What is your religion?

[Emoni]

My posts, and I myself, are completely different than religious extremists Hezam. Just because I get frustrated, and religious extremists get frustrated that somehow makes us the same? Pretty weak comparison there.

Unlike extremists, if I'm going to make a grandiose statement about the universe (which I usually don't do anyway) I'll usually provide some sort of scientific reference to back up what I'm saying, or at the very least give a basic flow of logical reasoning to support my own opinion.

Furthermore, a religious extremist might take his belief (unsupported by an scientific proof) and blow up, murder many, and enforce what they claim to be divine rules on others. I have yet to hear of wars or mass murder started over people disagreeing with the belief that there are likely no divine gods.

I'm perfectly fine with someone believing what they wish, as long as they don't start trying to enforce their belief on others or masquerading it as scientifically supported fact. The second they start behaving as if their belief is FACT just because they believe it based on blind faith, and subsequently demanding others believe their faith and follow their rules based on such faith, then they are going to get a battle from me. Honestly though, that has nothing to do with me being atheist and not believing in religion, it has to do with freedom of belief, separation of church and state, and freedom of speech which people from almost any religious belief (or lack of such) support.

I have to say though, ironically, that is one of the things I like about Japan. Other than Sokka Gakai people, I haven't been pushed to join any religion or believe what another believes based on threats of eternal suffering. Hell, even my catholic host family never bothered me with anything. They believed what they did, and went about their way without harassing the hell out of others. Oddly enough, while such freedoms and such are written into US documents, it seems that the idea of freedom of belief is interpreted as the freedom to impose it on others.

Bah, I'm wasting far too much time replying to stuff like this in this thread, and probably am only helping you people derail it. I am going to go out and live a bit.

Do we have any Shintoists on here? We have a friend in Tokyo whose husband belongs to a strict sect of Shintoism. Our friend would never agree to join, to the unending disapproval of her mother-in-law. I forget the name of the sect. Maybe I can find it.
It would be interesting to talk to a real, live Shinto believer. Must be a whole different way of perceiving the world.

I have never actually met a "Shintoist" and from my understanding it is mostly based on ritual rather than hard subscribed to belief. I guess you could say those that worship the emperor (does that even exist in right wing groups?!) could count within this?

 

[RolandtheHeadless]

Shindou-kyo. According to our friend the Shindou-kyo sect separated from Tenri-kyo around seventy years ago. Our friend's husband has always dragged their two boys off to weekend worship meetings, which I think exasperates our friend. I'd like to talk to her husband sometime to find out the tenets of his faith.

Anyone know anything about these Shinto sects?

 

[Emoni]

Shindou-kyo. According to our friend the Shindou-kyo sect separated from Tenri-kyo around seventy years ago. Our friend's husband has always dragged their two boys off to weekend worship meetings, which I think exasperates our friend. I'd like to talk to her husband sometime to find out the tenets of his faith.

Anyone know anything about these Shinto sects?

Curious too, but I suspect as you stated above, that the only way you are going to find out the nitty gritty is by getting someone who is serious about it as most Japanese probably just do the rituals at BEST.

 

[mohamed]

I'm very sad because I met people like you emoni from Japan and i hope you be the only one in Japan talk like that
With regard to the subject of the former you say I'm say Things not convincing
sorry that is not true, you was will respond, but as is usually my questions and proves with a question and mockery from you

i came with sun light and you say no this is not true it's darkness, ok as you wan't but you even did not look at what I wrote it might be true . you just always pushed me when I try to make a The subject be serious
May be you aware of the things I do not know, so tell me and light my eyes with the right .
please tallk with me with some solemnities

 

[undrentide]

The idea of this thread is ONLY to post your religion and why your subscribe to it.

Can't we just stick to this idea?

 

[Haruspex]

I'm very sad because I met people like you emoni from Japan and i hope you be the only one in Japan talk like that
With regard to the subject of the former you say I'm say Things not convincing
sorry that is not true, you was will respond, but as is usually my questions and proves with a question and mockery from you

i came with sun light and you say no this is not true it's darkness, ok as you wan't but you even did not look at what I wrote it might be true . you just always pushed me when I try to make a The subject be serious
May be you aware of the things I do not know, so tell me and light my eyes with the right .
please tallk with me with some solemnities

Exactly. This condescending attitude is what sickens me about the likes of you. Your ignorance disgusts me.

He made a claim with the full force of the source of clarity and truth, academia, behind it and now here you are trying to challenge it with what? Your flagrant, condescending nonsense. Please buy a rope.

 

[Emoni]

Can't we just stick to this idea?

Sounds good. Could you bring in a Shinto worshiper to distract us?

