Religion Thread

[LunarSeas]

LOL LEMME BE THE WEIRDO AGAIN. 

 

Seriously. 

 

I'm kemetic orthodox. I worship ancient Egyptian gods and belong to a temple with a king-priestess (it has to do with Horus and middle Egyptian language, it's a whole thing, just...yeah). 

 

So I'm very religious, I'm even in the midst of my new year. But nothing in my beliefs, or those of the temple, approves of proselytizing. And, being in the bible belt, that would be dangerous for me. xP

[Tal Shi'ar]

54 minutes ago, LunarSeas said:

 

 

I'm kemetic orthodox. I worship ancient Egyptian gods and belong to a temple with a king-priestess (it has to do with Horus and middle Egyptian language, it's a whole thing, just...yeah). 

 

That actually sounds pretty interesting.

[DannyFenton123]

57 minutes ago, LunarSeas said:

LOL LEMME BE THE WEIRDO AGAIN. 

 

Seriously. 

 

I'm kemetic orthodox. I worship ancient Egyptian gods and belong to a temple with a king-priestess (it has to do with Horus and middle Egyptian language, it's a whole thing, just...yeah). 

 

So I'm very religious, I'm even in the midst of my new year. But nothing in my beliefs, or those of the temple, approves of proselytizing. And, being in the bible belt, that would be dangerous for me. xP

 

Sounds really cool! I've edited the poll 

[LunarSeas]

Woo! :v

[iigolden]

Hinduism.  

[Untamed Heart]

Another atheist here, though if I were to follow any kind of faith I'd almost certainly be a pagan of some kind. I was very interested in the druids, and wicca to a lesser extent when I was in college (which led to me getting dragged to church a few times, after several years of nobody forcing me to try and be religious, including to a new Millennium sermon about death, destruction and hellfire...).

What's weird about that is nobody who didn't really know my parents would ever assume they were Christians, even if they spent a lot of time with them. They literally never talk about their beliefs or even go to church any more. It's my nana who gave me the most hassle about being a non believer, when I was a teenager. If anything it just pushed me further away from religion.

 

[anzu2snow]

I'm a Reform Jew. Basically, the most liberal branch. (Or, some people refer to these branches as movements.) However, I do want to become more observant in the future. Possibly being Modern Orthodox, nothing like regular or Ultra. There are so many branches of Orthodoxy, let alone the religion as a whole. I just feel I can't at the moment. Having a chronic illness where your food is already restricted, makes it difficult to keep fully kosher. I've omitted pork and shellfish products since I was 14, at least. Taking an immunosuppressant makes it difficult to go to shul (Yiddish for synagogue), and I don't particularly like the local ones, too. Hopefully, in the future I can or figure out a better way to do it.

 

Sorry to sound so down about it...Also, in my religion people can be atheist. (I'm not, though.) Some of the most observant are. We're told to wrestle with G-d after all. 

 

My mom's side ranges pretty much all the branches. Parent's side is Irish Catholic. So, it's an interesting mix. I was raised Reform, but both my parents encouraged me to go with how I felt about it. I love learning about other religions, and an cool with people who don't follow one. I was the only Jew at school, and one of a very small handful college. I'm used to being an 'ambassador', but never proselytize. It's against my religion. It's about education.

[Ace of Amethysts]

I`m atheist, but I don`t hate religion of course. Heck, I even like some non-religious aspects of Christianity and maybe Hinduism (I say maybe because my sparse knowledge may be wrong).

 

What did I type?

[DeltaAro]

So half of aros here atheists... how typical! You're all like Mr. Spock. No faith, no love!

 

Ok, I'm an atheist, too. But an intensive study of the philosophy of mind made me think that the case against materialism (physicalism) is extremely strong. This means that I'm basically an occultist. For reddit-atheists at least.

[Kickaxe]

I'm Lutheran, and I don't go to church much but I read from my bible and practice on my own when I have time. So I still consider myself fairly active in my faith. I'm not really surprised to see so many atheists here though. I'd love to hear more about what you all believe and why, it's always fascinating to hear other people's points of view.

[Apathetic Echidna]

I had a conversation recently with a friend along the lines of this and I kind-of said Australian was a religion. (I selected I don't follow an organised religion BTW) I said it as a joke but not really? I grew up hearing a lot of the Dreaming Stories alongside a long-standing family fight about Catholicism. Christianity was all vague blah blah about some people in Europe/Middle East. The Dreaming made more sense, it explained the land I live in and I love, and included all the animals and plants and places I could recognise, go to and touch. I have no blood ties to any Aboriginal group so I don't know any of the gendered secret business, and the stories were from many of the different groups, but they still make much more sense to me than traditional organised religions.   

