Whats Yalls opinion on Religion?

[kingkotheartiz]

Love and agree with your thought....

[_calm]

Thanks for the correction. I obviously didn't mean it as derogatory, its just a term that is commonly understood by the general public. I should've probably used "localized" instead.

[SpavVy]

I believe in spirits because of my own experiences but I'm not tied to any specific religion and part of the reason is that it can easily become toxic.
I come from a very right-wing family and some of them are also very Christian while others are not which has lead to some not-so-great conversations between family members.

[diamondactor]

I was raised Christian with some magical traditions like tarot and cuandero stuff, but later in life I became Kemetic and got with a guy whose Heathen. It does influence my writing as I do use those pantheons occasionally as characters.

[surenlicious]

Religion is a man-made fairy-tale of utter nonsense that causes more harm than good. Now your relationship to god however is in my opinion something personal and isn't something that can be written down in the books. Its your own experience between you and the Big Creature.

If it makes you happy, you do you boo, but don't bring it to my doorstep. Same for everybody not believing in anything, that too is fine but don't shove it up my behind. And don't hide behind either one of these to do harm on others, just keep it to youself.

[ProjectHybrid]

Interesting how many different viewpoints there are here on this chat. It's quite nice that people are sharing their beliefs.

It's sad that so many here have had negative views of Christianity and Christians. I am a Christian (and not a perfect one by any means, that's why I follow Jesus Christ), and have heard many different tales of good Christians, bad Christians, and those inbetween.

I agree that when one tries to use religion (any religion) to harm someone is wrong, especially considering that in every religious text, the messages of love and peace and patience are preached.

No one is perfect, that's why we seek the guidance of a perfect God, who can teach us to be kinder to one another, care about each other and walk in a way that promotes peace.

Obviously we all have differences, and yes sometimes we all let that drive a wedge between each other. But can we learn to accept each other in those differences?

Jesus Christ in the Christian Bible gives two ultimate commandments:

"You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul and with all your mind," Matthew 22: Verse 37. Meaning, we are to love the Lord who created us. He created us in spite of knowing what we would do, what we would say, who we would be because He loves us. He's our Father, and He does care about us. I know some people are going to scoff at that, and some are going to disbelieve that. Truthfully, only you can make that choice. And that is the gift God gave us: choice. Because God's looking at our hearts and our character and no one (YES! NO ONE!) is too bad, too lost, too stubborn for God to turn away. If anything, we take a bad situation and blame Him. I'm not a cosmic know it all but I do believe that everything happens for a reason and God's ways are not our ways, but work out in the best way.

And the second commandment:

"You shall love your neighbor as yourself," Matthew 22: verse 39. "Neighbor" does not mean the person you live next door to. Neighbor is everyone. Neighbor is friend and enemy alike. Even when asked "who is my neighbor?", Jesus Christ explains:

"A certain man went down from Jerusalem to Jericho and fell among thieves, who stripped him of his clothing, wounded him, and departed, leaving him half dead. Now by chance a certain priest came down that road. And when he saw him, he passed by on the other side. Likewise, a Levite, when he arrived at the place, came and looked, and passed by on the other side. But a certain Samaritan, as he journeyed, came where he was. And when he saw he had compassion on him, and went to him, bandaged his wounds, pouring on oil and wine; and he set him on his own animal, brought him to an inn and took care of him. On the next day when he departed, he took out two denarii, gave them to the innkeeper, and said to him "Take care of him; and whatever more you spend, when I come again, I will repay you.' So which of these three do you think was neighbor to him who fell among the thieves?" And he said, "He who showed mercy on him." Then Jesus said to him, "Go and do likewise." Luke 10:30-37

So, Christians (and people) are urged to be peaceful and helpful to one another. You may come from here, or you may come from there, or may believe this or may believe that, but we are called to love. In history, Samaritans and Jews (who were the main religion in Jerusalem at the time) did not get along. So, when a Samaritan helped someone out it wasn't a dig at other religions, but that all humans can help each other by simply treating others as they would want to be treated.

To wrap up here, I am truly sorry for those of you who have had a negative experience with Christians. We are not all like that, and I am saddened that you were misled or worse, your opinion and views of God and Jesus Christ have been soured. We're all people, and we all struggle. I'm not excusing what they did or defending it, I'm merely saying that even the most devout are still human. That's why if we're really honest with ourselves is why we turned to God and Jesus Christ-because we were no good, mean spirited, lost and confused people, who really just wanted something that changed us from the inside versus numbing us and waking up to the pain still being there. Ask anyone who they were before Christ saved them and they'll tell you.

Regardless, you are loved. You are welcome here, regardless of what you've done (yes, you are). But, I can't make you see that, so I give you my input and leave it in your hands. And someday, maybe, your views will go from negative to positive

God bless you and keep you

[_calm]

Great message. This coming from a muslim by the way. (Kinda feel like I'm the only muslim on the forum, but whatever, its great to see Christianity from a different perspective.)
Man, I'm still surprised this post is still going strong. I guess religion is a hot Button topic after all.

