Free Thinker...

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Sort of the same for me except for me being Sikh.
And in addition to not really practising Sikhism, I haven't been through the Amrit ceremony (where you become a full-fledged Sikh; it can be compared to baptism).

Former Southern Baptist.

Happily Atheist now. Secular Humanism is by far the most complete and inclusive mode of life that I have seen so far.

~~Dos

Church of England Christian, raised by a CoE mother and atheist father, and taught that whatever I choose to believe it is ok. I spent sometime in my teenage years exploring other religions, but was drawn back to Christianity and my faith is stronger that it would have been had I not strayed.

Personally, I don't care what other people choose to believe in as long as they don't stop me from believing in God.

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The pen is mightier than the sword...and considerably easier to write with.

Well, my mother tried to raise as a baptist when I young. My father steals tid bits from nearly every religion practiced in the region where we live. He believes in God however. As I got older I realized I'm not a big believer or rather I prefer not to be branded because I think it limits my happiness. In my life, happiness is all the rage. I told my mother and she basically said, "As long as you believe in God, it's okay."

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I like my men androgynous.
I like my women androgynous.

I'm a Hindu. I have like millions of Gods. My views on the contrary are not so diversified. I'm ready to accept or believe in a heavenly being, infact i do believe in the presence of a god. Its healthy for the mind for a little belief. But what i don't like is the idol worship of gods and all the shit activities ppl do in his name. If god exists, it exists within us. There is no need to look outside, instead we should look into our minds, thats where we will ever find nirvana.

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@beingJyotirmoy
- a dreamer

If you plan to read this, read it carefully and do not skim, because it will just make this thread longer when I have to quote this post over and over again and explain it otherwise. It's soft of a wall of text, but bear with me, I do count myself as a pretty entertaining writer, not like some researcher, at least that is what I've always been graded for.

I believe in the possibility of an insignificant, indifferent, immature god.
It might have the power of a cheese grater or slightly less, maybe a bit more, probably less. The whole concept of religion and belief to me is about ignorance and I am not very ignorant. Some religions are more ignorant, some less so, religions that are very specific being the more ignorant ones and the religions that don't say anything exact are less ignorant, as they give more space for error and thus have a higher chance at being right when it comes to probability, but the whole point is that you are right and other religious beliefs aren't as right, that is why you follow a specific religion if you follow any, because it is right. You wouldn't follow it if you knew it were wrong. Religions tend to have very specific practices too, just proves how right people think their religion is so there is very little agnostic characteristics in most religions. It's all about knowing what god or gods want and knowing how they want you to pay respect to them and thus about being right about some religious truths. As I said, there are very little agnostic characteristics, so you can't really speak of believing, it's all about truth, because you are most often certain, that is why you wear some weird hat, cut your dick or have a bushy beard.

If you believe in a mystic entity by taking influences all around, then you're just building your own god, which is a context made by you and shaped by you, which would leave you as the driving force of the belief and stronger than the deity you believe in. You might think that there's a seed of truth to all religions and thus making a potpourri out of those leads to a good one, but it does not work that way, just like remixing 5 different radio hits does not necessarily make the best song.
Religions might exist side by side without bothering each other or practice ecumenism and all that, but they still believe in different things, making the other thing wrong, even if they won't say it. Religions can diverge so much that they can't be differing takes of something, they can be fundamentally different, like being monotheistic or polytheistic, gods being very humane or superhuman, even inhuman. Those things are polar opposites that leave very little to interpretation.

Questioning other views, but not yours is biased. Before you ask me to question mine, I have halfheartedly questioned my own, as I already had a very good reason to doubt to begin with, I see very little reason to search again, it is just so blatantly obvious. Being a very observant person I have very little to doubt with my reasoning. I spend hours a day thinking about things that baffle 16-year-olds. This specific topic, probably around 50 or so this year, not a very intriguing topic, so I won't really spend more than that. There are too many religions out there for you to score the right one. For every deity you don't worship, there are millions you don't. Most of those have completely different ceremonies for praising than the god you worship, some might even find those insulting. Probability being that you never will and by using logic, none of those religions can disprove each other, which itself is a paradox. And paradoxes do not exist in nature, there is a cause for everything we can perceive. Things are not partly true, because something being true means that it is true and there is nothing false to it. They don't exist on a metaphysical level. As for very witty people, like the this-statement-is-false-guys, self-referential propositions are the problem. It is, essentially, a linguistic difficulty with self-referential propositions that leads to statements which are ultimately meaningless, like posts that have the phrase "This statement is false". Though that is slightly far-fetched, but had to throw it out there before you scrap my thoughts with some half-assed logic.

