ahh the voice of reason! we can't help but search it seems, and searching can be fun too, but we have to accept we will NEVER find the truth. Searching is done in the mind and the truth isn't the solution to some puzzle!! 'Living' on the otherhand, just 'Being', now there's an interesting modus operandi . . .

I like what Jostein Gaardner wrote in his book "Sophie's World", which for those who don't know is a pretty readable introduction to pretty much all of Western philosophy. He basically said something along the lines of:

We are like fleas in the fur of a rabbit that has been pulled out of the magician's top hat.

So the rabbit serves to represent the Universe/physical realm, and the magician the Big Bang/alternative naturalistic theory or creator god(s).

It seems to me that unless the material/physical reality in which we exist is eternal, then whatever gave rise to it must exist outside of it and is thus unknowable to us, at least in the sense of empirically-verifiable true justified belief.

Well, take your pick:

An Atheist would probably call me agnostic.
A Catholic would probably call me a non-Catholic.
A Baptist would probably call me damned.

I call myself a believer.

God does give a shit about your personal problems with your sister, girlfriend, enemy, yourself, etc. God simply wants you to love other people as much as you can. This means: smile at everybody, hold doors for other people, say what you mean and mean what you say, and don't be an asshole.

If you truly believe that God is all-powerful, why do you feel the need to stand up for him?

If God is all-knowing, then why do you feel the need to pray to him - he already knows every thought you will ever think and ever word you will ever utter? And why would he get so mad at Adam and Eve if he knew that they were going to eat the fruit in the first place?

If God is all-loving, then why would he damn anybody to hell for any reason? You can separate yourself from God, though. But you can do that on earth. And you can also be very close to God while you are on earth.

Heaven and hell are just mindsets that can change as you grow and mature.

All things considered, evolution is truly quite a monument to God's power. Don't lessen it by denying his great work. As Southpark so aptly put it: you are the four thousandth offspring from a malformed monkey having butt secs with a retarded fish. Or something like that.

The crusades were perpetrated by people who were not following the same God that I follow, and I only believe in one. And I was raised Catholic.

The whole Warren Jeffs clan in Utah is actually not a Mormon sect. They claim to be, but they do not believe. And, Mormons are really not as screwed up as any other Christian religion. Seriously, do a little independent research on the subject.

Jesus's main point was to tell us that no matter what we do including denying Jesus himself, we would still be granted a place in heaven due to God's unending mercy. If God cannot forgive you for not believing in him or his son or for your ancestors eating fruit, then is he truly all-loving?

If you've read Douglas Adam's Hitchhikers guide to the Galaxy, you should know the argument I use. As soon as you say there is a god, or find proof, say you have proof, or have some reason to deny faith, ("I refuse to prove that I exist," says god " because proof will deny faith and without faith i am nothing.") I cant remember it exactly but that is quoted from Hitchhikers guide to the Galaxy.

whoops, I forgot to put I was athiest

"I refuse to prove that I exist," says God, "for proof denies faith, and without faith I am nothing."

"But," says Man, "the Babel fish is a dead giveaway isn't it? It could not have evolved by chance. It proves that you exist, and so therefore, by your own arguments, you don't. Q.E.D."

"Oh dear," says God, "I hadn't thought of that," and promptly vanishes in a puff of logic.

"Oh, that was easy," says Man, and for an encore goes on to prove that black is white and white is black and gets himself killed on the next zebra crossing. While most leading theologians believe this argument to be a load of dingo's kidneys, that didn't stop Oolon Colluphid making a small fortune when he used it as the central theme of his best-selling book, Well That About Wraps It Up For God.

I was baptized as a catholic many years ago but, after reading a bit of history and considering I strongly dislike the way the 'Holy' Catholic Church has driven its way in the world (slaughters, wars, concealments, robberies): nothing to do with Christ's teachings, and also considering the fanatic and treacherous attitudes I see in the high Clergy (at least in my Country), I am not very happy with it and am eventually looking for a new definition for my 'religion', if any.

Why I am catholic? Because my parents took me to baptize without asking me.

Eclectic Pagan. Spirituality is central to the human experience, but I generally oppose organized religion (I don't oppose Shinto and Hinduism, being polytheistic, "decentralized" religions).

