Is there a Chewers vs Spirituality/religions thing going on here?

Maybe, but I think it's close.

What do you mean when you say "universal spirituality"? I'm not being difficult, I seriously don't know.

Okay. Do you think atheists are less able to have respect for life or beliefs?

To answer your question: Yes, most of us are aetheists/agnostics and a bunch of us find the idea of God laughable.

Me, the only thing I believe in is non-violence, but it's not founded in much.

I just don't like the hatred/lack of tolerance that goes on (not just here, it goes on everywhere) from believers/non-believers. As for myself, I do believe in Jesus and according to many here that makes me a fool.

I don't follow a religion. Honestly? I think religion is ridiculous and is a joke. I'm all for people wanting to believe in a religion. If they want to set themselves up for a huge disappointment that's fine. I just find it hard to believe in something that's so rude to other human beings. Christians and the whole anti-gay movement. I'm aware it's not all of them but doesn't Islam follow the same teachings? I could be wrong.

How can you say "Love and respect everyone! Except if you're gay! Then I hope you get AIDS and go to hell!" The fuck? And how can you believe in something and trust it so much when Priests go around on a daily basis molesting young boys and destroying their lives? Or Nuns abusing children. How is that the "teachings of God"?

And the whole respect and love each other bullshit but if you're an Atheist I hope you get raped by the AIDS infected gay people and burn in hell together!

Religion makes no sense to me and it just seems like a huge waste of time. Plus I don't want some fake book telling me how to run my life and if I screw up once, well fuck it, I'm going to hell!

But like I said, if you want to believe in a religion that's fine with me. But don't ever try and tell me I'm going to hell because I don't follow suit. And don't ever try and push your beliefs on me. If I want to join a religion I will seek one out that suits me. Which would never happen.

Now maybe I'm wrong, but I have a feeling Brendan doesn't quite get the general thrust of religion.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ok2oJgsGR6c

This is long (skip the first four minutes of intro), but if you have some time to spare on a Friday night, I'd recommend it more than anything else on this topic. It's Sam Harris speaking at an atheist conference last year, but he's not reiterating the same old arguments we've heard before.

I've called myself an agnostic since I was old enough to define the word, but every year my general tolerance level ebbs and I find myself listing towards atheism. I don't know why this is exactly.

Very well put and my feelings exactly.

It's just a shame there are so many vocal assholes giving all together decent religious people a bad name.

The way I view it, why do some people (and I must stress this; SOME people) seem to think that in order to have faith, they have to give up all common fucking sense?

I'm Roman Catholic and I actually was a sort of pseudo believer and was uncomfortable with my faith in my early teens. Later in senior high I joined the a local youth group and started a journey to discover my faith and became fascinated by the writings of Saint Augustine and a bit here and there from Aquina's Summa Theologica.

At one point I even considered joining the priesthood.

I was fortunate to have a very good evangelical friend, that was my way of knowing more about evangelicals and fundamentalist Christianity, this made me learn more about my own faith and even though some of the Churches I had attended would probably be scandalized if they knew I was Catholic ... I appreciated learning more about them and knowing the differences and similarities in our beliefs.

I think this message board tends to have a lot more people who don't really follow or believe in organized religion, and there are some very vocal atheists here. Unfortunately often discussions about religion that could be interesting turn out to be just people mocking other's beliefs and turn out to be wasted opportunities to learn from each other.

Still, once in a while there are some good discussions, and I love talking to atheists that have a Christian fundamentalist understanding of Christianity. I don't have a good name for them ... but fundamentalist or evangelical atheism sounds about right :-)

I wish there were more Muslims and Hindus and people from other faiths participating on the boards too, to learn more about those religions. More diversity in this area is welcome.

I used to live in Tulsa, Oklahoma and there's a pretty active base of practicing Muslims there. My dad worked at a church as a director of education and he was part of a program called Interfaith, or Faithlink, something along those lines. The program was designed to promote understanding and open communication between various faiths and denominations.

After 9/11, I actually had a few Muslims I knew, friends and strangers (mostly from the program), apologize to me for the actions of the terrorists. I told them it was inexcusable but that it certainly wasn't any fault of theirs. "Some people in our faith miss the point," one of them said. I told him that wasn't news and I joked about Christians who do things just as dumb (I'm Lutheran, if I didn't mention it already). One thing I remembered though was that he seemed genuinely surprised I could distinguish the difference between fundamentalism and a faith with good intentions. How sad is that? That Muslims feel the need to apologize to strangers for the actions of others who murder thousands of innocent people - that is very disheartening.

