What are your religious beliefs?

[Mighty Oracle]

I didn't see anything in the rules about controversial topics such as religion and politics being disallowed here, but if I somehow managed to overlook such a rule, please promptly delete this topic. However, I have faith in all of you that you'll keep it civil (not sure how a survey could turn into a flamefest anyway, but whatever).

Since I'm very interested in religion, and didn't see a topic like this here, I thought I'd start one up.

As the topic title asks, what are your religious beliefs?

Myself, I have no religious beliefs. I'm a weak atheist, who adheres strongly to moralism. The term "moralist" is a very broad and often ambiguous term, however, so allow me to clarify what I mean when I label myself as a "moralist". Basically, I believe that all humans are instilled with an intrinsic moral code, with permanent and unchangeable morals, such as do not kill, do not harm others, etc. (obviously though, there are exceptions to this rule, such as if, hypothetically, a serial killer were to break into your home and start bludgeoning and subsequently raping your wife) These morals cannot be eliminated, only ignored, in cases such as the one I describe above with the serial killer.

[D_guy10]

You could say I prefer to stick to morals and call it a day too.
I can't really call myself an atheist though, because I do believe in God, to put it another way, and pardon the double negative, I can't NOT believe in a higher power, some of the shit that has happened in my life just force me to believe in God, to sum things up.

That said, I don't roll with a gang... I mean religion, actually I think they're synonyms, you get what I'm saying.

[warrior21]

I'd describe myself as believing in Buddhism, but not particularly practicing it. I generally find that religion is a hindrance to society, or as Karl Marx put it "an opiate of the masses".

I especially disagree with any of the specific religions that originate from Jerusalem. I believe all organized religion loses its message to a majority of the population and that a strong minority uses religion to silently oppress society into doing its bidding. That's my controversial view.

Atheist, Buddhist, or just Secularist those are the labels I choose.

[Ranpalan]

Such a rule used to be  in place, but it seems it has since been removed. EDIT: It is still listen in the introduction section rules.

I quite enjoy making up as many theories and models as I possibly can, which has rather lead me to being sceptical, at best, to whatever others try to teach me. If a deity was proven to exist, I would likely settle for maltheism (i.e. hating the gods), but the likeliness seems low. I generally dislike religions originating from the Bible, but purely due to the silliness of the book, and I have nothing against (most) of it's followers.

Your idea of morals (which I'd call instincts) is quite close to what I have, except that I'd add "if everything went well" to it. Any of these could morals/instincts could be lost or missed due to significant events (brain damage, genetic defect, traumatic experience, etc.).

[Mighty Oracle]

You could say I prefer to stick to morals and call it a day too.

Not really, because then subjective morality comes into the picture, of which I am in strong opposition.

[D_guy10]

What do you mean 'subjective'?

[Mighty Oracle]

What do you mean 'subjective'?

Relative to the person. In other words, what one considers immoral, another could well consider moral. Morality has only as much value as you give it.

Like I said, I strongly oppose subjective morality, as I feel it to be rather detestable

[hashish]

Only reason im replying to this thread is coz, I come back from the pub and notified people in a chatroom of my intoxicated status. Thats important because they thought I was disadvantaged and that my arguments would fail when they challeneged my faith. I just spent the last 3/4 hours making EPIC WIN! 

Maybe i'll get a lot of haters.
You could say, I'm a weak evangelical christ-fag, who adheres strongly to my own beliefs.

Roughly this means:

I believe in a 7 day creation.
I believe the Bible is the written word of God, through various men from various places, compiled.
I believe in original sin, that the first man sinned once for all mankind to suffer, and that Jesus (perfect God in man) was the antidote to that.
I believe Jesus died and came back to life three days later, and in doing so, paid the price for everyones sin past present and future. Because of this, if anyone believes it with an honest heart and repents of their sin, when they are judged before God in heaven when they die, God will look at Jesus' perfect life account instead of their personal one, and they will be accepted into an eternal life in heaven.

I believe that that is all that is required to gain eternal life in heaven, after death.
I believe by Gods grace we are saved through faith, not of our own works.
I believe there is NOTHING you can do to save yourself.
(no catholic rosary, no muslim prayers, no jewish tithes or money offerings, nothing.)

I believe in not only a powerful all-sustaining creator God, I believe in a personal God that is also a friend that sticks closer than any brother.

I believe I should try to help reach everyone everywhere as much as I can to spread the word.

I believe there are more people who arnt "christians" who think they know everything (or a lot) about "chrisitanity", than there are droplets of water in the sea.
Anyone who wants to ask me questions are very welcome, please do so in a personal message or something.

[EDIT:]
Up until now my karma has never changed, after this post someone decided to give me a bad mark, quite surprising I must say.

[anathema]

I'm an apathetic agnostic.  (Who CARES if there's a divine force, It never actively does anything for us if it does exist)

I also follow the philosophy of the Tao. 

[redeker]

I'm an atheist. I don't believe in God or any gods/goddesses. I'm more of a science guy.

[FallenStar]

I removed the non-controversial topic rule some time ago, B.u.S., when TaintedLove, Doom_Guard, and... er... Chang... all raised rather valid points for allowing such discussion.

Therefore, I am not going to hunt... er... wabbits. After all, it's duck season and that damn dog o'mine is gonna laugh at me if I don't hit the damn duck.   

[Mighty Oracle]

I believe in a 7 day creation.

I will honor my word and keep this thread respectful, so please don't take this to mean that I'm trying to be condescending or act intellectually superior, because such is not the case. You'll just have to trust me on that.

Anyway, how can you adhere to a literal seven day creation, as described in Genesis, when there is vast amounts of scientific data in support of evolution, of which a mere seven days does not allow for?

[D_guy10]

I get your point now Oracle. What I don't get is how we can all, or simpler still, just the both of us (who adhere to a moral code) make sure it's the same exact code, that is to say that we see eye to eye on everything.

I mean, just like you said in your first post if someone is hurting a loved one of mine, yes, I'll take swift action to stop them, outside of that I also believe it's wrong to personally take someone else's life or harm them just because. So there we go, we're on the same page on that, but I don't know what your views on same sex marriage are, or abortion for that matter, not that I'm asking 'cause we'd need separate threads to go over most of the controversial aspects of life. Should you want to exchange views though, just send me a private message. It's only by learning how other people see the world that I get to keep an open mind.

Back to my point, I can understand your hatred towards subjective morality. It's stupid and the ramifications of it is a complete disaster to fathom, however the intrinsic moral code you speak of isn't written anywhere, not that I know of anyway, so although we consider ourselves moralists, aren't we bound to see each other as subjective moralists from where we're standing?

[anathema]

If humans have an intrinsic moral code common to all of us it is to  Survive, multiply and protect that which is important to you, in that order. I don't think it can be something as structured as "thou shalt not kill" or "strive to be a good person" if it's going to be a constant throughout humanity.

You say there are always exceptions for why one would not follow an intrinsic morality, but I would argue that the exceptions are signs that the basic model is wrong.

With the 'survive, multiply, and protect what is important to you' model you have an intrinsic moral code that can be followed by all humans both "good" and "evil" and not require exceptions to the rules.

[Pustuilo]

I'm an apathetic agnostic.  (Who CARES if there's a divine force, It never actively does anything for us if it does exist)

I also follow the philosophy of the Tao.

I'm more or less what he said. I could hardly care less if there's a divine god. If there is such an omnipowerful being he's either a sadist asshole or forgot about us, so why bother worrying about it?