What are your thoughts about religion?

Hi @KnoLte,

The question you ask, can only be answered by yourself. I can not do that for you.

However I know I had struggles too, so what I will tell you might help get you a little perspective.

I don't believe in religion. I think that people who are in religion rather believe in stories than the real truth.

For example I was talking to a guy recently, he was totally into religion you could tell. But all the time he was talking in cryptic-like words. I had to find out what he was telling by reframing his words. "Being busy with women" meant he was addicted to pmo and ho's.

I've been to a church for one year, and there I experienced the same with the people who talked to me. Always talking about things that didn't came out of them, but was sent from Him or God.

Only one or two people there talked the truth.

So I'm not against religion. And I think everyone should do what they think is good for them. I'm just against how religion gets wrongly interpreted many times.

I think it can help for some people. And for some people it won't. Like I said, I can't answer that question what will do it for you, only you can.

But if you expect to find the holy grail, than after a while you will start looking again . Because there is no holy grail.

Good luck on your journey my friend!

 

Oh god, not again. This topic periodically appears here (just search for some older posts!) Religious people will argue, atheist people will argue and no results will be brought and nobody will be persuaded because each will think he is right and the other is wrong.

 

What matters is the Gospel. False religion will still make you hell bound.

 

Religion is immensely helpful for me. Believing that there is a creator, that he has a path he wants me to follow, that he cares for me deeply, and that he wants to help me get where I need to be motivate me to be a good person and to never stop improving myself.

This thread is going to devolve really fast as Justinx mentioned, so you may want to just unfollow it before the ugliness really gets going.

My (admittedly biased) opinion is that you should look into the Catholic church. It catches a lot of shit, and plenty of it is deserved, but it is still one of, if not the oldest Christian religion. There are 2000 years worth of theological and philosophical development within it, and there are beginner friendly programs like RCIA (Right of Christian Initiation for Adults) that you can attend to learn more about it before making any commitments. You can also start online with short youtube videos from people like Father Mike Schmitz. Even a lot of Protestant Christians and Atheists like this guy, and his videos are pretty short.




You can find a church near you with hours etc. using this website
https://masstimes.org/

I'm happy to respond to any questions in a PM, but I will not respond to anyone but the OP on this thread.

 

My good sir. What is this 'religion' you speak of? I've heard of this 'philosophy' and simply understand it as thinking. Rigorously and systematically and in the world rather than just in one's own head...but to make it easy, its the pursuit of knowledge and the practical application of that knowledge in virtuous ways. Wisdom I've heard it said. But please do help me to think alongside you by telling me what you mean by 'religion'?

 

Your life philosophy is a very individual journey. I grew up in a very religious community and there wasn’t really any options presented to me except Christianity. I struggle with this a lot and it never quite made sense to me.

After taking philosophy classes in college and studying philosophy on my own I became an atheist. I find I miss certain things about religion and it does make life hard when you don’t have a concrete belief in something that can take your problems away or make you feel like the world is more fair than you think in some ways.

It’s still a journey for me. A lot of self help and 12 step things say to give your probelms to god. Recently I’ve been practicing giving my problems to the tree in my front yard.

It’s a bit of a mind trick (as is the god idea in my opinion) but it has been fairly successful at reducing my stress.

Overall I’m 3 times happier not believing in god than I was trying to believe in something that never made sense to me. But it’s a personal journey for everyone.

 

You are correct. It was created for political control and power to the ruling kings, church, etc. And money as well. The Catholic Church is worth billions.

 

A few things:

• Those aren't mutually exclusive. There are 2 aspects to any faith, political divisions or value system regardless if secular or religion:
  (1) It's fundamental core. Meaning if you take away how people practice it and look at it itself, what does it actually posit and introduce
  (2) The sociological element of it, meaning how do people practice it:
  • So in that case you can have a system that is supposed to bring answers but can also be used to control people. Catholicism and paganism was introduced to bring meaning but was used to control the lower classes and to protect the higher classes from revolt.
    
  • In the end, all good things can turn bad when they are institutionalised because it loses its fundamental purpose and so even good things can evolve into bad things over time.
• In order to ascertain whether or not a religion or any value-system regardless of its source or type contains answers will depend on many factors:
  • the nature of your questions and the motivation behind your questions i.e. if you are asking not for the sake of intellectual honesty but just to be skeptic like Dawkins and the like, then there are no answers except the ones that you want to hear and have already decided upon
  • the internal consistency of that philosophy/religion/perspective/value system: meaning, are there contradictions that are unsolvable? is there a unified source for that perspective? for example a lot of christianity is borrowed from pagan culture, but Greek philosophy like Platonic or Aristotle or multiple authors that agree with each other are still considered a unified source because it is based on a unified premise and that is clear logic and observation should be the guide to perspective. To what degree is the main body of the perspective through human-intervention? and from aspects of human intervention, under what guide or premise did they introduce or interpret concepts?
  • Then there is plausibility and believability/reliability of the narrative. For example, religions rely heavily on revelation, is that revelation believable? are the witnesses to that revelation reliable and trustworthy? Does the new reality or perspectives brought about from that revelation truly possible.
• I believe religion does impact the NF experience in one specific manner. Guilt. religion makes you believe that the thing that you are doing is wrong. It may drive you to greater depression and into addiction faster as well (sort of like a double edge sword) but you still feel that it is wrong to do that. It may not prevent you from doing it altogether because PA is not a rationally decided affliction it's reactive, emotional and neurological. But it would drive a person to trying to fix it, perhaps more than others. The others reasons cited on this forum for reasons to quit are more along the lines of disgusted with oneself and that they want be attractive to women and whatnot. Others because they got caught by partners.

 

Religion is man-centered. Theology is God-centered.

 

In a way yes. Theology is the attempt at divining the nature of God; lit. study of God. Religion is about a codification of that understanding that influences our actions and our societal and communal construct or the application of obligations resulting from interactions with a deity or deity like entity. But religion can be both as well depending on how it is presented and who is presenting it