 

 

@Kickaxe tagged you as you possibly might be interested in my answer but might miss it otherwise  

[James White]

On 7/15/2016 at 5:06 PM, PerformativeSurprise said:

Another atheist here, but I was raised in a devout Christian Evangelical home, and I grew up in the Bible Belt.  I got myself out of the church when I was a teenager.  Everyone from my hometown thinks I'm a heathen now  .

You sound like my mom. That is most definitely a compliment.

[Blackscarlet666]

LaVeyan Satanist here *dabbing on my haters*

[sarcastic kitten]

Well I'm an hardcore ahteist but there is one official religion that approaches my beliefs. 

 

Ladies, Gentlemen, and those who are in a different place in the gender spectrum, I present to you, The Dudeism! *insert whatever kind of music you like ''

[DeltaAro]

14 hours ago, Blackscarlet666 said:

LaVeyan Satanist here *dabbing on my haters*

Okay, I'll take the challenge.

 

Two users selected “Satanism”.

 

What if the other Satanist here is a theistic Satanist? Do we have a chance to witness a holy war between you two about who is allowed to use the word “Satanism”?

[Blackscarlet666]

@DeltaV Good question.  but we don't know the other person so I'm gonna not rant about the proper use of the word Satanism

[Confidential_Con]

Another Reform Jew here; my family (one parent Jewish, the other Catholic) was never very observant growing up, so lately I've been trying to connect with Judaism more now that I have the opportunity to at college. Trying to keep kosher to the extent that I can, observing the holiday's I'm able to, going to Shabbat services weekly, etc. I grew up in (and am currently attending school) in a pretty Christian part of the south, so I mostly keep quiet about being Jewish so I don't have to deal with people being assholes about it. I'd suppose I'd say I'm agnostic, since I don't really think there's any way to know if there's a god out there or not, but in Judaism that's not a very big deal. What's more important is how how you live your life.

 

One thing that is nice is that my branch of Judaism is very accepting of LGBT+ folks. I talk to my rabbi about the issues I have with trying to navigate Jewish stuff while being transgender, and he's been very supportive and considerate.

[DeltaAro]

16 hours ago, Blackscarlet666 said:

Good question.  but we don't know the other person so I'm gonna not rant about the proper use of the word Satanism

The masses of the English speakers decide what's the proper use of “Satanism”. They have this power and you and your kind have failed to wrest it from them! Weaklings.

On 7/22/2016 at 11:50 PM, EveryZig said:

Atheism in itself isn't a belief system in the same way that "believing there is at least one god" isn't a belief system. It doesn't exist on its own but in the context of (and generally as a result of) some other belief system such as philosophical naturalism or some forms of Buddhism. So rather than Atheism being a belief system, there are atheist (as an adjective) belief systems.

But what's a god anyway? Is Tara from Tibetan Buddhism a goddess? Are the Kami of Shintoism (which was left out in this survey!), gods? Or are they just considered to be powerful spirits?

[NullVector]

On 23/08/2017 at 3:47 AM, sarcastic kitten said:

Ladies, Gentlemen, and those who are in a different place in the gender spectrum, I present to you, The Dudeism! *insert whatever kind of music you like ''

The Dude abides 

 

On 24/08/2017 at 4:30 PM, DeltaV said:

But what's a god anyway?

For me that is THE issue with conversations about religion. When the degree of abstraction is so great (as with a concept like "god" or a sentence like "I believe in God") then the probability of all people participating in the conversation having the same underlying concept in mind seems extremely low (unless A LOT of semantic preliminaries have already been tackled). Hence the corollary: the probability of misunderstandings and talking at cross purposes becomes extremely high. From there, it's perhaps not such a massive jump to religious wars and the like! 

 

[DeltaAro]

I think that we are able to behave here and not start a religious flame-war , which happen regardless whether or not all terms are carefully defined. IMHO the participants' hotheadedness is the more deciding factor.

 

I guess what we usually think of gods are creator gods, which might be Western-centric. So Buddhism is atheistic in the sense that whatever Tara and the like are, they definitely aren't creator gods. But OTH, do we really think of the Dalai Lama if we hear “atheist”? Or even some Western Buddhist who really rejects all kinds of powerful spiritual beings? No!

