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I am religious and believe in free will

71 (27.7%)

I am religious and do not believe in free will

10 (3.9%)

I am not religious and believe in free will

114 (44.5%)

I am not religious and do not believe in free will

61 (23.8%)

Total Members Voted: 251

[origamiscienceguy]

Just wondering, what country are you two from? I'm from USA.

[i2amroy]

I've got to say that even while I was growing up as a methodist (which I don't do anymore, but it's how I was raised) in the USA our church services never got that crazy. I think it sounds more like you're from one of them more crazy spiritual type churches.

[origamiscienceguy]

I've got to say that even while I was growing up as a methodist (which I don't do anymore, but it's how I was raised) in the USA our church services never got that crazy. I think it sounds more like you're from one of them more crazy spiritual type churches.

Don't worry, that was just during the songs. My pastor still came up afterwards. We don't usually have party balloons or stuff like that, just on Easter. It's supposed to be a celebration after all!

[Helgoland]

Germany. What denomination are you from, origami?

[Orange Wizard]

I'm from New Zealand and attend a Reformed church. It's very formal and traditional.

[TheDarkStar]

Oh yeah, Happy Zombie Jesus Day!

To the religious folks around here: How was your Easter Mass? And what Easter Hymns do you like?

I'm very fond of Großer Gott, Wir Loben Dich (Great God, We Praise You). It's practically the anthem of the region my family comes from. My mom told me a story about it while we had our mock-Easter Bonfire (a tradition in that region, though sadly not here):
There's a lot of peat bogs in that area. One day, a somewhat demented family member (a grandma, I think) of a farmer in that village (a neighbor of my mom's cousin, I think) went out to pick blueberries there. Needless to say, she got lost, which is a pretty big deal in a fucking bog. So they called together the men of the village, who went out to search her - and luckily she was found. Of course, the men should have a reward: They got Freibier for the rest of the evening. But before they started, that farmer made a little speech: That he wanted to thank them, and that they all should thank God. So they all sung that song I mentioned, because everyone knew it by heart (and it really is a good song for that occasion). They sung three verses, and they sung loudly. And apparently a tourist walked by and was very confused to hear a bunch of men in the village pub enthusiastically singing a church hymn...

In my experience (as LDS), Easter Sunday is like the other Sundays except the topic is specifically the Atonement/Crucifixtion/Resurrection. The same people tend to show up (except the odd relative on Spring/Easter break). However, the first weekend in April is when the church (as a whole, not just the congregation I'm in) has a meeting called General Conference, which is where the church leaders speak and everyone else watches (mostly through online methods because there are only a few thousand seats in the conference building). This replaced the normal Easter meeting. They had some nice talks this year - several Easter-themed ones, a few family-related ones, and one on religious tolerance, among many others. They also had nice music.

[origamiscienceguy]

Germany. What denomination are you from, origami?

evangelical. My church puts alot of focus on making sure everything we learn comes straight from the Bible.

EDIT: My church is also like, 40% elementary age kids. On average, I'd say that every family has about 3 kids. It's pretty insane. (I should know, I teach  up to 20 2nd graders on some days.)

[Descan]

With apologies to literally everybody. <3

[TD1]

I was a Church of Ireland Protestant. Essentially, Anglican. Small country parish, very traditional.

The minister had a doctorate in theology, but his ideas seemed stale to me, and though I never talked in depth (one does not argue against God to one of the clergy) I got the idea he was stuck in a bit of a religious rut as it were. He'd parroted the same things so much he'd become firmly set in his views. No flexibility. Same goes for most clergy, though.

[Orange Wizard]

The minister had a doctorate in theology, but his ideas seemed stale to me, and though I never talked in depth (one does not argue against God to one of the clergy) I got the idea he was stuck in a bit of a religious rut as it were. He'd parroted the same things so much he'd become firmly set in his views. No flexibility. Same goes for most clergy, though.

Yeah, I find that. "Your ideas don't match up perfectly to what I was taught? Begone, spawn of Satan!"

That said, you tend to find the same with pretty much everyone over a certain age bracket. It's sure as hell not unique to Christianity. My dad still refuses to believe that nuclear reactors don't turn the land for miles around into desolate wasteland, as a purely anecdotal example.

[TD1]

My dad is something similar. "Russia is our friend...."
Emm, no.

So yes, it is an age related thing. But also very much caused, in tue case of the clergy especially, because of the amount of societal pressure, and time given over to repeating the same dogmatic mantras over and over again.

[Boatsniper]

I had a laid-back Christian/Protestant upbringing.

Then I learned about science, evolution, and sociology.

Today, I am Atheist Agnostic, and I have only one question to ask.

What would you call a religion/faith that has been proven beyond all doubt to be true?

[TD1]

I would call it impossible.

I would cease to be religion and just be a non-hypothetical science. Religion needs doubt in order to grow. Utter truth has never been helpful.

[Frumple]

Faith that's proven is knowledge, no more, no less. The only thing special about religious faith is that its suppositions are entirely unprovable (at least in any way that can be communicated), as opposed to just not-yet-proved or disproved.

A religion that was entirely proven would... still be a religion, I guess. It would just have provable (as opposed to just assumed) metaphysical weight behind it, and probably look significantly different from what current religious organizations look like. If it had any of the weird cruft the current living ones do, it would also cause really massive changes to physics and whatnot, which would be interesting.

[Descan]

I guess what you're asking can be split three-ways.

One: What would happen if a religion just *happens* to be correct? Like, by chance the universe works the way the religion says it does? That'd be... interesting, I suppose, depending on what the religion is. Could range from "Huh. Cool." to "Overturns human understanding as it stands" depending on a) how correct they got, and b) whether it's correct as in gets our universe correct as currently understood, big bang and all that, or if the universe instead turns out to not be how we think, but instead be how that religion conveys it. Flat plate on the back of four elephants and wot-not.

Two: A religion that attempts to change and correct to fit the facts as we know them. It'd be cool, and noble, but I'm not sure if it'd change anything major. Doesn't exactly fill a void or give new knowledge, it'd be mostly coat-tail riding.

Three: What if the world actually had supernatural entities and phenomenon? Well, after we started understanding them, to the extent we can, they'd cease being supernatural and just become a natural part/effect of the universe, at least the parts we can see/feel/experience/measure. Everything else, we wouldn't even know we didn't know them; we'd think we had the whole puzzle. For all we know, electrons are the intrusions in our world of fairies dancing in another universe, but because we can only see, measure, feel, experience, the electron-part of this weird fairy-dance, we have no way of knowing that electrons are actually supernatural. They'd just be a "natural part of the universe" for us. Same as anything else supernatural. The intrusions, measurable effect on our world would just be a (seemingly whole) facet of our naturalistic universe, working in ways we can't really grok because we're missing a piece of the puzzle, but because we'd have no way of knowing we're missing something, we'd just assume it's a quirky mess. If it even is, it could look whole. The only way we'd know we're missing something big/supernatural, would be if an actual intelligent being were to communicate and say "Yo. You're missing something." and even then, depending on how they communicate, we could still miss it.