Religion

[BurningLeaves]

...masturbation ...

So much energy.... wasted.... and could have been used for thesis =P

[The Origonal Head Hunter]

I won't go into all my beliefs and philosphy of life here, mostly because I'm lazy, and mostly because I don't believe I could do it justice unless I was talking it out with someone one-on-one.
And so I'll just sum it up:
I am a Christian, Baptist if you want to get specific, although I do dance on occasion. I believe all men are basically evil and that Jesus came and died for us so that we can live. I try to follow what the Bible says, though I do have slips and falls on occasion.
Not much else I feel like saying except that most of the stuff in the Bible that people spout as "simply symbolic!" I see as literal, especially Revelation. Yes, I believe there will be locusts with horse hooves, scropion tails and screaming human heads. Why do I think this, you ask? Well if God's letting all his wrath out in a last 7 year binge, I think he can damn well create whatever nasty thing he wants.

[Otohiko]

...masturbation ...

So much energy.... wasted.... and could have been used for thesis =P

YOU DON'T KNOW ANYTHING

LALALALALALALALALA

(what, I'm just stretching my writing muscle)

[NS]

You have a thesis to work on young man :O

[Otohiko]

You have a thesis to work on young man :O

What are you talking about, only old people write rants that long.

I'm old

[NS]

You are correct, and the time spent writing that rant could have been spent ranting about thesis things >_>

[Orwell]

Or like how in one of the books, Isaiah or maybe Psalms, the writer is praising God, who he says is above the "globe" or "sphere" of the earth. Thinking about when the Bible was written, that was WAY before it was proven to be round.

The arguement I believe was more whether the earth revolved around the sun, or the sun revolved around the earth, and much less, is the earth flat? Ptolemy in 200 bc surmised it to be round, wasn't there a greek guy in 500bc as well? Though it was not conclusively proven until the voyage around the globe.

I've, at least recently, viewed religion as a personal admission of weakness of character, which has been otherwise filled by a belief in something created only in the minds of people. The masses need an opiate, no matter what it is. Whether it's god, the man standing up to take control to 'liberate' you from those nasty freedoms that brought terrorism to your home, or just what somebody grew or cooked up, many, many people need SOMETHING to rely on, and few find that in themselves.

I was gonna rant about equality, but I have a feeling there would be little agreement anywhere when one makes the point of saying, equality before the law is good and all, but those who are privileged from birth with talents superior to their peers should be free to exploit that and succeed, instead of having to carry the masses.

[Otohiko]

I was gonna rant about equality, but I have a feeling there would be little agreement anywhere when one makes the point of saying, equality before the law is good and all, but those who are privileged from birth with talents superior to their peers should be free to exploit that and succeed, instead of having to carry the masses.

I think you're confusing equality and sameness - and the idea of 'superior talents' is a little shaky. Equality, I think, implies equality in rights, and not neccesarily just legal ones - not sameness in abilities or their means of development. Everyone should have a right to develop their abilities and inclinations appropriately, to the best of their personal ability, no question. That's why we have people educating people, not machines (yet).

Also of course the question - succeed at what?

[8bit_samurai]

I don't think you could legion twice or multiple times, let alone verb the word legion :/

Ever since I could remember I went to Church since my whole family went. We went to a Friends Church (which I think it's Quaker) for a long while. After 7 years or so (or at least when I was that age) we starting looking for a new Church, though I don't know why. We went to some pretty weird Churches, though they may have seemed weird since I was about 7 at the time and was used to the Friends Church. At one of them the Church sang the Barney "I love you" song and we never went back since. After awhile we settled at a Baptist Church, in which we continued going since then. Well, I kinda stopped going to Church when I started college, even though my parents encourage me to go to Church regularly. I have a Bible and read most of it (especially Revelations) and been meaning to read more of it, but... Yeah.

When I was growing up in my early teens, I kinda went through a phase where I believed that "God" wasn't the only Almighty Being and such, and that us "humans" were just like a "science project" here on Earth and that there may be more Almighty Beings who create other "science projects" on other galaxies far far away or something. But it was a short lived phase, and at the same time I was playing Starcraft alot.

