Are you religious? Or pious?

[JANIRA]

Im more spiritual than religious. I have always been more intune with the spiritual. Im not keen on being part of a "Group" that tells my sins, and has me ostracized for being who i am. Im a firm beliver in God, the higher power, allah, dios, the creator ...to me its all the same. I belive in all that is good. In my house i have tons of artifacts statues from: Ganesha, buddha, african, Gods, yoruban saints., thailand goddesses etc.. I dont belive in one specific thing. I have always loved to read on different beliefs , deities, god and goddesess, . and their roles. Many peopel have that mind state that if they cant see, why belive it ? The point is not to see it, but to feel it..... within you.

[elo]

The 109th Sura of the Quran.

In the name of Allah most Benificent ever mreciful

Oh say unto the disbelivers
I do not worship what you worship.
You do not worship what I worship.
I will never worship what you worship.
You will never worship what I worship.
To you is your way and to me is mine.

It is my favorite chapter of the Quran. When I fist read it it made me cry. Certain other passages still do. I read the Quran and found it to be profoundly beautiful and logical for a religous book. That and the love of a boyfriend who was a Muslimm brought me to the Islam.

What was crucial for your decision to become a muslim,the words of the Quran or the love and caring of your boyfriend?Or was it a mix of it?If you don´t mind me asking.

[elo]

I couldn't imagine how people could be atheist. Even when I wasn't Christian and didn't know what to call myself, I still believed in God(s). God saved my life when I overdosed in 10th grade. God named me.

I think atheists are people who refuse to acknowledge their spiritual experiences as real. To me, they are more real than my physical experiences. Who defines what is real?

Some people just have a lot of barriers built up spiritually, just like there are people who are always uptight or frigid, for whatever reason. Some people have a lot of hangups around sex because they were raped as a kid. Other people have a lot of hangups around spirituality because they were spiritually raped as a kid. The solution is therapy, yes, but also sometimes substances.

Drugs are a beautiful thing. They can also be dangerous and so must be used with respect and caution. However, they can also be very beneficial. One of my former roommates was permanently uptight and I just really wanted to get her drunk or stoned so she could simply relax and say what she was always too afraid to say. To the atheists, I want to give mushrooms or acid because it'll make you let go of your spiritual hangups.

My favorite way to use mushrooms is in a tea mixed with yerba matte to keep me from drifting off (also, make sure you have an empty stomach). Get changed, relaxed, light a candle, and put on some ambient music (I do the same thing with white wine sometimes to relax) and just lie down on your bed or couch or whatever. Even better is to forgo the music and just go into a big park or the woods where you can be away from all the man-made things which demand our attention and closer to our natural state. I don't know how anyone could miss the spirituality there.

Use of drugs to become religious?Hallucinogen drugs don´t open your mind.They don´t have an mind expanding efect even if you have the impression.The do what the name says you get hallucinations.

[crayons]

(Debating whether I should respond to one of crayon's posts...)

how come you debated whether to respond to my post?

[Coroner]

I couldn't imagine how people could be atheist. Even when I wasn't Christian and didn't know what to call myself, I still believed in God(s). God saved my life when I overdosed in 10th grade. God named me.

I think atheists are people who refuse to acknowledge their spiritual experiences as real. To me, they are more real than my physical experiences. Who defines what is real?

Some people just have a lot of barriers built up spiritually, just like there are people who are always uptight or frigid, for whatever reason. Some people have a lot of hangups around sex because they were raped as a kid. Other people have a lot of hangups around spirituality because they were spiritually raped as a kid. The solution is therapy, yes, but also sometimes substances.

Drugs are a beautiful thing. They can also be dangerous and so must be used with respect and caution. However, they can also be very beneficial. One of my former roommates was permanently uptight and I just really wanted to get her drunk or stoned so she could simply relax and say what she was always too afraid to say. To the atheists, I want to give mushrooms or acid because it'll make you let go of your spiritual hangups.

My favorite way to use mushrooms is in a tea mixed with yerba matte to keep me from drifting off (also, make sure you have an empty stomach). Get changed, relaxed, light a candle, and put on some ambient music (I do the same thing with white wine sometimes to relax) and just lie down on your bed or couch or whatever. Even better is to forgo the music and just go into a big park or the woods where you can be away from all the man-made things which demand our attention and closer to our natural state. I don't know how anyone could miss the spirituality there.