You could call me a vehement opponent of Christianity, but Islam sure isn't much better (other than the fact that it's 6000+ miles away from me, mostly). Two large groups of simpletons bashing each other in the head because their "God" has a bigger dick than the other's. Great plan...neither of your religions or gods created the Earth, our solar system, much less the Universe.

Anyway...my philosophy in life is basically "leave me the hell alone to do what I want." I'm not a pacifist because no one can seem to respect that.

Jewish, altho in reality I am probably Agnostic.

I'm an anti-religious atheist. By that I mean that I'm not religious myself, in the sense that I don't believe in God nor anything "supernatural", and I don't approve of the believes of those who are. A while ago I was with the "hey, believe anything you want"-crowd, but a speaker by the name of Sam Harris changed my mind. I strongly encourage everyone (religious or not) reading this to listen to his speech at "Idea City '05", really inspiring.

Of course, by this I don't mean I go on harassing every believer I meet. Just that I'm not so scared to question people when they end an argument with "that's what I believe" or something like that.

If anything I'd say my religion is science (not scientology! ).

if you look at it like that, but its like throwing a stick in a field and when it lands saying "wow, it landed on this blade of grass, amazing!" but of course its only amazing if you threw it totally randomly when theres only one blade of grass around, there are millions and millions of planets that totally lack life, we just happen to be the one in the right position to look at them all, when it could easily have been zorag 7 rotating around marklar 10.

A better example is shuffling a deck of cards. There are 52! possible arrangements for a deck, which is a fucking huge number: 8.06581752 × 10^67
The odds of getting any single arrangement is 1 / (52 !) = 1.23979993 × 10^-68, which is astoundingly low. Any given arrangement is impossibly hard to get, but because there are so many possible arrangements, you'll get one.

I was born and raised in the Lutheran tradition. I have a deep faith in God, and I try to live a moral and ethical life. But, as an adult, I shun organized religion.

Someone once said, that sitting in a church doesn't make you any more of a Christian, than sitting in a garage makes you a car.

Faith is deeper than that, and quite personal in interpretation.

All news about apostatize

Check out the video.

What would be the point of me going back to the church my parents tried to brainwash me in as a kid and saying "I reject your bullshit"?

So they can count you down from their statistics at least (list of cooperation and so forth).

I was born and raised as an agnostic. But I have migrated over to atheism. Why? I just find the mindset of many religious people to be ridiculous. When it comes to religion vs. science, I will always side with science. I don't see any proof of many religions and find that many religious ceremonies just take up time I could spend enjoying myself.

Also, it isn't that easy being atheist here. Even though a quarter of my school is atheist/agnostic, my relatives who live elsewhere aren't. One of my aunts has been kicked out of 6 churches for being too religious.

Another aunt of mine is extremely religious. If I told her I was agnostic, she would grab me by the ear and drag me to church, chain me to the pew, and force me to read the bible 5 times before having anything to eat. If I told her I was Atheist, she would build a cross and crucify me on it. And I'm not kidding, she is so insane that if it weren't for the need for food, shelter, clothing, and taxes, she would donate her family's entire income to the church. We have to pay for her daughter to go to college because she thinks that the church is more important than college.

Exactly. I'm tellin' ya, it's the Linux usage ;-). If only weed had the same effect.

Uh... no. I wouldn't call pantheism and atheism equivalent. A Buddhist is similar to a Hindu -- believing that we're all part of 'God' (Brahman), and that divine entity is everything and nothing at once. It's a very vague idea which is very difficult for me to wrap my western mind around, but even if I could I imagine it's difficult to explain clearly. It's really kinda cool, honestly, if you can find someone who knows how to explain it in a lucrative way ;-) (But I guess that's true about anything).

But if you're just saying that you believe that Buddha had good ideas on morality and what-naught, then I can see how that could fit with atheism. I have a copy of the Dhammapada (Essential teachings of the Buddha) on my shelf, and though it makes my friends in this conservative Christian town uncomfortable when I pull it out, there's a lot of cool stuff in there. I'm not sure I agree with all of it, though -- like where he says passion is to be avoided. All passion. Greed and love alike.

Siggy

I'll reiterate that I don't like the phrase "science vs. religion." If there is evidence for any sort of religion at all, then it lies within the realm of science. "Naturalism vs. religion" might suit it better. Just a pet peeve there.

