The big question, what religion are you?

The thread question.

And Atheism is no religion. It has no rites or rituals, no superior being above any human, no preachers/priests/mullahs/gurus/monks/etc. etc.
You can call it a belief, but not all beliefs are religions.
I believe that there is more than one planet in the universe hosting intelligent life: does that belief make up a religion?

man is not god, there is no god

man is not god, there is no god

Well that’s just not true, and you should no better than that since you know me from this forum. :D

very well, agentsmith, if you are god, than smite me.

very well, agentsmith, if you are god, than smite me.

muttering If he only could…. ;) :D

Seriously, I have a question for you Janus; why should God pay any attention to the smiting requests of someone who doesn’t even believe God exists, just to prove he does?

its to bad he doesnt. :lol:

I voted none of the above. While the styles differ, fundamentally I don’t see a significant difference between these two. There are differences between various Protestant groups that are greater than the differences between Catholics and what I would consider the average Protestant faith.

Perhaps Christian should have been one of the choices?

God doesn’t damn or smite people off the hammer for no reason… it is not in the bible… That is why I do not exactly like calling myself fom a “religion”… because “religion” as in the word denotes the Beliefs of man about God… And I believe in the bible not a mans belief(although I might have been introduced to it or had it explained to me from man)…

A god is:

God

1. A being conceived as the perfect, omnipotent, omniscient originator and ruler of the universe, the principal object of faith and worship in monotheistic religions.
2. The force, effect, or a manifestation or aspect of this being.
3. A being of supernatural powers or attributes, believed in and worshiped by a people, especially a male deity thought to control some part of nature or reality.
4. An image of a supernatural being; an idol.
5. One that is worshiped, idealized, or followed: Money was their god.
6. A very handsome man.
7. A powerful ruler or despot.

Your god is what you serve… you have to serve something in all areas of life… and sometimes that is yourself… so therefore you are your own god… and if I look back at the definition of Religion:

1a. Belief in and reverence for a supernatural power or powers regarded as creator and governor of the universe.
4. A cause, principle, or activity pursued with zeal or conscientious devotion.

In my belief you are a spiritual being and have power(dominion over the earth…) so therefore a god(small) and can be a religiously worshipped being…

GG

wargaming_nut, im just being an ass

Yes, I know, I just felt like asking that question of anyone who cared to answer 8) .

the fact is, i dont see any reason why to believe in a god. i see more reason not to, than to try to come up with elaborate, complicated ideas such as gods to say that “its part of his grand scheme”. which if it is true, turns god into some kind of sick voyeur, giving us “free will” and letting us duke it out, but then he has a plan for us. its like we are his video game (again, playing the devils advocate to say he exists)

I’d like to discuss with you again Janus, simply as a philosophical debate; if you want, we could PM it, so we don’t get booted for spamming ;).

leave it to CC and yanny to decide, better to make it public so others can offer input

Fine by me.

So, correct me if I’m wrong, but you find it more likely that an unexplainable explosion billions and billions of years ago created all the matter in the universe, which, through the course of more billions of years, coalesced into the various galaxies, which then, through the course of a few more million (or billion, take your pick) years formed stars, planets, asteroids, etc., etc., and one of them happened to have the exact right conditions to suddenly develop life, which then evolved through another few million years into us? This is assuming, of course, that you don’t think we were planted here by aliens, which I know you’re too intelligent to believe 8)

Have you noticed one thing interesting about evolution? It presents a theory which would be considered ludicrous if it was said to have taken place over the course of, say, a month, but if you spread it out over the course of a billion billion years, it suddenly becomes not just valid, but likely. Doesn’t make a lot of sense to me…

Why not add communism? It seeks to replace God with the State.

Oh and I am an Eastern Orthodox Christian. When I was growing up we called it “Russian Orthodox” since the Family was of Russian extraction-

F_alk didn’t we cover this subject last summer?

We probably did….
which means i spent way too much time here on the board :D

For WN… shakes my head
Let me just drop a few natural laws which seem to be valid, and some names of researchers that do work you might want to look up yourself.
For explaining why the universe is this and not other:
-General relativity (a good starting point ot explain the nature of gravity)
-Quantum Chromo Dynamics aka high energy physics aka particle physics(to explain why stars and planets exist and how they work).

Of couse: If (some of) the natural constants where different from what they are, our universe would have collapsed already, or stars could not have started fusion etc.
You could claim that god set these values to where they are, then i claim that god needed 10^34578902345893 attempts to create this universe and is a rather stupid bugger that he had to try so often.

For life on this planet:
Chemist Uwe Meierhenrich, University of Bremen.
found 6 different di-amino acids on the Murchinson meteorite (on a sample of one gramm), who is known to contain 80 amino acids
See his article in the “Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences” (PNAS).
Chemist Matthew Pasek, University of Arizona in Tucson.
found phosphor in a meteorite, in a molecule similar to the phosphates of ATP. Offering an explanation how the earth’s scarcity of phosphor could have been overcome to allow life to spread: having a belt of asteroids in your solar system could be a necessity for your solar system to develop a decent spread of life.
See the proceedings of the conference of the American Chemical Society in Philadelphia.

first: evolution makes perfect sense to me. consider the unique adaptations certain species of animals have. the scientific explanation, evolution, is completely reasonable. within a species, there will be certain mutations, or abnormalities in the offspring every so often, which of course we can see in humans (midgets), and other animals (three legged dogs). some will be useful abnormalities, others will not. if the one which is useful helps the animal to survive better than the others, then it will breed more, the others will breed less, and eventually the population will “evolve” into the new breed of the animal, better adapted to its enviroment.

second: while the scientific approach to the origins of the universe, life, and all the other mysteries is certainly not simple, it is far less complicated than explaining everything away with a god. god may seem like a cover-all explanation, but really, it raises important questions of why and how, as well as mysteriously introducing a being that is apparently all-powerful, timeless, omniscient, and existed before “he” created everything. far more complex when you actually look at it. also, with science, the things we conjecture and discover are empirical. we can, in time, do experiments and tests to observe their validity, and decide upon or change our reasons based on the results. things can be effectively “proven” to the extent that it is logically and mathematically incontrivertible, unlike god, which requires a leap of faith alone. even if you say you have “proof” or an experience of god, it is only proof to you, based on your faith. you claiming to have felt god’s presence cannot convince me, and is certainly no proof.

third: imagine if other things were based on faith. the criminal justice system. “well, i have no proof that you killed him, but i have faith that you did, and i feel it in my spirit that you are the one, so therefore, guilty!”
that would obviously be no good.

By the way, since “Satan Worshipper” was brought up… I’d like to quote the bible.

Revelation 2:9

I know thy works, and tribulation, and poverty, (but thou art rich), and I know blasphemy of them which they say are Jews, and are not, but they are the synagogue of Satan

So you may be able to combine two categories there :)

(not to be anti-Jewish)

janus, evolution is 100% idiocy, created by idiots that dont want to beleive that god exists even though the proof is there. evolution is not a theory, its an unconfirmed hypothesis, with absouloutly no proof, i would think someone like you would need proof.