[Ken]

I'm not religious, as organized religions go, but I do believe in God (who, to me, is really a personification of the universe). I know it's real from personal experience, but I don't need fellowship with other people to cultivate it. Having said that, I have friends who have found salvation in religion and it makes me happy that they found it somewhere.

[Se7enMeister]

Originally Posted by Ken

I'm not religious, as organized religions go, but I do believe in God (who, to me, is really a personification of the universe). I know it's real from personal experience, but I don't need fellowship with other people to cultivate it. Having said that, I have friends who have found salvation in religion and it makes me happy that they found it somewhere.

well my family is methodist, but i try to distance myself from it, i belive in forming a relationship with god and leading a good life. i do not think the bible was writen by god but it is a manual to lead a good life

[JJ Rodriguez]

If I believed in God, I'd probably be a devil worshiper. I like the LaVey Satanism philosophies, but to me any rituals are just silly and exist only to serve our own need for something else. I don't mean this as a swipe at anyone, just my personal feelings on The Church of Satan/any religion. I forget who said it once here, but I feel that I'm more of a "skeptical agnostic" (with somewhat LaVeyist principles). I won't deny the extreme possibility that there's a supreme being, but it just seems far fetched to me.

[Shotglass]

My mother tried many different religions, with me tagging along of course, trying to find something that was right for her, and she couldn't find anything that suited how she felt about God. She was baptized baptist, she tried a Pentecostal church for a while, among others, and she wound up deciding that she was just spiritual, not religious.

Living with my dad and stepmother was interesting. Those were three years where I was a part of the Mormon church. I was baptized Mormon and went to church every week. I can say right now that of all of the religions that I have explored, Mormonism is the scariest. They aren't scientology, but they have some practices that I haven't seen in any other religion or church.

What I'm trying to say from all of this is that I believe in God in one form or another. I have too many beliefs of my own about things that would get in the way of me really getting into any religion.

But then, that's just me..

I should add that by believing in God, I believe that there must have been some form of higher power back when the universe and everything was created, because so far there hasn't been any real evidence to back up anything else. Until science can show me why and how EVERYTHING works, a small part of me has to think that there was something else that kickstarted things. And maybe governs us in some small way today. Who knows.

It's moreso that I just don't know all the answers yet I guess.

[7 Strings of Hate]

i dont believe in god and actually religion really enrages me, i feel they all try to take advantage, and the bible sounds like a fairy tail.

i also dont really believe in a "higher power", i feel that the forces of nature created us, just like stars and galaxys and microbs, the big bang, what motavates those things is what motaviated us into existance, and its not an all knowing man, or a god, its just a natural way of things, just like gravity and other universal constants.

i also believe that when you die, its just like before you were born, you dont think, or feel, or exist. That sounds somewhat depressing, but its natural and the most likely possibility.

[stuh84]

You know how people have epiphanies which make them believe?

I had sort of like a ray of light hit me, and I KNEW in myself that there could be no higher power. Fair play to all believers out there, but just like you know there is a God, I know there isn't.

I also don't follow the idea that because science cannot explain it (whether it will be able to or not), that the only other option is belief. There are many things that aren't explained by either side, I just spend my time not caring about either side, got much better things to do than devote precious time to a belief in something which has no tangible explanation.

[Chris]

I was raised Catholic and relatively pious, but I don't attend mass all too often.

Originally Posted by Ken

I'm not religious, as organized religions go, but I do believe in God (who, to me, is really a personification of the universe). I know it's real from personal experience, but I don't need fellowship with other people to cultivate it. Having said that, I have friends who have found salvation in religion and it makes me happy that they found it somewhere.

Same here.

[Nerina]

I just wrote a long reply about my religious views, should I post it? I normally don't post such long replies

[ZeroSignal]

Originally Posted by Nerina

I just wrote a long reply about my religious views, should I post it? I normally don't post such long replies

Go nuts dahling!

[Nerina]

Originally Posted by ZeroSignal

Go nuts dahling!

ok

Originally Posted by Zepp88

and I don't really like organised religion.

I also have little use for the bible, but I think that The Ten Commandments is one of the most important things ever written.

Exactly.
I wonder if we did away with all religion altogether, and lived simply by the ten
commandements, if we would have as many problems.....

