Your religious belief?

I don't know exactly what I believe in. I was raised a Christian, but I eventually fell out of that. Felt atheist for a long time. Then agnostic.
Now I don't know what to call it.

I do not believe in one true religion.
I believe in a higher power, though not predetermination.
I believe in life after death.
I believe in spirits, somewhat. This includes both malicious and benevolent ones.
I believe Jesus existed at some point in history. Not so sure about the 'son of god part'.
I consider the Bible a storybook with little bits of truth. I do not take it literally in the slightest. (As stated earlier, this is because of mistranslations and the corruption of the church.)
I consider myself spiritual, in some aspects.

I don't believe in the biblical Hell.
I also do not believe you go to a place of eternal damnation for ****ing up sometimes.
But I do believe something not-so-great may or may not await those who have beyond ****ed up. I mean the absolutely heartless, demented, sadists of the world. Killing babies for pleasure and whatnot, etc, etc.
I believe that the higher power is forgiving and realistic, otherwise, we are all going to burn.
I do not believe it's possible for anyone to know for sure.

I do not go to church.
I do not live by the bible.
I pray, for comfort. I'm not positive anyone/anything is listening.
I believe 'God' is a word, not a name.

I am easily irritated by those who refer to the higher being as God. At least call them Yahweh, or something.
I lose respect for people who unnecessarily judge other's based off of what their religion tells them. Whether you're being polite about it or not, people being against things like homosexuality simply because the Bible MAY OR MAY NOT say something about it bothers me. I won't directly approach people about it, but really?
I lose respect for anyone believing, and being arrogant about their religion being right. Several different beliefs and religions in the world and your's got it completely right, hm?
Specific types of hypocrites also bother me. Those believing they are Christians, or another religion, and sticking that label onto them without following any of the practices. Those calling themselves a name simply to have one, but not understanding anything about it, and not admitting to that.
I believe that religion is MAN MADE and a higher-power had/has nothing to do with it.
I don't believe a divine being would really care that I lied about doing my homework the other night, and I definitely don't believe I'll burn for it.

I believe in near-death-experiences, witchcraft/magick, astral projection...some other spiritual things.

I think there's more. But I can't think of it.
If my beliefs fit into a single named category/religion/system of some sort, please lemme me know. I'm curious and confused.

*Willing to elaborate on anything I mentioned, but unless this is moved to the debate section, leave it at discussion and elaboration.
I'd also like to state that I believe in the things that I do for a reason. ​

​

 

I have never,and probably will never believe in some higher power or anything.
And I don't believe in life after death,reincarnation etc etc.
I am just unable to.

I mean,a lot of the time I wish I could,so I could get some comfort and think I could see all those I love who aren't here anymore..
But no.
The whole idea just didn't seem possible to me,or plausible,from a very young age,andi guess I just never trusted churches or to an extent,highly religious people.
But meh. Just my negativeness showing through.

I really envy all those who can take comfort in their fate,their beliefs.
And do wish I could believe as well,although I know I could never.
Bleh.

Post in the morning makes no sense and is most likely full of spelling mistakes,sorry dears.

 

I don't think there is any category for your collection of beliefs. You're neither this or that; you come to your own conclusions; you're an individual, you should be proud of that. Do not worry about whether or not your particular beliefs matches that of a group, the collections of beliefs that do are the ones that I find most boring.

 

I'm an athiest, have been for a few years. I just plain don't believe in some higher being sitting up above us all, watching us live out our daily lives..i imagine it'd seem kinda creepy if i believed in that kinda thing.

 

I believe in most, if not all, greek gods. I don't know why, but I just do. Besides, what happens after the death of a person? That's why I think that gods exists, to help the spirit of the dead body get guided to Zeus to get judged.

 

I'm not sure what I think the afterlife is like in my position. Maybe you just...die. I don't know. :/

 

Yahweh is the accepted pronunciation of the way the name of God is spelled in the Hebrew bible; in Roman letters it is YHWH or YHVH. The original pronunciation is considered too sacred to utter, and so His true name was not written and the original pronunciation is not known. In history, only High Priests would know His true name, and it was never taught to common Jews. Jews are not forbidden from saying "Yahweh", but of course they cannot, according to their religion, say it in vain. It's really only said in prayer and other religious ceremonies and such.

Not Jewish. Just a religious studies student.

I would describe my "religion" as neo-paganism, even though I have not set the details of my spiritual beliefs in stone. I am interested in the spiritual beliefs of Wicca, although I haven't done any rituals/spells, and don't have a strong desire to do so.

More specifically, I believe in neither monotheism nor polytheism. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pantheism

Also, Discordianism ftw.

 

As far as my beliefs go, I'm a Deist. I do believe in some form of deity/god, but I definitely do not ascribe to any particular belief system/religion, and that's about it really. I don't follow any sort of religious code, but I do have my own moral codes which I believe in (Which by some standards, you can say that most moral codes come from religions).
Not that I think that religious people are wrong or anything, to each their own honestly. I have immense respect for people who do follow a religion correctly, mostly because I would never be able to do something like that.

 

Not all religions require faith or even a deity to have faith in. Buddhism is a prime example.

I am a solipsist. Or perhaps you would call me a practicalist? I subscribe to the notion that whether something is in my head or not does not matter if I can make consistent use of it. Science is not proof of reality, but rather a system that is consistent within my dream. It operates by the same rules either way.

I do not require faith to use a concept. I require only trial and error. At the most basic level one uses intuition to discern what is useful. Must I believe that a shadow is physically real to make shadow puppets? I think not.

The problem with determinism is that it still fails to settle on a first cause. Every known model of the universe fails to explain it. If an explosion or a god was the first domino, then whence came it? You cannot assume the point as a means of proving it. So where are we?

