Quote from: sororcaeli on October 03, 2014, 07:30:09 PM
Is your lack of belief due to some past experience, or based on any resentment for organised religion, or did you simply just conclude by your reasoning that any idea of God is preposterous? This isn't a hostile reply, I'm just curious. A lot of atheists I've talked to seem to arrive at their conclusions due to perceiving the God of Abraham as absurd and malevolent, and then from that point just lumping in all things metaphysical as just more of the same.
I have no problems with or judgments of atheists. I would consider myself one simply for the fact that I do not believe in a deity. I would consider myself more of a Pantheist, seeing "God' as impersonal and permeating all things without bias or favoritism, kind of like The Force. My particular spiritual path is Thelema which is easily adaptable by any perspective.
"The Method of Science; The Aim of Religion" is the motto of the Thelemic fraternal order of The A.'.A.'..
Anyway, you should definitely expound upon your views, albeit tactfully. There are people here who are most definitely more sensitive than others. Everyone should be able to share their beliefs and how they arrived at them so that we can all better understand each other.
First of all, a disclaimer: I'm not a native English speaker so while my writing might come off as aggressive or something, it really isn't. Also, I find it easier to discuss things like this face to face.
Well, I could borrow your words and say that the idea of god is preposterous in my mind. I find religious writings a mere product of fiction and honestly, I sometimes do read the Bible but for me it's like any other book I could grab from the shelf. Just a mere pastime and it usually leaves me deeply confused mainly due to all the contradictions it has.
And as a disclaimer, I mainly refer to Christianity because that's the background from which I come from, more accurately Evangelical Lutheran one like a majority of Finns.
I think a huge influence in my life has been the access to science. I have always had science-related books ever since I was a child. I couldn't read them so I asked someone from my family to do it for me. I was very young when someone happened to read me about the Big Bang Theory and compared to what the Bible says, it seems much more plausible explanation.
I always had an interest in science and no one in my family was ever there to say that the evolution isn't true etc so I grew up to... well, basically to believe in science.
Of course, I must admit I am fascinated by religions from study point of view. Kind of like I'm fascinated by the fictional world of Tamriel from the Elder Scrolls series and everything it holds within. This is not an attempt to offend anyone, it's just the way I see things and tells how I see religions.
Also, from the literature point of view, I really like the way the Bible was written, Finnish or English. I just... have a thing for everything that is overly dramatic and epic. I don't know why, it's just always been like that. It might have something to do with me having dabbled in writing myself.
That being said, I suppose I should mention that I actually live (and have lived my whole life) in Finland's equivalent of the Bible Belt. But the presence of church is still much more muted down than it is in the US, I would say. Generally, people turn to religion and church here only when they need it, whether it is to baptize a child, marriage, funeral or to seek some way to oppose something they don't like and justify it.
This is so not a topic for text-based discussion just after waking up, lol...
