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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

[Kot]

You still need a real serious bsns pope with your own American Vatican.

[Egan_BW]

...Yeah, what does it even mean to catholic if you don't follow at lease one pope? If you're not going to follow the one in rome, I'd think that means you have to get a new one, or else be a filthy protestant. 

[penguinofhonor]

[TD1]

I dunno... the Protestant movement is based on reforming the outdated traditions (of course, by now, many of them have outdated traditions themselves), but simply having a change in leadership may not be enough to label you Protestant, if you keep the doctrine. Neo-Catholic, maybe? Essentially what King Henry tried to do - all the rules of the Catholic church, but no tax to Rome and no dirty old man telling him who to sleep with.

[TheBiggerFish]

Oh. That? Well, SA's a different question but stateside the schism was... decades ago. Or about as much as you're going to see, anyway. US catholics have been rejecting the authority of the pope and vatican for a long while now, to varying degrees based on specific denomination/region/congregation/etc.

And antichrist is always, everywhere. Now, tomorrow, yesterday. All over, no escape, unfortunately no svelte competence leading the world to an era of apparent peace either. Wish that would hurry up if it's comin', because this watered down antichrist crap got old years ago, probably even before I was born.

Yeah, there's incipient breakaways both ways.

[Descan]

obviously it should be called the Union Church in the same vein as the Anglican (Anglo) Church :V

[Gentlefish]

I love when threads become self-moderated.

Ahywho, might as well get a list post into the big three tonight eh?

Read an interesting take on the death of Jesus on the cross, absolving us of following the old ways of Leviticus and allowing Christians to practice freely so long they gave themselves to God. I liked that interpretation because it means it's wrong to hate gays and also lets Christians eat the "unclean" meats.

[Telgin]

Before I abandoned it altogether, that was more or less the way I was forced to believe.  Homosexuality was the thing that kind of killed it for me, since I wasn't willing to accept that God made people homosexual and then would toss them in Hell over it.  I never doubted that people were telling the truth when they said it wasn't a choice either.

Interestingly, I've since come to understand that the whole notion of being predisposed to sin has plenty of basis in Christianity already, so it wasn't much of an excuse.  After all, if God is willing to make someone an alcoholic then that's making someone predisposed to a sinful lifestyle that they arguably have little control over.  It's not quite the same thing, but generally the same idea.

I am kind of curious what it would mean to practice Christianity freely in that sense though.  Clearly you'd have to follow at least some of the rules.

[Frumple]

New covenant, yadda yadda. Homosexuality isn't necessarily in good shape from nixing the Leviticus et al stuff, since there's crap in the NT, too, but it's arguably better. Iirc it's a common interpretation but not necessarily the most theologically sound, though I can't quite recall why at the moment.

That said, hating other humans has pretty much always been explicitly contrary to the word of the new testament. Forget where but there's scripture quoted more than once in the thread. Lotta' folks can't really wrap their head around loving even the sinner, heh.

And sure, telg, you have to follow some of the rules but there's only two or three big ones and pretty much all of the minutia is of questionable relevance to 'em. Tends to be how folks not terribly interested in the shitty parts of the text rolls with things. One of the more fun interpretations I've seen occasionally is that much/most of the stuff in the texts themselves is a test. Stuff that's contrary or interferes with the big message (which basically boils down to love god, love your fellow man, treat both well) littered throughout and there to more or less see how well the people claiming to be faithful are actually paying attention. So hate gays, test to see if the message love got through. Stone XYZ, treat well. OT God, hell, maybe even that's a test to see whether you love god and its message enough to reject a presentation that's obviously against its loving nature. So on, so forth. Fun stuff. Heretical revisionist bullshit, more than anything, but the best kind of heretical revisionist bullshit, that's fun and seems to tend to produce some pretty decent folks.

[redwallzyl]

you could always be like me and take an anthropological and historical perspective on the bible and religion. basically the bible is both a record of oral and recorded history and a refection of cultural norms and traditions of the times it was written in as well as relating the events surrounding Jesus. anyone who thinks its somehow a literal and infallible relating of ultimate truth is fooling themselves. I'm to deep in history and anthropology to take any other position. i just understand what it is and find the the core of truth. also my vary typically human predisposition to spirituality for my mental health is also part of it. I'm fully aware of the psychological and evolutionary predisposition we have and how important it is to us mentally and as a hugely important part of human civilization. anyone who says humans will "grow out" of religion or that it is "bad for us" is woefully ignorant of how important and intrinsic to us it actually is.

[Gentlefish]

We're always going to need a "why" alongside the "how".

We know how things work? Great. Why do they work -that- way? Oh, we don't know and can't find out from experimentation? Let's look inward. I believe that religion is about introspection, and personally answering the whys for yourself. It's not so much about "how did the universe start?" That's almost irrelevant when you ask why, and why it's so big but we can only live on one planet (for now; we're about to transcend one-planet-ness). Religion, for me, really helps frame the universe and humanity together. Maybe that's why I'm a pagan; I like to know that there isn't one all-powerful and always-right diety. I like the idea that we're all under a group of personally flawed, but altogether whole group of beings that care for us and want to see us succeed and prosper.

[Frumple]

Eh, not really. It's not that that difficult to have a point that you can go, "Close enough," then accept an incomplete or fuzzy answer and stop worrying about it until notable reason to start again shows up.

We can find out well enough to get by through experimentation, and work out something near enough to knowing to keep things moving, and that's all you really need when it comes down to it. If even that much.

[Shadowlord]

We're always going to need a "why" alongside the "how".

We know how things work? Great. Why do they work -that- way? Oh, we don't know and can't find out from experimentation?
Let's look inward. I believe that religion is about introspection, and personally answering the whys for yourself. It's not so much about "how did the universe start?" That's almost irrelevant when you ask why, and why it's so big but we can only live on one planet (for now; we're about to transcend one-planet-ness). Religion, for me, really helps frame the universe and humanity together. Maybe that's why I'm a pagan; I like to know that there isn't one all-powerful and always-right diety. I like the idea that we're all under a group of personally flawed, but altogether whole group of beings that care for us and want to see us succeed and prosper.

One scientific theory to explain why things work -that- way is Everett's interpretation of quantum mechanics - aka the "many worlds" interpretation. There's nobody thinking these thoughts in the universes that don't produce intelligence, and we're all obviously in a single universe and can't see the others. That wouldn't explain where the multiverse came from, though.

[TD1]

We're always going to need a "why" alongside the "how".

We know how things work? Great. Why do they work -that- way? Oh, we don't know and can't find out from experimentation? Let's look inward. I believe that religion is about introspection, and personally answering the whys for yourself. It's not so much about "how did the universe start?" That's almost irrelevant when you ask why, and why it's so big but we can only live on one planet (for now; we're about to transcend one-planet-ness). Religion, for me, really helps frame the universe and humanity together. Maybe that's why I'm a pagan; I like to know that there isn't one all-powerful and always-right diety. I like the idea that we're all under a group of personally flawed, but altogether whole group of beings that care for us and want to see us succeed and prosper.

'Pagan' is a very general term, though, isn't it? Unless this is some new age definition or something, where a religion calling itself that has sprung up.

[ChairmanPoo]

"Pagan" is a term which Christians used to denominate non-Christians. It's pejorative, too - roughly analogous to "redneck"