Religious affilition, what do you believe?

[daruckis]

nah, i dont like him. ive already sworn allegiance to mighty cthulhu, and am in full preparation for his rise from rl'yeh.

[sagedil]

Jesus loves you anyways. :lol: :lol: 8)

[VBSnus]

nah, i dont like him. ive already sworn allegiance to mighty cthulhu, and am in full preparation for his rise from rl'yeh.

IA! IA! CTHULHU FHTAGN!

[sagedil]

Jesus is prettier. :wink:

[lxskllr]

That's debatable...

[CM]

Have you guys readed about those parents, who's daughter died to diabetes(?) because they didn't take him to the hospital, instead they prayed alot to heal their daughter. o_O

[blotgode]

Sveriges Asatrosamfund =
The Swedish Asatru Assembly
The Swedish Asatru Assembly is an organisation for everyone interested in old norse religion and its myths.

This website contains current information about the Society and our activities, as well as ancient norse myths, legends and cultural history. It also works as an interface between members all over the country.

The Swedish Asatru Assembly arranges several blot, i.e. feasts in honour of our gods and of the cycle of the year.

The Swedish Asatru Assembly is a democratic, non-racist, non-profit organisation.


http://www.asatrosamfundet.se/

[sundog]

I'm praying for all of you. :wink:

[Veganpunk]

What about the flying spaghetti monster?

[MasterGuns]

Deist... anything created requires a creator. Big Bang? sure. Who put the chemicals there? I dunno, but they couldn't just show up outta nowhere. :lol:
I'm a little more superstitious than Deism allows. I put stock in the old religions, the dark arts, all that jazz. I just think that no one really understands what it is or where it comes from. I would definitely call myself a skeptic, but one who is not open to possibilities is not a skeptic, they're just stubborn.
Personally I think all world religions started off on the same page, but the true meaning got lost in the rituals/human corruption, therefore it's no longer pure or true.
The suppression of truth and knowledge in the name of religion is what kept people in the dark ages for centuries.
I just take what I know: there is a world, there are people, and the odds of a random event causing our random creation are preposterous...and apply it to spirituality. Live well and benefit mankind by your presence. Don't worry about salvation and all that. Don't think of life as a test but an experience worth having.
Anyways, that's my 20 year old philosophy, for what it's worth. I'm still traveling this road so where it takes me may change my views.

[VBSnus]

That's debatable...

Eight year olds dude.

[VBSnus]

Personally I think all world religions started off on the same page, but the true meaning got lost in the rituals/human corruption, therefore it's no longer pure or true.

Religions have risen, flourished, dominated millions, and have faded away, borne down by the weight of the superstition and outward forms which man persists in building around the bit of truth which originally caused the religion to spring into existence. It has ever been so, and must be so in the future. We may doubt this fact (so, doubtless, did the people of the vanished civilizations), but it must come. It is mortal - man's work - and the mortal ever must perish and pass away.

Men look around them, and, becoming conscious of the unreality of all that goes to make up mortal life, begin to ponder over the meaning of it all. They ask, "Whence come we - whither go we - what is the object of our existence?" They try to solve the riddle of life by countless theories. They discard the dogmas that are handed down to them, only to create fresh dogmas equally unsatisfying. They travel around like a squirrel in a cage, and exhaust themselves on the wheel - but they stop just where they began. They are like a caged bird, that beats itself to death against the confining bars of its prison. They go around and around the circle of intellectual reasoning, only to find themselves travelling over and over the same ground, and making no real progress. They try to explain things, but succeed merely in giving things new names. They climb the mountain of knowledge, and when they reach the top they look around them and see that they merely have reached the top of a small foot-hill, while, far above them, towering higher and higher, rise range after range of the real mountains, the highest peaks of which are hidden among the clouds.

The mistake of the searchers is that they are continually seeking the truth from outside - it is not to be found there, for it is within. It is true that with the inner light every outside thing may be studied to advantage, and bits of truth gathered therefrom. But without this inner light the outer objects will give no real answer, and one may shout aloud to nature and hear only the echo of his own cry. The seekers on the relative plane find only that for which they look. They find that which they expect, for there is more or less truth in the theories favored by them, and accordingly they must find something that will correspond with that bit of truth. But the man who looks for the thing exactly opposed to that sought for by these seekers also will find that for which he looks, for he, likewise, has a bit of the truth, and must find that which corresponds to it. Each realizing that he has found a bit of the truth, but each making the mistake of supposing it to be all of the truth, disputes the claims of the other, and various schools form. They the schools quarrel over details, and split into sub-schools, and so it goes, and the inquiring student is perplexed more than ever to know just what is the truth.

- Yogi Ramacharaka

[shikitohno]

I subscribe to Buddhism from a philosophical stand point, but I find a lot of it inherently unpracticable in the modern world. It's a good message, and something to aspire to, but I don't freak out if I fall short every so often. As far as gods go, I don't really care. I personally don't believe, but they could exist. Any one who says they know god doesn't exist is just as weak from a logical view point as someone who says they know he does.

For I while, I juggled the thought of Pascal's wager, which sort of says believe even if you don't really, because you've got nothing to lose. Looking at it from the Christian world view that created it, I realised it's bunk, though. Basically, if God's 1)Omnipotent, and 2) known for arbitrarily punishing people for the slightest faults (don't believe me? Read the Bible. I can't recall the book it's in, although I'm fairly sure it's part of the Pentetuch. Regardless, the Jews are crossing a river into Israel, and the Ark of the Covenant is about to fall over, so a couple of people go to keep it from falling in the water. Being cool and composed, God burn's them to death with some of that heavenly fire), I could only imagine he'd be more pissed at me for trying to pull the wool over his eyes than just being honest.

If there's a god out there who would punish an otherwise good person for not believing and condemn them to hell, I wouldn't want to worship him. Of course, I really have to hope that the Christians don't have it right, or else my fencesitting has reserved me a place in hell (I believe Dante put it in the second circle), chasing a banner around and being stung by bugs.

[tom502]

I like the Bhagavad Gita and Dhammapada.

[Roo]

The Lotus Sutra is a fascinating example of how fringe religions, in that case Mahayana, use religious text to convert unbelievers. Powerful insight to the tactics employed by the authors of the Bible and virtually any religious text. My personal favorite is Vimalakirti Sutra. He was a spiritual bad ass. Taoism makes more sense if you understand the text as political discourse, as it was IMHO originally intended. I like this thread. What happened to jamesstew anyway? Me thinks he's on another forum.