The Religion Wars begin here

[Jason Lee]

I remain firmly agnostic.

I've got a fascination with the historical evolution of religions (ancestor worship -> tribal gods -> monotheism).  Joseph Campbell rocks my lame ass.

I'm also very interested in the evil side of a religion - where I think the true nature of its followers may be found.  All this talk of love and peace is nice and all, but when it comes down to it how vile their hell is and how cruel their evil spirits are will tell you what those people are capable of.

[Andy Kitkowski]

Joseph Campbell rocks my lame ass.

He is indeed one of the most biting, critical, and cynical writers I've ever known (at least in his earlier works, before the whole "grandfatherly" image started coming out). I LOVE him!

One of my absolute favorite quote was from him. It was regarding conservatives (in any religion) and the dualism between religious faith and scientific beliefs.

(to paraphrase)

"I was in India giving a speech, and afterwards a gentlemen came to ask me what I thought about the current findings regarding the dating of ruins in a particular area, and how they indicated civilization a few thousand years before the Vedas were written.
'Well, yes, using a variety of methods it's been determined that they predate the Vedas by about 4,000 years.'
He replied, 'Well, as a devout Hindu, I do not believe that anything predates the Vedas."
To which I replied, "Then why did you ask?"

Sublime Ninja Philiosophic Slam Attack!

[Mike Holmes]

He is indeed one of the most biting, critical, and cynical writers I've ever known (at least in his earlier works, before the whole "grandfatherly" image started coming out). I LOVE him!

Cynical? The man whose main thang is to "find your bliss"? He's ironic, but far from cynical, IMO.

Mike

[Jason Lee]

I should really pick up more of his works than the Power of Myth and The Hero with a Thousand Faces.

I'm having trouble remembering the last time I read something that wasn't software documentation, and rpg, or a frickin' online forum (damn addictive things).

[Brian Leybourne]

Ahem, well, not trying to antagonise anyone or start any flame wars, but you asked...

I think religion is wrong.

I do not believe in God (/Gods), and I think the concept that we were created by a divine being is laughable.

I think that the world would be a far more tolerant and peaceful place if it were not for religion(s). I think that priests and nuns et al are wasting their lives in the pursuit of absolutely nothing.

Every time I see people killed because they didn't share the beliefs of others, I weep. Every time I see poor families living in poverty because they tithe over large percentages of their income of the local Church, where the vicar/priest/whatever is a fat and wealthy man living in luxury, I weep. Every time I see the pope on TV denouncing birth control in an overpopulated world that is bursting at the seams, I weep. Every time I see parents dragging their children off to Church and forcing their religion on them so that there's no chance they'll get the opportunity to make their own decision in later life, I weep. Every time the bible is used as an excuse for intolerance of women, homosexuals or people of different races, I weep. Every time a man at the side of the road accosts me and tells me I'm going to hell because I don't believe in God, I want to punch him, but I just weep. Every time I see religious shows on TV where people are encouraged to send in their money so the evalgalist can buy another house, I weep. Every time I see sick people conned into believing that a "faith healer" can cure their cancer or make them walk again by laying hands on them, I weep. Every time progress is halted because it's an "affront to god" or people are not allowed to teach science in school because the bible says different, I weep.

Yeah, I weep a lot. But so do the billions of people whose lives are ruined daily by belief in deities who conveniently provide no proof of their existance, and to ask for that proof is showing that you don't have faith. What a beautiful catch-22. God doesn't help out ther worlds woes because he's "the freedom that allows other freedoms to exist", that's great, it means you can preach God but use that line to shut up anyone who has an original thought or question. Everything in the bible that makes sense is gospel, anything that is obviously rubbish (the bible says the earth is flat, square, and held up at the corners by angels, for example) is merely allegory. There's an answer for everything.

So I say no to religion. I'm not merely athiest, I'm against religion itself in all its forms. Are good things done in the name of religion? Sure, probably a lot of the time. But they're outweighed by the bad things done in it's name (IMO) and the world would be better off without it.

Having said all that, I don't feel any less of someone because they believe in whatever they believe in. That's their right. By don't use it as a crutch to excuse your intolerance or indifference towards others, and don't try to "convert" me, and we'll get along just fine :-)

I'm truly sorry if I have pissed anyone off. God will smite me down, I'm sure.

Brian.

[Jason Lee]

I've got a sure fire solution to any religious disagreement...

I'll wrestle you over it.

[greyorm]

I am regularly amazed at the lack of religious education displayed in terms of the variety and types of religious institutions, beliefs and practices that actually exist in the world, and the hate and rebellion directed towards "the standard atheist myth(tm)" of what religion is.

It's intellectually and scientifically dishonest to proclaim "how bad religion is" and then refer to through multiple examples to one specific religion as the definitive "thing" that is religion: Hells and evil spirits? Popes and vicars? Divine creation?

I've long known that most self-proclaimed atheists know (and regularly prove they know) precisely squat about the actualities of any religion outside of a very narrow brand of Western Monotheistic tradition so prevalent in mainstream Western culture.

So when someone says, "I hate all religions, all of it is utter crap" and then refers to something that is totally unlike half the religions I am aware of, I find it all very indecipherable and annoying.

Thank you. Nothing more to see here, move along, everyone.
Now let's all shut-up about it before we're moderated, or worse...we all have to wrestle Jason!

[Jason Lee]

Well, do religions without a place to be sent for post-life torture (such as hell) exist.  Yeppers, even including christian denominations.  If a being of pure love can sentence you to eternal torment, why can't a judge?  If the judge can't, who's more moral?  How dark and twisted is your view of the unseen?  If that's how you see reality, what does that say about you?  From my understanding the middle ages picked up the concept of hell as a place of torture, before that it was simply a place absent from the light of God (sorta like a timeout, I guess).