I hear ya. I go to a conservative Christian college which requires 33 hours of religious services a semester outside of the weekly church services. They charge you if you don't meet the quota like a good lemming. There are a lot of intelligent people and professors here -- it's a normal university in a lot of ways -- but the purpose of its existence is to provide an environment to "Seek knowledge, affirm faith, and change the world."

Being agnostic here is slightly common -- particularly among science majors, I'm inclined to posit -- but not popular by a long shot.

My parents are one of the ~1/3 of members of our denomination who pay tithe, and furthermore they pay from 20-25% instead of the 'mandatory' 10%. Of course, they probably wouldn't give quite so much if it severely threatened my college funding too.

If you really believe in something, though, you'll contribute to it. Most Christians are secularist and individualistic -- despite the religion's focus on being unselfish. My father finds it startling just how many of his Evolutionary Biology (Yes, he's a creationist teaching an Evolutionary Biology class) students don't see any connection between belief and behavior. Some Christians, however, really put themselves into a "life of service."

SigmaX

Before I go on, I will preface this by saying two things.
1. I will not go into the reasons for my choice, because of 2..

2. In this topic, I have found there to be enough intellectual posturing seeped in ignorant intolerance on all sides of the fence to make me feel the bile of my supper rise in my throat. If someone wishes to engage me in a rational exchange of ideas in the (not quite lost) art of conversation, I will be happy to do so. At the point the brush paints broadly, the understanding of an intellectual and rational discussion will forever be lost on the person who breaches common decency in exchange for a series of gotchas is not worth my time.

Now, that my prefaces are out there, here goes my entry into the gauntlet of flames ...

I am a Christian.

What does that mean for me?

It means I am to show all people the unconditional love and grace of Jesus without any reservations due to their lifestyle or religious background, past or future. This love has no agenda behind it (I Corinthians 13:5). This grace sets no timeline on personal change or standards for spiritual growth (Romans 4:4-5). The idea is to be a part of people’s lives because I truly care for them rather than to fulfill a religious duty; to walk with them through all their struggles as a part of their life, not as a religious outsider.

The desire at the heart of my faith is to see this idea spread to others. I aspire to see people taking to heart the true message of the grace and love of Christ, and in turn to see them spread this message to those in their community, building relationships and sharing in the life experiences of those around them (Galatians 6:2-3), and living out the grace, hope and love that God has blessed them with.

I am NOT religious. Religion is a false perception of holiness that focuses on law and kills the true message of Christ. Jesus had a lot to say about the religious who put the law before his true message:

“…How terrible it will be for you experts of religious law! For you crush people beneath impossible religious demands, and you never lift a finger to ease the burden.” Luke 11:46

“How terrible it will be for you teachers of religious law and you Pharisees. Hypocrites! For you are careful to tithe even the tiniest part of your income, but you ignore the important things of the law- justice, mercy, and faith. You should tithe, yes, but you should not leave undone the most important things. Blind Guides! You strain your water so you won’t accidentally swallow a gnat; then you swallow a camel.” Matthew 23:23-24

Jesus came and declared that the most important law was “You must love the Lord with all your heart, all your soul, and all your mind; and love your neighbor as yourself.” (Matthew 22:37.39) Religion ignores the reasons behind this being the most important commandment and only focuses on the exterior and works as a way to get close to God. It is religion that not only kills the true message of hope Christ taught but also has held back people from understanding the true meaning of Christianity who could have benefited from the teachings of Jesus.

At the end of the day I believe Jesus is the Savior, not Christianity. Am I defending Christ or Christianity? Will enforcing the ideals of a pre-packaged Christian lifestyle help people feel the love of Christ? Do I believe that my moral lifestyle holds more truth than Jesus? Do I want to be driving people to Christianity or leading them to Christ?


Along with this comes a belief that is more socially liberal than most people assume Christians are. I am not some gay bashing, scientifically impaired 'tard who is only allowed to remove the protective helmet in the evenings. Equal rights is a moral issue, fighting poverty is a moral issue, fighting Aids, starvation, and all forms of darkness is a moral issue. In order to truly live the moral life presented in the gospel I am called to fight for a better quality of life for others. Regardless of background, belief or country of residence, all should be guaranteed equal rights, access to medication, education, and livable wages. A lot of this belief is what has drawn a bloke like me to FOSS.

So, there it is, there I am.