 

[Mycernius]

Can't we just stick to this idea?

Thank you.
Emoni, Derfel and especially Mohamad stick to the subject at hand, not discussing on how the last thread became a disaster area. Remember guys, do not feed the troll. ;-)

 

[Emoni]

Remember guys, do not feed the troll. ;-)

Yeah, yeah, you're right. It's hard to resist going full salvo sometimes.

Back to the main topic.

 

[Nichiren]

I don't. All religions are a collection of biased history, magic stories and baseless assertions when it comes to gods and spirits, including Buddhism.
All hail the FSM

This is a biased as well. While it is true like most religions had fantastical stories and anecdotes to their beliefs, In Buddhism, however, the fantastic elements are never the main point and they almost always exist to underscore a point that does make sense. In most cases, the metaphorical nature of the supernatural and miraculous in Buddhism is very easy to see and the Buddhist scriptures themselves state that they are using metaphorical language on many occasions.

 

[Nichiren]

Personally I'm atheist, but I can sympathize on what you say. I think it's not fair to compare Christianity and Islam, that are from the same "branch" so they surged in very concrete circumstances, and Oriental religions and philosophies that due to the pure geographic separation have followed very different paths.

If you study the historical frame or even the dogmatic basis of these religions you have cited, there is an obvious field that doesn't allow you to compare Christianism, Islam or the Grecoroman pantheon to Buddhism, Taoism or Confucianism. I've usually heard from religious scholars to even question the term "religion" to some oriental beliefs and name them "philosophies".

To speak about me, I can say I feel very far from any religion structure, but I can simpathize a lot more with Buddhism or Taoism than the Catholic Church, because I do not see them as intrusive religions but like an inner teach of personal values. After all, religion is nothing more than another manifestation of cultural identification, like Nationalism is after the French Revolution or Feudalism was in the Middle Ages. What I find specially fascinating is the fact that there's people who can follow more than one religion, like Confucians and Taoist in China, or correct me if I'm wrong please, Sintoism, the indigenous animistic Japanese religion and Buddhism. In Europe and the Western world, you cannot be Catholic and Sunni, or Protestant and Jewish, because the identification and obstruction of oneself that the structures of these religions have always had do not simply allow any kind of dissidence. I'm not surprised that in nowadays liberal western societies western religions do not triumph, simply because they require a level of intrusion that liberalism does not permit. On the contrary, in areas of the world with more oppressive regimes, those religions fit and expand, like Islam or Christianism not many centuries ago. This is an obvious difference with Oriental ones, who I coincide with you that allow a lot more room for personal freedom. I may be wrong in my assumptions, but that's how I see it.

Anyway, the most important thing if you are either a believer or not should be respect for everyone else's thoughts while they respect yours.

Buddhism teaches that among all religions in the world, there is only difference in the complexity of the teachings, with very little difference in good or bad, right or wrong. Every religion which can exist in this world for over one thousand years must provide useful benefits to mankind, to be accepted and followed for such a long time. Otherwise, these religions would have been filtered by human wisdom and be discarded.

In the 2500 years of the history of Buddhism, it has always existed peacefully with other religions, there has never been any incident in history where the spreading or preaching of Buddhism had created conflict with other religions resulting in bloodshed. Buddhism is truly a most tolerant, understanding or peaceful religion.

From the perspective of Buddhism, "true faith" has no country boundary, and it doe require the trademark of a religion. It does not belong to any one religion, or to any one person at any one time. The "true doctrine" preached by the Buddha is not His exclusive possession, the Buddha was simply one of the discoverer of the Truth. Just like Newton discovered the law gravity, he did not possess the law.

That is why Buddhism teaches that all reasonable, and everlasting doctrines of any religion are also considered to be Buddhist principles, and many Buddhist principles are also part of the teachings of other religions.

"Love thy enemy" came from the Christian bible. Buddhism unquestionably recognizes this virtuous truth, and this saying is also stressed in a similar manner in the teachings of Buddhism. A number of the Christian Ten Commandments are also very similar to the five Precepts (rules) of Buddhism.

 

[Davey]

Moved to serious topic section, because it's not about religion in Japan but in religion in general.

 

[Emoni]

Yay... just what we need more religion threads!!! Bleh...

Sets of unproven submissions. Which is why I don't practice.

^ This. Same for me.

 

[Thorham]

Sets of unproven submissions. Which is why I don't practice.

Even if they we're proven I still wouldn't practice, because I see absolutely no need to get down on my knees and praise the lord. In my opinion people only worship because they don't want to go to hell, and as far as I'm concerned, omnipotent beings who want us to worship them can go and kiss my butt, thank you very much.

