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I am religious and believe in free will

70 (27.6%)

I am religious and do not believe in free will

10 (3.9%)

I am not religious and believe in free will

113 (44.5%)

I am not religious and do not believe in free will

61 (24%)

Total Members Voted: 249

[Loud Whispers]

I'm not terrified of the wilderness like the open ocean or some far away tundra, but I also don't think it's terror or fear to respect that it can and will kill you quickly with irreverence despite its sheer beauty. But I share the sentiment - it is a shame to even try and make human ideals separate from every other natural cycle, as if to be apart from reality is its own virtue

[Frumple]

There's an inherent sort of hubris to that sentiment I think... the general belief that somehow what we do or the spaces we make is apart from nature, like the house or city is somehow fundamentally different in nature from the dam or burrow or mound.

Scope and effect, probably, but it's a very human arrogance to look at what we do and claim that we're apart from nature just because you're inside a high rise or something, as if that distinctly cleaves you from atmosphere pressures or tectonics or grasping roots or every tiny ecosystem, like walls magically stop pigeons from roosting on them or bugs from finding their way through life in the crawl ways. The city is nature just as much as the forest, just with different specifics.

... more self destructive than most forests, probably, but it's not like those don't have their equilibriums break down without our influence, too. For all we accelerate a great pile of things, fundamentally most of what we do just... isn't special, in the grand scheme of things.

[Superdorf]

Carrying over from the AmeriPol discussion... here's my two cents as a Christian college kid.

Any Christian church worth its salt places value on the church body as a source of knowledge, independent from Scripture. Without that backing, the Bible loses its staying power as a historic, moral, and theological framework: isolated interpretation begets distortion, however clever or zealous the person doing the interpreting may be. Sola scriptura doesn't work— it just leaves the reader combing Scripture for confirmations of their own personal/cultural proclivities.

Among the differences between Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant versions of the Bible, one of the most notable is that Catholic and Orthodox versions include books such as the Maccabees, which most Protestant versions don't include.

Note the interaction at play here. The church assembles the Bible!

[Rolan7]

That's a fine position - communities are very important, and I do appreciate how people come together to figure things out!  Religious communities can be as good as other kinds of communities.

I personally feel like true faith has to be an entirely personal thing.  No other person can teach you the ultimate truth.  "If you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him".

It's okay to believe one's parent's or community leaders about a great many things.  Cars: dangerous.  Red berries: don't eat.  But one's ultimate purpose... one's "role" in existence?  That cannot be given, even benignly.

And the structure of the universe must surely be either evident at a primal level, accessible through meditation - or simply beyond human understanding.  The idea that some individual received revelation and must be believed... it makes me upset.  Particularly after so many transcriptions and translations, and with countless competing assertions.

If there is divine revelation, it must be something anyone can access.

[delphonso]

Sola scriptura doesn't work— it just leaves the reader combing Scripture for confirmations of their own personal/cultural proclivities.

Particularly after so many transcriptions and translations, and with countless competing assertions.

This point is, I would guess, the reason many people raised Christian abandon the faith (as I did).
The Bible itself is a deeply complex collection of texts from multiple authors with different motivations in their writing. The Old Testament is written from the perspective of before the First Temple, but was certainly written after the Second Temple. There's even an argument to be made that the Old Testament is newer than some parts of the New Testament. To take it as a God-breathed document is to put hypocrisy in God's mouth.

[Superdorf]

It's okay to believe one's parent's or community leaders about a great many things.  Cars: dangerous.  Red berries: don't eat.  But one's ultimate purpose... one's "role" in existence?  That cannot be given, even benignly.

Therein's the rub, though: warnings like "cars: dangerous" are critical to the spiritual life!
If the "supernatural person" occupies an objective reality, it follows that the "supernatural person" can encounter objective perils to its well-being. Thus, preserving the soul safe and healthy becomes a real concern. Some people know more about the process than others. The pitfalls are documented.

This isn't to say the spiritual life isn't ultimately a personal journey! Rather, there's aspects of the journey that are much, much more easily walked with someone else clearing a path for you.

This point is, I would guess, the reason many people raised Christian abandon the faith (as I did).
The Bible itself is a deeply complex collection of texts from multiple authors with different motivations in their writing. The Old Testament is written from the perspective of before the First Temple, but was certainly written after the Second Temple. There's even an argument to be made that the Old Testament is newer than some parts of the New Testament. To take it as a God-breathed document is to put hypocrisy in God's mouth.

Another big reason the church becomes such an important interpretative body. You've got a bunch of fallible, human writers, saying a bunch of fallible, human things— God's there, but discerning the divine from the human is nigh-impossible alone.