There's only a Lutheran Church here lead by a family from down States (and who's kids lived here all or most of their lives and are more "native" than me :/ ) and I do go on special occasions and such, since everybody practically does.

I have a few friends from different Churches. I had some Mormon friends, one not being very Mormon-ish and other two who were twins that are really into it. Though they didn't believe in the multiple wives part. I had a couple friends who were in the Russian Orthodox Church which seemed pretty interesting when they told me about it. One of my other friends was the son of the Priest (or preacher, or whatever) of the Korean Church in a small town (with alot of Korean immigrants who owned take out restaurants and one of them had the best Hot N Spicy Chicken evar).

I dunno what I'd be, now. Some kinda Christian or something. Baptists kinda bore me since they just sang the same songs on how I lift Jesus on High, helped out other people who didn't really need it in the first place (except for the donating to charities and taking some kinda trips to Africa to preach and give food or something). Though I'm pretty sure they do other stuff, but I wouldn't know since I didn't really pay attention. I do miss going to the Friends Church because of the Hymns and the way the Church looked inside kinda like those old fashioned Churches. I believe there is a God and he has his reasons for stuff, though we don't understand since we're only human. Other than that I don't really know what to believe in, but then again I'm not really searching for answers at the moment.

[godix]

I do think there is a spiritual aspect to humans. Cold physics and biology along with pavlovian explanations of human behavior just don't explain how people work. Our brain may operate via electrical impulses through a lump of grey matter but that just explains how we think, it doesn't explain why or what we think about. The various theories of psychology may help explain some aspects but they don't, and I doubt they ever will, come close to explaining even a small fraction of it all. Personality seems to be beyond science.

However that does not mean I believe in religion. Looking at the role of religions historically they have served as little more than to explain the unexplained (and an opiate to the masses, but that part only explains why some leaders push religion not why people buy into it). Then science comes along and comes up with a much better explanation so religion gives up on that point and goes away to explain some other unexplained aspect of our world. Back in our earliest recorded history religion was used to explain, and desperately hope for, good crops/hunting/fertility and other strictly local things. Over time we learned how to hunt well, farm, etc and religion retreated towards bigger unknowns like what is thunder and lightning. And they were serious, this wasn't any of the vague 'god is behind it all but he does it through natural laws' type bullshit. Thunder was directly made by Thor. Science figured out some about what natural phenomena really are and these days you just don't see much serious belief in thunder gods. So religion moved on to explaining where people came from. Then came the idea of evolution and it's taken a few hundred years but religion is slowly retreating from that position. It retreated into the clockwork deity who winds everything up, except over the last few decades we've come up with some serious and credible ideas on how the universe started. I don't know where religion will go next but I'm quite sure that it will be, basically, nothing more than a token explanation of the world around us to serve until science figures out the real answer.

So to put it simply, I believe in a spiritual essence of humanity but I don't believe in a deity. Religion exists simply because humans fear the unknown and there aren't all that many people who can look at the world and say 'I don't know how it all works and I don't need to make up some bullshit to fool myself into thinking I do know'.

A note on the bible: It is a pack of total shit. Two totally different creation stories in the first couple pages, believing Batman turned into Little Orphan Annie with no explanation is actually easier than believing the new testament and old testament deity are the same character, at least one story where god loses to another deity (yes, there is more than one deity in the bible, God isn't alone), a chapter that starts off saying they'll list the genealogy of a family then totally misses a generation, several major passages that just make you think 'they had LSD back then?', long list of rules that would scare the fuck out of any sane person, repeated excessive cruelty, Jesus having four totally different last words, Jesus promising he'd return during the disciples lifetime then standing them up, Jesus claiming he is the planet Venus (or Satan, the passage can be read either way although Jesus probably meant he was the planet), etc. It isn't even good literature much less something to base your beliefs of how the universe works. If anyone seriously believes in the bible then do yourself a favor, actually read the stupid thing and think about what it is saying.