Religion Poll

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Strongly atheist. But I like many aspects of paganism, since nature worship makes more sense that deity worship, nature is infront of you and you can see it and hear it etc and it also does awesome and amazing things like evolution.

I'm an atheist, but my family is Christian (protestants). I was raised in Christianity, but somehow religion just never made sense to me and I found it all too unrealistic and hard to believe and when I asked questions about the things I found illogical or confusing, nobody could answer. So I was always skeptical. Then the older I got and the more I learned and the better I understood things, the stronger my doubts and disbelief became.

I was raised differently from different parents. My grandparents on my father's side are penicostal (scary, I might add) My birth father is penicostal and very conservative. But, him and my mom split when I was a kid. She is methodist and (other) and my step father was a lapsed catholic. Because my mom and my stepfather could not agree on a church... we just did not go. So I set out on a spiritual journey at the age of 20 when I went to college. First I tried catholic since my boyfriend at the time was catholic...but a very ill behaved one. Then in the middle of my lessons about a month later, my birth father comes back into my life and he told me I was nuts for going catholic and that I should be penicostal. So I tried that on for size, but the instability of the religion mostly, "you lose your salvation if you sin after your saved...so everytime you sin, you must be saved again" was a crazy maker. I started viewing God as dogmatic and some evil father wanting to wup my butt. Anyway, shortly after that, I joined a cult..which lead to a psychotic break 1 and half years later. The realization that it was a cult was a very traumatic one and I began my quest for what I believe in my heart to be true. I found that religions should be inclusive rather than exclusive and I tried multi-faiths of native american spirituality, wicca, and buddhism and some gnostic christianity. Right now, I am mostly buddhist with the exception of a belief in a divine spirit which is like the christian God but much less dogmatic, more personal...and universal to all religions and incorperates renicarnation. I Guess you can say that I am unitarian universalist with a strong lean towards buddhism or Buddhist with a belief in God. My friend says that there is a spirituality that moves beyond religion since religion is just the kindergarden of faith...he seems to think that I moved beyond religion.

Anyway I could not vote on buddhism and other...so I chose buddhism. I think buddhism is a great religion though since it is an inclusive religion and it has a big emphasis on peace and goodwill and I love the practice of mindfulness, it is a life saver.
The only thing that I dont understand about buddhism is nirvanna. I know that the whole goal but I think I will stick with the mental exterizes for its mind strengthening effects. Reincarnation just makes sense though since all life on earth and the universe is one big spiral cycle...why would our spirits be linear?

Anyway that is how I got here.

I was raised differently from different parents. My grandparents on my father's side are penicostal (scary, I might add) My birth father is penicostal and very conservative. But, him and my mom split when I was a kid. She is methodist and (other) and my step father was a lapsed catholic. Because my mom and my stepfather could not agree on a church... we just did not go. So I set out on a spiritual journey at the age of 20 when I went to college. First I tried catholic since my boyfriend at the time was catholic...but a very ill behaved one. Then in the middle of my lessons about a month later, my birth father comes back into my life and he told me I was nuts for going catholic and that I should be penicostal. So I tried that on for size, but the instability of the religion mostly, "you lose your salvation if you sin after your saved...so everytime you sin, you must be saved again" was a crazy maker. I started viewing God as dogmatic and some evil father wanting to wup my butt. Anyway, shortly after that, I joined a cult..which lead to a psychotic break 1 and half years later. The realization that it was a cult was a very traumatic one and I began my quest for what I believe in my heart to be true. I found that religions should be inclusive rather than exclusive and I tried multi-faiths of native american spirituality, wicca, and buddhism and some gnostic christianity. Right now, I am mostly buddhist with the exception of a belief in a divine spirit which is like the christian God but much less dogmatic, more personal...and universal to all religions and incorperates renicarnation. I Guess you can say that I am unitarian universalist with a strong lean towards buddhism or Buddhist with a belief in God. My friend says that there is a spirituality that moves beyond religion since religion is just the kindergarden of faith...he seems to think that I moved beyond religion.

Anyway I could not vote on buddhism and other...so I chose buddhism. I think buddhism is a great religion though since it is an inclusive religion and it has a big emphasis on peace and goodwill and I love the practice of mindfulness, it is a life saver.
The only thing that I dont understand about buddhism is nirvanna. I know that the whole goal but I think I will stick with the mental exterizes for its mind strengthening effects. Reincarnation just makes sense though since all life on earth and the universe is one big spiral cycle...why would our spirits be linear?

