How religious are *you* and how did you get there?

[Kaeb]

I only care about truth, in order to find truth there needs to be evidence for that truth, otherwise you're believing in something for no reason and without any evidence whatsoever.

I mean, what is the definition of faith? It is the belief in something without evidence, I'm sorry but that just won't do for me.

[HaloAssault]

I voted 7.

While I do believe in a God - although that is a relatively recent development, and arose from spending almost a quarter of my life so far in introspection on the matter - I am utterly unsure what form that takes. I am a member of no organised religion, and don't even have a clear idea of what I think of the God I have so recently found, or what I believe of him. I don't know if I believe in even basics tenets of most faiths, like heaven or hell, or that He actually loves us. I simply believe He exists in one form or another, and I do believe he directly influences the world in certain ways. I do pray relatively frequently.
I have many qualms about "organised" religion, and many of these have been cited in this thread. I am not keen on the influence various Churches have in politics and economics, and strongly believe these things should be kept separate.
Furthermore, I believe one's faith should be personal and individual, not simply adhering to something you would otherwise think wrong simply because it is written in the Bible. I, for one, am bisexual, and so I'm not going to adhere to the belief that being LGBT is a sin. I also support abortion, contraception, and many other things that are prohibited in various faiths. Prayer, as well, should be personalised - the words should be your own, from the mind God created for you, tailored to your deepest wants, fears, and emotions. I find things like mass-prayer defeat this.
I'm still developing my fledgling faith, however, and my opinions and belief are always open to change. I'll never be close-minded enough to disregard challenges to my beliefs, from any source, or I certainly hope not. I'm also not going to be disdainful to anyone for their beliefs unless they are harmful to others, and I'm definitely not going to try converting people when I'm not still entirely sure of my faith myself, and I wouldn't attempt to anyway - it is their right to decide for themselves.

How did I come to these conclusions? As I said above, a great deal of introspection. I've only recently turned 16, and I've been deliberating on this issue in earnest since I was about 11 or 12 years old. In the end, it was not logic or reasoning that led me to my -admittedly still fairly weak - faith, and no rationalisation was made. I simply came to the decision that I believed in a God. I was asked, one day, whether I did, and almost surprised myself by simply saying "yes" rather than saying I was not sure. That was really the key moment when I accepted that I did believe, for whatever reason.
In developing my faith, I have had an individual who is very close to me to guide and advise me. They've helped me in my understanding of the Christian faith - their own religion - and helped me to delve into my own moral values and beliefs, what I think of God, and so on and so forth. This development is ongoing, and I imagine it will be many, many years before I choose any definite religion for myself, and finalise my concepts of God, the Bible, and my views on the whole situation.

On the side-topic of evolution: I believe firmly in evolution. Whether God created original life or not, I believe that we have evolved naturally throughout millennia to become what we are today, as have other species.



Oh, my word, that is rather ineloquent and rambling, and doesn't convey everything I mean to say completely. I may well edit that later on.

[Shon Harris]

Like others, here comes your semi-solicited request for background:

I chose seven on the scale. When I was younger, around six, my parents drug me to church each Sunday. My babysitter lived next door, her younger sister was my age, and their father was the assistant pastor. All that meant that I was close to the family that organized and led a congregation of two-hundred. It also meant that I spent my Wednesdays, Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays in the church for preparation. We hosted a soup kitchen event each week and had to pick up the food donations, prepare it, and serve it. I was among those helping until age nine.

Being at the church so much fostered a lot of questions. The sort of question you'd expect from a pre-teen little boy like "When were the dinosaurs in the Bible?". More toward age ten-twelve, when we stopped attending the church, I began looking into demonology and eventually some of the books exempted/removed from canon. I asked about these but was shot down. Surely I didn't understand my questions, yet it mattered to me to hear why things were removed. Why would one of the original Apostles (Thomas) not be included when his entire book is simply a list of sayings by Yeshua (Jesus). It didn't make sense. Eventually, that started to isolate me. It didn't help I was the only one with a hint of colour.