I acknowledge I have many doubts about my faith, my church, my denomination and basically the validity of it all. It's that college phase I guess, where I decide if this whole "believing in a god" thing is worth it. I'm way too liberal about everything that even I find the idea of a "God" laughable at times. However... there is good that comes out of it, and I know it, I'm just wrestling with it. But that's personal stuff and not something I feel the need to share. I'm just glad there can be intelligent conversations about things like this on the CHUD boards.

I'm an atheist for the simple reason that I don't see any compelling evidence for a being that is all powerful and all knowing. Extraordinary claims requiring extraordinary evidence, etc. I also don't buy the claim that religion is required for good behavior. There have been evil atheists (Stalin) good atheists (Sagan, Dawkins, Harris, etc), evil Christians (various popes, molesting priests, BTK killer, etc) and good examples of Christian morality (Jesus of course).

One of the reasons that many atheist seem militant is because they are, on a worldwide level a minority. Also religions tend to be run by very rich and powerful people who have made attempts to suppress any alternate view point. It tends to make one defensive.

Having said all of that, at work I sit next to a conservative Christian. She runs her church choir. She is also one of the kindest people I have ever met. She doesn't preach. She doesn't leave Biblical pamphlets everywhere. We have had one or two discussions about belief and at no time has she tried to push her way of thinking. What she does have is a host of health problems. Her faith helps her get through. I wouldn't take that away from her or mock something that is so important to her.

Daryll?

For what it's worth, I think the typical well-adjusted atheist (as distinguished from the asshole evangelist variety) has much more respect for life than the typical religious person, because the atheist doesn't believe in life after death: this right here is quite literally all the life we have.

Doesn't mean the atheist behaves better than the religious person. Just means the attitude behind the behavior is healthier. The religious person may do good works and try to help others, but it's with an eye to what that signifies for the next life. Whatever the atheist does or doesn't do, it's for its own sake, period.

I don't really agree with this, although I see where you are coming from. However, I think that's a gross generalization you just made there about charitable works.

I'll reuse it:

Well, yeah. Any time one discusses millions of people as a group instead of as individuals, one can't help but generalize. Is it true for every believer? Of course not; it's a generalization. Nevertheless, I do think it's more true than not on average.

Alley-Oop!

For the record - that's not really how it works. Good works never precede faith, through my understanding of the scriptures.

Of course, there's this church down the street that sends people to my door telling me how wrong I am about that aspect. They always try to put obnoxious anti-abortion signs in my yard, much to my dismay.

God is dead / Asleep at the bottom of the ocean / Burned in the ovens of Belsen / Gone like the Buddhas of Bamiyan

I'm sure you believe in that, but I have really not met a lot of Christians that help others just for or mainly to "get to heaven". I'm sure there's got to be a bunch of them out there, but I would tend to think that those types won't be the type of people that dedicate their lives to helping the poorest of the poor giving up the riches of the world. Having come from the "3rd world" I've met a lot of people like that, and none of them seemed to do it out of a sense of selfishness but of love.

Doctrinally it is more complicated, you'll see different emphasis and motivations on these things based on the whole faith vs works debate.

This is fine. (I mean, I could nitpick against the "energy changes state" thing, but whatev.)

It's when people try to use this as a reason for any specific religion that they become wrong (in a probabilistic sense). There's no reason to pick an answer just because you have a question.

I'm the child of a Lutheran minister. For some reason I've never really had much faith (I was the one who asked my dad in first or second grade if the angels could've just been hallucinations), but if I did it certainly would've been shattered by certain events of late.

Recently a faction of the congregation showed up at a church council meeting with a petition asking for two things: the regular church service at 8:00 a.m. to be restored, and for in so many words my father to get the hell out of Dodge. There've been combative elements to this church ever since we moved here. Here's the thing. The 8:00 service being discontinued is not my father's fault. It was a council decision. My father voted to keep it. By the end of the meeting after much fighting my father declared he'd be leaving at the end of the school year. Since then three council members have resigned, the bishop came and left in the span of an hour after this faction refused to let the council meeting he was attending go on until they were allowed to speak (The bishop told them he was here to speak to the council not to them, they would have to schedule their own block of time), and people are now to the point where they're offering to pay my dad off to leave immeadiately.

Yeah, to me there's a little too much bullshit in religion for me to find any spirituality in it. If you've got a church that works for you, and you find faith in it, fantastic. I would dare say I admire you. You can do what I can't. But based on my experiences, I wouldn't put much stock in there being a just and loving God behind all this bullshit.