The only true notion of determinism that I have found is this. Whether you were the result of a long line of causation or a random event, you did not create yourself. You did not give yourself the limitations of three dimensions and only five senses. You did not give yourself the impulses that you have, nor did you choose the environment that you would be brought into. Free will does not exist regardless of any other truth unless you are the creator of everything, and this is solipsism.

I fail to see how this has any relevance at all to significance and preciousness. Both significance and preciousness are names for value, and value is a subjective attribute. If you have no free will, and no one else has free will, then no subjective opinion exists; indeed, no individuals exist to value any given thing. Therefore nothing is significant or precious. You are not free to determine what is significant of precious, and neither is anyone else, because their conclusion is not in their hands. Individualism loses all coherence in determinism.

You do not think. You are analog machinery. Nothing has meaning.

Something akin to the reality depicted in AKIRA seems more likely to me if individuals exist.

I do not recommend it. Faith is emotional and will lead you away from your own existence and into following something else. Intelligence is measured by how much you question what you think you know, not by the amount of things you think you know.

 

I'm just not a religious person. I used to go to church every now and then with my parents, but I think my parents got sick of me and my sister's constant bickering. Maybe if I stayed in church through my mature years, I would have a different opinion.

However, scientific academics is a requirement, not a choice. And since it's what I focus on instead of religion, it's probably going to be my "belief."

 

Some may refer to him as 'Heavenly Father' or something similar because of that. I think something like that is better than just calling him 'God'. A variety of religions refer to their god as 'God' as well. I believe that if you feel there's one true god, it would be more respectful to refer to him as something more...specific? You could be praying to Zeus! I don't know. And my main annoyance is with the ones who treat the word 'god' as though it is his name. For example, someone telling you not to say "Oh my God" because it's saying his name in vain...When his name isn't anywhere in that sentence. It's as if people don't even know, and that's what bothers me.

As for referring to him as Yahweh, I don't think all religions find it disrespectful. There are a lot of people who actually refer to God as Yahweh and Jesus as Yeshua. As Luna stated, not in vain, of course. But she pretty much summed up what I was thinking of. ​

​

 

At this point I really don't care. I prefer to just live my life the way I want and hope for the best. If some deity has a beef with that, there's not much I can do about it. I couldn't possibly know what the "right" belief is, and even then I don't think I would change my way of life. I'm really not interested in the idea of living forever with or without God or any such thing, so that promise has no sway over me.

 

So I am indeed taking it on faith that determinism exists the same way I'm taking it on faith the universe as I see it is here.

The reason why I see everything as having significant value is precisely because I believe we do not have free will. We have unknowingly given into everything that has come before, and everything is affecting everything that is to come. Determinism gives a type of order to the universe. Maybe I'm a solipsist, maybe not, I just think determinism is a nice thought.

I can not immediately remember the plot of "Akira," but I'll watch it again sometime.

 

Orderly like a clock. A clock has no meaning. The passage of time is meaningless, however perfect it is.

I hold that organic chaos trumps uniform clockwork every time. The only difference is in the predictability; that is what 'orderly' means.

If you get that reference I will love you.

 

The Bible describes events that no one can have any knowledge of, such as the creation story. No offense, but there's still a fair chance that this story has been made up by someone who had toked too much prehistoric weed. The only way to believe it is by having blind faith in it. Again; what makes unicorns so different? Saying that they're "stupid" is not a satisfactory answer at all, and even comes off as childish.

Also, if the Bible would be "partially" true, how do you decide which parts are true and which are false? If you know one part to be false, how can you still trust the rest? If I knew a book was lying to me at one point (by which I don't mean an honest mistake, I mean a blatant lie), I'd immediately become wary of the accuracy of said book altogether. That's not even being paranoid; it's a logical and rational response.

What I'm trying to say is that the common reply of "That's why it's faith, you ought to respect that" is all too easy. Not only is it illogical by definition, it's also inconsistent. What bothers me is that there is no clear-cut way to discern faith from gullibility, which makes me wonder why it should deserve the respected statute that it has.

 

How else would you distinguish him from some other god? The Israelites used Yahweh (or rather, their pronunciation of it) when speaking of him to humans who worship different gods. The old form of theism is unique in that all religions accepted every god into their canons, but only actively worshiped they one(s) that they were established to worship. The Israelites believed in all those other gods (Ra, Ceres, Zeus, Jupiter, Baal, etc.), but worshiped their own god, Yahweh. They were also forbidden to put any other god before their god.

That's the opposite of what happens in Christianity. Yahweh is considered disrespectful to say in prayer, being in the same vein as a lowly peasant being on a first name basis with the king, but it is perfectly acceptable to use in an academic setting.

 

I was born into a Christian family, and I was a Christian for most of my life, but I go to a Christian school and it really doesn't help when they shove the belief down your throat. I think there is some form of deity, and it might be the Christian God, it might not, there might not be a God at all. You could call me Agnostic. I also believe in reincarnation.

 

I'm the type of person who grew up without religion being shoved into my face. My parents let me grow up with religion any way I wanted to. When I was young, I experimented with Christianity, but the only reason I stopped was because the Bible was boring and too big, and I didn't like that my church tutors told me to believe in this and believe in that and Jesus Christ and blah blah blah, and then as I spent more time with my grandparents, Jesus Christ turned into Santa Maria y blah blah blah and I looked into Catholicism.

I was so sick of everyone telling me to believe in some higher being in white that was walking around up in the sky and crap that I decided around age 13, after my first attempted suicide, that I was a person who held the view that any ultimate reality (as God) is unknown and probably unknowable. So basically, he exists or doesn't, I don't really care.​

 

I think both Atheist representatives and Christian representatives are annoying. Atheists always act as if they're 100% right, and Christians don't know what an opinion is.