Until last year I found myself at a constant struggle. I couldn't fathom how an all loving God could so painfully disown some of his children for their being homosexual, despite their great services to humanity and their faiths. That was hard for me, until I protested against Westboro Baptist Church. Seeing those crazed hate-mongers say what God apparently thinks definitely made a few things to clear to me. If God is incomprehensible, why would should I believe he solely cares what we put our dick into? The point is the intention, the moral-choice, what our conscience says and what we do according to it. Do we act out of lust, or out of deep, compassionate love? Moving on, when the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq broke out I heard tons upon tons of hate-speech toward Muslims and those more generally from the Middle East. Apparently we were bypassing the fact their god, Allah, Arabic for God, is said to claim Islam as a friend of the Jewish and Christian faiths. Abrahamic brothers with the same eye to salvation, the same general ideas, give or take. I couldn't understand again how we were mixing political and religious realms. Good, compassionate, and loving self-proclaimed Christians that I knew well were spitting poison to Muslims because our country couldn't handle an opposition force without first demonizing them. We had to feel they were a threat to a religion most of us barely understand today.

This was the state of mind I came to RPG with in 2009. Once I graduated from high school in 2010, earned my Associates in 2011, and transferred to a larger state school last year, things changed. My major is a mix of Fine Arts/Graphic Design with a minor in Art History. It's relevant to this monologue because any Art Historian worth their salt will see the enormous changes Judeo-Christianity and Islam have brought to image-making. I delved into a full-year, intensive study of Judeo-Christian scripture, canon and non-canon (including the Nag Hammad, original texts later edited into what we read today, etc.), Greco-Roman precursors (pictorial and philosophical), and Judeo-Christian image-making beginning in the 3rd Century. Broadly, we went up until the 17th Century, following the evolution of image-making to art, the religious meaning that evolved as well, and the connections, which sprouted throughout the world. My personal study emphasized on Early Judeo-Christian imagery and the Greco-Roman foundation from which it raised.

My studies forced me to ask hard questions as a Christian of any level. Most of our students began as Christians (i.e. Catholics, Protestant, Orthodox, etc.) and left, faded, or what have you, others belonged to other faiths such as Islam, Judaism, Baathist, Buddhist, Hindu, and some came as Christians somewhere on your scale. I am a Christian Universalist, finding the core of my faith in Judeo-Christian text, but looking to other faiths as true in so many regards. Even so, asking just what we expect from God is hard. Or what God is, if it even exists. The questions we asked forced me to decide if God acted in a human way, good or evil, spiteful, wrathful, happy and kind; or if God acted in a way beyond my human recognition. We read so much literature, and by the first two months Dante's Comedy. It meant looking beyond what scripture told us, individually, and into what others saw. A God who lived in giving love, and those who did not freely give love, instead holding it for themselves, were gluttonous and greedy. This started articulating what I expected from a deity.

Our studies pushed very deeply until the point where I found peace of mind in the thinking of some saints (including Buddha, actually, who is a canonized saint). God the Father, as Yeshua originally named him, is a very personal projection of a god. There's no covenant with a large people so much as it is a covenant with you, the individual, and you alone must nourish and struggle with it. Personal struggle, internal struggle, the meaning of Jihad actually, and Israel, which means 'to struggle with God', is what makes my faith. It's what should make everyone's. You cannot believe in my God in the way I do, because that's a personal relationship that's made of my struggles, my questions, my desperation to stay in line with my conscience on good moral decisions. I've had a lot of sex with a lot of partners, but this wouldn't be so bad if I really hurt people emotionally in doing so, if I didn't feel weighty guilt because I knew I was wronging people with what I was doing. My faith is based on those missteps, those learning experiences, and the face of God I interact with is based on that.

So, ultimately, if I were to try to 'convert' someone, it'd be fairly simple. I would tell them to do what felt right, what they could live with without guilt or internal strife, and to do their damnedest to make right anything they've done wrong. I'd say to pray if it helps, to meditate whether it does or doesn't, and to make sure to think hard on your decisions before and after you make them. Whether you believe you're accountable to a god, you will be accountable to yourself for the rest of your life, and to those around you and their possibly to descendants. That's it.