I normally never post such personal beliefs/experiences so freely but for some reason I
feel safe here, so here goes, maybe someone else feels the same way or had a similar experience.

My mom was a Jehovah's Witness, my dad claims he's a Roman Catholic, simply because he's Italian, but neither of them go to church anymore. In fact, I never remember my dad going to church, but anyway.
I was dragged to church by my mother three times a week, from the time I was really little until the time I was a teenager and decided to get rebellious and stop going.

While growing up, in church, I was taught the regular 'christian' views about
smoking,drinking,fornicating, etc. That was all well and fine, because to me it was the norm everywhere, I went to a Born Again Christian primary school and then a Methodist highschool, so everywhere you went there were the same basic teachings. (The Bahamas call themselves a christian nation, with about 99% being christian of some sort, save a population of Indians that are Hindu.)
So while I was really young, I never really questioned anything, I thought I was supposed to be a Jehovah's witness,because my mom was one, and didn't question it. That's how kids are.

But,as I got older,I found it harder and harder, and then finally impossible to follow half of the 'rules' you're supposed to live by. I had friends that weren't witnesses, I made sure of it, and I had seen a lot of hypocrisy in situations between the elders and my friends that were witnesses.
I do not think that witnesses are bad people, I really think that 99.9% try really hard to live by a high standard, but really the rules and regulations and stuff I just couldnt deal with. I didn't like going 'door to door', imagine, living on an island where at any second you're gonna knock on someone's door that you go to school with, a nightmare for any child at 10 years old....

Then when I was older,like 13, 14, I HATED, the elders telling me that I wasn't supposed to listen to Motley Crue, and Metallica and AC/DC, ie ANY heavy metal, or rock, at all, because for some reason they think heavy metal will make you go postal and kill your mother,but I did anyway, what else was I supposed to listen to? And then by the time I was 17 I was having issues with them again because I had friends that weren't witnesses. I just got sick of the way they made me feel guilty about so many things, and it wasnt just me,I have a few friends that all had similar experiences with the same church, it was like having this huge cloud of gloom follow you when you've done something that you just know if one of them saw you doing, they're preach at you over it. And in the end, I stopped hiding everything.

When I was out with my 'worldy' friends I would see witnesses, that JUST SAW ME IN CHURCH, and talked to me, but because I was with non witnesses, they wouldn't say hi, so I would intentionally walk up to them and say hi, and if I was smoking at the time, I didn't hide it, I just kept on. If I was drinking, I didn't hide the drink, I took a swig,and acted normal, why be a hypocrite?They're in the same nightclub as me, so how am I the bad one? I never went out of my way to be 'different' I just stopped hiding who I was, I've never been a two faced person, and going to that church, with the way they make you feel, makes you become two people.

One of the last straws for me,was when one of my friends, that I had been friends with for like 20 years, (she lived really closed to me, we played every day, and went to the same church, we were close for YEARS), when she got married, she was a witness, her husband was, and I was not, I had stopped going to church. I was never invited to her wedding, because I didnt go to church anymore.And apparently it would have been 'wrong' to invite me, because I don't go to church,after I supported them and was so happy for her because she was marrying the love of her life. Yeah, thanks.

So I have many reasons why I agree with Zepp about not liking organized religions, or any religion that has rules that are insanely strict. What is the point? Why can't we just be good people, and let that be it? Why should we have to go and be seen in a church in order to be percieved as good people?

And the other thing with me and religion,specifically Christianity is this. If you look anywhere, the US, Europe, wherever, don't you ever wonder why people are so mean and disgusting, and why God permits so much suffering to happen? Ok, so, along those lines, has anyone ever wondered what the world would be like if we actually had Jesus right now?
I watched that movie, The Passion of the Christ, and I figured, you know what, If I had been alive back then, and SEEN him, and seen PROOF of his existance and proof that God hasn't totally abandoned us, then I probably would have been the most devout Christian ever. But today, what do we see? Ok, not everything is screwed up and bad, but how much differently do you think you would act if you KNEW an angel was watching you, or you had actually conversations with one? Wouldnt that be kinda cool? Like how it happened in the bible, way back in the day? I think that's the problem many people have in believing in God in the first place, cause we see so much suffering,and not much in the way of devine intervention.