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I like it better than the last one

It's good, but I don't see the need with the discussion thread

It's not going to go anywhere good, just lock it now.

[Biowraith]

Just wanted to say thank you to those that answered my questions, much appreciated.

[Cheeetar]

Everyone: How did you end up being a part of your religion? Did you discover it later on in life or were you born into it? (Or something else besides.)

I didn't really know religion was a thing until I was in primary school, and it seemed a bit silly to me.

[Orange Wizard]

Everyone: How did you end up being a part of your religion? Did you discover it later on in life or were you born into it? (Or something else besides.)

I was kind of raised into a Presbyterian church, so there was certainly a predisposition towards Christianity early on. I didn't actually care about the stuff, it was simply a childlike "your parents know everything, so believe what they tell you" kinda thing.
In my early teen years I basically said "fuck this, shit makes no sense" with regard to religion/spirituality in general.
Then a couple of years back I started to believe in God/etc. for no discernible reason and started going to church again.

[Pirate Santa]

Everyone: How did you end up being a part of your religion? Did you discover it later on in life or were you born into it? (Or something else besides.)

I was raised in a rather non-religious family, not anti-theistic, just very casual about religious observance. Never went to church, don't have any bibles, just had the basic go to heaven/hell when you die kinda thing.
This lasted about a decade before I started becoming very critical of Christianity, it started with "If god is good, why does he let bad things happen?", and developed into what would probably be called Agnosticism (not that I had any idea what that was at the time).
Throughout my teenage years my dissatisfaction solidified into a distrust of religion, but it was only in the last year or so (I'm currently 20) that I finally decided to proclaim myself as firmly anti-theistic.
After doing a bunch of reading in books and online I decided that Humanism is the system that best describes my beliefs. It is a decision I am quite happy with.

[UXLZ]

Thanks for all the good answers, guys.

Personally I was raised without even knowledge of religion until Primary school, and even then, while I did RE, I didn't even know what the hell it was about until much later. (I can't actually remember when I became aware of religion to tell the truth.) I doubt my family would care either way if I decided to dedicate myself to a religion. Probably the best way of describing what I am at the moment is sort of an Agnostic Nihilist.


Everyone:
How many of you believe that deities exist but there's more than one? Atheism types and christian types seem common enough, but I'm wondering if there are any polytheistic type religions in here.

Christians:
Has the crazy stuff the church has done in the past (at least allegedly) in regard to the pedophilia stuff made you question how good of an idea it is to go to church? (Note: I am not questioning the religion itself. I'm essentially asking if the actions of the church influence your decision on whether or not you actually go to church, or if it's something you've decided you're just going to do regardless or the like. Also note I am not suggesting that if you do go to church you support pedophilia.)

[Arx]

I've never heard of anything like that within either the Methodist church or South Africa, the first possibly in part because Methodist ministers aren't required to be celibate. My decision to go to church is therefore entirely uninfluenced by it.

[UXLZ]

I've never heard of anything like that within either the Methodist church or South Africa, the first possibly in part because Methodist ministers aren't required to be celibate. My decision to go to church is therefore entirely uninfluenced by it.

Has either of those churches ever done anything else controversial? (Like, I don't know, proclaiming Asians as soulless animals or something. I don't actually think either *has* done that, but something that could be considered quite bad by most people.)

Here's something I'm always confused about. What the hell's the deal with the Pope? Is he considered important by all branches of Christianity or is it just some sort of Catholic thing or what? I don't know what he's actually there for, or what he does.

[Arx]

I've never heard of anything like that within either the Methodist church or South Africa, the first possibly in part because Methodist ministers aren't required to be celibate. My decision to go to church is therefore entirely uninfluenced by it.

Has either of those churches ever done anything else controversial? (Like, I don't know, proclaiming Asians as soulless animals or something. I don't actually think either *has* done that, but something that could be considered quite bad by most people.)

Probably the most controversial things about the Methodist church are using grape juice for communion and allowing female ministers, as far as I know.

[UXLZ]

I've never heard of anything like that within either the Methodist church or South Africa, the first possibly in part because Methodist ministers aren't required to be celibate. My decision to go to church is therefore entirely uninfluenced by it.

Has either of those churches ever done anything else controversial? (Like, I don't know, proclaiming Asians as soulless animals or something. I don't actually think either *has* done that, but something that could be considered quite bad by most people.)

Probably the most controversial things about the Methodist church are using grape juice for communion and allowing female ministers, as far as I know.