The episcopal corpus acts as a standard against which the writing can be safely considered. It's not a perfect process by any means (bishops get it wrong too), but the existence of an ecclesiastic authority keeps the majority of the crazy away when well-exercised.

[Loud Whispers]

Carrying over from the AmeriPol discussion... here's my two cents as a Christian college kid.

Any Christian church worth its salt places value on the church body as a source of knowledge, independent from Scripture. Without that backing, the Bible loses its staying power as a historic, moral, and theological framework: isolated interpretation begets distortion, however clever or zealous the person doing the interpreting may be. Sola scriptura doesn't work— it just leaves the reader combing Scripture for confirmations of their own personal/cultural proclivities.

I agree, however it is also worth noting that having an institutional body of theologian-scholars also opens the door to serious gatekeeping of moral thought, which then introduces its own human pitfalls. It's how you end up with fatwahs and doctrines confirming local custom or prejudice as universal fact despite a lack of adequate reasoning or theological justification.

[MaxTheFox]

Honestly ideally there is a compromise between church and personal interpretation of scripture (though I personally lean towards the latter due to circumstances). Too much in one direction leads to problems. I did however pretty much completely get syncretism with other religions out of my system.

Before I converted to Christianity, I considered Islam and Buddhism. Decided neither resonated with me.

[Loud Whispers]

I considered Judaism, but I just didn't make the cut. Was too slow for Islam, they told me I had to go fast. Fancied giving Buddhism a spin, but realised I didn't desire it.

[Eschar]

I considered Judaism, but I just didn't make the cut. Was too slow for Islam, they told me I had to go fast. Fancied giving Buddhism a spin, but realised I didn't desire it.

took me a minute or two

[McTraveller]

Sola scriptura doesn't mean "you are free to interpret the Bible however you want" - it was a reaction to the perceived abuses of the institutional church that put heavy emphasis on the church powers.  Sola scriptura was an attempt to break that power held by the Religious Elite - to basically say, "scripture trumps human edict, where they are in conflict."

That said, I find the arguments about numerous translations and interpretations to be specious; the translations we have today - especially the Christian New Testament - withstand extreme secular scrutiny and the words on the page are as essentially what was written originally.  So there's no real argument about the words in the text, the only debate left is in the interpretation.

Most of the "offshoot" interpretations are, interestingly, from "independent" churches that don't have a central systematic method of teaching How to Interpret Ancient Texts. There's nothing particularly unique about interpreting the Bible compared to any other similarly-aged literature - it's just that people want to treat allegory as history or apocalyptic literature as literal events.  It's just bad form.  It's like if people in 1000 years got a copy of your corporate memo and tried to claim that it meant something that could not have made sense to you when it was written.

[MaxTheFox]

I did however pretty much completely get syncretism with other religions out of my system.

What I mean by this is that I basically believe that the Judeo-Christian God is the only god. All other supernatural beings that aren't related to Him that may exist (which I highly doubt) are demons who exist to mislead man, no matter how they may appear. I was conflicted on this, but even the early councils decided so. Gone are the days when I was an agnostic who leaned towards animism.

That said I don't care if you're Muslim, Buddhist, neo-pagan, new-age, universalist, whatever, you can believe whatever you want and I don't care as long as it's not being forced on me.

[Urist McScoopbeard]

I believe that either, A. reality is God's corpse and we are their dreams. I simply believe that, no matter what someone does, they are part of the gestalt thing that is all existence. Nothings predetermined or anything and people probably have free will. But no need to worry about death as we'll simply become part of the gestalt thing again--which we never stopped being. Rebirth? Reincarnation? IDK, maybe--but the corpse of God ain't gonna stop dreaming, that's for sure.

or B. we are all characters in the great cosmic comic book. Limited by the nature of our reality in pulling back the veil on another. I would assume in this case that there is a creator or creators, and we continue to exist because someone out there loves this narrative or collection of narratives. But even if they didn't, if we went out of print a thousand years ago and there is indeed a finite end to our reality. Would we know it? Could we? I dont think it really matters. As for free will, I'm sure some things were predetermined and others left up to 5th dimensional authors who wrote us to come up with on the spot. It was someone's free will, and even if it is set in stone for all of eternity it was spontaneous that first time--which is what we are living.

[wierd]

My personal take on the abrahamic prototypic god, goes a bit like this:

Many worlds is true.

All humans are sinners, because all humans have branched world trees where they have done every kind of sin imaginable.

The limited humans in each terminal branch of their world tree, are each oblivious to the billions of iterations of themselves that exist-- but from the POV of god, they are all "That one human."

