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Author Topic: Religious people, make yourselves known!  (Read 64172 times)

Fieari

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Re: Religious people, make yourselves known!
« Reply #15 on: October 10, 2009, 04:47:44 pm »

I'm a Jew, practicing as a Ba'al Teshuvah, which is hebrew for "Master of Repentence".  That means I wasn't raised as a practising jew, but as an adult made a conscious decision to return to practise.  I'm attempting to be orthodox, but since there's so much to learn, I'm not quite there yet.  As far as my practise goes, I'm more observant than the Conservatives (who are in turn far more observant than Reform) yet not quite as observant as Orthodox.  I like to say I'm "Ultra Conservative" (as a riff on Ultra Orthodox).

As for which branch of Judaism?  I study chassidic literature and a bit of kabbalah (not Madonna's version, let me tell you!), and I go to a conservative synagogue/shul that consists of mostly Ashkenazi jews who tend to follow more Sephardic traditions and rules.

So, just slightly complicated.  Hehe.  I'm not even going to go into the branches of kabbalah I study and believe in, since it just makes people mad.  And I mean really really pissed off.
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LegoLord

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Re: Religious people, make yourselves known!
« Reply #16 on: October 10, 2009, 04:50:41 pm »

What I am I don't think there are particularly good terms to sum it up with.  I could probably spend awhile explaining details.

But basically, I'm what you get when you send a French Huguenot to a Catholic school for ten years and then introduce to the same sort of ideas that revitalized MLK, Jr.'s belief in Christianity (not everything in it should be taken literally). 

I believe that the myths of the bible are just that; myths - speculations on the pre-history of the world based on a religion (much like a lot of Ancient Greek philisophical ideas).  I also don't hold much credit for parts of the bible that go on about "burning heathens, heretics, etc.; those parts just seem like madmen and power-hungry maniacs trying to use religion to stir people up against some oppressive force (very common in days of the Roman Empire; many were hoping the Messiah would rally the Israeli people against Rome, and thus did not believe Jesus to be him).  The things that I believe are the word of God are the parts that show most care for the human race at large, a good example being most of the teachings of Jesus (and even then, they were still written by men - corruptable creatures, even the best of us).

And though I haven't read the whole bible myself (last paragraph should explain why), I've heard there is mention of dragons in the bible.  Having read Peter Dickinson's The Flight of Dragons, I find the idea of a mention of them in the bible interesting.  I keep meaning to look into it, but seriously, that book is huge.  Smaller copies frequently cause paper cuts from being so thin.  Flipping through it without direction sounds unwise ;D
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"Oh look there is a dragon my clothes might burn let me take them off and only wear steel plate."
And this is how tinned food was invented.
Alternately: The Brick Testament. It's a really fun look at what the bible would look like if interpreted literally. With Legos.
Just so I remember

Leafsnail

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Re: Religious people, make yourselves known!
« Reply #17 on: October 10, 2009, 04:54:19 pm »

Some people take the mentions of dragons in the bible as proof that humans and dinosaurs coexisted at some point.  I think it's just an extremely iconic and widespread mythical creature - some kind of lizard that sometimes has wings and sometimes breaths fire.
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LegoLord

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Re: Religious people, make yourselves known!
« Reply #18 on: October 10, 2009, 04:59:23 pm »

Oh, I don't believe that, per se.  But I've heard explanations for why dragons (presumably a type of dinosaur) might have existed, why the survived what the dinosaurs didn't, and other such things that are basically meant to be explanations for why dragons are such a widespread mythical thing.
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"Oh look there is a dragon my clothes might burn let me take them off and only wear steel plate."
And this is how tinned food was invented.
Alternately: The Brick Testament. It's a really fun look at what the bible would look like if interpreted literally. With Legos.
Just so I remember

Leafsnail

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Re: Religious people, make yourselves known!
« Reply #19 on: October 10, 2009, 05:03:02 pm »

The story could've just occured early on in human cultural history.
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Armok

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Re: Religious people, make yourselves known!
« Reply #20 on: October 10, 2009, 05:06:06 pm »

Atheist, transhumanist, I believe in mathematics and if I worship anything it is the universal Turing machine. Also, there is a tiny flavour of not-quite-sophilism and in subjectivity with from the treachery of images, and that the only thing you see is an image in your brain of an image on your retina on an image of photons traveling to your eye. That's not even scratching the surface, my rabbit hole goes a lot deeper than that, to places were true and false becomes meaningless and existence and non-existence are laughable concepts.