 

[RolandtheHeadless]

Why would an omnipotent god be so insecure that he needs me to grovel before him? I never did get that part of Christianity.

Why does he say he gives us free will, then from the other side of his (supposedly his, anyway) mouth say that we must submit to his will?

Oh, I guess we have a choice: submit, or go to hell. If someone puts a gun to your head and tells you to do something, it's not an act of free will if you do it.

 

[Emoni]

Even if they we're proven I still wouldn't practice, because I see absolutely no need to get down on my knees and praise the lord. In my opinion people only worship because they don't want to go to hell, and as far as I'm concerned, omnipotent beings who want us to worship them can go and kiss my butt, thank you very much.

Same actually. When I tell this to friends who are trying to push me to their religion it scares the hell out of them. It's like they can't fathom the idea I don't agree with the so-called "morality" of the god that appears in their little book.

 

[Yukiko chan]

I'm a freethinker, I construct my own system of thought by myself based on my readings, life experience and reasonings. Concerning the question of divine existence, I'm agnostic atheist (or weak atheist).

Why am I a freethinker? Because I'm a rebel by nature and I hate to bow down to any form of authority except Reason; and because I was disappointed by all religious systems I've studied which I found mostly self-contradictory and incompatible with modern science.

Why am I an atheist? Because, first, science explains most phenomena that humans used to attribute to divine will or power: god is more or less dead, except in the imagination of some people. Second, because I don't feel any emotional need for higher beings in any circumstances.

 

[RolandtheHeadless]

"Why am I an atheist? Because, first, science explains most phenomena that humans used to attribute to divine will or power"

Where did the Big Bang come from, and who or what caused it?

What or who set the properties of our universe (e.g., the gravitational constant) to allow for the formation of matter and existence of life?

Yes, there is abundant evidence for Darwinist evolution, but where did the first life come from?

Science can't answer these questions, so why not assume that God did it. Who- or whatever "God" is.

 

[Mycernius]

Thread title changed to be more suitable for the poll.

 

[Yukiko chan]

Where did the Big Bang come from, and who or what caused it?

Well, first, why do you assume that the Big Bang had to come from somewhere? Questions like "what existed before the Big Bang?" or "What exists outside of the universe?" may simply have no meaning, because our conceptions of Time and space come precisely from our experience within the observable universe. Principles like causality are also derived from our observation of objects within the universe, and extending such principles to a hypothetical pre Big Bang existence is a mere personal choice which is not supported, to the best of my knowledge, by any scientific evidence.
The universe may be undergoing endless cyclic expansions and collapses as stated in the oscillatory model, which bears some a similarity with Hindu cosmology (the universe being created when Brahma opens his eyes, and destroyed when he closes them).
There are also some theories in modern physics, such as M-Theory, which are attempting to explore the Terra Incognita of the pre Big Bang. In short, M-theory stipulates the existence of entities called "D-branes" which can have a great number of dimensions, and when two branes (or membranes) interact with each other accidently, a universe is created.
But at our current state of knowledge, as far as "meta universal reality" is concerned, we are reduced to mere guesses or abstract mathematical models at best.

What or who set the properties of our universe (e.g., the gravitational constant) to allow for the formation of matter and existence of life?

Again you assume that "something" must have necessarily "set the properties of the universe" to allow "the formation of matter and the existence of life". Indeed, if universal constants were even slightly different in our universe, and a fortiori totally different, life as we know it wouldn't have appeared (for all we know, this could've also resulted in alternative lifeforms). But like a French astrophysicist (whose name I forgot) said "there's no point in discussing the probability of an event that we are sure has already occured". Life exists here and now, and considering that things must have been set somehow to allow the emergence of life, is attributing a finality to the universe.
This idea is stressed by the parallel universes and multiverse hypotheses. Suppose that during a baseball match the ball hits one person among the crowd. The person wonders "why is it me precisely that the ball hit?"; he would be possibly tempted to invent all sorts of theories based on the idea that the hit was intended, since it cannot be just him who was "chosen" among all people, hence the necessity of an "intention" behind it all. Though if you think about the situation from a global perspective, you'd see that the denser the crowd in space is the higher the probability that the ball would hit someone (anyone) is. The rest (the ball trajectory and velocity) would depend on complex factors, so complex that we may consider the specific event as a mere accident. In the same way, if the number of existing universes is dense enough, in the space of possible physical laws, there would be a high probability that one of these universes at least would be constructed in such a way that it allows the emergence of complex entities known as living beings.

Yes, there is abundant evidence for Darwinist evolution, but where did the first life come from?

