Faith
 

Hi all,

Warning : this might sound stupid, crazy, boring... ah,who cares...

Just some thoughts that came up to my mind reading the posts about the Pope's death, all the news about it, etc... I think it's a good time to pause and think of who we are and where we're at.


I'd like to hear about how people live their faith, how they consider God, if they believe in God in the first place, which ever God it may be.

For my part, I recently (I'd say this last year) evolved from atheism to agnostism. Previously I was certain that there was no such thing as a God, or any entity that created the universe and had a judgement to give upon everyone of us.
I believe strongly in Science for what it's supposed to bring : the answer to the question "How?". For a long time I had faith in Science one day answering the question "Why?", but then I understood that it never had even been it's goal. Later I foung Religion, or I'd better say Believing, was the exact complement.
There are so many mysteries that Science is centuries away from clearing... logical organisations in Nature... One concrete example that got me thinking was a butterfly I saw in a Museum in Montreal that had a snake's head drawn on it's wings to scare it's predators. How was it thought that since that butterfly had a predator that was afraid of snakes, it needed a snake's head on it's wings? How was the info circulated from there to the actual drawing on the wings? By who/what?Or were there millions of different butterflies, with each a different drawing on it's wings, and only the one with the most efficient drawing survived?
Whatever the answer here, an obvious conclusion to me is that someone/something above us, all around us, beyond us, has some sort of a conscience of what everything is and of how everything is related, and some sort of power on it all. And I started believing in that something/someone. I restrain from using the word God here, because it's been filled with parasite ideas from all religious institutions that I know.
Btw according to me religious institutions should not exist, even less with hierarchy. What is going on with the Pope right now is nowhere near any faith should lead imo. Faith can be shared and discussed but certainly not generate rules that lead to judge others and therefore categorize when we're all the same.

Anyway, is this someone/something a divine entity? another conscious lifeform that we don't know of? Maybe a microscopic one. I read somewhere that bacteria recieved and transmitted genetical information from one body to another, that they were thought to be at the origin of key genetical mutations for all species throughout the evolution process. The scientist behind that theory even suggested that maybe bacteria were intelligent and that there is a probability that we could say that we are here because they wanted us to be here, or that bacteria made it to the Moon using us. :lol:

Anyway where I am at now: I know there is something but I don't know what it is.
The question now is do I want to know?
I'm not even sure of that. Because I came to enjoy the mystery behind it all. What I want to do, and like to do, is deepen the question, stiffen the mysteries, not find the answers.

However what I'm sure of (well as much as I can be) is that whatever it is:

1 - it is so much beyond us that it has no judgement on us or anything, no need for adoration or even belief, no absolute rule to be followed. It's there for the sake of it, for the beauty of it.

2 - Everything, matter, life, spirits, everything is organised with it, by it.

3 - Mankind, with it's conscience, actually has the ability to retrieve itself from the process or abuse it by dividing, isolating, ranking, etc... but it also has the ability to participate, to take it's right and deserved place in all this by respecting, sharing, learning, etc...

I chose my side as this is where I believe in some values defended by religions : love, forgiveness, peace, solidarity... this also where I disagree with the same religions on homosexuality, abortion, women's rights, heaven and hell...

Care to share your thoughts?


Ponrauil

I believe in science and I believe in something else too, but not god as the religions picture him/her. I can't believe anyone so powerful could be so petty, power hungry, racist and judgemental.

I believe that all religions are man made fiction, that have no bases in truth.

I believe in evolution.

Ice

i dont either believe in any religions, i think they are all made by mankind for personal or racial purposes.. but i do believe in One God.

I am not religious but I cannot say I am atheist .. my husband is atheist for him everything can be explained and has a good reason to be and all .. I am believing in Faith not in God .. I believe there is something but I don't know what
I believe in Love even if it might sounds totally cheesy ... sorry ...maybe the ultimate love is what other people call God .. but then it's a concept not something factual... I am interested in Shintoism and buddhism (in Witches in Ghosts and so on ) not as a way of living not as a religion...

I think religions have been created by mankind to make our life on earth having a purpose

Hmm - I'm in agreement with Ice on this one. I'm too much of a scientist to believe in organized religion. As far as organizing and patterns are concerned (referring to your butterflies), I'd call it nature - not religion.
I actually assumed that I would become more "religious" as I got older, probably because I saw other older people follow that pattern. It has been just the opposite in my case, I was more willing to believe in divine intervention of some sort when I was much younger than I am now. I appreciate nature in all its various forms, and some of it is quite destructive. I can't go as far as thinking that there is a higher being or a guiding hand "out there" somewhere. And in my opinion, the modern world's organized religions are one of the problems, certainly not the solution to anything.

Kathleen

Freedom of religion, eh? Everyone has the right to believe what they want to believe, there is no true right and wrong.

"There is no absolute truth."

As for what I believe...

My Goddess is just an aspect of an Entity that is the culmination, or "origin" if you will, of all other God/desses known, who are just facets of this Entity. That's why there is no "wrong" religion or God/dess to believe in.

I follow the Threefold Law, though I am not Wiccan. Maybe it is more of a karmic thing I believe in. But whatever you send out, it will return.