You know, the point you're making here is the reason I find the Pauline/Augustinian/Lutheran doctrine so compelling. A lot of people these guys are downers because they basically say humans are essentially bad and nothing but the Grace of God sanctifies us. The kernel of optimism there is that they also stress that a person should live a life of selfless love even in the face that nothing they personally do "counts" towards your salvation. To me, these doctines are what makes Western Christianity Christ-like: Doing the good/just/right thing isn't the thing you should do because it gets you into Heaven but it's the thing to do because the act of doing good itself is the end of Christian life. That truly is a worldview worthy of the "suffering servant."

To address the main question of the thread, yeah, most of the people here seem to be non-believers but that doesn't necessarily lead to conflict. Death Surge may not care for Christianity but he doesn't seem to hold that against people as long as they're not anti-intellectual evangelicals. Harry Beanbag and people like me can find common ground in ripping on the lunatic fringe of the GOP. Graynadian and Chris Miller both can express dissenting viewpoints without being jerky about it and actually contribute charitably to the discussion in the process. And then there are even some Christians (from their posts, I'm guessing Frank Cobretti, teledork, ElCaptain, yours truly, eein, and Beth) and we don't agree 100% of the time or even most of the time.

The only person on the boards I've come across who is openly hostile towards people with a different viewpoint than his own simply because he happens to disagree with such viewpoints is Devin. However, his role as being the most insulting and classless asshole on the boards doesn't seem to be limited to the topic of religion (see also: daring to post things Devin doesn't personally think a person should discuss or like to discuss, posting threads touching on personal issues when they're not written by Devin, and not limiting your output to discussions dealing directly with films).

There are other Lutherans on these boards?!

Re: Collins
I think it's kind of deserved. There are people on both sides fueling the fire. Trust me, the people at some of the churches my dad's worked at have done far worse than movieme's.

Eh, I go to a Lutheran church and read the Bible regularly but quite a few people think I'm disqualified from counting as one because I'm slightly nuts and like women, liquor, and drugs. So, it might just be you. However, I do think I fit in nicely with a movement founded by an angry, beer swilling German who did thing like writing down all the things that bugged him about his society and publsihing it and marrying a runaway nun. . . save for the anti-semitism and psychppannycism. I like Jews and the concept of immediate judgment.)

Actually, if you're talking about Christians, the New Testament says specifically that good works won't get you into heaven. It's Judaism that has the whole living right thing, the 'new covenant' in Christ says that you get to heaven through faith and the grace of God alone. That being said, if you follow Christ's teachings, there is the fundamental "love your neighbor as your love yourself" rule, plus a lot of other things (depending on whether you go with things Christ personally said, the teachings of his followers, what Christ suggested everyone should do vs. what disciples should do, how literally to take parables, etc).

Now that certainly doesn't mean that Christians actually act Christ-like, which has always been my personal issue with organized religion. It tends to be very not-Christ-like.

I'm a sort of Quaker/Friend/Diest type, myself. I'm not sure there's necessarily a God and a heaven and all, but I do think that the more I know about the universe and living organisms, the more amazing it is that any of us or any of this exists and works.

I do think that because of the nature of this board and recent trends in this country there has been an increasing level of discontent with and scorn for the fundamentalist evangelical Protestant Christian stereotype (homophobic, anti-evolution, etc) on the boards. However, I also think that as much as the people who typify that negative stereotype are not really Christians and are deserving of some scorn, I also think that general derision towards all people who have any faith in anything is inappropriate.

Probably my favorite description of this comes from Sam Harris: that we are all atheists when it comes to Zeus, or the FSM, we are all atheists when it comes to all beliefs except the one or zero that we currently hold. An atheist and a Muslim both know what it's like to not believe in Judaism, a Christian and a Hindu both know what it's like to not believe in Scientology. It shouldn't be that much a mental leap to realize that a reasonable gentleman could disbelieve something that you hold on faith.

Most of us trust in something, too, though, and it shouldn't be that hard to imagine that a reasonable person might trust in something in which you might not personally rely, either.

Preacher's kid?

The more I think about my post the more I just want to clarify, I'm by no means anti-God. I was the one who broke down crying in the middle of a state-wide youth gathering a couple years ago and swore up and down that I would change my ways, I would stick to the straight and narrow. I think that kind of fell apart due at least in part to the junk I have to hear about going on behind the scenes. It could just be me though, it's hard to say. But like I said, I admire the people who can find a situation in which they are blessed with faith and spirituality, I just can't find one of those.

