The Religion Wars begin here

[wyrdlyng]

I started a devout Roman Catholic (altar boy and choir singer) but stopped walking that path right before I was Confirmed. After that I studied some Wiccan groups, some non-organized Earth Goddess faiths, and a few others. Became agnostic for a long time. Studied some Eastern belief systems such as Zen Buddhism and Shinto. Finally, decided that the closest system which fit my beliefs is the Tao.

In the end I believe everyone should follow whatever belief system they want so long as they don't bother other people with it.

[quozl]

I'm a Jesusian, which means I believe in what Jesus said and did.  I believe the term "christian" carries way too many negative connotations with it to be a useful term anymore.

Is that unclear?  Would you like to know more?  Don't make assumptions.  Ask me.

[Jake Norwood]

I'm an "orthodox" Mormon. I believe in modern prophecy, revelation from got through both indivdual prayer and through ordained prophets and apostles who walk the earth today. I believe that God appeard to Joseph Smith in 1820 and Christ several times after. I believe that there really were golden plates.

I thing that quozl's quote "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)" is very poigniant (dangit...I can't spell that). I agree that organized religion is a very easy way to hide from real spirituality, because it's easier. That's the primary flaw I see in believing people of any religion, including my own (though I know more people that have had deep personal experiences as a Mormon than any other western religion). The core of religion, IMO, *must be* personal and private, based on deep personal, spiritual experience. Not everything makes sense, but there's things in my life I certainly can't deny. And for the record I'm not afraid of Jesus, unless "letting him down" counts, meaning I fear him the same way I fear my dad, my wife, or eventually my children...the only thing to fear is one's self.

I spent 2 years proseletyzing in Poland as an ordained Missionary. For the record I always steered clear of people that "weren't interested," as I never saw any point in trying to tell people about my faith if it would make them like mormons less... I did see a great deal of lives changed through the teachings of the church, though, and I know at least 50 or 100 people who wouldn't trade in what we taught them for the world.

I'm very moderate when it comes to discussing anything (religious doctrine and swordplay--two dangerous subjects--included), so if you're ever around me in person expect me to be open but not pushy about what I believe, and I dont' offend as long as none is intended.

Jake

[Jack Spencer Jr]

Aw, hell. Religion?

I was raised without a religion for most of my life. It turns out my parents decided to not force religion on my brother and I,...at first. I had heard about god. My aunt read a bit of Genesis to me when babysitting once. For reason unknown to me, I pictured god as looking like the Wizard of Id from the comic strip. It must have been the only thing I could relate it to. That and Enchanter Timothy from Monty Python and the Holy Grail. This is my early vision of god.

What happened later is my father, for some unknown reason, suddenly became religious. Around when I was 7-8 years old. We "church shopped" for a little while. I was either too young or too dense to see what was going on, but the stories my mother tells me about it now are pretty scary, especially some of the crap that went down at the pentecostal church we were test driving. This was fairly close to the whole Jonestown thing. (Timewise, that is)

Long story short, this eventually wrecked my parents' marriage. My father eventually settled on the Church of Christ denomination and then got involved with the International Churches of Christ where he remains today.

At this time, I'm sort of at a crisis of faith. I no longer believe in Christianity. Since this is the faith I had mostly been raised with and my faith in it has been irrevokably shaken, I do not see how or why I could believe in another faith or form of god (note how I have been using the small 'g' the entire time).

That said, I do seem to still believe in something. Fate, perhaps, or destiny. Call it what you will. I think it may just be a matter of time before something hits me and I find faith in something again.

[J B Bell]

I blab about myself an here a lot.  So I'll address some side issues:

Gotta agree that if you vaporized religion as a human phenomenon, we would not suddenly all stop acting wicked.  I'm not certain that the hardcore atheists here and elsewhere necessarily mean to imply that, however.

My pet peeve as a Buddhist:  people who point out that I'm a Buddhist when I get riled about something enough to, perhaps, say something uncharitable, or maybe, just for example, curse like a sailor.  (Buddhism, and many other religions, teach that one should regard enemies as friends, since they're honest about one's faults.  So I refer to this type of people as my "dharma friends" on occasion.)  As I put it recently to some other Unitarians, I didn't become a Buddhist because I'm perfect--I became Buddhist because I need the medicine it offers.

By the same token, Buddhism's reputation as being somehow extra-pure and good as a world religion is pretty funny.  Hang out on a Buddhist bulletin board (hurry before it implodes, as so far they all have) for a while and you will see that there is, ahem, quite a bit of variety in terms of moral turptitude, standards of discourse, and so on.  Oh, and we have some really great hells, like some sort of amazing amusement park, some of them easily as inventive and twice as nasty as Dante's vision, with the main benefit being that they aren't eternal--the usual stay is a few hundred thousand years, minimum.  (That bit in Big Trouble in Little China about the "hell of being cut to pieces" is perfectly orthodox.  Also called the "black line hell," because you're repeatedly born there with black lines all over your body--these lines are where you know for certain you will be chopped, sawn, and variously severed along by demons.)

