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Post by
MyTie
This is a thread about Religion. It can be critical of religion, or supportive of religion. It can be questions about certain religions. It can be about atheism. It can be a contrast between religions. It can even be about the metaphysical nature of anything or nothing. It can be about beliefs about morals. The range for debate in this thread is pretty wide open, as long as it entails something about someone's belief structure, or a hypothetical belief structure.
At the time this thread was made, there are a few religious people on off-topic, though the forum is overwhelmingly atheistic. To the best of my recollection, Funden is Mormon, Magician is Christian, and MyTie is fundamentalist Christian. The rest of the forum is unknown to me or atheistic.
Since so many debates on off-topic devolve/evolve to religion, it is my recommendation that all of those discussions move out of the thread that they were in, which is probably not about religion, and move into this thread, so that those threads aren't clouded up.
This thread spawned off of page 43 of the "debate of the day" thread, particularly, this dialogue:There was a whole brouhaha about how offensive it is to the religious to use unicorns or teapots or whatever as examples in discussing ontology - which on the insult scale is pretty low. (And nobody ever managed to suggest any suitable replacement examples, either.)
Well...
Give me a way of explaining that atheists will burn in hell in a polite way, and I'll give you a way of explaining that my religion is as logical as a mythological beast in a polite way. The difference between me and you is I understand that telling the other side of this debate what I believe about their beliefs is pretty inappropriate, disrespectful, and futile. For some reason, this forum doesn't understand that what's bad for one side is probably bad for the other. There is a general lack of being able to put oneself in the other's shoes. As Lombax pointed out, it looks ridiculous when a religious person tries to preach to atheists, from the atheist's perspective. Shouldn't the double standard be painfully obvious here?(##RESPBREAK##)8##DELIM##sas148##DELIM##This thread is perfectly fine. However, please be respectful to each others beliefs. No insulting each other and so fourth. Religion, as MyTie stated, tends to derail a great many of the Off-Topic threads here and is most often the primary reason for intense arguments and hurt feelings. So, again, please be respectful and this thread should thrive just fine.
Addendum: Do not discuss comparisons/analogies involving a correlation between Unicorns and God. In order to keep unnecessary drama from occurring here we've imposed that restriction at this time. Thank you!
Post by
392412
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
Atik
As an atheist, this is something I kinda want to ask everyone.
What made you choose your religion? Is there some aspect of it that stuck out to you and tied everything together? Was it simply the first thing you were told and how you were raised? Some other reason?
Post by
FatalHeaven
I was raised in a non religious home. Oh my parents said they were christian, but they didn't
live it
. But my grandmother made certain I was in Sunday School each Sunday even though my parents weren't in church. I was very strong into the faith until I was sixteen, when I made some bad choices which resulted in my church stripping me of nearly all my involvements. I ceased attending everything. Sunday Sermons, Youth Group, Church Drama Team, Youth Leadership in the Church etc... My youth pastor at the time told me it was "Gods decision" not his. First of all, I didn't believe that. Nor did I think God should let everything that happened in the aftermath of everything happen. So I dropped my faith. I hated God for a long time. I just didn't understand how what anything I did warranted what I got. It became a very ugly dark time for me until about a year later when I met my girlfriend. Things became better and they became better fast. But... I still didn't have God. Or my church family. And that bothered me. It never ceased bothering me. It was such a huge part of my life. For over seven years now, I have been.... strayed. I stopped talking badly of God, but not supporting him either.
Recently, while sitting with my girlfriend after putting our daughter to bed, I began to ponder why we are without God. I mean, I still love God. I read my daughter the Childrens bible every night and my girlfriend has a comic book version of the bible (it's actually pretty cool but don't tell her I said that) that she reads. So I turned to her and said "What are we if not a Christian family?" Yes, we are homosexual. But God still loves us. He still wants to be in our lives. And if our only sin is loving each other, I can live with that. I guess my perception is that God can't hate two people for loving each other. He hates the sin anyways, not us. So we have recently and by recently I mean within the last week, decided to try harder to live by the faith. To find a church to attend and to raise our daughter through God.
So there you go Off-Topic, Fatal has officially gone Christian.
Post by
Nathanyal
I'm not very religious myself. If anything, I would believe I'm Agnostic. I don't really believe one way or another. I was also never really raised to be religious. My maternal grandparents have varying religions. My grandmother is Catholic and my grandfather is Jehovah's Witnesses. After I was born, I was baptized Catholic. Since then I have gone to the Catholic church only a few times, one of which was when my sister was Baptized. Only other times I went to church was with some friends that had gone.
