this: maybe it is ignorant, but who can say for certain that those videos weren't filmed somewhere else and edited, and that the data wasn't just fudged for national security and national pride purposes? There comes a point where you make the decision to accept the data and information that you hear and not be skeptical of it.

There is likely a lot of good reasoning behind dismissing the lunar landings. You won't convince a non-believer by simply calling them ignorant. But what can you do? A person likely reaches a point of such skepticism that even if you let them speak to eye witnesses they'd say that these people were lying, brainwashed, or lied to themselves. Unless you put these people on a rocket to the moon they wouldn't believe that it was possible of happening; perhaps they'd still feel that there was trickery involved and that it wasn't happening. There's no way to show these people that it happened because they have closed themselves off to the possibility of it. Practically no amount of data can prove it to them otherwise, and most people can probably come up with reasons to back their belief that are disprovable. So how do you open up a disbeliever to examining the evidence openly and admitting to the possibility that this actually happened?

This has a beautiful parallel with religion. It's so good that you just need to replace "lunar landings" with "God's existence" and replace "put these people on a rocket to the moon" with "have God speak to them directly."

Once again, I am not advocating a belief in God. Whether you want to believe or disbelieve is up to you, but don't claim that your belief (disbelief is a belief, ironically) is strictly evidence-based. Just because the knowledge and methods that we have now don't provide us with a way to test for God's existence doesn't mean that God doesn't exist. Just because the accounts of God in religious texts don't give us realistic (as we know it) recollections that we can't test for doesn't make them false.

Science and technology are always advancing, and if you claim a conclusion based on what we currently know you'd better constantly be evaluating it. Wasn't it two to five years ago that some aspects behind the theory of gravity were re-evaluated thanks to advancements in astrophysics? We can never know enough. You are free to make your own conclusions based on what evidence we have at the time, but to deny the possibility that our understanding may change - that's not open thinking.

[Vexx]

The moon landings were worked on by too many people who are not the type to keep anything secret for a hoax to fly. Though I suppose arguing that would just have the hoax-believers tag me as another "Man in Black" so all I can do is make sure such whackjobs don't get into positions of influence or authority.

The only real problem I have with Ledgem's remarks is that he's pushing the definition of "belief" so far that I think it becomes meaningless.
Yeah, I "believe" in the scientific method.... because it produces results, repeatable results, and its output continually becomes more predictive of what we experience in reality and by measurement. If something becomes invalidated, we toss it. As long as it cannot be validated, it remains a hypothesis at best.

"Belief" in supernatural forces or entities requires a "leap of faith" and is generally not testable. So, by the above tenets -- the idea of invisible sky beings... or pixies... is at best a hypothesis. The forces of nature can be measured, counted, and described by predictable mathematical equations (even chaotic systems are predictable in phase space). I *could* invoke gremlins, daemons, and pixies as a driving model... but though anthropomorphizing reality may be fun, it isn't currently the best explanation given the data. Children naturally invoke intention to non-sentient objects -- as they get older and understand the underlying mechanisms, the need to do so fades.

[Ledgem]

I admit that I'm stretching the meanings of the word, but I can't think of any other way to prove my point. It also raises an interesting point.

The point I'm making is that you can't wave away the evidence behind religion objectively because doing so is purely subjective. Beyond a certain point you're believing the words/findings of other people; you're believing that your own sensory input isn't being fooled into seeing things. When it comes down to religious accounts we can say that it sounds unrealistic, but we don't know what really happened. Was it just a story? Was there a hint of truth in it? Was it written to be metaphorical? Did these seemingly unrealistic events really happen? If you pick the first or last possibility that I mentioned you're likely either a skeptic/Athiest or a religious follower. It's totally subjective, you're simply choosing an opinion (to use a new word instead of belief) on it. For all intents and purposes in every-day life, we have to make conclusions and we can't be overly insecure of our knowledge. There's nothing wrong with that, but especially when it comes to subjects like religion, please be open to new possibilities.

I'd again like to bring up my favorite example of this: the field of microbiology. Before we knew that there were microscopic organisms virtually everywhere not even the greatest scientists could explain many things. There were all sorts of reasonings even backed by experiments, and eventually (but not without much controversy) we reached the point of knowing what we do today. How about genetics? Before we had even a slight understanding of genetics (and there's still a fair bit that we don't understand) I'd say that people and scientists were rather secure in their knowledge of why life was the way that it was. Genetics clarified it, and proved some beliefs to be unsupported. Perhaps by its very nature the belief in the supernatural can never be tested, but we're constantly increasing our understanding and our abilities, and we put the supernatural to the test with those discoveries.

Isn't science fun and amazing? But it's constantly changing. You're missing out if you take all of science at face value, or reach conclusions and refuse to re-evaluate them ever again.

//

Anyway, part of the reason these religious texts and the religion itself are such an issue is due to the fog of time. The lunar landings happened relatively recently; it's not so unbelievable. The existence of George Washington and the "founding fathers" of the United States are also relatively recent, and this is not so unbelievable. Let's go a few thousand years into the future, though. Many other events will have happened, life will have changed, people will have a different understanding of the world and society. Will they claim that the founding fathers were simply a story created for the American national image to come about? That no group of people, no nation would possibly allow themselves to have their framework built by a group of old codgers, and thus it must be a story? This is a Gedankenexperiment, a mental experiment, for you to consider. It's possible that religion really was just a story, but it's possible that it was something more.