Hi, Tgirlzoe. I don´t mean to attack you and there are points in your post I respect. I am an atheist and I think you don´t understand atheism at all. Atheism is not just opposite to Theism and is a wide term. Atheists don´t simply disbelieve the same way theists do believe. You believe that your spritiual experiences are real while atheists don´t believe there are spiritual experiences but to you, it´s the simple explanation and it satsifies you enough to go on with your life. I have my opinion about that but I do respect you. You said you survived an overdose. I´m glad you´re alive and hope you stay by health but what does make you believe that you´ve been saved by a supreme being you call god? It´s something I read very often stated by some lost Rock stars like Dave Gahan etc.....

Atheism is a part of rational thinking. My atheism is based on science and philosophy what I call rational thinking.

[hippifried]

Well I thought I saw Mescalito once after eating a half-dozen peyote buttons. Does that count as metaphysical?

Atheist. Unaffected by personal religious belief.

I can't call myself pious, because there's too many religious connotations in the common usage of the word.
I do call myself moral, because morality is religiously neutral.

Don't get me wrong. I love mythology, but I see it all as just that. I also lump most philosophy & a lot of science in there too. I've always considered piety & pomposity to be twigs off the same branch. Mumbo jumbo is mumbo jumbo & it makes no difference whether the doubletalk comes from a religious text, some blowhard philosopher, or some dude who thinks he can pinpoint the origin of the universe from some trace radiation that he could only explain by making up a big bang theory. I would never assume a deity just because I don't understand something. I would also never assume to be able to come up with answers to all questions with the limited tools of naked apes who are barely above scavenger status & still can't break free from a primitive fire culture.

More to come, maybe?...

[NeedBlackup]

I'm an atheist. I don't object to people with religious sentiments until they try to impose it on others, which is inevitable in most contexts. Religion isn't the source of every problem in the world, but it provides wicked people with the perfect excuse to oppress women, men, homosexuals, and anyone of differing political or religious ideology. This is apparent today in the Middle East where Muslim fascists murder each other over beliefs in invisible imams. It is apparent today as the fundamentalist Christian right wing stands in the way of stem cell research, the single most promising thread of research in biology today, and as the Catholic church stands against condoms in Africa, causing untold amounts of deaths from AIDS, and as nearly every major religious petitions against something as innocuous as gay marriage.

Spare me the preachings of the value of religious doctrine, please. You don't need to believe in nonsense or falsehoods to love your neighbor. In fact, I posit that the world would be a much worse place if most religious tenets were followed. How do you think US citizens would have reacted if our government, after the 9/11 attacks, said "You know what guys? I think we're just gonna turn the other cheek on this one. Jesus said to do that." It would have been an outrage even among the most hardcore fundamentalist Baptists.

Forgive me if I sound angry, because I am angry. I'm furious that the phrase "Well, my faith says that I should believe this way" can cause so much suffering to so many undeserving people. It's entirely acceptable in our society to stand against something as promising as stem cell research, which could potentially eliminate the suffering of burn victims and paraplegics everywhere, just because someone has some intangible predilection or ignorant tradition that tells them to believe so.

[trish]

None of us is in a position to deny the experiences of another. But when it comes to our own beliefs, we can only take our own experiences and the reports of others as evidence. I do not generally discount the testimony of others, or generally deny their experiences, but I do judge their veracity against my own experience. It’s the best any human being can do.

I happen to be an atheist. This doesn’t mean science is my god. Though I think the big-bang theory provides a viable account of the evolution and expansion of the cosmos, it does not explain why or even how the universe got here in the first place. Like everyone else, when I look up into the night sky, awash with the light of myriads of stars and galaxies, I’m dumbstruck with wonder and I find myself asking, “What the fuck is all this about?” I find neither science nor gods adequate to the question.

I’ve always had trouble with authority figures and so I’m not disposed to worship anything: otherwise I might be persuaded to sing the following reply to the 109th Sura.