By the way, wouldn't a god by definition not have laughable concepts attached to it? SO why are people discussing if it exists or not? "exists" and "dosn't exist", as well as the trueness or falseness of statements, for example "there is a god" or "there is no god", would probably be obsolete far earlier than perfection of the kind religions talk about becomes possible. I believe a god don't "exist", but in the context of such thing it is way to fast a conclusion jumped that it would be relevant in the slightest.
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LegoLord

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Re: Religious people, make yourselves known!
« Reply #21 on: October 10, 2009, 05:14:35 pm »

The story could've just occured early on in human cultural history.
Aw . . . but that's boring . . . ;)
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"Oh look there is a dragon my clothes might burn let me take them off and only wear steel plate."
And this is how tinned food was invented.
Alternately: The Brick Testament. It's a really fun look at what the bible would look like if interpreted literally. With Legos.
Just so I remember

Footkerchief

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Re: Religious people, make yourselves known!
« Reply #22 on: October 10, 2009, 05:55:11 pm »

Apathetic agnostic, i.e. atheist with a quick answer to the "But that's just a faith too!" accusations.
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de5me7

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Re: Religious people, make yourselves known!
« Reply #23 on: October 10, 2009, 06:10:42 pm »

Christian

i dont really believe in classifying christians in to groups but outsiders would probably describe me as evangelical
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Gorjo MacGrymm

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Re: Religious people, make yourselves known!
« Reply #24 on: October 10, 2009, 06:13:36 pm »

a fallible follower of Christ.
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Tack

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Re: Religious people, make yourselves known!
« Reply #25 on: October 10, 2009, 06:23:00 pm »

I'm a Steevist. Which is a glorius cover to my agnosticism.

It's the idea of a perpetual 30-year old called "Steve" lives out the back of heaven in a flat, throwing parties and playing the Xbox-360 all day.

Of course, "Steve" is actually used as a subtle reminder to everyone that god it "Too good", and Satan is "Too evil", so there has to be a mediator between the two. Steve is that grey area. Steve is brothers to both of them, and lets god into the flat - if god gets over his OCD tendencies, But he hasn't let satan in ever since he invited the army of the damned to a party.

Basically - it's a way for people to attribute human personalities to an immortal, unexplainable being.
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Ioric Kittencuddler

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Re: Religious people, make yourselves known!
« Reply #26 on: October 10, 2009, 06:40:06 pm »

I don't know the label for what I am.  Some people might think of me as agnostic while others would think of me as an atheist, all that of course depends on their personal definitions of the words (I personally believe Agnostics are those that don't know there is a god, while Atheists are those who know there isn't one otherwise what's the point of having both words.). 

I don't have faith in any particular religion.  I believe that all religions were created by humans (men) in order to explain the world around them, and then people liked these stories so much that they decided they absolutely must be true.  Around the same time some other, cleverer guy realized that he could use peoples' faith in these stories to control them, and thus religion was born.

I the one thing I have faith in is good.
« Last Edit: October 10, 2009, 06:42:07 pm by Ioric Kittencuddler »
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Leafsnail

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Re: Religious people, make yourselves known!
« Reply #27 on: October 10, 2009, 06:43:25 pm »

You could call yourself a "Fairy Agnostic", or something similar.  The idea being that God isn't any more likely than, say, fairies.  This is the viewpoint most atheists (including myself) tend to take.
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Tack

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Re: Religious people, make yourselves known!
« Reply #28 on: October 10, 2009, 06:45:39 pm »

I tend to have the ideal of the invisible pink unicorn - having my mindset warped by russel's teapot.
I tell all christians to never read russel's teapot, if you don't want to question your faith.

It's amazing the amount of people who believe in the concept of "good". Be "good". Have niceness to people. For some reason, many of the corruptible and corrupted souls in this world wouldn't like that idea.
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Yeah, he's a banned spammer. Normally we'd delete this thread too, but people were having too much fun with it by the time we got here.

Emperor_Jonathan

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Re: Religious people, make yourselves known!
« Reply #29 on: October 10, 2009, 06:47:03 pm »

Tibetan Buddhist, specifically.
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