[HelloKitty]

I'm very spiritual/hippie, not religious, but I do believe in some aspects of what religious people have adopted into their religion. Sooo, I am at a scale on the 'religion' poll. c:

[Kadaeux]

I would say I'm a 6/10.

That religion being Pagan, how I came about it being hedge-betting.

If there is a god there are multiple gods, simple fact of existence, there isn't only one of anything, there isn't one human, one sun, one cat, one air particle etc. Logic dictates if there is one god, there is more than one.
This of course instantly disqualifies monotheistic religions as false, or at least, vastly incomplete. Most religions also qualify that refuse to believe ends up in purgatory or something equally bad. So believing in one set of multiple gods has a higher chance of being correct than believing in one god, and additionally potentially protects from any one of a number of hells.

As such monotheism must be wrong by simple logic.
And atheism has its potential downside if they're wrong.
Ergo the only logical thing to do is follow a non-monotheistic religion.

[Automatic]

I would say I'm a 6/10.

That religion being Pagan, how I came about it being hedge-betting.

If there is a god there are multiple gods, simple fact of existence, there isn't only one of anything, there isn't one human, one sun, one cat, one air particle etc. Logic dictates if there is one god, there is more than one.
This of course instantly disqualifies monotheistic religions as false, or at least, vastly incomplete. Most religions also qualify that refuse to believe ends up in purgatory or something equally bad. So believing in one set of multiple gods has a higher chance of being correct than believing in one god, and additionally potentially protects from any one of a number of hells.

As such monotheism must be wrong by simple logic.
And atheism has its potential downside if they're wrong.
Ergo the only logical thing to do is follow a non-monotheistic religion.

You should have gone for Hinduism, hundreds of gods

[Kadaeux]

You should have gone for Hinduism, hundreds of gods

Indeed, but Paganism is technically ....

pa·gan (pgn)
n.
1. An adherent of a polytheistic religion in antiquity, especially when viewed in contrast to an adherent of a monotheistic religion.
2. A Neopagan.
3. Offensive
a. One who has no religion.
b. An adherent of a religion other than Judaism, Christianity, or Islam.
4. A hedonist.

So if we take definition 1 (Highlighted above) then Hinduism is also counted, as are American Indian, South American, Australian Aboriginal etc


But to be specific, I follow the Norse and Celtic pantheons.

This, quite fortunately, allows me to use this argument against Jesus worshipping bible-thumpers.

[Automatic]

I always like the frost giant argument better.

[Kadaeux]

BEGIN COPY-PASTE

Clearly, the lack of ice giants is evidence Odin exists.

Let N = the evidence that there are no ice giants.
Let O = the hypothesis that Odin got rid of all the ice giants.

Pr(N|O) > Pr(N|~O)

If Odin exists, he would surely want to and be able get rid of the ice giants. So Pr(N|O) is 1. If Odin does not exist, there may be no ice giants due to some other cause, but ~O would not predict the non-existence of ice giants. Perhaps they would be improbable, but we at least must say that Pr(N|~O) is < 1. Thus, the lack of ice giants is good evidence for the existence of Odin.

Also, I have calculated the prior probability of a god's existence to be at least .5. But that's too much for a blog post comment. The point is that N, along with some other evidence I have discovered and given probabilities to, pushes it up to about .997. You can read all about it in my popular summary Was Odin God?

[Tasuke]

As such monotheism must be wrong by simple logic.

How convenient then that the Bible declares the Godhead to be comprised of two Beings.

See John 1:1 and understand the word translated "God" in the Creation account is a uniplural word like church, family, etc.; meaning more than one member. Which is why it says "Let Us...". It's further interesting to note that the Bible begins with a mistranslation of the Hebrew.

The beauty of someone knowing what they're talking about is something evaded by so many "pastors" that teach utter lies.

My intent here is not to begin any sort of debate. I simply felt compelled to address that.