You can have faith and not stick to the straight and narrow, and stick to the straight and narrow and not have faith. I'm a pretty damn straight and narrow person, and I'm not very religious. And I think we all know "religious" people who are far from straight & narrow!

That's the point, though: he doesn't want to be "religious" with quotes.*

*I know you know.

Good point, that probably wasn't a very good choice of words. Sticking to the ways of the religion? Being a good Christian boy? Neither of those sound much better but that's what I was trying to get across.

I'm a DCE's kid, but it's close enough.

I've found that congregations just want a pastor/minister they can boss around. This past year has seen me still going to church on Sundays, but I have little patience for the people at our church now because of how ugly they are to each other and outsiders. It's politics and it's frustrating.

I understand where you're coming from. For me, I understand everything about the doctrine and I like it and all, it's just that ever since I was a kid the whole idea of a god seemed... well, silly. Imaginary. I've never "struggled with my faith" or "had a life-changing experience." It's just always been there. Is it a crutch? Probably. That's what I'm trying to reason out now, but at times it feels like I'm a kid trying to calculate how Santa delivers presents. Who knows.

I still hold the principles in pretty high esteem. But I'm exactly setting a good example with all this swearing, drinking and partying am I?

God help me If I'm ever going to be able to give up my love of all words profane. I'm not sure what any man of the cloth could change that.

Well, we still have our Lutheran potlucks.

You see, irony of all ironies, I'm a horrifically picky eater, and hot dish doesn't appeal to me. Just one of my many personal quirks.

I think a certain amount of shoulder chipage comes because there is at least the perception that if you're following a religious belief it's because you feel that that's the more moral way to live, and some athiests take that as a personal insult "Oh I don't believe in God so I'm not as good a person as you?". Most big reactions come from insecurites.

I guess there is a certain amount of passive judgement inherent in organised religion, but it's just as easily combated with not caring what other people think about you, than it is railing against it and getting angry about it.

Faith is a power and like any other power it can be used for good or bad depending on who's wielding it. I actually wish I had some faith, I don't, but I think it would nice.

Pot meet Kettle. Honestly, do you not see the logical contradiction in your statement?

How's this, I think most religious beliefs are not only absurd and false, but irresponsible. I have to question, especially in this day and age, whether or not there is such thing as "private" belief when our beliefs inform and influence actions that affect so many others. A belief in some kind of personal God fosters a sense that the world revolves around you in some way, and that this world, this planet was given to us or meant to be ours when the reality is that the universe is indifferent to whether we come or go and that we are the sole bearers of responsibility for our future.

The sooner everyone wakes up to this reality the sooner we can start demanding more from it.

In what way does having a personal God change whether or not we're responsible for the environment? If you are a member of a faith that believes in the book of Genesis, then you're supposed to be a careful steward of the earth.

Despite identifying myself as a Buddhist I do think there something to the words of Iris DeMent:

A-fucking-men, Andre. I'll say that I think Jesus, real or not, fantastic fucking idea/man/whatever the hell he is. But damn, if he's actually going to come down here, I think he's going to have a few words with his dipshit followers that'll put them rightly in their place.

I mean...what's so hard about "love one another"? That sounds like the easiest command in the history of the world.

Edit: I worship at the altar of CHUD, and pray to its Saints: Nick, Devin and Dellamorte (among many others).

Here's the thing that blows my mind: You don't have to believe in a god, a heaven, resurrection or anything unquantifiable in order to live your life according to Christian principles. You just have to, as mentioned above, love one another.

Though I would argue that such behavior is in fact really hard to maintain. Have some sympathy for the 'dipshit followers', eh Doc?

Oh, I suppose I do have some sympathy for them; maybe it's a kind of pity (I know some wonderful adherents to the tenants of Christianity), but I wonder why sympathy the All Knowing "JC" will have upon them. Oh sure, he probably won't cast them down, but I imagine having the end all, be all saddened and annoyed at the mockery you make of His words is death itself.

I believe in goodness, in the biological impulse of altruism. People who believe in God either do so in spite of the lack of evidence, or have been raised in an environment which prevents the concept of a godless world from being disseminated. If they have been exposed to rational refutations of irrational dieties, and choose to ignore them, there is not much to do about that. If they have never been presented with the rational alternative to theism, it is the moral thing to provide it for them.

That's what I think.