I have a movie script sitting around unfinished that does somewhat for Buddhism what so many movies have done "for" Catholicism over the last thirty years--show a secret, weirdo conspiracy within the church that holds Terrible Things at bay, or perhaps even harbors them.

In movies and RPGs, I have a real weakness for "kickass priest" characters.  (Nope, never played a paladin--I mean I like guys with shotguns who go after zombies, vampires and the such, preferably with cool kung fu moves.)

--JB

[Clinton R. Nixon]

I'm an unorthodox-in-every-way Christian. I temper that immediately with the following beliefs:

- Religion is a construct needed to form civilization, as base animal instincts don't allow for much beyond tribalism. It's one of the most enabling ideas that the human mind has come up with, and the idea that there's something better that we can become may be hard-wired into our brains.
- Cultural outlooks influence this need tremendously. For example, modern American Christianity is uniquely American, and nothing like the tenets set forth by Jesus or other Jewish prophets.

I attend a Quaker church, and basically believe truth and kindness equal good, and lies and inflicting suffering on others is evil, and that's about it. I also am a huge fan of the Gospel of Thomas, which is Jesus gettin' all sorts of Buddhist.

[Simon W]

I am an Atheist tending towards Agnostic or perhaps the other way around? Either which way, I don't care much for religion, except as an interest in these things, because they are intersting, especialy from a role-players point of view.

Incidentally, despite my A/A tendencies, somehow I attract religious types. Used to go out with a 'Born-Again' type, lived with an ex- Jehova's Witness for thee years and been seeing an ex-Mormon for two years.

Funny old world.

Gideon (look at my name for a start!)

[Dotan Dimet]

Secular humanist, I guess ("people should be nice to each other. Especially because there is no God"). Atheist non-observant orthodox Jew, like most Israelis I know.

I used to sort-of believe in a God that was (a) more infinite, wise and compassionate than any religion does describe and (b) had a huge sense of irony. I outgrew that.

- Dotan

[Ben Terry]

I'm a secular humanist.  Basically atheist.  I like Buddhism when looked at as a psychological/philosophical system and stripped of its mythical or superstitious ideas.  I generally think it is better to not believe in things there is no real evidence for and that faith is a bad habit to get into.  It is good to be OK with the fact you just don't know something and not need to fill the void with a pleasing (or displeasing) religous version.  I'd personally prefer that religous wisdom was extracted and recompiled into philosophical frameworks instead of being tangled up with stories that are variously interprted as historical fact, morality tale, symbolic, real, etc.  I like a lot of the stories though...

So, this only my 3rd post or so, but this is one of those topics that is always good for drawing people out of the woodwork.

[Rich Stokes]

As I said before, Secular Humanist.  I did the soul seaching and went from Agnostic ("I dunno") to Atheist ("I don't believe in gods") to Devout Atheist ("I believe there are no gods") and finally discoved that I'd actually been following the Humanist Manifesto the whole time.  Being a socialist helps there too.  The bible would be great if you edited out all that stuff about God.

90% of people are basically nice, but easily lead.  They'll either be lead by a religious zealot or they'll get pushed into a political regime that acts the same way.  Religion isn't the only cause of nastiness.

[quozl]

I thing that quozl's quote "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)" is very poigniant (dangit...I can't spell that).

Jake

I just wanted to point out that I didn't say that.  Pale File did.  I don't agree with that statement at all although I do agree with its sentiment.

[Shreyas Sampat]

I call myself an agnostic with Taoist leanings.

It turns out that I have some Secular Humanist tendencies, too, at least according to some people I've spoken to, but I don't know enough about the attitude to say anything conclusive about it.

[John Kim]

I was raised Liberal Presbyterian, but at this point I am more of a Christian Deist than any organized sect.  I am often at odds with people I know over Christianity, mainly over vastly different experience.  I went with my church group to see "The Last Temptation of Christ" and discuss it afterwards.  The church where I grew up had among the most thoughtful people I knew, and has been a huge influence on my life.  Still, I am very suspicious of organized religion in general, and I can see a lot of horrible tendencies in other churches.  

Still, as far as I see, the track record of atheist societies is at least as  horrendous as the religious ones -- consider Communist Russia and China, for example.

[Itse]

I don't believe the existence of gods, supernatural, fate, karma or even luck really. Actually, I don't believe in a great many things people tell me, like isms. I'd like to, in a way.

[Paul Watson]

I was raised in a variety of Christian variants, Mormon for a few years, then Pentacostal for several more. While a Pentacostal, I developed the annoying habit of challenging everything. You see, I strongly believed in, and still do, St. Paul's admonition to "Prove all things. Hold fast that which is true." My challenges caused a Sunday School teacher to say "Paul, you're such a sinner." He laughed as he was saying it, but I don't believe he was entirely kidding.

Anyways, it got to the point where I had a set of questions, challenges to what I had been taught, that I couldn't find adequate answers to. Eventually I concluded that there were no answers within Christianity. I began to look elsewhere. I wandered through a variety of faiths before finally winding up Asatru (basically, Norse heathnism).