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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

[Harry Baldman]

Yeah, I can't figure out a way that any religion makes sense.

It depends on how your view of the world was formed - with at least one god or without one. If you didn't have one, at least not a relevant one, then no gods are necessary. If you did have one at the core, then it's integral to the whole thing.

I suspect that's why if you're nonreligious it's difficult to seriously accept the idea of any godlike being into a worldview in a way that actually does anything - you're just tacking on the idea of God onto something that functions perfectly well without it. So you'd be tempted to think that a god is superfluous to all worldviews, which isn't subjectively true at the very least.

[Rose]

Notice I said religion,  not God.

I actually find the existence of some sort of creator to make sense, or at least as much sense as anything, but I don't see how any religion in the world can possibly be anything but a creation of man, with no basis in reality.

[Harry Baldman]

It's a gentlemen's agreement on how to relate to God. A helpful way to get together and consider the important issues. The existence of God has implications on society, whether that be a natural order imposed by said God, a moral code required for the ultimate reward or some other helpful article of worship and respect for a being many degrees of magnitude greater than yourself.

[TD1]

Religion itself makes sense. It says there's a greater being than yourself, and gives guidelines on how to interact with or appease it. What I don't understand is why people believe in the greater being in the first place. There are so many stories in the world, I don't see why people have to elevate one particular tale and form a community around it. I think it's something to do with a need to understand, but I don't know why it's so powerful.

I suppose in a sense what you might disparagingly call God of the Gaps. Why do quarks have exactly one third the charge of an electron? Why do charges actually attract, when you get right down to it? Why is the speed of light what it is, and why is it that it can relate mass and energy so neatly? Why does anything anything?

I personally consider it the most reasonable explanation (of God, and this stuff) that He defined the way things work, more than anything else. Maybe at the beginning of the universe there was a huge quantity of energy floating around and He defined the rules that let it do stuff. Maybe there was nothing and God just pulled it all out of his hat. The explanation makes no less sense than any other. vOv

Also usually when I walk out into the rain it stops. And other more serious personal reasons.

It does make less sense, though. Scientists say "we don't really know why things are as they are, but they are." Rationally, that is all we know. You say "A father figure God made heaven and earth then came to earth as a man and sacrificed himself for our sins and rose to heaven, and there's also a holy spirit who influences us." That is a very specific claim to be making on the grounds of zero evidence. Even if there was an original starter, from observing the universe it would much, much more likely be a force - a cause which had an effect. You're working backwards off the original certainty that God exists, and ergo it makes sense that he created everything as it is. To me at least, that's not indicative of God existing. He is only necessary in that picture because you made him so. I understand that some people have a personal feeling of God, and that's why they believe in him, and ergo he must have created everything and so everything reflects God - it's reasonable enough in that it's logical (though the rain stopping sounds more like a Greek-style patron god rather than the Abrahamic, free will God.), but it's a house built on sand.

[Rolan7]

@Arx
The "God of the Gaps" is a fine thing to worship, in my opinion.  I basically do too, though it's more "Spirits of the Gaps".  Animism, fey, etc.

A faith about the spaces between can be... useful.  People aren't really designed to leave questions unanswered, it can be distracting to a detrimental extent.
People should be ready to be wrong, is all.  Any faith technically undermines reason, but humans are better at compartmentalization than we are at ignoring scary questions.  Faith doesn't need to be a serious problem.  Only potentially.

It tends to rain when I need the emotional support it represents for me.  I read a lot into that, but I'm no meteorologist (;

[Rose]

Most organized religion seems to me to be a way of exploiting gullible people for power and money.

[MaximumZero]

The "God of the Gaps" is a fine thing to worship, in my opinion. 

I really hate to rain on peoples' parades, but the "God of the Gaps" is the worst thing to worship. We're always filling in those gaps with new information and knowledge. If you want to worship an ever-decreasing pocket of ignorance, that's fine by me, but you should know exactly what you're doing when you do so.

[origamiscienceguy]

Most organized religion seems to me to be a way of exploiting gullible people for power and money.

Speaking from christianity here, don't know much about others...

I have noticed that sometimes. But those are the really big ones that make a lot of noise. There are plenty of good churches who spend all their money on benefiting the community and the world, but they generally don't parade around that fact, so they generally go unnoticed.

You never hear random acts of kindness on the news, but you do hear corrupt scams alot.

[smirk]

The "God of the Gaps" is a fine thing to worship, in my opinion. 

I really hate to rain on peoples' parades, but the "God of the Gaps" is the worst thing to worship. We're always filling in those gaps with new information and knowledge. If you want to worship an ever-decreasing pocket of ignorance, that's fine by me, but you should know exactly what you're doing when you do so.

Huh. That'd be an interesting idea for a cult in a game or somesuch. An organization that pursues knowledge and discovery as a means to commit deicide. "They say that God lives and moves in the spaces between facts, in the places where reason fails. We will find those places, and we will map them, and slowly but surely, we will over-write God." It would feel just a bit like that one Arthur C. Clarke story.

[Rolan7]

The "God of the Gaps" is a fine thing to worship, in my opinion. 

