Very well said. Alot of folx allow Westboro to be the PR Firm for religion when in reality they are BY FAR and EXTREME Minority Rocket River
The first thing that comes to mind when I find out someone believes in God is that they are lucky. The second is that I am envious. It must be wonderful to have the feeling of living in a meaningful universe. It must be wonderful to feel that no matter how alone you are, you are never alone. If I could feel those ways, I would. I've tried. I couldn't vote in the poll. None of the answers were ones I'd ever give.
I usually think how much better the religious people I know would be if they cussed, drank, smoked, cheated on their spouses and beat their children with baseball bats. Oh, right...
Totally agree. I get in arguments all the time with other Indians who get mad at the fact that so many Indians are converting to Christianity. But honestly how can anyone be shocked by that? In a country with tons of poverty and many times governments that are unable to provide basic services, its the Christian missionary organizations that supply the basic education and health care for many rural communities. So why wouldn't someone in abject poverty choose to affiliate with religious organizations that are actively helping them.
Great answer overall, DFWRocket but I highlight this part because almost every Christian church across America is actively doing the kinds of things described in your passage cited above.
Ditto Probably wrong about existence and the state of the universe, not that anyone will ever know otherwise, but lucky to have the comfort of real belief instead of the constant nagging of a answer-less life. What do you think? I don't know. What is real? I don't know. What's the point? I don't know. Get out of my brain and leave me alone!
A lot of folks allow al Qaeda to be the PR Firm for Islam, when in reality they are BY FAR the EXTREME minority. I'm seeing a trend here.
I picked "uneducated" although that isn't exactly what I think but I suppose it was closest because I find the less educated a person is, the more likely they are to be deeply religious. One thing I do instantly think when I learn a person is a religious is that their ability to think critically and approach problems rationally is underdeveloped. Basically, it causes me to take everything they say regarding subjects I'm unfamiliar with more than one grain of salt. Sometimes I'm wrong but mostly I'm right
I've known some exceptionally kind, compassionate, and incredible, religious people. The flip side of the coin exists, but that is not a trait exclusive to the world of the pious. I respect most of all the person who studies all the avenues of his/her faith, and tries through philosophical and theological means to decide which is the most plausible belief. Even Western philosophers (Kant springs to mind) have discussed the issue of a logically existing God. Even the Abrahamic religions, which I've come to look at as being the "fast food" religions, have certain sects that deeply and rationally discuss to possibilities and impossibilities of a God (and that's God with a capital G). Atheists who blindly close their minds to the possibility are, in my opinion, as bad as those believers who blindly close their minds to atheism. Some of the most intelligent and brilliant people in history were devout believers in God, so devout that one could argue that their belief transcended the cultural context of their lifetimes. Some of the most evil and violent people in history were also devout believers in God. I'd say this speaks more towards the ambiguous nature of humanity, rather than any attribute intrinsic to religion. The one kind of religious person who I will never have any respect for under any circumstances is the one who, when asked why he/she believes in God, responds with "I've seen miracles that made me believe!" Get real or get lost, dude. Seriously.
One of the descriptions in this topic is self-righteous and judgmental. That's more of a character flaw because we've seen what happens when both sides exhibit that behavior through retrenchment into their own established talking points. If they're different sides of the same coin, then maybe it's a general problem in how our society views/deals with religion, which is a capitalistic and results-driven nature... or sometimes the opposite, a capitalistic spirit combined with a dogmatic, brainless obedience of the rules (don't know how people manage to merge the two without conflict, don't care). Gee, I can't prove/disprove God in the context of a face to face conversation, but I can make my displeasure known when I feel persecuted or belittled. Agreed. A doctor I knew advertised that he was a Christian family practician. I began having doubts due to my own preconceptions (Texas....) but he turned out to be a cool open minded dude whose personal and professional religious and spiritual beliefs I didn't disagree much, but rather greatly respected, namely embracing the paradoxes of life and death.
the answer is simple, really: if you're religious, don't push your beliefs onto people who don't want it if you're agnostic/atheist, don't blaspheme those who do believe everyone's view of each other would be much more positive
I agree, and I'm not the least bit religious. However, I respect those who are and expect them to respect my own beliefs, or lack of them. My experience with the overwhelming majority of my friends, acquaintances, and relatives who are people of faith is that they do. In my opinion, threads like this push people apart, rather than bringing them together.