[monotone_ink]

Religion is epic

I don't ascribe to the idea that religions are merely social constructs and I firmly believe it's actually a great disservice to oneself to view them in this way - I don't like to say it, but it honestly really pisses me off whenever people handwave it like that.

We can have a look at catholicism (which is what I'm most familiar with): here you have thousands of years of philosophical inquiry and lore; starting from the establishment of the catholic church, we've had a shit ton of church fathers outputting tons of writings and works that underpin the moral framework of your western world.
Before that, you also had the already monumental weight of Jewish tradition, of which already had their own collections of writings and works. Even during the time of Jesus' life, the stories in the Jewish tradition (e.g. Genesis and Exodus etc.) were already ancient as all hell, with morals and meanings that survived up until that point.

And then even before that, where did these stories come from? There are some indications that a lot of Biblical lore was influenced by Ancient Egypt and Ancient Mesapotamia. And even then, where in the world did their stories come from?? It's almost as if they emerged from the human soul in some way or another.

What I'm trying to express is the importance of religion as a whole - they're collections of history, culture, and philosophical inquiry. As far as I can see it right now, it's one of the few things in the world that help people connect to the past and find teachings that can rejuvenate the world moving into the future. I don't really care what religious affiliations people have - all I care about is that people do their best not to neglect the importance of religions as a whole.

---

Edit: I'm still kind of pissed so I'm just going to spill more of my thoughts here:

I really, really detest the idea that religions are "made up fairy-tale nonsense." I haven't the words to fully explain my stance on this, but I don't believe ancient peoples just sat around a table and "made up" these stories. Delve into religions closer, and realise that these stories aren't manually fabricated in the way that we sit down to write stories - they emerged.

For an example, I find it's completely fucking pointless to pick apart the biblical stories in a scientific lens - they didn't have the scientific method back then, and they weren't focused on accurately recording the objective reality of their world. What we can at least gleam though is that they recorded world as they perceived it.

People rag on about the story of Adam and Eve for being weird, but look at it from other perspectives and realise that the story is very much about the rise of human consciousness. I'm tempted to say that it's 'allegorical' for this period of human history, but I don't think 'allegory' is even a strong enough word to describe it, because no one made this story with the intention of making it an allegory - it was simply passed down as it was.

Do you realise what these stories are? They're the entirety of human history written in the most compact, meta way possible. And the same can be said for fairy-tales themselves, which are also of huge cultural importance, so think again whenever you compare religions to fairytales.

I also detest it when people complain about religion deciding what is right or wrong. It's the same concept as what I described the emergent nature of religious stories - morals and values are discovered, not made. Thousands of people died in wars and hunger for people throughout history to figure out things like morality. The world's religious teachings are backed by suffering, heartache, and tragedies.

To me, dismissing these religious ideas merely because they're not scientifically accurate is the greatest affront to humanity itself - you've been gifted a gift rich in experience, history, ideas and culture, a system that underpins the entirety of your world whether you know it or not. I don't give a fuck about whether or not you convert to a certain religion, it's not about that - all I care is that you learn from it.

[monotone_ink]

how do I dislike a post?

[snowy]

It's getting really, REALLY hard not to start pointing out all the logical fallacies in the religious rethoric I'm running across here, so I'm out.

"Off Topic" indeed.

[TAMAnnoying]

Thank you for bringing up the cultural aspect to religion, I sometimes forget about it myself when discussing it.

I recently finished reading the Hogfather by terry Pratchett and as much as Death isn’t exactly my fav character he expressed the idea of belief and culture and morality pretty well in one idea.

Spoilers:

Summary

death yells Susan that the sun will not rise if the hogfather dies. When he’s finally pushed to the point of explaining himself he states

“A MERE BALL OF FLAMING GAS WOULD HAVE ILLUMINATED THE WORLD.“

Belief, like love, is a complicated thing that isn’t meant to be proven right or wrong and simply meant to be a personal if not cultural discovery for people. It always tickles me when people think religion is what makes people evil when people do a fine enough job being evil be it with a religious background, an atheist background, or a background where they grew up watching Disney cartoons as moral guides.

[monotone_ink]

Hey you sound like a pretty smart guy - do you have a blog or something I can read through? Also, can I suck your toes?

[snowy]

Yikes.

Sure, if that's your thing.

[snowy]

Love Pratchett. Got "witches abroad" signed by the man himself. Brought him a banana daiquiri.

As for religion, someone straight up asked him :

[TAMAnnoying]

Yeah I’m not sure what I was supposed to get out of that besides what I’ve already been saying.

Belief tends to be an incredibly personal thing, even terry has referred to it as his own religion. Granted he seems to sadly group all other religious people into the one belief of the Bible and has concluded that people believe they are fallen angels which is hallarious and never what I’ve ever believed (tho wings would be cool if not horrible obtrusive)

There are plenty of religious people who do not believe in science. I am not one of them. There’s also a bunch of religious people that do believe in science. I am one of them. Religion is a big part of culture and understanding how one culture decided to do one thing instead of another. There’s a lot of tiny building blocks when we look at history and realize that one thing can lead to another thing can lead to another thing.