We do not know yet. Several theories were proposed among which panspermia and abiogenesis...

Science can't answer these questions, so why not assume that God did it. Who- or whatever "God" is.

Indeed science can't answer these questions yet. But let me explain two things:
- First, science generally proceeds following two principles: 1/ Occam's Razor, which states that simple hypotheses or theories are given priority over complex ones, because they are easier to handle and test. 2/ Popper's principle of falsifiability stating that a hypothesis or theory must be falsifiable (i.e. clearly formulated and testable), in order to be considered scientific.
The god hypothesis, even in its most sophisticated form, doesn't satisfy the second principle, and though seemingly simple it implies many more questions about the nature of that deity.
- Second, I don't believe that science discovers "truths" about Reality. In fact, I'm in doubt that objective (or absolute) truth exists in the first place. I think that the duality true/false (like any other duality, beautiful/ugly, good/bad, etc...) is only meaningful within a pre-defined system of ideas: in order to consider a proposition as true or false, you'd need a pre-established system of reference, which would have been arbitrarily constructed (to the n degree back in hierarchy if necessary). Though in the case of Reality, things are slightly different since we have our pseudo-system of reference in the form of endless flows of sensory data we get from it. Still, stating that such a truth exists is akin to stating that there exists one and only one representation which modelizes the universe. A conscious being possessing such a representation would be a priori able to predict any event in the universe with maximal precision. But there could be many such representations or none. Our sole "hope" resides in creating more and more powerful theories (powerful in the sense of prediction capability) in order to control nature.
Bottom line is, science is a mere instrument, of which the finality is control.
Therefore, not only is the idea of god a bad hypothesis, but it's also a totally useless one because it doesn't add anything in our prediction scope, and thus has no incidence on our ability to control nature. I would personally prefer to answer "I don't know", and try to look for possible explanations.

Finally, let me say that I'm not here trying to prove that "I'm right and you're wrong"; I'm rather trying to show that each one of us is pursuing a path of construction based on our respective basic principles and hypotheses. As I explained earlier, as far as Reality is concerned, we could be both right or both wrong.

Best regards, Greg

 

[Tsuyoiko]

Science can't answer these questions, so why not assume that God did it. Who- or whatever "God" is.

- First, science generally proceeds following two principles: 1/ Occam's Razor, which states that simple hypotheses or theories are given priority over complex ones, because they are easier to handle and test.

In its original formulation, Occam's Razor says entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem, i.e., "entities must not be multiplied beyond necessity". I think this formulation emphasises the point; unless we can show that god is necessary to explain certain things then we need not invoke such an entity. The only way to show that god is necessary to the explanation of that which science cannot yet explain is to prove that science can never offer an explanation. Otherwise, as Zoon van Ijs quite says, the only defensible claim is, "I don't know".

As for "why not assume that God did it", why not assume that aliens or fairies or the FSM did it?

As I explained earlier, as far as Reality is concerned, we could be both right or both wrong.

Ehhh? Relativist fallacy alert! :? ;-)

 

[Yukiko chan]

In its original formulation, Occam's Razor says entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem, i.e., "entities must not be multiplied beyond necessity". I think this formulation emphasises the point; unless we can show that god is necessary to explain certain things then we need not invoke such an entity. The only way to show that god is necessary to the explanation of that which science cannot yet explain is to prove that science can never offer an explanation. Otherwise, as Zoon van Ijs quite says, the only defensible claim is, "I don't know".

Yups, that's much better formulated. Thanks Tsuyoiko!! ^_^

As for "why not assume that God did it", why not assume that aliens or fairies or the FSM did it?

I guess RolandtheHeadless meant by "God" any entity which could be considered as the first agent, and/or the guiding force of the universe (call it the energy, the vital force or anything), which includes more or less "aliens, fairies and the Flying Spaghetti Monster".

Ehhh? Relativist fallacy alert! :? ;-)

So it seems perhaps, but let's see; the relativist fallacy is based on the hypothesis of the existence of Objective Reality, or at least on the existence of a universal system of reference. I disagree with both, thus that cannot be the relativist fallacy! (actually you could call it "the hocus-pocus fallacy" since without any reference system, my earlier statement would be meaningless!! )

 

[Hezam]

Lol,you are talking about Why

 

[Mars Man]

Taking the more general definition of the term 'religion,' I seem to fit most completely (not 100%, mind you) into the Secular Humanism grouping. Along with that, I tend to claim to carry the title of 'non-theist agnostic,' so always please keep that in mind as well.

 

[mika_r]

there should be an option for catholisism, faith is a (theological) virtue infused by god, only few people are lucky enough to have this...