When I was younger I would consider myself to be Christian, but as I grew older I kinda thought otherwise.
Post by
Magician22773
Nice thread MyTie.
Hopefully
......it can / will remain a civil discussion.
What made you choose your religion? Is there some aspect of it that stuck out to you and tied everything together?
Growing up, my Dad was an alcoholic, and I do remember praying, a lot, about that, and my Grandma had severe Emphazema from smoking, and I prayed a lot for her. So, although I wasn't a "practicing" Christian, I still looked to God for help, but rarely, if ever did I praise Him.
Two things in my life really made me realize, not just that God was real, but just how powerful He could be. The first was when my Dad was killed. As an adult, my Dad became my best friend, as well as my father. We were very close, even though he still struggled with drinking. We lived next door to each other, we worked together, and, as I said, he was the best friend I had. He was killed in an accident at work, and he died while I was performing CPR on him. At the moment that he passed away, instead of crumbling into a heap on the floor, I fell to my knees and began to pray. I can say, with no uncertainty at all, that I felt the Lord take away my pain. I know, as a Christian, that I am not guaranteed an easy path through life, but that God will not allow me any more that I can handle, and at that moment, I had more than I could take on my own. And I could physically feel that burden being lifted from me. I know that without God, I would have not made it though that time.
If you have read my other posts you will know that I fell away from God pretty bad after this incident. I started using drugs, and I became an addict. The second event that finally (I pray) solidified my relationship with Christ, was when I once again, had more than I could handle on my own. I was fully addicted to meth and cocaine, and I asked Him to take that addiction from me. I went from a daily user of the two most addictive drugs on the planet to clean with no withdrawal effects, no counseling, and no relapses in 10 years.
This time, I also found a church that I liked, and have been attending there for the last 10 years. Although attending church doesn't make you a Christian any more than going to a garage makes you a car, it has allowed me to begin to become a better Christian. Instead of only turning to God when I needed Him, I now spend more time praising Him for what He has given me.
So there you go Off-Topic, Fatal has officially gone Christian
Fatal,
I will pray for you that you can find a church that does accept you. I have no doubt that you will, as I believe that God will lead you to one. I wish you were in my area, because I know you would be welcome with us on Sunday morning. I do, in some ways, know how you must feel. Walking into a church in as an addict that was going to be going to prison was not very easy. My town only has 744 people in it, and I knew that everyone in the church knew who I was, and what I had done. But when you find the right church, you will know it. God will let you know when you have fould the path He has made for you.
Post by
168916
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
Magician22773
It's not an attack on anything, "unicorn" is used merely as a familiar example of something non-religious that most people would say they don't believe in. Anything fitting that description would do - I'm just using "unicorn" until someone suggests something better.
How about simply using God. Feel free to leave out the capital G if you like. You can say you don't believe in God, and that is not going to offend anyone (or it shouldn't), but you could at least respect those of us that do by not comparing Him to a unicorn.
Post by
Sas148
It's not an attack on anything, "unicorn" is used merely as a familiar example of something non-religious that most people would say they don't believe in. Anything fitting that description would do - I'm just using "unicorn" until someone suggests something better.
How about simply using God. Feel free to leave out the capital G if you like. You can say you don't believe in God, and that is not going to offend anyone (or it shouldn't), but you could at least respect those of us that do by not comparing Him to a unicorn.
I just thought I would point out that the Unicorn/God comparison argument has been used for quite awhile, an example is located
here
.
However, I'm sure if you provide an alternative term to use in fenomas' context he'd honor that request. I personally couldn't think of one right off the top of my head except stuff perhaps equally unappealing like magic beans or something... maybe use the term aliens as we don't know if they exist or not either?
Post by
Orranis
As Lombax pointed out, it looks ridiculous when a religious person tries to preach to atheists, from the atheist's perspective. Shouldn't the double standard be painfully obvious here?
Not really, because you can't show us that Atheism is ridiculous or immoral or whatnot through Christian terms because we don't adhere to those Christian terms, while Atheism does not actually have any of it's own terms, and (though some are loath to admit it) Christians do actually understand logic, so when we use it to argue our points through that perspective they can end up insulted.
Post by
Magician22773
I just thought I would point out that the Unicorn/God comparison argument has been used for quite awhile, an example is located here.
It has been argued in this forum, many, many times that using "tradition" as an excuse is not really acceptable. I don't think the argument is that fenomas invented the analogy, but that it is disrespectful to Christians to compare God to a unicorn.
