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Forums - General Discussion - What religion are you in?

I didn't know that the Flying Spaghetti Monster appeared in South Park. Apparently they had Him as a guest appearance once.

 



My Mario Kart Wii friend code: 2707-1866-0957

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clandecyon said:
What religion am I in? :) People are "in" locations, organizations, employment, school, clubs, cults, sanity (or what any single person would dub it), etc. "In" is a word leading to a state of existence. Do you mean what I have come to conclusions on based on my experience and rationalization of the world around me? Do you mean, "what do I believe to have happened to the world in the beginning?" "What do I believe is the overall essence of everything?" "What do I believe will happen when we die?" Or are you wanting to know if we superficially see ourselves as part of a sect or group of people who think a particular way? I'm sure I could fit in at a lot of different organizations that seem to believe similar things, however, I don't know if I could say that I am "in" any labeled system.

I "believe" that there are more important things than being stated as "in" something, even if you just so happen to be in something. Seeing yourself as "in" something should not be the reason that you are in it. There are purposes that bring us into certain states and if you see yourself as complete by being "in" one of those states then you have by most definitions of the states, lost the purpose for which they exist, therefore making your own state that differs from the actual state.

To be fair, there are three instances I can think of offhand that being "in" something might be able to stand singularly, and I attempt to look closer at each: If being in the group satisfies a purpose in itself (already touched on slightly), if claiming participation in a group helps on grounds of quick communication, and if a group is needed to leverage a purpose.

Many times just being in a group or state can satisfy a purpose as mentioned above, if your purpose is to have a feeling of belonging. But that purpose is still more important than the state, and you could satisfy that purpose with many different states, making the state that you are in of little significance to be mentioned. By having your own agenda in the state, you are still alone in your purposes and will not ever give a complete effort toward the same tasks that everyone else is moving towards at the time. You could though, find others in the group that need a feeling of belonging which would give you all the same agenda, but then aren't you just making friends and creating stability for yourself?

The other circumstance is to use a general state to help explain your thoughts and purposes. Those who are Christian are understood to believe in a higher power, God, his embodiment as a human, Jesus, his death, and resurrection. If this is a background that you want to portray, then you might use the term "Christian." But Christian means a lot of things these days to many different people because of its history and those other Christians that have come in contact with the audience in question. "Christian" could mean hate, cult, hypocrisy, ignorance, and blind to some while meaning love, unity, higher purpose, enlightened, and blessed to others. And for a more petty reason, can you be "in" Christianity? Does that even make sense? haha

In an extension of this concept, being "in" a group of like-purpose individuals can heighten the attention given to your cause for better result. The Population seems to take more notice when a larger portion of it works together, though that isn't as much the case anymore. We could use the concept of "in a mob," here. ha Each has their own driven purpose and while united, they are individual people with their own purposes. None of them are going to look around them and say, "I'm in a group." Though they know that, they are there because they want to make a difference and just happen to be doing it in the same place. After they achieve that goal, despite the friends that were made and celebrations held in remembrance, they will never be the same group as the purpose would be different for new groupings, and while some members might share the new purposes with the old, the next time, they are grouping in another purpose which recycles the idea until you become an extremist, which then is a grouping that takes back to the second of these three and as such is only stated for clarity. And even extremists have individual purposes that make them extremists which may not have anything to do with the groups they join.

 That is a highly intelligent post on the analysis of the topic as a whole and i say that i agree with you.

Using Christianity (as i'm a Christian), you really can't be "in" it. You become it or bear it, as it is the term of "Christian". People who bear the name of Christ (Christians) are cursed people due to the curse on Christ himself, and are burdened people, because they live to overcome death. But are they "in" Christianity? No. If that's the case then i don't believe in a religion at all. I am not part of any religious group. I am a Christian and I bear curses, burdens, forgiveness, grace, mercy, blessings, pains, and love of Christianity. 

or something like that...

 

And ive stated this before in the "Is there a God" thread, faith in itself (well at least Christianity) isn't in any way a "bad" thing. It's when the whole concept of a certain faith is curropted due to ethnocentrism, pride, greed, misunderstanding (the number 1 conflict of all human nature i think), and just regular human flaws. This is why i don't understand how people blame the religion for the muderous killings and book burnings and hate stuff instead of the people who did them.  



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I believe that religion is not the problem of this word. It is just used as a decoy by the powers that be. The cause of all the world's wars is simple... money.



No foreign sky protected me,
No stranger's wing shielded my face.
I stand as witness to the common lot,
survivor of that time, that place.

- From 'Requiem' by Anna Akhmatova

Musouka said:
I believe that religion is not the problem of this word. It is just used as a decoy by the powers that be. The cause of all the world's wars is simple... money.

True! And as other people have said, religion itself isn't the problem, despite being the proverbial whore for all past rulers using it to further their agenda in despicable ways. What bothers me is that after all the bullshit that religion has been used for, people still see it as pure, innocent and sincere, an incoruptible path to God, which should never be questioned, and that the leaders of a religion should not be questioned.

Plus, religion always has the support of the masses, Iran is the best example, religios leaders used religion to overthrow the democratic goverment ( which had one of the most modern constitutions at the time ).I mean you would litteraaly see women protest against girls going to school and having basic human rights, believe me only religion can do that, be it the twisted version of it.Not to mention that throughout history, the moment a state became a secular state, thingsw only became better, the moment the church started gaining power, it al went to hell.

Simple fact of the matter is religion at the level of an individual is cute, religion at the level of a group is intolerant and ignorant, religion at the level of rule and governing is pure poison. Yet despite all this relgion still has a fluffy, harmless image in the minds of people.



Wow... I had no idea one of my threads would actually be this popular. Ha, ha...



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fkusumot said:

You can't change your beliefs just like you can't actually want something that you don't want.

Actually, yes you can. By acquiring new information, you are susceptible to revising your beliefs.

Let's say I was not interested in Super Mario Galaxy... I just did not want it... Then, after seeing the mighty reviews it got, I became interested.

I am going to make up my very own saying... You never know, it might become universal...

"With more knowledge becomes more possibilities."

100% original, and copywrited!



Nintendoism.



Revived

Christian.



"Back off, man. I'm a scientist."

Your theories are the worst kind of popular tripe, your methods are sloppy, and your conclusions are highly questionable! You are a poor scientist. Especially if you think the moon landing was faked.


ioi + 1

I'm not in any religion. I consider myself an atheist/agnostic as I feel that there is no clear consensus on the definition of either atheist or agnostic.



"¿Por qué justo a mí tenía que tocarme ser yo?"

Catholic.