In the name of mercy,
Oh say unto the believers
I do not worship what you worship.
You do not worship what I worship.
I will never worship what you worship.
You will never worship what I worship.
To you is your way and to me is mine.

Unfortunately non-believers don’t worship anything, and so what at first seemed to me to be a beautiful symmetrical sentiment, is not symmetric at all.

So instead I’ll be happy enough to sing:

In the name of mercy,
Say to the believers,
I do not find sufficient what you find sufficient.
You do not find sufficient what I find sufficient.
I will probably not ever be happy with your answers.
You will probably never be happy not having an answer.
To you is your way and to me is mine.

[trish]

Hippiefried exclaims,

Mumbo jumbo is mumbo jumbo & it makes no difference whether the doubletalk comes from … some dude who thinks he can pinpoint the origin of the universe from some trace radiation that he could only explain by making up a big bang theory.

As I’ve indicated above, the big bang theory doesn’t explain origin of the universe; however I would like to make clear the theory is not mumbo jumbo. The theory was christened the Big Bang by its opponents Bond and Hoyle in the earlier half of the twentieth century. Bond and Hoyle were proponents of the Steady State Theory. It’s unfortunate that the name stuck, because the theory does not pretend a giant explosion is sufficient explanation for the origin of the universe. Both the Steady State and the Big Bang theories are historical theories, not metaphysical theories. Both historical accounts attempt to maintain consistency with Hubble’s discovery that the universe is expanding and has been expanding for as far back as we can see. Both theories are formulated within the mathematical framework of general relativity in an attempt to make quantitative predictions. The trace radiation of which Hippiefried speaks is known as the cosmic background radiation (CBR). The Big Bang was not invented to account for the CBR. It happened the other way around. The Big Bang predicted the existence of a background radiation left over from the time when the cosmos was compressed into a small volume of space and consequently glowing with heat. George Gamow, using the mathematical formulation of the theory, predicted what the current temperature of that radiation should be. The discovery of the CBR with the predicted temperature was a quantitative triumph for the theory. Later measurements of the distribution of the wavelengths of that radiation also lined up with perfectly with the prediction of the Big Bang. Not only does the theory predict the exact nature of the CBR it predicts the abundances of the lighter elements and the distribution and formation of galaxies. It’s clear to all astrophysicists, astronomers and mathematicians that some version of the Big Bang theory is correct. It’s also clear to most who are not carried away with their enthusiasm, that there is nowhere contained within the formal theory an explanation for the existence of the universe, its purpose or lack thereof.

[hippifried]

I had a feeling that'd get a rise out of you, Trish.

Look. I understand the theories. I even understand most of the science behind them. I just don't buy it as proven fact. Too many assumptions. We have no idea how big the universe is, or even if it has such a limitation at all. We don't know our own position within it. There's this assumption floating around that Hubble's claim of discovery of the red shift proves expansion. Relative to what? We're moving, & we really don't know how fast or even in which direction relative to everything else. We can be pretty sure that the universe isn't static. I'm thinking that there's no reason expansion & contraction can't be happening simultaneously. Maybe everything's just moving around with no rhyme or reason to it at all. Or maybe we're just stuck in our own limitations in trying to figure all this out.

I think it's egotistical to say that any of us puny humans have the answers to questions of beginnings & endings. It just seems to me that we assume a beginning because we have an end. That's why we have religion. It explains our being finite while things around us were there when we showed on the scene & continue after our demise. Well, as far as we know. Matter changes form & moves around, but it doesn't cease to exist as far as anyone knows. Energy can be created & it dissipates, but it doesn't cease to exist as far as anyone knows. Hence the CBR. As far as we know, life is finite. But there's no evidence that anything else is. With no end, what makes anyone think there's a beginning? Even if the big bang theory pans out, how often does it happen. Just give me a ballpark, in relative time of course. I'm sure some professor has put a bank of grad students & computers on the problem, at somebody else's expense of course, in order to reach demigod status in the cult of astrophysics.

Sorry. There's just too many people claiming to have answers. Every time I hear one, I have more questions. Think that's a learned thing from being in Catholic school & having the priest come in for Q & A periodically? I guess the Devil's in the details.