What's your religion?

[Reckoner]

Much of the last pages have revolved around semantics. In any case, it does not really matter what term is used if people are able to understand the intended point.

For example people have been referring to the beliefs of one person concerning the supernatural to be either religion or just spiritual. Or they have been questioning whether a religion takes one person or many.

Finding a common definition is only helpful for organization and does nothing to backup any points concerning the issue. If two people are in disagreement over word-usage, but are able to understand what each other is referring to, then there is no reason to keep arguing as it gets them nowhere.

It is not pertinent to keep doing so, and it is far better to discuss each others viewpoints rather than the somewhat subjective spins on definitions of certain terms that we hold.

This I believe is leading to arguments when there really is not much of a argument to be made between posters. Taking Urzu 7 as an example.... He/She seems to be under attack by supposedly anti-religious people, but what most people including he/her are not particularly fond of in the first place is organized religion (Or just simply religion if you choose to follow WanderingKnight's reasoning) where sheep are force fed knowledge and there is a lack of open-minded thinking taking place.

On that point, I feel that organized religion (The Vatican Church) has done a lot of good for society, but is quickly losing any sort of value it really once had and is now evolving into ugly forms like the Chinese Government where the State has essentially become the religion. It is definitely a form of control, as are many things in society, but is especially dangerous because of the means in which it takes control of people (Takes very little effort, sometimes none at all).

I am not against individually formed, open minded beliefs concerning creation and the like, which I would coin as spiritual beliefs, but organized religion is definitely as WanderingKnight has put it is a hurdle that society must conquer in order to progress.

I myself remain Agnostic, because I will not deny the possibility of people's beliefs, but I will not hold them as true because it is founded irrationally and without factual basis. So the flying spaghetti monster is about the same as God to me, as ludicrous as that may sound to many overly zealous, religious minded people.

[Anh_Minh]

Originally Posted by ClockWorkAngel

Seriously Just Drop it, like I said just PM war me, not quote by quote war.

Your sense of logic is failing, and you can clearly not distinguish common forum courtesy from weakness.

Courtesy, if you're not going to state your arguments, would be to not mention them at all. Especially if they're arguments to "look down" on religions and, by extension, religious people. It'd have been one thing to say "I have reasons to not believe in god, which I will not state for fear of causing offense". What you said? "I have reasons to feel superior to theists, but I won't state them to keep the pretense of being nice and to avoid being challenged".

It's the former. I haven't even brough up any evidence of sort and only expressed my opinon, if I did then you won't have anything to day, want proof? Look at The Rational Responders you can go rant your butt over there and you cna ee the evidence I have is very very hard and solid.

I don't have the time or drive to check it thoroughly, but it looks like a site devoted to atheist circle-jerking about how smart they are. Being an atheist myself, I hope it's better than sites about ID believers circle-jerking about how smart they are, or Christians circle-jerking about how holy they are, but I'm just not interested.

If you're going to try hitting my argument

Argument? What argument?

atleast back it up with something! You've just been doing continuing taking every sentence. The argument makes it automatically "better" because it includes the rest of the point and not a single part like so;

I think that religion is a bad influence on children, but it does have several positive benefits.

In which you would just take out I think that religion is a bad influence on children,

If you've been offended then express it objectively not like a rushing crusader troll fighting for the great overlord troll.

I don't have anything against your arguments. You haven't given any. What bugged me was your claim of trying to avoid offense. I'm willing to give you the benefit of the doubt and think you really believe you weren't being offensive. But I can't agree with that. Take your quip about Buddhism, for example. You said it made you laugh, because - and that's the part you claim I've heinously cut out - it's not a real religion. How does that make it better instead of worse? If I said I laughed at American football because I think it's not a real sport, do you think I'll avoid offending its devoted fans? That's just not how it works.

Or the next paragraph about factuality of the Bible. I'll be the first to say there's nothing reliably factual about it. But I won't in the next breath claim I'm trying not to be offensive. If I say so, it's fully aware that some devout Christians may be offended that I've insulted the holiest book of their religion that their faith explicitly state is 100% true and factual.

If you want to challenge my courtesy just PM war me like I said, you've obviously didn't bother to read or do it it seems and I wonder why. Is it the habit of every crusader to spout his war for the world to hear I wonder.