I think all those cruel people where cruel to begin with - doesn't matter much to me whether they use God, Quake, or Alice Cooper as an excuse.  

But, I'll wrestle you over that too ;).

[Jason Lee]

Hey, that's got me thinking...

Is christianity abashed?  Do you have to drift it to fit your priorities?  I think God is love, gimme that do unto others stuff.  I think God is vengence, gimme that flood thingy again.

Just a wierd little thought.

(I think I'm gonna hafta get my spandex out any second, I just noticed I didn't add the 'just my narrow little opinion' cause to my last post)

[sdemory]

I'm on the cusp of atheism, except for the fact that I can't stand dogma of any sort. However, my unwillingness to commit may come from my decades-long pathological fear of Jesus.

My folks are good AME/Baptist types. My dad was stationed in Germany from my birth until I was about three or four. When I was a wee slip of a lad, we went to a church which had a remarkably realistic, elaborately carved Gothic crucifixion over the altar. I took one look at that thing and ran, screaming, out of the place. It literally took years for me to be willing to enter a church under any circumstance, since I'd been told that church was "where Jesus lived." No way was I going to tangle with that fella.

[Incidentally, I still have recurring nightmares about being chased through my house by Jesus on the cross. Yep.]  

So, combine the pathological fear of Jesus with the fact that my folks kept all of the Buddhist/Taoist literature at child's eye level and you get me. I've read a good chunk of religious source material since then, and I appreciate the merits of religion in general... faith creates good stuff, it helps people when they need help and it's been a significant motive force for good and ill.  At one level, I'm very much of the "Whatever gets you through" school of thought, and have never felt that I've had the right to declare an according-to-Hoyle view of how the universe works.

Jesus still wigs the hell out of me, though. Probably explains a whole lot about Le Mon Mouri.

[Spooky Fanboy]

Atheist. Would love to be simply agnostic, but I don't even have enough evidence that there is something out there beyond the scope of life and death.

Right now, my only 'faith' is in Transhumanism, that humanity will pull it's collective head out of it's collective ass, take control of it's evolution, and start treating education and science like they actually matter. No more wars, no more prying into other people's lives to enforce orthodoxy, no more time wasted on universal imponderables until we get control of the here and now.

This is why I roleplay; atheism is a very scary place to be.

[C. Edwards]

Well, it's probably no secret that I'm not a big proponent of organized religion.  This doesn't stem from bitterness or disapproval of any particular religion or the actions of any religion's followers.  Mankind doesn't seem to need much reason to be wicked.  I don't see removal of religion changing that, one way or the other, to any noticeable degree.

This is a complex issue so I'll just touch upon a couple aspects.  The first being the tendancy of religion to over anthropomorphize the workings of the universe.  My particular paradigm rests on a bed of scientific thought.  Gods, totems, and to a degree even ancestor spirits just add an unnecessary layer of complexity and obsfucation to what I view as the integrated mechanics of all the constituent parts of the universe.  The only leniency I grant in this area is for far flung peoples who still live primitive lifestyles and rely on their religion for the cohesiveness of the prevaling social structure. I think modern man is more than capable of leaving, what I view as, outdated religious institutions behind.

The second aspect I want to touch on is one of personal freedoms.  Not all, but many, religions have built in limitations to the amount of personal freedom allowed to a particular segment of people.  Examples being women in Islam, homesexuals in Catholicism, and the caste structure of Hinduism.  Maybe it's just my modern mindset again but I find such restrictions completely unacceptable, even if individuals who follow those religions and fall under those restrictions do not.

My own beliefs?  Well, they're more along the lines of suspicions than spiritual belief.  The following quote sums up my "suspicions" much more succinctly than I ever could...

"As a result of a thousand million years of evolution, the universe is becoming conscious of itself."       -Julian Huxley

With respect,

Chris

[Enoch]

I was Lutheren, I was raised as Lutheran I think even though my dad was Catholic.

I used to like being Lutheren, all ya gotta do is accept Jesus as your savior and you go to heaven.  Easy enough.

Last time I went to church (which is once a year, Christmas Eve) I felt nothing at all from the sermon.  That's when I decided that I'm a kinda Christian.

I believe in God.  I believe Jesus exists, and did cool stuff and taught cool lessons.  I really do not put much stock in the Bible.

Oh, and I know more about Judeo-Christian mythology than any of my heavily religious friends do.  I thank my obessions for biblical themed campaigns for that.

-Joshua

[lumpley]

Religion robbed me at a young age of my sense of humor.  I've had to replace it as best I can with what I can find.  Swearing, mostly.

-Vincent

[Christoffer Lernö]

I guess this has already been said here but:

Almost everything done in the name of religions have nothing to do with religion at all, it's just a convenient excuse.

(That said, some brands [sects] of religion lends itself to more xenophobia than others.)

An interesting deal which ought to be familiar to a lot of you is the evolution of the christian theology. Catholicism with it's offsprings (including protestantism) was far from the only christian sect, it just managed to be run by merciless enough people.
My favorite was that "heretical" (heretical means that it didn't win the power-struggle) sect that said the sacraments wasn't effective unless the priest was free of sin. Considering that at the time priests were about the most corrupt people you could find, that scared the living shit out of the people of the Vatican. And as usual it was declared heretical and people believing in it killed as heretics. Yeah, the good old days.

Instutionalized religion is a way to keep people from deep religious experiences and contain them. Organized religions have always feared mystics. (Jesus being an example)