Are you religious yes? No?

[donald1]

I'm christian, I've been going to church since I was little I don't even know how young. I was blessed to be born with a Christian family. But I wonder what it would be like if they weren't christian if they were not i might not be christian... Maybe later in life but I don't know... What my curiosity is are you religious, yes or no and if you are would things be different if you grew up with a different background/family or if you are not religious would it be different if you grew up with a different background/family

 

[Transk53]

I'm christian, I've been going to church since I was little I don't even know how young. I was blessed to be born with a Christian family. But I wonder what it would be like if they weren't christian if they were not i might not be christian... Maybe later in life but I don't know... What my curiosity is are you religious, yes or no and if you are would things be different if you grew up with a different background/family or if you are not religious would it be different if you grew up with a different background/family

The latter is something one wished for at an early age. I have banished my past so I will speak, or write, on the former. In many respects I could be counted as being religious. I just not believe in the Christian God or other beliefs. It is my belief that all particles are inter-connected in way that binds the very fabric of being together. I am not going to proffer any thoughts as I simply cannot scientifically back them up. However, I am the stuff of the Stars. I do not wish to disparage you're beliefs, so I will not. What I do believe is that the issue of God, goes so deep that none of us can truly understand, we of course have to go beyond the threshold, but that does mean in spirit, that is in belief, which we simply cannot quantify.

 

[donnaTKD]

i don't go to church if that's what you mean by being religious.

there are things that i believe in but for me the bible is outdated and when you consider that everything evolves then the bible just doesn't stack up. the world wasn't created in 7 days it took many many millions of years to create. people have been around for many thousands of years before jesus was even thought of so to say that jesus is where time starts etc... is just plain wrong cos jesus's had parents and they had parents and their parents had parents so the bible is just not right on many levels.

like it or not but i don't believe and these are my opinions and thoughts -- your thoughts are your thoughts and your beliefs are exactly that --- we are all individuals at the end of the day.

one thing i absolutely hate is when some bible worshipper tries ramming their views down my throat - that really hacks me off.

 

[arnisador]

No, I am not and was never religious. I went to church with my parents but it never rang true to me.

 

[hoshin1600]

i grew up catholic and have a very religious family including all my aunts and uncles. i went to chuch every sunday untill i was about 20. at that point i began seriously listening to what was being said there and the more i listened the more it infuriated me. i know not everyones experience will be the same as mine but i found i had my own beliefs on what is right and wrong and the messages i was being told thru the church was full of lies, self appointed rightous bias, condamnation and intolerance toward other people and other beliefs. this did not seem like the message of Jesus. at the age of 14 i began reading about Zen and Buddhism and once i had the courage to accept my own convictions, everything clicked for me. i began reading the bible in a new kind of way and understanding it in a way that made sense to me but was not the way the christian religion interprets it. i got involved with an authentic Rinzai school of Zen and even taught Zen for a time. my wife is from Thai land and is Buddhist and i consider myself Buddhist if someone asked, but in truth I do not believe in an after life and i do not believe in reincarnation. i do believe in the possibilty of something like a heaven, explained thru scientific string therory that there are 10 dimensions and we have a muti-verse. so it might be possible for our 3 dimensional bodys to die and "something" of us to continue in the other dimensions. but i do not believe in a creator or God. so at this point i am not sure if i am religious or spirtual or something else.
"we know so little about how to co-exist peacefully with other humans, let us pay attention to living in harmony with our brothers and sisters and let what ever happens after death take care of itself"
credited to Confucius but not sure

 

[Dirty Dog]

To quote the Great Philosopher George Carlin...

I used to be Catholic, now I'm an American.

 

[jezr74]

Christian family until about 12, now most of my family is atheist and my father still thinks he's Christian.

I personally would have preferred to have been raised in an atheist family environment like my children are now. As some ideologies are now programmed into me that I still struggle having to un-program.

 

[EddieCyrax]

My definition:

Religious - man-made organizations of like minded individuals that share similar beliefs.

I am not religious. Most thing from my experience created by humans contains an agenda.

I am Agnostic. I believe in a higher power and am very spiritual.

I too was brought up Catholic. My family continues to follow this faith.

As I got older and learned more about others belief systems, learned more about human history, and witnessed the agenda of men, I grew further away from any organized religions and modified my beliefs.

Good luck on your journey....

 

[Buka]

I am a "praise the lord and pass the ammunition" kind of guy. Given the choice, I'll take the ammunition....until right at the end when I think I'm dying and then I'm sure I'll be very religious. Devout, even.

 

[Hong Kong Pooey]

Simple answer is no I'm not.

I attended CoE church services as kid with the school & cubs and stuff but the Christian bible just never struck me as being that believable.

In fact I don't really understand how any modern person with a questioning mind, ability to reason, and exposure to things like books, an education and the internet (in short all the scientific knowledge that's out there on things like evolution, geology, astronomy etc.) can believe in something fantastical that contradicts this knowledge just because it was written a few hundred/thousand years ago. But each to their own of course.

Having said that I'd describe myself as agnostic rather than atheist as I'm not saying there is no God (or Gods), but I'll need proof before I believe in any of them - and currently no such proof exists that I'm aware of.

My parents aren't religious but my grandparents were.

 

[Makalakumu]

My parents baptized me into the Catholic church very shortly after I was born and I performed a few of the sacraments as a child. By about 8 years old, I realized that the stories didn't make any sense. I still went to religion classes at my parents behest, though. I remember asking all kinds of questions to the Sisters who taught our classes. For example, I asked, how could a loving god damn people to the pits of hell for all eternity for not believing in him? Why did it have to be a "him" at all? What about all of the other gods that people believed in? And what exactly happened with the Ark? The dinosaurs lived way before humans, so how was that even possible?