If you have an interest in the subject, why immediately close yourself off to all but one possibility? Why go through religion only seeking facts that will support your opinion? I'd rather that people, religious believers and vehement non-believers alike, go through the texts and what we know and piece it together for themselves. I don't want anyone to be fooled into thinking that what they believe is wholly supported and thus ultimate truth - but at least many of the religious are fine with acknowledging that there are little to no facts of God's existence and that their belief is completely faith-based.

[Anh_Minh]

There are more consistent records of the founding fathers than of, say, Noah. And a lot less physical impossibilities involved.

Maybe, one day, we'll learn that global floods do happen. And seas part, and people get swallowed by whales and live to tell the tale. But in the meantime, to the best of our understanding of the world, it's hard to take the Bible as "factual".

[Ledgem]

That gets into another point that I mentioned before, which is questioning whether the presently religious really understand their own religion. Who says that all of those things that were written about should be taken literally? From what I understand Catholics truly believe that wine turns into blood (the blood of Jesus) in their mouths during communion. It doesn't necessarily happen (science dictates that it really isn't happening, since blood taken down the digestive tract should induce vomiting) but it's supposed to be more or less metaphorical, something along the lines of how people are taking in the sacrifice of Jesus to cleanse their sins if I understand it right. Who says that nearly all of the other biblical examples aren't that way? I think many religious people like the idea of God as a magical entity, but who says that it has to be that way?

[Anh_Minh]

Then it becomes as much a quarrel of semantics as anything else. It just means that "do you believe in God?" isn't a yes/no question, but one that invites defining what "believing in God" means.

[twkiwilee]

I'm part Buddhist, part Taoist, and part nothing (I am what I am).

I believe that we don't have to go to temples or churches in order to be religious or have faith in what we believe.

Furthermore, I don't really considered Buddhism as a religion, because it just confuses other people that religion has to do with God or any other deities.

To tell the truth, true/ original Buddhism has no God, and Buddha had said to follow no leader!

Others said/claim that Buddhism has a God, because they just incorborated it into Buddhism, so that it can go as they believe. For example: There are Christians who are also Buddhists, etc.

And.. Buddha is not a God, and the word "Buddha" is just a title. It just that Siddhartha has reached the level worthy to be called "Buddha" or the enlightened one.

Buddhism is a teaching about reality and life based on experiences.

Buddha has said that there is God, because it is created by one's fear.

[Vexx]

Some classify Buddhism, Taoism, and Confucianism as examples of ethical and philosophical systems rather than "religion" though the main difference from J-C-I and many other religions is the lack of "invisible supernatural entities". See Buddhism.

However, as Buddhism spread, it often organically integrated with prior beliefs in the area. Example: there really is no "buddhist hell" as such (Jigoku Shoujo notwithstanding) --- that's an incorporated belief. There really is no worship of the Buddha but many regions revere Siddhartha as equivalent to a god for what he accomplished (i.e. Enlightenment). Whatever the word means - we could all be considered a "god" should we achieve Enlightenment (unity with the universe). If you look at Tibetan Buddhism, many of its pieces of doctrine and myth clearly preceded the entry of Buddhism into their culture. In Japan, the animist Shinto and Buddhism have managed to entwine and so thoroughly blend that some of the Buddhist rituals there were originally Shinto and vice versa -- and virtually all Japanese assert they are both.

There was some interesting if fanciful speculation back in the 70s that Jesus Christ had spent a few years in India in the mysterious period in his twenties prior to his encounter with John the Baptist and that's where he picked up his "daring new ideas" on how to live and these new ideas about "God" --- and that basically his apostles completely misunderstood the Buddhist teachings he was trying to impart (especially about that "being God" part). See Buddhism and Christianity for academic thoughts on this.

Okay, throw your bricks now --- I don't have any opinion on that idea other than its a smile-inducing sort of interesting alternative myth with no more backing than the historicity of Jesus himself

(note: Buddhism began around the year 500 BCE so it was very well established by the period in which a person such as Jesus might have lived. Trade routes, commerce, and travel to India was also very well established then. None of which proves anything of course).

[twkiwilee]

Originally Posted by Vexx

Some classify Buddhism, Taoism, and Confucianism as examples of ethical and philosophical systems rather than "religion" though the main difference from J-C-I and many other religions is the lack of "invisible supernatural entities".

However, another main difference is that Buddhists believe in reincarniation, while Taoist worship any gods (they worship their ancestors)

[Vexx]

Wellllllll, *some* Buddhists believe in reincarnation. Others find the idea irrelevant and remain silent on the subject. Core Buddhism is about the direct experience of reality.
And many Taoists do practice ancestor-worship or ancestor-respect (their ancestors are not "gods" in the Western sense. This is one of those word-problems where a concept like "kami" does not directly translate to "god" thing .... more like "spirits", though some are very powerful).

If a woman sits quietly meditating at her parent's tombstone/grave and having a private conversation with them ... is she praying to them?

The answer kind of depends on your cultural context and how you load the words with meaning.

[Reckoner]

@Ledgem

According to scientologists, you can't say they are not absolutely right about our world because the only reason you would disagree is that your memory was erased as a thetan or whatnot.

You're whole argument is therefor false .

But yea, no matter what you practice in life or think, people should always recognize that we don't know anything for sure.