 

In practice, atheism is associated with philosophical naturalism. But naturalism is another ill-defined term and is usually just used as a synonym to the bad-sounding “materialism” (“physicalism” is still too obscure). So, if one unpacks it all, behind the modest “lack of belief in god(s)” hides a philosophical world view which makes some pretty strong claims.

 

Btw, the Judeo-Christian god (Yahwe) is seen as just another Kami by Shintoists. Hirata Atsutane even thought a lot about what the Christian god's (he read about him in texts from Jesuit missionaries) relation to the other known Kami might be and where to place him in the pantheon. I find that that really cute.  Though this might be regarded as sacrilegious by more serious Christians and was not what the Jesuits intended.

[NullVector]

5 hours ago, DeltaV said:

I think that we are able to behave here and not start a religious flame-war

Well, I hope you're proven correct!  

 

5 hours ago, DeltaV said:

But OTH, do we really think of the Dalai Lama if we hear “atheist”? Or even some Western Buddhist who really rejects all kinds of powerful spiritual beings? No!

Buddhism is an interesting one. I have some (mostly peripheral) involvement with traditional Buddhist circles these days. There is a lot in traditional Buddhism that I find enormously practical and helpful, on a personal level, but I will admit to not taking the metaphysics and cosmology stuff all that seriously! (i.e. notions of literal reincarnation, the 'realms' of devas, hungry ghosts, etc.) Tibetan Buddhism does tend to go a bit more 'all-in' with these than some of the other strands, but it is there in pretty much all of them. The Pali texts I'm more familiar with certainly refer a lot to the devas, although I don't know to what extent one is intended to interpret their existence literally. I take it more metaphorically, as a way to explore through the medium of story/myth aspects of how humans can relate more or less productively to The Dhamma - but that could well be a heretical interpretation on my part! 

 

5 hours ago, DeltaV said:

Btw, the Judeo-Christian god (Yahwe) is seen as just another Kami by Shintoists. Hirata Atsutane even thought a lot about what the Christian god's (he read about him in texts from Jesuit missionaries) relation to the other known Kami might be and where to place him in the pantheon.

 Presumably He was not categorized as being one of the more friendly or easy-going Kami? 

 

I went to a Church Of England primary school, so I was read many stories on the deeds of Yahweh from a young age and it had a lot to do with my early rejection of Authoritarian Ethics (and, to some extent, organised religion as a whole)

 

5 hours ago, DeltaV said:

In practice, atheism is associated with philosophical naturalism. But naturalism is another ill-defined term and is usually just used as a synonym to the bad-sounding “materialism” (“physicalism” is still too obscure). So, if one unpacks it all, behind the modest “lack of belief in god(s)” hides a philosophical world view which makes some pretty strong claims.

Such as?

 

On the one hand, one can make a statement such as: "Thus far, I see no compelling empirical reason(s) to believe that our universe resulted from an act of creation by, in effect, a souped-up version of human intelligence; although I don't deny the possibility of it a priori and am willing to change my mind if new evidence comes to light". Which seems like a fairly mild claim. On the other hand, one can make a much bolder statement such as: "All things are, in principle, amenable to understanding through The Scientific Method^TM and it is only a matter of aggregated human time and effort before they are moved out from the darkness of ignorance and ushered into the light of reason and rational understanding".

 

Now, although I agree that often the same people would make both statements (with the first-statement-makers set probably being somewhat larger than the second-statement-makers set - and also containing most of the latter as members), I don't think that the second statement in any way proceeds logically from the first (or indeed has any necessary connection to it).

[Momo]

7 hours ago, NullVector said:

On the one hand, one can make a statement such as: "Thus far, I see no compelling empirical reason(s) to believe that our universe resulted from an act of creation by, in effect, a souped-up version of human intelligence; although I don't deny the possibility of it a priori and am willing to change my mind if new evidence comes to light". Which seems like a fairly mild claim.

This is a mild claim, but it's an agnostic claim not an atheist one, at least in my mind.

[DeltaAro]

On 8/26/2017 at 4:46 PM, NullVector said:

Buddhism is an interesting one. I have some (mostly peripheral) involvement with traditional Buddhist circles these days. There is a lot in traditional Buddhism that I find enormously practical and helpful, on a personal level, but I will admit to not taking the metaphysics and cosmology stuff all that seriously! (i.e. notions of literal reincarnation, the 'realms' of devas, hungry ghosts, etc.) 

In general, somewhere there's a division between a religion and a secular life philosophy and system of ethics inspired by this religion. In the case of Buddhism, I would say that it loses its religious character if belief in literal rebirth and Karma is abandoned.