As a non-religious person I fail to see why either of those things means diddly squat. Especially the grape juice. I kind of see why the female ministers thing is controversial because churches have long been a male dominated thing, but aside from that... Is there some kind of thing in the bible/religious texts that suggests that females can't be ministers or is it just being the actual church organisation itself being slightly sexist?

[Arx]

The grape juice was an intentionally somewhat silly example. Methodism is called that because it's based around studying the Bible and implementing the instructions &c in the way that makes the most sense, which means that doctrine is pretty tight with the Bible, and generally non-controversial.

Paul's writings are the only Biblical issue with female ministers. I imagine there is quite a lot of institutionalised sexism as well.

[scrdest]

I've never heard of anything like that within either the Methodist church or South Africa, the first possibly in part because Methodist ministers aren't required to be celibate. My decision to go to church is therefore entirely uninfluenced by it.

Has either of those churches ever done anything else controversial? (Like, I don't know, proclaiming Asians as soulless animals or something. I don't actually think either *has* done that, but something that could be considered quite bad by most people.)

Here's something I'm always confused about. What the hell's the deal with the Pope? Is he considered important by all branches of Christianity or is it just some sort of Catholic thing or what? I don't know what he's actually there for, or what he does.

Ex-catholic (unofficially):

Primarily Catholic, though there's a group of people that follow Orthodox traditions but recognize the Pope and are considered more or less 'one of us' by Catholics.

The idea is that the Pope is the direct descendant, authority-wise, of Saint Peter, elevating him in status over the bishops of other places, descended from Joe R. Cleric.

I might be mistaken on this part, but I believe there originally were more posts of comparable status, in the East, but it all sorta fell apart with the Great Schism.

[TheDarkStar]

Here's something I'm always confused about. What the hell's the deal with the Pope? Is he considered important by all branches of Christianity or is it just some sort of Catholic thing or what? I don't know what he's actually there for, or what he does.

The Pope is the leader of the Catholic church (but ask a Catholic for a better description of what he does). I guess he could be considered important simply because of that fact, but other religions don't generally look to his authority.

[TheDarkStar]

IIRC, that IS supposed to be literal. He meant it in the sense of 'If you're rich, you're not going to heaven. It's like trying to shove a camel through the eye of a needle'

There are plenty of biblical examples of rich men generally considered righteous. For example, that's actually kind of the entire point of the Book of Job.

Job 1:1
"There was a man in the land of Uz whose name was Job, and that man was blameless and upright, one who feared God and turned away from evil. 2 There were born to him seven sons and three daughters. 3 He possessed 7,000 sheep, 3,000 camels, 500 yoke of oxen, and 500 female donkeys, and very many servants, so that this man was the greatest of all the people of the east."

Job 1:8
"And the Lord said to Satan, “Have you considered my servant Job, that there is none like him on the earth, a blameless and upright man, who fears God and turns away from evil?”"

He's rich and  loves god, so satan suggests that Job is only righteous because it's convenient for him. So god has satan spend something like 30-40 pages taking away everything he holds dear. His money, his cattle, his wife, his health. But Job refuses to curse god, so god decided he passed the test and gives him even more more and cattle than he had before.

Other examples exist. Solomon, obviously. And David. And Abraham is an especially good example. He was rich, and yet he's the guy in the bible that god made the covenant with that was the original basis for the entire existence of judaism, the idea that the "promised land" belongs to the jews, etc.

This assumes there are no contradictions within the bible. In this case, it was apparently supposed to be literal, but I'd be *completely* unsurprised if in other cases rich men were viewed as righteous and able to go to heaven.

If you take the whole eye of a needle thing to mean that it's really, really difficult to do (wasn't there something about the eye of a needle referring to a narrow gate in the wall of Jerusalem?), then there will be a few people who were righteous and rich. However, there are going to be even more rich people who fail at being righteous (Solomon and David both had serious problems, for example. Also most of the other kings in the Old Testament were bad.)

[Askot Bokbondeler]

So, the camel is actually a rope and the needle is actually a gate... sounds pretty easy

[Urist Mc Dwarf]

What does it takes to convert to Judaism?

There's that organization that offer free trips to Israel for Jews to convince them Sionism is good and everything, and I've always wanted to visit Israel.

You have to learn some of the commandments, take a ritual bath to purify yourself, become a bar/bat mitzvah in some synagouges, and there is generally a period of study and worship.