Church is the main source of my misery

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lol, gwynfryn!

ooh, no - i take everything seriously.

but each to their own.

except fundamentalists, of course, who should all be rounded up together and left to screech (or worse) at each other.

including pagan, wiccan and satanist fundies.

V.

p.s. astrology comes in handy if you have little theory of mind, i've found. works for me.

well theres the catch 22, because who created god? did humans create him?

As a religious person about that and you'll probably receive the reply, "you just have to have faith."

And to that I usually reply with one of my favorite Mark Twain quotes:

"Faith is believing what you know ain't so.."

And it's hard to find a religion which doesn't have faith as one of its cardinal virtues; coincidence?

I had very bad time in the 6th grade going to a Catholic school. It probably scarred me for life. To this day, when I think Catholic, I think evil. The principal of that school I think of as a demon. My parents sent me there, mistakenly thinking they would be more caring and understanding, they were sadly overenthusiastic about that idea. Sure they sent me to reading and writing labs, but they reacted harshly to my behavior and general learning difficulty. So to Hell with them!

Why is there something rather than nothing? Why do we exist as opposed to not existing at all?

Become an atheist, like me. Religion is only for some people...

I thought I would offer a website that I find intriguing and interesting and it makes sense to me.

We've all heard of Kabbalah, however we have only heard of Madonna's Kabbalah. There is the true Kabbalah out there. The teacher or Rabbi we study under presents Kabbalah as a Science, not a religion. It is a knowledge of the 6th sense. A sense that is beyond the material. It answer questions like, "Why are we here?", "What is the purpose in life?", etc. It tells how the creation of the material world occurred. This isn't paganism and it isn't Wicca or anything like that and it certainly isn't religion: In fact he just earned his Ph.D. in Philosophy and Kabbalah from Moscow University (which is supposed to be one of the most prestigious universities in the world). He is also a bio-medico-physicist, so he is a scientist by occupation.

Well, I'll point you all to the website and you can research for yourself. Whether you agree with it or think it's total crap, you might at least find something interesting.

Every article, book, video lessons etc. are absolutely free with no strings.

This happened to be my one of my obsessions for a long time, just thought I would share. It helps make sense of the world for me personally.

www.kabbalah.info

Tallgirl

Hmm, very interesting. I wanna read more about that.

I have experienced the same thing as you, tom. I used to talk to this "popular" Christian girl all the time in church, then when we ended up going to the same school together I went over to say hello and she pretended she didn't know me.

You usually find that these people aren't actually Christians, they pretend to be to please their parents, and are usually forced to go to church by them (or they just see it as somewhere else that they can be popular).

Now that I'm slightly older I've found another group of people who are actually nice (and some are even geeky like me). So there are nice Christians out there, you just have to wade through the crap to find them.

hmm. . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .


Interesting. . . . . . . .

::mind shifts gears::
::clutch slips, gears grind and crashing noise is heard:: d**m!
yeah thats what I found at my methodist church, all the guys and gals were forced to go into sunday school/youth group and they would basically pass out from boredom. I would be arguing with the teacher about theology while this was happening, so I rather enjoyed sunday school.

Youth group was almost the same, except the leader Matt would bring snacks (<~~~almost wrote that as snakes, lol) for everyone and we would attract a lot of people by having food. The reason we never grew was b/c Matt was a hardcore calvinist and would fill the entire session with his "sermons" on reformed theology, and of course, I would argue/comment with him the entire night about reformed theology. Ah, those were the days. . . .free food and great theology. . .

I did go to another youth group at one of the more charismatic churches (a nazerene church, I believe) where everyone was going to it to be "popular". The only reason I went was to see one of my "friends" and to argue more theology with the pastors (of which there were many, as it was a large church). There was no food, but lots of Hot Babes so I became a pretty regular attendee . The sesssion was basically a giant group sing, a little bit of sermonizing (less than 10 minutes) and then we would normally break off into small groups for a more personal chat about whatever was on our minds, temptations and the like.

What I found in these groups was that most of these people saw god as a being to give them something they needed or wanted. And they would pratter on about how pious they or someone else was when the dirty old man across the street offered them free crack (this was a suburb) and how they were so upset their bf/gf had left them and how God had reconized the infinate emotional danger they were in and saved them by-you guessed it, leading them into the arms of their current bf/gf. It stank.

my "conversion" to agnosticism (is that even a word?) came when I realized that the ontonolgical arguement (in a nutshell here; if there is something, something must have been the cause of it) did not necessarily mean the revealation of god was from GOD or that He was god by default.

sorry if i ranted too much

Christianity and church aren't really AS friendly.

I hate all the church goers I know, ther'e all rich, stuck up twats!

I'll second that. As much as I like theology, I can barely stand a worship service. . . . .except when I do powerpoint. I still attend church although I am agnostic b/c it is a good source of scholarship money and an excellent place to start looking for jobs, in my experience. Does that make me a moocher?

Sometimes it's tough not to let religion get in between you and your relationship with God...or between you and your spirituality, but it seems to be the people that are the problem in this situation, which is why we all need faith based principles to help us treat each other better.

?

What do you mean by better? better is such a subjective word. . .

I realize this is potentailly violite ground for me to walk, but why do we *need* faith-based principles to treat people better?

I am sure you've heard from others on all the wars religion causes. . .are you refering to religous faith or to strictly personal faith in a greater being than yourself?

I don't *see* what faith has to do with treating people better. . . could you explain some more?