God, such as it is, is not "active."  It is entirely passive, as it represents the sum total of all world trees, in a condition of superposition. It is thus all things, and also, fundementally excluded from any individual world tree. (EG, you can look in every micro-angstrom of your iteration of the universe, and never find it.)  Any actions it may have chosen to undertake, were undertaken at the moment the initial flash of the universe was initiated, as this being has perfect knowledge of the total wave-function of the universe, and thus, this is the only time it actually NEEDS to be active.

When people die, and are judged, the many branches of their world-tree are superimposed, to composite their true being. This true being is then judged.


Why approach it this way? 

The bible is very consistent in asserting that those that are selected, will be able to understand god, because they will be like him/it.  This fundamentally then, requires that humans become similar beings-- eg, ones that are gestalt superbeings of all the possible manifestations of themselves.

I view that this interpretation satisfies all the necessary checkboxes in the literature, while being "plausible" (if taken with a lot of salt) from current cosmological interpretations-- but again, requires Copenhagen to be wrong, and Many Worlds to be true.

[Magmacube_tr]

I am, well, nothing in particular. I am not a theist or and atheist. Calling me an antitheistic apatheist will suffice, for defining my stance in (or vehemently against) in the topic of religion.

Don't get me wrong. I don't have hate for ones that may believe. I understand, in the end, all can be true, and all can be false.

It's the very concept of religion that I have hatred for. lt neither stems from a trauma, nor is it an actual rebellion even if I refer it to as. Let me elaborate.

We humans love validation. Validation with, as, because and for anything, or nothing in particular. We seek it everywhere. And our minds have specifically evolved to seek things even before our hairy ancestors descended from their ever shrinking pockets of jungle trees eons ago. And the brain that supports this mind has become so good with time and positive feedback at seeking and finding patterns for validation that it detects them even when they are not actually there.

So our ancestors looked upon their surroundings, came up with many ideas right and wrong, which then clustered into stories and charaters, which then got combined with both what they did, and how they did things, and formed the first religions.

Then the lowly and savage tribes became the first civilisations and competition rose, for humans were still savage as they are now. These humans too saw patterns in their circumstances too. But different ones due to their different world. The simple tradition became reinforced into unquestionability, first with a leader, then all the more ideas and stories. They became so large and capable that they were less like patterns now, but entire worldviews that each new generation of humans was introduced into. Of course the children accepted it wholeheartedly, they too inherited the overdeveloped ability to see non-existent patterns.

So things became more and more complicated. Competiton rose. Soon, the weaker and less complex of these clusters of patterns began to be absorbed or straight-out eradicated by the more agressive ones. Leading to a more competitive environment. Ancestral teachings of fruitfulness evolved into demands for more soldiers and baby makers that will make those. Little aesops and sayings got mixed and bastardised and became the ramblings of a non-existent, divine commander who saw nothing but shed blood, assert his dominance and conquer. We know his name.

From the Bronze Age Collapse, and the inherent savagery of the Middle East, came what we today observe as The Abrahamic Triad. Them and their one and only, jealous god, Yahweh. Allah, Jehovah, and as he likes to pompously call himself "God". The most infamous of patterns.

He was the ultimate validation to pillage and conquer for the Isrealites. He was the ultimate validation for slavers to justify what they did. He was the ultimate validation that sunk the Europe into The Dark Ages. The list goes on.

It really does not matters what these patterns are called. They all come from the same little cranny in the human mind. It wouldn't be a problem if they stayed there. But no, all they do is to expand until all the person can see is themselves.

What gives them the right to exist? These contagious, abominable clusters of thought have existed and plagued us. What did they granted us in return. They internally validated our actions for us when we wanted, which only made them stronger for the next generation until they became inescapable.

I hate them. I hate all of them in the basis of their very nature. It does not matters what elaborate stories, legends and tradition they have been vowen from. It is all just means for its spread.

Parasites they are. They are pathetic, for to have substance, to merely exist, they need you. Your attention, your time, your praise, your obedience. And they take it with threats of shunning, of death, of eternal suffering.

Memetic hazards, all of 'em! Cognitohazards, all of 'em! These are primordial filth. They do not deserve their existence. Let them die. Let their corpses rot in the form of ruined temples and molded scripts. Let them be forgotten. Let them ever never be remembered.

Do not listen to them. The feeling of validation they give you only plants them into your mind more.

Tldr: Religions are products of our minds seeing patterns where there is none, and gods are Pattern Screamers. They exist because we want justification for things we do and believe, and are inherently parasitic in nature. I hate them because of this.

Tldr2: Religions are cringy memes.