I really hate to rain on peoples' parades, but the "God of the Gaps" is the worst thing to worship. We're always filling in those gaps with new information and knowledge. If you want to worship an ever-decreasing pocket of ignorance, that's fine by me, but you should know exactly what you're doing when you do so.

I disagree, it's the best thing.  IF you're going to worship or belief in something, which seems somewhat hardwired into the human mind, it should be something that recedes from scientific inquiry instead of getting in the way.

Most organized religion seems to me to be a way of exploiting gullible people for power and money.

Speaking from christianity here, don't know much about others...

I have noticed that sometimes. But those are the really big ones that make a lot of noise. There are plenty of good churches who spend all their money on benefiting the community and the world, but they generally don't parade around that fact, so they generally go unnoticed.

You never hear random acts of kindness on the news, but you do hear corrupt scams alot.

Eh... They do seek out controversy of course.  But when there's a disaster, or a happy fluff piece, most of the time some local citizen is thanking God.
Makes sense since most Americans are Christian, and I know I was nervous the one time I was on the news.  Humbling thanking God is a very natural reaction.  Still, statistically, I'd expect to have seen some other faiths represented.  Maybe they were but didn't feel inclined, or safe, to make that public on TV.

Okay okay also!  I am SUPER EXCITED because I just discovered a new ancient "heresy" that inspired Catharism!  But it was Orthodox!
Catharism is still by far my favorite kind of Christianity, eee...  Too bad they were all murdered.

Bogomilism!  Yeah ugly name, but it's Greek I guess.  Someone's name.
It's somewhat gnostic and, like Catharism, says that humanity was created by The Devil!  Though it seems to differ in the details.  In Bogomilism, God seems to be somewhat neutral.  He created Satan then helped Satan create humanity, then later created Christ who saved humanity.  Satan apparently orchestrated the Crucifixion, and... well... Catholicism :/  Dualism is strange and fascinating, with my Baptist background.

Also like Catharism, it focuses on self-purification to foil Satan.  Actually avoiding sin instead of accepting it as inevitable and seeking forgiveness.  That is VERY interesting to me.  I'm not seeing anything about the Cathar reincarnation cycle, though.  Not sure what their afterlife concept was.

Mostly just sharing a bit of religious history I found fascinating.  But also...  Catharism makes way more sense to me than any modern Christianity, and that includes the super vague ones like Unitarianism.  Though I have personal problems with infinite forgiveness, I guess.

[Frumple]

Eh... re the corruption stuff, it's pretty well known in the states (and elsewhere, but I'm more familiar with 'em) that the church circuit is one of the biggest fraud et al markets in existence*. There's pretty much no setting easier to exploit for an experienced (or not) scam artist, and even just petty/incidental stuff (the sort of thing that's like workers unintentionally walking off with the occasional pen, which costs companies a fair amount on the net) racks up the dosh over time and area.

And from what we know most of it we don't actually hear much about so far as news and whatnot goes -- it's kept in house, brushed under rugs, ignored or rationalized by the congregation, played well enough no one notices until the next priest comes in (that may only happen after the last one dies of old age :V) and sees the numbers off... the list just kinda' goes on. The big stuff that makes the news is barely a ping on the proverbial radar so far as organized religion related exploitation goes. It takes something particularly nasty to break down how little people are willing to suspect, or even just double check, priests or fellow members of the congregation. There's all sorts of less nasty that happily putters along with barely anyone noticing outside the specific church, if that.

... and that's not even touching all the shit related to taxes and law and whatnot. Seriously not touching, both because it pisses me seven different kinds of off and it's been a year or three since I brushed up on the current state of things.

*Forget the numbers for the US specifically, but I've seen estimates upwards 50 billion annually lost to internal crime in churches worldwide... and even the lower bounds are tens of billions, just less tens (mid to upper 30s instead of 50 or up). The kicker to notice there is that's more than churches worldwide spend on missionary work. Religions may not primarily be there to exploit people for power and money but it's a really damn good environment to do so.

[saigo]

Catharism is still by far my favorite kind of Christianity, eee...  Too bad they were all murdered.

The modern incarnation of it is called Calvinism, if I recall.

[Arx]

Preeetty sure Calvinism is a completely different thing to Catharism.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

Not even remotely similar.

[Rolan7]

I sometimes joke with my friends about the similarity (that God is a dick), but yeah they're pretty different.

Calvinists believe in predestination, so God is kinda directly responsible for everything.  But they still seek his forgiveness, and he'll grant it if asked.  But some people are never going to be saved.  Otherwise it's pretty standard Christianity.

Cathars believe that the Gods of the two Testaments are different entities.  The Old one, aka Satan, created the world and that's why life sucks.  The New one created Heaven and wants to help people get there.  But they're weighed down by sin, so they'll keep *reincarnating* here in Satan's world... Hell.  To break free, they need to make a strict pledge of purity and then keep it until death.  This can be done on a deathbed, but some people lived this way for years - these so-called "Perfects" were basically priests, and they were both men and women who remained pure.

I just think it does a good job of explaining why the Old Testament God acts so... different from the New.  I don't think the Cathars agreed with the Catholic Church about which books belong in the Bible, though.  It doesn't quite work from a literal reading of the KJV.