Mostly because I'm too lazy to take it to PMs. However, it also happens our dispute is still related to the topic of this thread, and may prove useful or at least entertaining to other readers.

And by the way, I'm not trying to say you're a jerk. I'm a jerk: I give offense and I don't care. I'm trying to say you're insensitive: you give offense and you don't know.

[Lord Uiruu]

my family is apiscopalian, but i guess im atheist.

[Vexx]

Buddhism is legitimately considered both a religion and a philosophy ... in fact, calling it a "religion" is not quite accurate in terms of western J-C-I forms of religion. Now there are many *forms* of Buddhism because as it moved from India through China and outward, it tended to be incorporated with the local traditions and indigenous religions -- which is how you got Tibetan, Thai, Japanese, and other wildly different looking versions overlying the basic principles of Buddhism. Many of the forms *appear* to worship the Buddha ... but they're simply honoring the guy who "figured it out and passed the solution along".

[Rkiou]

asdadasdsad
i don't belive in the way the church does...
i just found the religion like a good plan...but like always the mankind took it the wrong way...
i mean....like politycs...
....now i only found it like an excuse to fight each other...
i mean...people fights for what they believe...and exterminate the other who doesn't think in the same way...
there is still a great lot of people who thinks in that way D:

[Urzu 7]

With this sentence I realize you didn't understand anything of what I said.

With no organization there is no religion! Stop and think a little about what a religion means, what it means to share a core belief that's based on nothing at all, and attempt to keep it consistent. You can't unless there's some centralized organizational corps that keeps everything consistent, or it wouldn't be a religion at all.

Organized religion and religion aren't two terms/categories I've coined. I didn't just make it up.

Originally Posted by Vexx

I'll only observe at this point that "religion" does not equal "spirituality" nor is "religion" strictly a term for an organization. A "religion" is a set of beliefs that may or may not be attached to an organization, set of groups, or bureaucracy.
Often, the complaints anyone has about "religion" are actually about the institutions that people create in response to a set of beliefs and the doctrines created by those institutions.

Vexx understands what I'm saying, and what you said about "without organization there is no religion" isn't quite true. There is the social phenomenon of religion, and then there is the teachings of the religion which can be looked at in a more personal way and any individual gain observe and/or gain from. It is hard to explain, but Vexx knows what I mean, and people have made a distinction between 'organized religion' and 'religion'.

As someone said, it starts to get bogged down by semantics.

It might look like an extremist mindset, but if you followed my reasoning you would understand more or less why I said so instead of skimming through it and not trying to understand it a little better.

I'm sure you have logic of your own behind your beliefs, like anyone, but I think it is extreme to try and demerit any and all good things about religion. When you claim all religion is completely harmful and bad and keep referring to all religious people as sheep, people aren't going to look kindly at that. Yeah, people are going to think your thinking is unfair and extreme.

Please tell me why do I need the core Christian set of moral values when (the sane part at least) more or less stands for "don't fuck around with others". Lots of non-religious people follow that simple rule. And, mind you, lots of Christians don't (and somehow their religion says that if they tell their screwups to a priest they will be forgiven, lol).

You are right, lots of non-religious people are good, and plenty of Christians screw up where they shouldn't. Please don't over look that there are many good Christians in the world, though.

I'm not against people being atheists. People form different views in life; it is a part of life. I don't like how some Christians treat atheists in a poor regard and totally get in their hair, either. Nor do I like to see some people making it their goal to slam and slander religion in its entirety at every chance they get.

I went and re-read some of your posts. I'm sorry I didn't read them as carefully as I should have. It does seem to me that your criticism does mainly lye in the religious institutions of the world, which plug directly into societies. Harm has come out of them, in a way, but most times it is not a real reflection on what the religion stands for; I still will argue that most times it really boils down to people failing to do things right. Really, religion is not so bad, it is people you have to be concerned with.

[Clarste]

Originally Posted by Urzu 7

Harm has come out of them, in a way, but most times it is not a real reflection on what the religion stands for; I still will argue that most times it really boils down to people failing to do things right. Really, religion is not so bad, it is people you have to be concerned with.