While the value of charity is important, but how generally successful has conversion been in India? I'll openly admit that I get annoyed with Christian missionaries in Japan ( and I know a Christian friend who did work there over the summer), though it's less a "Christianity is bad" and more "We have our traditions and faith, you have yours." And while I would call myself an atheist, Shinto is such a weak religion that if I ever had to give a religion, I'd probably call myself that. The OP poll is weak, and in general religion means nothing to me on a personal level. On a political level, I highly respect secularism as the French do it, and would hope America adopts similar policies.
I am an atheist. And to me I find religion to be more of a philsophy than anything else. I'd go to church on Sundays with Christian friends and enjoy the sermons. I have discussed details of Islamic Law, Koran, and other things with Arabic friends. I've stopped looking at it from a "do they believe in a higher being" POV, but rather learn to understand how it shapes their life. Kind of look at it as a way of life more than anything else.
So I discuss political matters on this other board, one of whom is a woman who believes in the inerrancy of the Bible. I contended that St. Paul's statement that women should be silent in church was wrong. She and others argued that it can't be wrong because it's in the Bible. I mentioned that she shouldn't stay at her church, then, as they certainly have at least a few women in leadership positions, etc. Her response: "Dorotik I have said time and again that my church does NOT have women in leadership positions save for the Ladies bible classes. I would not be willing to accept a leadership role when it involved charge over men in the congregation, nor would my Elders and Deacons ask any women in our church to do so." Is it just me, or is that like a Dark Ages mentality?
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I don't really view them differently. I've kind of decided that people will eventually find their own principles and apply it to any religion which is most compatible with that. The label becomes nominal really. I try to treat everyone like a human being. I find that this quality goes down as religiosity increases in people who follow the Abrahamic religions (which is basically more than half the world) with some exceptions. I don't know enough about other religions to guess. But that's essentially what pisses me off about religious people.
Science is one thing. Ethics is another. It's when you try to squeeze them together into one self-validating, infallible , unchanging, omnipotent system that you get the conflicts because information changes. Sometimes just through interpretation. But, without the appearance of a transcendence of mortality the whole eternal reward/damnation thing loses its motivational power. The power I think that has made the traditional religions seem so pervasive in history and philosophies, that could have equally profound effects on human relations, seem so weak. You must love your brother as yourself to achieve a harmonious life.... uh yeah OK, I'll get right on that. You must love your bother as yourself or you will burn in hell for eternity......Hmmm, I might really think about doing that.
I was raised baptist and attended church "religiously" until I was 16. At that point in my life, I started asking questions at bible study and was very concerned with their lack of concern about the weaknesses of their answers. It wasn't that I couldn't put the entire puzzle together, but I came to my own period of re-evaluation and realized that having faith, for me, was not a sufficient response for my doubts. After I moved away from prayer and faith, I grew intellectually more than I ever thought possible and the "assumptions" of protestant Christianity became more and more obtuse to me, and as I began to step back and look at the church as an unit, a collective rather than the flowery, melodic, effervescent group of Flanders I had previously defined the congregation as, I realized that a key tenant of Christianity is interpersonal divinity. Though they were some of the nicest, most well meaning people in my life needed one another to retain their religion, and that the notion of just me and my maker was a fallacy, and that we are only so human as to be blinded to how much our own personal faiths needed to be fed by the currency of external faiths. Now, as the "outcast" they were all trying to save, and making more efforts to "help" me than they were when I was repeating the dogma and dancing the dance, I felt like an object in their own pursuit. The whole "fisher of men" thing never sat well with me. I am not a fish, and fishers don't fish for other fishers. The only thing I can characteristically resent. When people, and from my own experiences this has only been Christians, see you as a "get" for God, or a subject for their own divine, and inherently selfish, object. Of course, this does not apply uniformly to all persons of religion, because well nothing does, short of being human, when you cast the net that wide.