Anyway that is how I got here.

sorry double post

I'm a Christian.

I don't agree with your conclusions, but I definitely relate!

I also consider myself, as you put it, "neurologically incapable of faith". Having said that, I also consider myself a Protestant Christian. Seems like a contradiction, right?

Actually, it isn't. I think the strongest faith comes from evidence and fact, and not by trying to convince yourself into believing something that doesn't make sense. I don't blame you (and believe me, I usually blame people for everything) for rejecting religion if your first experience with faith was being raised Catholic.

I have a very close friend (and no, this isn't me disguised as a friend) who was raised in very similar circumstances. She eventually left the church as a young adult and was an agnostic for many years. She investigated many different faiths, particularly Taoism, which she said seemed to have a base in the reality of how the world works. The last thing she wanted to investigate was Christianity. Been there, done that. In the end, she was persuaded to check out a good church from a Protestant denomination. She has now been a strong Christian for over twenty years!

I would strongly encourage you to investigate another Christian group. If people from one church act like jerks, try another one (jerk-ness respects no boundaries). Some Protestant churches have a kind of analytical spirit that you might like, if I read you correctly. Anyway, I hope that you do some extra research on this one; you won't regret it.

I am a Christian

Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster. Ramen to you all.

spagettidamnit!

Noodles, guys!

You're doing your own religion all wrong

I am an atheist. I was actually raised Mormon, but I never really believed in the church's teachings. Fortunately, my family wasn't very active, and my parents raised me to think rationally and to not have blind faith in anything. This kept me from feeling bad about myself for not believing. We didn't go to church every Sunday, and when I was 10 my parents had had enough and we stopped going altogether. With the exception of a couple semi-lapsed Catholics, all my relatives are Mormon, atheist, or agnostic. Some of the Mormons are really zealous about their religion - as in, they refuse to be friends with any non-Mormons. Family reunions are often a bit tense.

To be totally honest, I still don't understand why Catholic and Protestant are different religions. >.> It's all Christianity either way.

Voted 'Other', in that case. Since I can't seem to believe in hell (apparently gay marriage is still non-christian too, so add that. also, i'm skeptic on witchcraft really being a sin, so even more to add), but still believe in a higher power that aligns more towards Christianity, I don't really fit into any of the options.

Christian heretic, most likely.

@ "neurologically incapable of faith" notion: That would describe some of the different views I have compared to other Christians. From a near death experience I see reason to believe in a higher power, but I neurologically can't believe in hell, or any of the discriminating practices of the church.

Also an ex-Mormon Atheist.

One of my "obsessions" or "focuses" has always been science, and thus it was in science that I grounded my objections to the LDS church. The problem with this "church" is unfortunately the high amount of fear and indoctrination they instill in their young children. As a result, even though I had perfectly valid objections that I had long ago come to the conclusion that the LDS church could not answer, it took me until age 13 to mentally decide to consider myself an "ex-Mormon". Living in Utah, this was a huge step, as I have a massive family (a sizeable chunk of the small-to-mid size town I grew up in were relations of some sort, family reunions were a 500+ person fiasco) and so the revealing to others and deciding that I was not just an ex-Mormon any longer but an actual Atheist came later after my teen years.

Good Lord, are you my clone??? I must say, I am finding a lot of what you write to be very much like what I would say.

Anyway, on the subject itself, I would say that you're right. I can also say that to some of us there is absolutely no incompatibility whatsoever between science and faith. It might take finding a more accepting church, but it's doable. I would also say to Exclavius that what was done to him was inexcusable, and frankly, I find it a form of "blasphemy" that anyone would do a thing like that and then claim it was God's will. No, that was a sick person's own screwed up, twisted, selfish, psychopathic self-justification and there is absolutely zero excuse for it.

As to myself, I consider both Catholicism, Protestantism, and Orthodoxy all to be Christianity. All three have aspects I disagree with, but I am not surprised--no matter how much divine inspiration there is, human beings are running the hierarchies and power structures and we all know what happens when bureaucracies and organizations grow and develop: without careful, careful vigilance, they become systematically corrupt. I do not fault God for this but I VERY much fault the people responsible for it.

i believe that jesus existed but he was not my messiah. yu cannt denny the bible truth as evidenced by the return of the jews to israel.