Nat

Re: Faith
 

I am atheist. I don't like any religious institution and since for me those things are *that* connected, I don't believe in any God either.

I partially agree. I strongly believe in science. For me there are two very important sides. The one side are the natural sciences, on top of which I see astronomy in this day and age. This side is for the "How?". The other equally important side is philosophy, the "Why?". So, for me, those two questions are not that far away from each other. They are both questions with scientifical approach.

I very much agree with this. But then I look back at what the past century had discovered with science and this confirms my FAITH in science.

Yes, and I would call it Nature, i.e. an all-embracing thing including the whole universe and what is beyond, not just the "nature" on our little planet.

To me it is Nature. It doesn't mean I understand everything, but it is what I think this something is.

I'm not sure about that.

I agree on those two.

Yep. I always say that the Bible includes lots of good values that should be maintained. But I believe those values were there before the Bible, so I don't need to believe in the Bible to live by these values. Plus that I think the bad things in religion do easily outweigh the good.

my thoughts are the same

It's kind of hard to describe what I believe, but I'll give it a shot.

I believe in the God of the Christian religion and that his Son, Jesus, died as a sacrifice for our sins. That's about the only thing organized Christian religion and I agree on. I don't think that just because you don't believe in Jesus you're automatically eternally damned. I think everyone finds God in their own way, and as long as you don't explicitly REJECT the teachings of Jesus, I think you'll probably do fine. I'm not completely sure of that, though my uncle, a Catholic Brother, believes the same thing, and I guess that's a good sign.

My faith influences my life in that I try to live according to the teachings of Jesus. This'll probably sound weird, but one of my major religious beliefs is the non-innitiation of force. It goes against everything I believe about religion and morals to commit agression against someone, and I believe non-aggression was something Jesus taught, though if not taught, definitely lived. I try to attend church on a semi-regular basis, but I'm kind of dissatisfied with the message of the church I currently attend, not to mention that I don't think all the ceremony and question-and-answer stuff is just window dressing. I'll probably never find a church that I agree with 100%, so I'll keep going to this one.

Given that I think everyone finds God in their own way, I don't attempt to convert people to my religion, one of the reasons I rarely discuss religion outside of statements of my belief - like this one.

Adrian

I don't believe in god in the religious sense.

I've explained my theory on it before and to do it in full it takes a while so i should really save it somewhere so i can just copy and paste iot but anyways...

I spent a good deal of time in my latter half of high school doing philosophy and one of the main subjects was creation/ God's exisetence and IMO even the "fundamental" (if that's the way to put it) philosophical arguments for God's existance go nowhere near to proving it.

A being of which none greater can be conceieved therefore it must exist? bollocks. i could imagine a sandwhich of which none greater can be concieved. doesn't mean it exists.

the creation / watch argument doesn't hold true for me either. In theory if you're walkign through a desert ull of sand, a very basic thing and came across a timepiece and you could see it's mechanisms working etc... you'd know it was made by a man therefore because the world is so complex it must be made by something else which again is just a case of saying we don't know this so it must be God. Too much chaos in the world and for every human eye or heart there's a million incredibly basic things that science has proved how it came to be.

and the causation theory in that evrything has a cause and we must have a 1st cause so that 1st cause is God again is putting 2 and 2 together and making 5 because that's what you want it to come too.

even descartes who I regard as great copped out at the end of his meditiations and came out something along the lines of God exists because he must.


so for me philosophy can explain a whole lot but not this because we're never going to prove (or disprove) God's existence through rationalism.

Religion wise my parents are Protestant but don't follow it too closely and I believe for the most part their ideas on morality but I would without that influence either.

One thing I totally disagree with is the heirarchy and abuse of position that most organised religions used. As I posted someone elses comments in the Pope thread. i think it's pretty blasphemous to say the least to install a human on earth as our go between with us and the big man.

anyways my idea on god is faith. god does not e3xist physically and he can't create mountains or send swarms of locusts to whoop our ass when he gets bored and on the same hand, he isn't personally responsible for wars and people flyign planes into buildings in his name. it's the religion and the twisting of it that is. but anyways, if you believe in god then god exists to you personally but only in your head and what you want God to be able to do or not do is pretty much what God is capable of as it's you who believes it.

as i said, i don't think god can do jack shit in the physical world but if someone else believes that he made the tsunami to punish us or whatnot then so be it.

and as i said, it's when you start getting it twisted (by the heirarchy might i point out) that we do get wars as a result but not because of God.

as far as how do i live my life? I'd like to think I'm a good person. I'm not going to win a knighthood anytime soon i can be a total cunt at the best of times but for the most part i think people would say i'm a decent guy with a fair set of morals and that's more to do with how I've been brought up with my parents, the friends I have and my environment as opposed to the Bible or church.


Good questiosn btw mate.

ps. as far as the butterfly thing n allt hat goes on. I think thats ome things just happen purely by chance no matter how unrealistic that seems. how many million butterflies is there? how many billion have ever existed? sooner or later you're goign to get one with elvis' head on it really.

I just think some things happen both in nature and in the world we experience hence why im pretty apathetic with regards to alot of issues and think trying to change things is a waste of time.