MarkMiller

Religion may not be going to church every Sunday and praying to a deity. It could be as simple as the spiritual way you lead your life.

We have people on the site that believe in the Christian God. We have Jewish members as well as agnostics and atheists. And many of us read the writings of a pagan group as well.

Agnostics and atheists....religion plays a small role in your life as well. How do you avoid it...do you avoid it? When did you know you lost faith or did not believe in God?

God Is Santa for Adults

I stopped my brainwashed youth once I got out into the real world (college) and noticed everyone had a different view of their religion. Not everyone believed the bible to be literally true hence none of it is true from a god view. Humans invented religion to control the masses.

It is pretty simple once you can get away from the brainwashing most of us are taught as children. Humans are taught to listen to their parents which leads many to believe in many strange things which may seem reasonable to them because they know no better.

Even though most of us move away and differ our lives from out parents, why can't we shake the need for an invisible friend as an adult?

BUT I do believe in karma and treating others the way I want to be treated. Good acts will get good acts in return. I simply think I don't need an imaginary pal to act that way.

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Have Faith in Yourself...
. ...Not an invisible friend!

I Believe = I Guess Religion is an Illusion of Control!
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disfigured

I like to feel that I adopted some very important Roman Catholic values, while discarding the bad ones. But that would be too perfect.

I think mercy and forgiveness is a good one. That's why my pursuit of E-man wasn't relentless and I'm not making a beef about the "The Group" being disbanded. Eric was right, it was becoming far too much at the expense of some one else, regardless of anyone's view on the subject.

I live by something, which is hard sometimes. But it works for the most part. Which was taught to me by my mother in a none religious way, but the underlying basis was her religion. And that is:

"Find something you like about a person and like them for it, don't find things you don't like about them, and dislike them for it."

I tried with Eman and found no redeeming value in anything he said for the most part. But I forgive him and myself for being a dickheads.

That's the other big Catholic one. Forgive. Even your worst enemy if you can. That's really where it counts. Forgiving the paper boy for leaving your Sunday paper in the rain doesn't cut it.

That's something I find absent in the majority of "Christian" type stuff going on in America. They're always railing against this or that, or pointing fingers at "enemies". I can see being judgmental, it's hard not to be in our world, but the vengefulness is just out of control. It's become like a moralistic Hatfield and MaCoys. No one want to give an inch once some one has transgressed them. Oh they say I forgive, but that doesn't work when your also seeking punishment and revenge (see Clinton's Blowjob). To forgive the sinner , you must also forgive the sin. As if it didn't happen.

.......and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.....

Man that stuff get's pounded in hard at an early age. I haven't attended a church for anything other then a wedding and funeral since I was about 8, and I just typed that verbatim, no problem.

Wacky shit.

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Gaia

I backed away from organized Religion, when I experienced the cruelty of some/alot of the Followers of God. Most of God's Followers do not practice what they preach. They just judge and kill eachother.

I now live in Harmony with Earth Mother and all her Life (exept Spiders, Snakes, Ticks and other CreepyCrawlers, I avoid them.)

I found that in Life, you get what you give. The Universe is very fair about that!

Blessed Be! )0(

Gaia.

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The present moment is a powerful goddess.
~ Goethe

Heretic

Shapeshifting's party of my spiritual daily life. I adupted the mental traits of those animals I need at that moment. That and a quick prayer to Road Runner every now and then.

What's that?

"MEEP, MEEP!!"

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"In space no one can hear you scream. in D.C. it won't matter..." -Clinton Resurrection: The Alien Queen lives!

disfigured

About the age of 8 I think.

It's when I realized the Catholic stories of the bible just seemed nuts. And it's not as if the Catholics taught it as history even, they don't. They are for the most presented as stories, examples, or even anecdotes if you wish. Many many of them very good with very good messages.

I just remember thinking, it's not true, even if it wasn't presented as history of "facts". The whole rising from the dead thing and all. It just didn't add up. I think the Trinity is specifically meant to confuse and create a circular filing cabinet for logical questions. Same with the whole heaven hell structure. In my mind I was thinking the same things as Bart Simpson does:

"Are there pirates in hell?"
"Do robots go to hell, if they are evil?"
"Where do pets go?"'
"Where are heaven and hell, they sound like physical places, so they must be somewhere?"

In hindsight I'm speaking with much more clarity, but that's how I remembered the feeling of lack of logic, to a person (me) first discovering reason and reality. Just too many unanswered questions. Even for an 8 year old. I refused to go. My father being agnostic at the time ( I think) and not attending with the rest of us, was indifferent. My mother didn't have the wear with all to fight me on the subject.