The redoric is still there. People are good, people have achieved a lot of things. The diffrence is terry wants to talk about science and telescopes with his friends where as I wanna talk about ghost and if the univers is a computer if it has the hardware space to keep dead people or if it deletes them fully and ghost could possibly be remnince of the deleted person like when you try to search for the file on your computer and it pops up but you can’t open it or find it in any of the folders.

Im religious but I am also a theory crafter. I probably enjoy religion for that very reason. It’s just fun to talk to people about and listen to their ideas. So long as they’re willing to be told “no I disagree” I’m happy talking to them. There’s plenty of secs I can’t be bothered with- the ones that don’t believe in free will are always horrifying to me but there’s plenty of people who are able to take those ideas and are able to calm their social anxieties with it. Not my thing but if it works for them I’m happy.

Point is people are sharing very personal thoughts and ideas about themselves when they talk in this thread, just like when someone mentions they like ray from starwars and don’t want people to explain why she’s a marry sue. Or want to start a conversation about their favorite book series but dosnt want to be told how it ends cause they haven’t finished it yet. It’s all just very personal journeys and it’s just a jarring when someone says “everyone who likes Disney is a bad person” cause it’s just not true.

don’t know, if religion isn’t fun for you to talk about you can mute the thread?

[queentrashmuffin]

I think that you bring up some really interesting points in your post. I agree that religion can be very useful for people as a historic piece of work and viewing religion through that lens can be highly beneficial and entertaining. One of my favorite classes in college was World Religions. I loved learning about all kinds of different religions.

The issue is that people don’t typically look at religion through that lens, but rather treat the religious texts as a set of rules and regulations. This can be very damaging to minorities, which typically get the short end of the stick when it comes to religious texts. The bible does condemn homosexuals (although that can be argued) and fundamentalists use that as a sword and shield to be bigoted. I am not saying that all religious people are bad, but rather that some parts of religious texts can cause people to have negative thoughts and feelings towards certain people.

I also find it kind of funny how you disapprove of people claiming that religion is merely a social construct and then go on to define religion as a social construct. The concept itself is not bad to be honest. Social construction literally just means that something occurs not in objective reality, but rather because of social interactions. Money is a social construct. Marriage is a social construct. Hell, even morality is a social construct. I don’t subscribe to the thought that social construction is bad, but rather that certain aspects of particular sections of socially constructed thought can have damaging components.

You do bring up a good point about the evolutionary origin of religion, as many religions are born through the fantastic aspect of storytelling. In fact many religions have very similar thoughts and stories that are told in their religious texts. The bible, the Hebrew bible and the Quran are all very similar in content, mostly likely because they were born around the same area geographically. In fact, one could possibly see connections throughout all religions, as humans developed together and then spread out through the Earth. You bring up the point that religion isn’t brought up through objective reality, but rather what individuals perceived at the time. This is a good point to make (also you are literally describing a socially constructed thought). A lot of religion is explaining something that people once were not able to explain. For example, look at Greek mythology, which was once seen as a religious thought. The Greeks had a god or goddess that explained all kinds of things that they did not have the science to understand, such as oceans, thunder and lightning, and so on.

You bring up religion and people trying to disprove religion through a scientific lens, which I agree with. Hard science cannot explain religion, mostly because it is not backed by scientific thought, but rather theology. The issue is that the exact opposite also happens, where religious individuals try to teach religion as a type of science, via creationism, and try to denounce actual science, in this example evolution. The concept of “oh evolution is just a theory” is ridiculous on two fronts. One being that the term theory is vastly misused, as a theory is a scientific explanation of aspects in the natural world and must be backed by actual scientific proof. A scientific theory isn’t just some thought that someone came up with, it has to pass several qualifications before it becomes an actual scientific theory. The second being that there is also a scientific law of evolution, which basically is a description of an observed phenomenon, in this case evolution.

The next aspect that I kind of want to critique that you pointed out is the sense of morality. I agree that morality is discovered. That is a great point to make, however religion and morality are not mutually inclusive. A person can be secular and have a solid moral compass and a person who is religious can have a crappy moral compass. Decent moral thoughts can be developed without the presence of religion.

Again, you make some really decent points in your post and I agree that religion can be a very important aspect in a person’s life, but it doesn’t have to be. Secular individuals can go a lifetime with the same amount of positive life experience with a decent moral compass as any religious person. Again, those aspects are not mutually inclusive with religion.

[Rai89]

God/religion was created to control people.

[_calm]

This thread legit went from ,"ahh, Religion is a tool to control the masses, man made and not needed in todays age" to a strangely philosophical and nuanced discussion in the role of religion in our day to day lives!

Just had to give it time to marinate.

Not everything is black and white people. Open Your Eyes!

[lomcia]

My opinion: religion is necessary, or more precisely faith. Faith gives hope and meaning to life. End of opinion

[N1ghtm4r3]

i think religion was a good idea in some cases but got lost along the way