However, I'm sure if you provide an alternative term to use in fenomas' context he'd honor that request.
I just did....use the term god. In lowercase form, the term is a generic way to refer to a spiritual being, regardless of if you believe they exist or not. I can speak about a the Greek gods in the same way. I don't believe in them, but I can still address them in a proper fashion.
Post by
168916
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
Sas148
I just thought I would point out that the Unicorn/God comparison argument has been used for quite awhile, an example is located here.
It has been argued in this forum, many, many times that using "tradition" as an excuse is not really acceptable. I don't think the argument is that fenomas invented the analogy, but that it is disrespectful to Christians to compare God to a unicorn.
However, I'm sure if you provide an alternative term to use in fenomas' context he'd honor that request.
I just did....use the term god. In lowercase form, the term is a generic way to refer to a spiritual being, regardless of if you believe they exist or not. I can speak about a the Greek gods in the same way. I don't believe in them, but I can still address them in a proper fashion.
In my experience a great deal of people, religious and non-religious, often consider the term 'god' to be the same as 'God' though I understand that it's meant to be capitalized. I think using both those terms in an argument, yet considering them separate, would be confusing for some. How about God and perhaps 'other spiritual being'?
Whatever you two agree with is wonderful I'm just trying to help is all. :)
Post by
Orranis
Incidentally expanding on Atik's question, I wonder if any of the religious folks can comment on something I've always been curious about - how it was that you came to subscribe to one religion rather than another?
I mean I know that one isn't meant to "choose" whichever religion suits one's fancy, at some level. But I'm imagining if I was a gay man and religious, I'd presumably feel in my heart that "surely god can't possibly disapprove of what I do with my partner". If in that situation I happened to belong to a church whose authorities assured me that god does indeed disapprove, I would think "These guys clearly have it wrong" and I'd need to find a different religion. Did something like that happen as you came to whichever religion you came to, or if not, how do you view situations where what your church says contradicts what's in your heart?
Note, this post isn't meant to say anything about Fatal's situation, homosexuality is just one example of what people and their churche might disagree about. I'm just curious in general. Basically, I find the belief that there is "something" out there beyond us very understandable - it's more the process by which one comes to believe in tangible specifics (not having gay sex, not eating pork, whatever it happens to be) that mystifies me.
I actually had this discussion in a thread a long time ago if you want to read through it.
http://www.wowhead.com/forums&topic=152353
Edit: Though this was more than two years ago and many people's opinions have surely changed, I know mine have.
Post by
168916
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
Magician22773
Incidentally expanding on Atik's question, I wonder if any of the religious folks can comment on something I've always been curious about - how it was that you came to subscribe to one religion rather than another?
Obviously, you have cultural influences for many people. But take my life for instance.
My grandparents were the only really "religious" members of my family when I was growing up. They were Pentecostal. On the rare occation we attended church, it was their church. So I guess that family influence, and Midwest culture pointed me at least toward a Judeo-Christian religion. But I ended up in my church purely by chance. We had friends that attended our church, and our son started going with their son. My wife and I just decided one Sunday to go with him, and it "just felt right". I now know that that feeling was God letting me know I had found the path He had planned for me.
Please read my post. I am not comparing god to a unicorn, I'm comparing my position on god to other people's position on unicorns. The point is to explain why I say I "don't believe" in god, rather than saying I'm undecided or agnostic about it, even though I don't have any proof one way or the other. Essentially it's a way of explaining the difference between positive and negative atheism without semantics.
I have read the post, and I see what you are saying. But, it make it no less of an insult, regardless of your intent. If this is the case, than the analogy is unecessary. Simply saying that you do not believe in God because you have no proof of His existance, states your position fully. There is no need for the unicorn comparison. You are far to intelligent of a person to not understand why this would be insulting to someone that does believe in Him, so I can only assume that when you use they analogy, that you know full well that it will be insulting, and just don't care.
Not meaning to drag Adamsm into a topic he has not joined, but I will use him as an example. I do not believe in the tenants of Wicca. I can say that I don't believe in them, and I can even say that I find it odd that anyone would choose Wicca as a religion. I would hope that neither of those statements would be offensive to him. But if I said I don't see how anyone would want to worship trees and rocks, and dance around naked chanting, that would be offensive. Both statements make my point, but one is at least respectful of his beliefs.
Post by
168916
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
168916
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
Adamsm
What made you choose your religion? Is there some aspect of it that stuck out to you and tied everything together?
I choose mine because it's the one that filled in the missing part of my soul.
Post by
301983
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
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