To which many people would counter that, while religion may not be inherently harmful, its not inherently helpful either, and therefore is a net negative influence on the world because of its potential for abuse. I'm not really sure if that's true, since it depends entirely on the value of "spiritual fulfillment" which I've never experienced, so... *shrug*

There's actually an old philosophical argument (classical Greek philosopher era) for why gods can't be the source of morality (which is called the Divine Command theory of ethics). Basically it goes that DC theory is self-refuting. Either god's commands have no logical reasoning behind them, which makes them completely arbitrary and therefore amoral (morality is by definition not arbitrary) or god has some other reasoning behind the commands, in which case god is no longer the ultimate source of morality.

This was basically the basis for the philosophy of ethics; since morality has to come from something other than religion, it must be possible for us to figure it out without reference to spirituality. Which is of course the basis for the agnostic position that religion is completely unnecessary for moral behavior that's done for the right reasons (assuming the reasons matter at all). Unfortunately its susceptible to the counterargument that "god is special and ignores logic" to which there is no satisfactory reply.

[Zakuraa]

It's fairly hard for me to distinguish what religion I am apart of now, seeing as my mom is Christian, and I originally grew up around Jewish traditions. I'm basically agnostic-Jewish.

So confused with my main religion. So I don't really celebrate Hanukkah or Christmas. ;-;

[OtseisRagnarok]

Originally Posted by Clarste

To which many people would counter that, while religion may not be inherently harmful, its not inherently helpful either, and therefore is a net negative influence on the world because of its potential for abuse. I'm not really sure if that's true, since it depends entirely on the value of "spiritual fulfillment" which I've never experienced, so... *shrug*

There's actually an old philosophical argument (classical Greek philosopher era) for why gods can't be the source of morality (which is called the Divine Command theory of ethics). Basically it goes that DC theory is self-refuting. Either god's commands have no logical reasoning behind them, which makes them completely arbitrary and therefore amoral (morality is by definition not arbitrary) or god has some other reasoning behind the commands, in which case god is no longer the ultimate source of morality.

I like that statement. An absolute being would have to be corrupt by our standards, yet he doesn't abide by them. At the same time, he creates or standards... quite the quandry.

This was basically the basis for the philosophy of ethics; since morality has to come from something other than religion, it must be possible for us to figure it out without reference to spirituality. Which is of course the basis for the agnostic position that religion is completely unnecessary for moral behavior that's done for the right reasons (assuming the reasons matter at all). Unfortunately its susceptible to the counterargument that "god is special and ignores logic" to which there is no satisfactory reply.

I never liked that logic. "God is good, and you are instantly wrong for questioning him." That was the biggest reason for my leaving the church at an early age. The problems with most faiths is their lack of logic, but at the same time, it's what makes them what they are. If it all made sense, there wouldn't be much to take that "leap of faith" in.

[SaintessHeart]

My religion is Haruhiism.

Really! I even write it in application forms. The difference about Haruhiism from other religions is that it does not preach peace in whatever kind of approach or form, it preaches spreading excitement around the world to make it a better place.

Sekai Oikete, geddit?

All hail Haruhi Okami-sama, wielding her infinite power of moe to change the world for better!

[Shii]

Originally Posted by Clarste

To which many people would counter that, while religion may not be inherently harmful, its not inherently helpful either, and therefore is a net negative influence on the world because of its potential for abuse.

By this standard we should outlaw evolutionary biology, since its exploitation by people who don't understand it (Social Darwinism) has led to several of the greatest tragedies in human history.

Maybe you say that's not fair because it's a wrong interpretation, but clearly religious people would say that about their religion...

[Clarste]

Originally Posted by Shii

By this standard we should outlaw evolutionary biology, since its exploitation by people who don't understand it (Social Darwinism) has led to several of the greatest tragedies in human history.

Maybe you say that's not fair because it's a wrong interpretation, but clearly religious people would say that about their religion...

But it is helpful in the sense of medicine and technology... Knowing how evolution works actually does something for us in a measurable way. Religion does nothing except provide spiritual fulfillment.

Well, I don't have a strong opinion either way; I was just throwing that argument out there.

[xris]

Before this thread is dragged off-topic yet agian, please remember the actual topic.

Here's a post made a while ago in this thread.

Originally Posted by xris

Please remember that the topic is if you are religious or not (and stating you are an atheist would therefore be considered on-topic I believe).