Haven't been back since, and I haven't seen any evidence of anything other then just variations on the same "unbelievable theme". Gotta get out early, other wise you can't have the proper perspective to make a rational decision about any "religion". Or so I think that's the case.

I gotta go get smokes up in NH, I'll be back. For an atheist I love discussing religion, even though I'm often adversarial and my knowledge on the subject (in the biblical sense) is limited. It's an amazing human dynamic.

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Vicariously I

The moment I stopped believing everything people told me was the day I found out Santa Claus wasn’t real. I believed my parents because why would they go through so much trouble to lie to me? Decorations, presents, cookie crumbs in the morning, the carrots missing from the snow, and the insistence that if I wasn’t good, Santa would know and I would get nothing from him. At first I was very confused as to why they would lie like that. It wasn’t until I was much older that I finally understood, it’s what we do.

For thousands of years we have told grand stories to make our lives more important and meaningful. In fact there are MANY “gods” or heroes who share the EXACT same life events as Jesus Christ including turning water into wine, being nailed to a cross or tree, rising from the dead 3 days later, descending into “hell”, etc. The only problem is that many of these stories took place thousands of years before Christ were even born. See Christ is NO different from Osiris or any of the other “Gods” or heroes that these events supposedly happened to.

In fact when Jesus was introduced, many people of the time resisted because his life was so similar to the gods and heroes of the past that they were getting sick of hearing the story. But the religious leaders of the time had a trick up their sleeve. See the people wanted to know why they should believe THIS story when all the others were simply not true. Their answer was not only genius but so fool proof that it is still brainwashing people to this day.

Their answer was that all those stories told thousands of years BEFORE Christ, were the work of the devil and he knew that if he told the story enough people would no longer believe it when it actually happened. They then followed that with the greatest con of all time, faith. See the great thing about faith is that it relies in the absence of facts and it tells you that if you question the story of god you are losing your faith and the questioning of god or the stories in the bible, is also, the work of the devil. It’s either believe this story with no proof or facts of any kind, along with ignoring other facts and the large amount of contradictions and go to heaven or THINK and go to hell.

Anyone, any group or organization that uses fear in such a way is the very definition of evil. And now how do we move forward? We have millions of people who are afraid to think for themselves and anyone who speaks the way I am right now is considered the devil. I guess I could go on forever but I will leave you with this. You want a reason why I don’t believe in religion? How about this? If it weren’t for Christians, George Bush would NOT be our president.

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"It's hard to face reality when you're busy living in the American Dream."

Vicariously I

disfigured

I think the whole Jesus hook was fascinating. And that's what a religion needs, a hook. Like a jingle or an angle.

The Jesus angle was fantastic. Forget pluralism, or multiple gods, I'm the single one , as Vicariously says.

Also, the fact he was a "man". I'm sure there were other "prophets" of the time who were "men", but few claimed to be the single and only son of a single and only god, in quite the way Jesus did. And to predict your own martyrdom is a great move too. Why not it's probably going to happen, your going to end up crucified or having your head on pike back then anyway, might as well chance the prediction to make yourself look omnipotent. Who predicted he'd catch cannon balls in his sleeves? No one remembers that guy, because he couldn't come through with the claim.

I think the positive messages were a good "hook" too. Forgive, date prostitutes, so forth and so on. He also set up a pyramid like evangelical system. That's what the gospels were for the most part. Salesmen, who fit the story for the populace. Too weak and pacifist, then you'll inherit the earth. Hungry then the fish will be plenty. Suppressed politically then let Caesar render what is his. And so forth. I'm sure I screwed that all up, but it is widely believed that the Gospels did morph to fit the situation.

Maybe he was the first superduper liberal. But it still has all the baggage of discipline, with not worshiping false gods and everything. Plus the guilt , oh the guilt. Combine all of that with the emergence of movable type, making a bible (not to confused with "the bible", which there really isn't one in a singular sense), and you've got the makings of one of the "big 3" that rose to the top.

It's the same as automobiles, Fords, Chrysler and Chevy suck a lot of the times, but they made it through the early days. The difference being there's not mechanism to eventually stop people from being loyal to cars. Faith doesn't break down on the highway when your late for work.

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Vicariously I

From what I have learned of history Jesus never existed at all. I recently watched a documentary that basically reaffirms my conclusion that Jesus is Mythology. It's called "The God Who Wasn't There" and if you haven't watched it I would recommend it and not just to those who don't believe in God but those who do as well.

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"It's hard to face reality when you're busy living in the American Dream."

Vicariously I

guest1234567

Religion affords me 2-4 hours of quiet on Sundays when my wife goes to church.