Which religion is correct?

[Immortal]

Jay520 said:


Fair enough. It doesn't really matter to me which term you associate me with. As long as you clearly and thoroughly understand my beliefs & lack of beliefs, I don't really mind which term you call me.

I agree with you about strong atheists. I don't think anyone is qualified to say what's not out in this vast, enigmatic universe. I also don't think we can say if there are more strong atheists vs soft atheists. You could he right, I won't argue against you. I don't think there's been any studies or experiments in that sort of thing.

I guess the second paragraph of your post really depends on each individual's experience.

And btw, what are your beliefs?

That's good. You're far less argumentative about this subject than almost anyone else I've met (atheist or otherwise); that's quite impressive, :D.

And for the strong atheists part, I could obviously easily be wrong. At this point, I know that it's my bias thanks to experience in places like forums and school that makes me think it's the general case. It really would be interesting to see studies about this, even though the results would be horribly skewed depending on who does it and with what motive.

As for my beliefs, that's an infinitely complex area of thought that I'm not sure I'm smart enough to delve into. I desperately avoid being termed an atheist because, as I'm sure you can tell, I'm very much biased against them for the moment. Most of my beliefs comes from philosophical stuff which makes open-mindedness my key priority. My parents have basically raised me in Hinduism, with all the gods and reincarnation and such that comes with it. The thing, though, is that, as far as I understand it, Hinduism is basically a complex, chaotic set of ideologies that has very little that you need to believe in. I mean, to some extent, we only have so many gods because of "compromises" that have been made to stop conflict between people who believe in different gods. In fact, my parents insist that this is like the basis of the religion. Just as an example, Buddhism is generally considered a part of Hinduism by Hindus, even though most people see it as a separate religion or even a "way of life". If you go to a rural place in India, give a person a picture of Jesus and tell them he has something to do with the divine, they'll probably put it alongside all their other idols and paintings and pray to it daily. This actually rather fits my whole "open-mindedness" idea since it is open-minded to the extent of being beyond gullible (as that video showed, xD). But, you know, since it's about the divine and we're not actually gonna get around to getting any solid evidence till we're dead and gone, it doesn't really hurt that much to accept everything.

That said, I'm just a silly little boy yet and I hope to look back at this as utter nonsense in 10 years. What's important to me is that I don't start taking a belief too seriously and stick with it for too long. That would make me close-minded and then there wouldn't be any room for improvement.