I think your post (or at least the second half of it) would be better suited in a thread such as Creationism / Intelligent design which seems to be discussing the topics you raise.

Seems it can apply to some of the recent posts as well.

[TUndead]

Well im jewish and I would even concider my self pretty concervitive...

[theorys]

Originally Posted by SaintessHeart

My religion is Haruhiism.

Really! I even write it in application forms. The difference about Haruhiism from other religions is that it does not preach peace in whatever kind of approach or form, it preaches spreading excitement around the world to make it a better place.

Sekai Oikete, geddit?

All hail Haruhi Okami-sama, wielding her infinite power of moe to change the world for better!

Genius. Absolute genius.

I think everyone agrees religion is just a reflection of how you live your life:

Hindus live by the Bhagdavad Gita and other texts.
Buddhists live by the Vinaya and Sutra.
Christians live by the Bible.
Muslims live by the Koran.
Atheists live by method and reason.
Jewish people live by the Torah.
Agnostics live by their own morality.

Did I forget any?

Oh yeah, myself....

My religion actually changes from day to day. So here's the tenets of my religion today:

#1 You should like headaches, it means your mind is growing.

#2 I don't consider myself an atheist, because I like religion, I like art, I like sex, I like learning. I just like being alive. If someone were to ask me though, I would tell them I hold an atheistic view of the world. God is interesting, but only because humans are interesting, and is no way more real than say the elven characters of a fictional fantasy world.

#3 Likes are stronger than loves. Loves always have a sense of 'attachment' to it, an overbearing feeling of passion that must be reciprocated. Loves are more social than personal. So instead of saying, "I love you", I just like to say "I like you".

It's just more fun that way.

(I'm sure my religion will chage by tomorrow )

[TUndead]

Originally Posted by theorys

Genius. Absolute genius.

I think everyone agrees religion is just a reflection of how you live your life:

Hindus live by the Bhagdavad Gita and other texts.
Buddhists live by the Vinaya and Sutra.
Christians live by the Bible.
Muslims live by the Koran.
Atheists live by method and reason.
Jewish people live by the Torah.
Agnostics live by their own morality.

Did I forget any?

Oh yeah, myself....

My religion actually changes from day to day. So here's the tenets of my religion today:

#1 You should like headaches, it means your mind is growing.

#2 I don't consider myself an atheist, because I like religion, I like art, I like sex, I like learning. I just like being alive. If someone were to ask me though, I would tell them I hold an atheistic view of the world. God is interesting, but only because humans are interesting, and is no way more real than say the elven characters of a fictional fantasy world.

#3 Likes are stronger than loves. Loves always have a sense of 'attachment' to it, an overbearing feeling of passion that must be reciprocated. Loves are more social than personal. So instead of saying, "I love you", I just like to say "I like you".

It's just more fun that way.

(I'm sure my religion will chage by tomorrow )

u have a mistake jewish ppl and Christians actually both live by the the bible the def is that the Christians added a part which is the new sentement

[GuidoHunter_Toki]

Originally Posted by TUndead

u have a mistake jewish ppl and Christians actually both live by the the bible the def is that the Christians added a part which is the new sentement

Actually if you want to get technical the Tanakh is the bible of judaism.

The Tanakh contains three sections: Torah (the first five books of the Old Testament), Nevi'im (Prophets), and Ketuvim (Writings). The Tanakh contains the 39 books found in the Christian Bible and called the "Old Testament." The talmud is considered the most important book in Judaism. This tells the jewish how to interpret and apply the laws found in scripture.

[TUndead]

Originally Posted by GuidoHunter_Toki

Actually if you want to get technical the Tanakh is the bible of judaism.

The Tanakh contains three sections: Torah (the first five books of the Old Testament), Nevi'im (Prophets), and Ketuvim (Writings). The Tanakh contains the 39 books found in the Christian Bible and called the "Old Testament." The talmud is considered the most important book in Judaism. This tells the jewish how to interpret and apply the laws found in scripture.

i know, and just to correct u its 24 books some books are concidered to be the same. Im from israel and we do learn the tanakh without the new testament by i do have some knowledge about it

[Psychopathic Otaku]

I am a christian. Or a Baptist to be more specific. I am also a Haruhiist ^^

[Milk Tea]

roman catholic. that's all i've got to say. >.<