Thus I have no definite religious beliefs. It is impossible to justify one and I take nothing granted without thinking it through. There might exist things of higher level than humans, though I am skeptical about things that aren't made of quarks. But I am certain that nobody can tell for certain what those things are, what the things people call gods are like and certainly they cannot tell what they think and want. The only basis are some books and there are thousands of holy books about different things which most claim that there are no other gods than the one/s in the said book. I don't aim to frantically disprove deities, I don't mind if any exist or not, but the likelihood of one is pretty low. I'm all for magic tricks and such too, but I think it is a disgrace for human intellect to think you know anything about deities. No need to get butt-ravaged, I must be wrong if you are right.

I'm a really lazy Christian although I'm Atheist now i guess. I used to go to Church every Sunday and say prayers before dinner but we just slowly fazed out of it... I never really believed in a God, since i think religion was created for people who wished there was some higher power out there that could help them.

Bump!

I follow Hinduism. Been so from birth, and though I question various practices and will never be a very avid devotee, I don't think I will ever switch religions or become an atheist.

Like SaikaTora said the thought of a higher power which could possibly help is the driving factor. It's nice and infinitely more happier to have some fragment of faith than none at all. After comparing various religons at a glance, I found Hinduism to be the best option for me.

I am a voracious reader and devour books. Similarly, I have also read tons of Indian myths, legends, scripts etc. I find the the practices, the traditions, the superstitions grounded to scientific facts. Hindus rever cows. They worship plants like Tulsi, Neem etc. Why do this? Because cows give us milk and the aforementioned plants have large medicinal benefits. People might kill these plants or animals needlessly. But if told that they are god's form on earth and they will incur his wrath on killing them, they are terrified and worship them, as they should. This is just a small example.

It is not without it's faults. Religions, as many other things, fall prey to evils and evolve over time. But, you can choose the parts you want to believe in. That is what I do.



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This by about 95%
But change We to I...

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Tournament Round 1
Round 2

I'm a Catholic. But I only go to church when I feel like it. And only pray when I remember to. My mother, a devout Catholic, accuses me of being an Atheist.

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Thanks to blueangel06661 for the stock!

Officially, it's Buddhist. In reality? Nothing. Not exactly Atheist, since I don't deny or support the existence of gods. I don't "believe" they exist, but, I don't deny it either. They may or may not exist but it's none of my business. The world goes round, and unless I ever encounter a supernatural being, they live their lives and I live mine. Whether or not they exist if not important. What IS important is that they should be interesting. Things like the Christian "God", I have absolutely 0 faith in. That simply cannot exist. Defies logic. More over, boring. On the other hand, I believe in many myths, including the Chinese, Greek, and those myths and gods and whatever born from some mangaka's head lol. That's not limited to gods too, I take the after-life/reincarnation as a given, hot vampires are definitely around, and I want to get reborn into a world with magic, etc. lol. They interest me, that's all that matters. Interesting stuff should exist, after all. I demand it.

I guess if you get to the bottom of it, I'm an Atheist. It hasn't been proven to me that supernatural beings exists, though it hasn't been proven to me that they don't, either.

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i am a muslimah~

That's agnostic XD

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Went from being Muslim to agnostic.
I guess what made me lose my faith was when I actually read up on it. For example it is said in heaven men will have at least two wives plus nymphs (hoors in arabic) to marry. Some may even have 70 wives and women will be okay with this because she will be the queen of her husbands nymphs. Plus many other things that I won't get into.....
Anyways not insulting any Muslims its just something that I don't agree with anymore. I still believe that if religion makes you do good things then it should be respected.

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