 

The Devas and eight hot and cold hells¹ etc., all that can be easily interpreted as just symbolic, imho the core of the religious system doesn't hinge on that.

 

¹ I always wondered what motivates the torture servants in the hell realms to work? If there is no God or any similar authority, who commands them? It seems like in an anarcho-libertarian utopia: if the state wouldn't exist, prisons would just run themselves.

On 8/26/2017 at 4:46 PM, NullVector said:

 Presumably He was not categorized as being one of the more friendly or easy-going Kami? 

A satisfactory answer to this question would need some pretty serious scholarship. I can only tell you that Hirata Atsutane speculated that the Christian god was a spirit branched off from Okuninushi. So He came off pretty well.

On 8/26/2017 at 4:46 PM, NullVector said:

I went to a Church Of England primary school, so I was read many stories on the deeds of Yahweh from a young age and it had a lot to do with my early rejection of Authoritarian Ethics (and, to some extent, organised religion as a whole)

Were you also told the story of Saul, the Witch of Endor (not to be confused with the Battle of Endor ) and the Amalekites?

 

Our teacher was very unmotivated and so we read the Bible without much of him selecting the nice parts. Even the complete story of Lot aka “the story of a sex offender family victimizing each other”, which caught a lot of attention in class…

On 8/26/2017 at 4:46 PM, NullVector said:

Such as?

As I said, one strong claim would be that materialism is true, i.e. that we live in an universe solely governed by the non-teleological laws of physics which produce what clearly exists in the human sphere (purpose, reason and subjective experience) as some kind of “epiphenomenon”.

On 8/26/2017 at 4:46 PM, NullVector said:

Now, although I agree that often the same people would make both statements (with the first-statement-makers set probably being somewhat larger than the second-statement-makers set - and also containing most of the latter as members), I don't think that the second statement in any way proceeds logically from the first (or indeed has any necessary connection to it).

I don't disagree with that but it's also not what I had in mind. Still there is something to be said about it: the institutions and political activism that gathers behind the word “atheism” fit, in practice, a very restrictive definition of the term. Absurdly, one part of this activism is to popularize a definition of “atheism” that is far more inclusive.

18 hours ago, Momo said:

This is a mild claim, but it's an agnostic claim not an atheist one, at least in my mind.

The question is, if we use the traditional definition of “atheist” (= someone convinced of the nonexistence of god(s)) or the “modern” definition, commonly used in online discussions (= someone lacking belief in god(s)). I assumed we use the latter here.

[NullVector]

On 27/08/2017 at 5:49 PM, DeltaV said:

As I said, one strong claim would be that materialism is true, i.e. that we live in an universe solely governed by the non-teleological laws of physics which produce what clearly exists in the human sphere (purpose, reason and subjective experience) as some kind of “epiphenomenon”

 

It's interesting, as you say, how weak the arguments are for a lot of these sorts of things that tend to get taken for granted (by 'atheists' in particular?) To the extent I think about it at all (philosophy makes my brain hurt! ) I tend to take the line that things like materialism (or, I might call it reductionism, as you described it above) cause-and-effect and even the existence of an objective and independent reality, aren't really much better than useful working hypotheses. By which I mean, assuming that something like them applies to the world I live in (and, again, assuming it makes sense to say I live in a world!) does seem to allow me to make sense out of a lot of different phenomena I observe (think I observe?!?) based upon a reasonably concise and 'taut' mental model. But, does that make them 'really true'? Does that last statement even mean anything? Is there any 'proof' for them, outside of their apparent utility in making sense of things?

 

Of course, I'm not claiming any originality of thought here: probably the empiricist philosophers like Hume and Berkeley laid it all out fairly comprehensively (wouldn't know: not read them first-hand! )

[NullVector]

On 27/08/2017 at 5:49 PM, DeltaV said:

On 26/08/2017 at 11:36 PM, Momo said:

This is a mild claim, but it's an agnostic claim not an atheist one, at least in my mind.

The question is, if we use the traditional definition of “atheist” (= someone convinced of the nonexistence of god(s)) or the “modern” definition, commonly used in online discussions (= someone lacking belief in god(s)). I assumed we use the latter here

 

See, those 'semantic preliminaries' I mentioned earlier have come back to bite us .

 

Yeah, I had the latter type of 'atheist' in mind when I wrote what I wrote. But I guess it doesn't matter so much what word-label we use, so long as we're all using the same one(s) somewhat consistently throughout the discussion.