By the time I was 12, I had had enough of religious classes and told my parents that I refused to go anymore. I told my mother that I didn't believe in God and she cried and then I turned around and pretended for a while longer so I could be a Boy Scout and not make the people in my family upset. I even had a short stint as an Altar Boy! It was around the time of Confirmation that I quietly told my parents that I was no longer going to church and that I really didn't believe in God.

They urged me to learn more about religions and try something else, because they felt that a good person needed to have that spiritual core in order to be moral in this world. I followed their advice and learned as much as I could about different religions. I became fascinated with Eastern Religions in High School because of my martial arts training and read a lot about Buddhism and Taoism. When I got to college, I was exposed to philosophy and ethics and that pretty much ended my participation in any religion. Based on a few philosophical principles, I knew that there not only was no such thing as a God, but that such a being could never exist. Gods are self contradictory propositions that explode upon rational contact like balloons and needles.

This is when I first used the term atheist to describe myself.

Moving forward, it's been very interesting raising my own children and teaching them about religion. My children love learning about mythology and religions, but we treat all of them to the same rational analysis that we apply to other areas in our lives. We ask questions like, what exists? How do you know? Do things exist if you don't know about them? Does anybody know something if there is no evidence? I don't come right out say that there are no gods, but I do treat them as stories. My son and I like to joke about converting to Odinism and we talk about what that religion must have been like. We are friends with lots of religious people and I think the lesson we try to get across to them is that people believe in all kinds of different things. Most of it, if not all, might not make any sense to you, but it's still important to them and it's important that you don't devalue them as a human being for believing in one of those things.

In my ideal world, I would like to see religion fall away from humanity as a relic of our irrational and violent past, but I don't see that happening in my lifetime or even my children's lifetimes. So, instead I practice religious tolerance, sufferance, and camouflage. Tolerate the religions that are harmless. Suffer those that are annoying. Hide from the dangerous ones.

 

[donald1]

There's a lot of good posts, I like hearing people's opinions on things, there's no two exact opinion

 

[jezr74]

There's a lot of good posts, I like hearing people's opinions on things, there's no two exact opinion

Yeah, I've found it interesting too.

Do you think your a spiritual person as well?

I've met god fearing people before, but have never found them to be spiritual, and then I've met people I've thought spiritual from different denominations (inc. Christians) but would hesitate to call them religious.

 

[jezr74]

I am a "praise the lord and pass the ammunition" kind of guy. Given the choice, I'll take the ammunition....until right at the end when I think I'm dying and then I'm sure I'll be very religious. Devout, even.

You obviously haven't read Job 28:28. :yoda:

 

[ST1Doppelganger]

I was brought up as Christian and went to multiple hours of Sunday school and church every Sunday, till the church turned on us when my Mother & Father got a divorce in the mid 80's.

If anything my Chinese art studies has opened my mind up to Taoism and Buddhism so if I was going to dedicate time to study a religion it would be one of those two since I feel they would be the best suiting religion for me.

I don't consider myself a religious person and don't believe in an afterlife but i do believe in spiritual entities and different dimensions if that makes any since.

 

[Xue Sheng]

Are you religious yes? No?

Maybe. And that is actually a serious answer

I'm christian, I've been going to church since I was little I don't even know how young. I was blessed to be born with a Christian family. But I wonder what it would be like if they weren't christian if they were not i might not be christian... Maybe later in life but I don't know... What my curiosity is are you religious, yes or no and if you are would things be different if you grew up with a different background/family or if you are not religious would it be different if you grew up with a different background/family

Raised in a Protestant family, was married to and then later engaged to another Catholic and at one point went to a Catholic church. Now I live in a mostly Buddhist household, studied Taoism and Shinto..... not exactly sure what I am at this point

 

[Transk53]

I don't consider myself a religious person and don't believe in an afterlife but i do believe in spiritual entities and different dimensions if that makes any since.​

Yeah, a different dimension though, is just a continuation. The chance to live the same life, even though up stairs it feels different.

 

[donald1]

Yeah, I've found it interesting too.

Do you think your a spiritual person as well?

I've met god fearing people before, but have never found them to be spiritual, and then I've met people I've thought spiritual from different denominations (inc. Christians) but would hesitate to call them religious.

Sadly I no longer attend a regularly attended church; I try donate to charity or give blood to make up for it. But I pray every day and do my best to follow the rules if I'm not christian for the lack of seeing the church then definitely spiritual

 

[Transk53]

Sadly I no longer attend a regularly attended church; I try donate to charity or give blood to make up for it. But I pray every day and do my best to follow the rules if I'm not christian for the lack of seeing the church then definitely spiritual

Spiritual, the channel. The rest, well that is you!

 

[oftheherd1]

I think most members of MT know that I call myself Christian. I believe in the Bible. I believe in Christ's sacrifice for my sins, and have asked him into my heart. I try to live as the Bible tells me I should live, but am not as successful at that as I wish I were.

If that makes me religious, then I am. If that makes me spiritual, then I am.

EDIT: I did not answer all of your questions. I also grew up in a Christian family. My father was a Methodist, my mother a Christian (the denomination), and mostly attended different churches. My father was very much into music and attended other denominations to sing in their choirs. Sometimes I attended church with my father, but most often with my mother, at the Christian church I consider myself to have grown up in. But my mother and father also sometimes attended the same church together. The church my father went to the last years of his life, as the choir director, was a second church to all of us.

If my family had not been religious, or of a non-Christian religion, I have no idea what I would believe in today. I would hope Christianity. Having grown up the the mid-west, I certainly would have been exposed more to some form of Christianity than anything else. I thank God that I was raised by believing parents. No doubt that made it more likely for me to be Christian.