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Post by milkman's baby on Aug 1, 2009 0:26:44 GMT -5
What religion if any, do you claim affiliation with and how devout are you? Were you raised this way? Reasoning behind it?
Just curious.
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Szymon Von Zalyn
Full Member
50% Polish of Prussian descent, 25% Italian, 25% kalmyk, but 100% English.
Posts: 367
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Post by Szymon Von Zalyn on Aug 1, 2009 6:32:55 GMT -5
My religion is Christianity and my affiliation is Roman catholic. I would describe myself as fairly devout but I have certain doubts about the doctrines and beliefs in the respect that they do not sound very biblical at times!
I went to a Roman catholic infants and junior school but went to a secular high school. I come from a catholic but not overly catholic family.
I have personally chosen christianity and I believe that Jesus is the son of god. I do not believe that the Popes are infallible but I respect them in the sense that they are and have been the successors to Saint Peter on Earth, individually that is!
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Post by betahat on Aug 1, 2009 19:47:22 GMT -5
I'd like to believe that I came by atheism honestly after a long arduous journey of rigorous intellectual effort involving historical scholarship, evolutionary biology, comparative religious studies, and various forms of metaphysics and other forms of philosophy. But really I'm just like the majority of people (56-70% depending on how you count it) - I just inherited my parents' (non)beliefs. An interesting article on how many people change religions and why: newsnet.byu.edu/story.cfm/68374I'm definitely not in the militant atheist camp though - I respect people's religious beliefs, though I do sometimes enjoy probing them in a gentle way. I think that kind of tolerance should come naturally to many Eurasians.
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Post by milkman's baby on Aug 1, 2009 21:03:57 GMT -5
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Post by palaver on Aug 1, 2009 21:25:21 GMT -5
I'd like to believe that I came by atheism honestly after a long arduous journey of rigorous intellectual effort involving historical scholarship, evolutionary biology, comparative religious studies, and various forms of metaphysics and other forms of philosophy. 'Philosophy is religion for the atheist.' I forgot who said that. Atheism isn't a brand or a religious category. It's more like a "No thank you, I already think for myself."
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Post by betahat on Aug 3, 2009 11:05:42 GMT -5
^ "Asian American students are the least religious of all the major racial groups."
I have to say that I'm surprised, at least based on the number of Asians you see around the churches here. But then again, since the student body is about 40% Asian, there are probably also lots of Asians hanging out at Atheists club too. Or maybe the ones I'm seeing are all foreign students? I would think EAs have a slightly higher tendency to have no religion stemming from their origins - parents are probably more liberal and more open to alternate/multiple religions or more likely to be atheist, growing up with two traditions makes you more likely to question both, etc. But this forum is probably not representative.
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Post by hapatite on Aug 3, 2009 14:19:45 GMT -5
Yeah, when I think about it, all the Chinese friends (bar one) I have that are about my age go to a Church.
I'm like most atheists I suppose. Mother never talked about religion and father was absent. I don't really know if she is religious, I'd guess she's kinda... Buddhist and atheist? I can respect those with religious beliefs, and I enjoy discussing it with them.
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Post by milkman's baby on Aug 3, 2009 15:32:37 GMT -5
^ "Asian American students are the least religious of all the major racial groups." I have to say that I'm surprised, at least based on the number of Asians you see around the churches here. But then again, since the student body is about 40% Asian, there are probably also lots of Asians hanging out at Atheists club too. Or maybe the ones I'm seeing are all foreign students? I would think EAs have a slightly higher tendency to have no religion stemming from their origins - parents are probably more liberal and more open to alternate/multiple religions or more likely to be atheist, growing up with two traditions makes you more likely to question both, etc. But this forum is probably not representative. I would guess so. My family was the exception, with my mother converting to my father's strict Christian-Baptist religion upon marriage. My parents tried hard to raise me as a devout Christian, but I did go through that identity crisis that a lot of preteens go through (especially girls). I struggled with racial identity and religion and after years of Bible-burning and battling with my parents, I settled into a reserved Agnostic. Ironically (or not), I don't think I could ever marry a non-Agnostic. As ridiculous as I find religion to be, I'd have to say it's the devout ones that make the most sense. Why practice a religion if you're not going to follow it entirely? Many Americans fall under this "nominal Christian" category and it irritates me. I don't see why you would engage in premarital sex, then return the church pews the next Sunday to hear your preacher blatantly condemning such acts. It's not just the hypocrites, I'm finding a lot of these followers of religion will try to bend the words of the Bible and make exceptions. They raise the Bible when a murder is committed, but they dismiss it when they want to watch porn. And a lot of them will make exceptions for marriage. The Bible does condemn marrying a non-Christian, despite what some Christians try to argue. I would never marry a man that is affiliated in any way with an institution that writes me off as lost or evil, and I don't understand why others do. So yeah, maybe many Eurasians have parents of two different religions and are thus more open-minded toward all religions. But I take these things seriously, and that usually means not being open-minded.
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Post by D.A on Aug 4, 2009 7:54:23 GMT -5
I'd like to believe that I came by atheism honestly after a long arduous journey of rigorous intellectual effort involving historical scholarship, evolutionary biology, comparative religious studies, and various forms of metaphysics and other forms of philosophy. I'd also like to claim such a notion, but my belief came from a short painless journey of lenient intellectual effort involving historical (un)scholarship, evolutionary biology, laxed religious studies, and various forms of metaphysics and other forms of philosophy. But seriously, I will happily state that I'm agnostic through knowledge, atheist through philosophy, by which the path of philosophy has included some rigorous intellectual effort.
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Kush
Junior Member
X)
Posts: 153
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Post by Kush on Aug 4, 2009 9:51:40 GMT -5
Atheist, for many reasons but I don't wish to go on. Parents are both Christian but it honestly has no impact on their lives whatsoever, I think they're just in it because their parents were. My aunt however, is absolutely Jesus-loving crazy and claims she was healed by God when the doctors failed (by that logic, she should never go to see a doctor again). She had her kids, who are grown up now, wrapped up in it entirely as well, luckily she doesn't know I'm an atheist.
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Post by betahat on Aug 4, 2009 11:56:18 GMT -5
^I'd also like to claim such a notion, but my belief came from a short painless journey of lenient intellectual effort involving historical (un)scholarship, evolutionary biology, laxed religious studies, and various forms of metaphysics and other forms of philosophy.
But seriously, I will happily state that I'm agnostic through knowledge, atheist through philosophy, by which the path of philosophy has included some rigorous intellectual effort.
Are you saying you were raised in a religious tradition but were convinced by various arguments that it was all baloney? That your struggle with your faith, leading to non-faith, was mainly one that involved reading books, taking classes, and/or long discussions and debates with a faithless friend or family member? That's impressive - my casual observation is that many conversions (especially for those from a strict faith tradition) occur through more emotional than spiritual experiences, be it rebellion against overly controlling parents or tragedy, etc. My own experience is one of developing an intellectual apparatus to justify my beliefs (or lack thereof) after I was raised without any faith, so I did not have to overcome any emotional investment in a faith or undergo a conversion that would create tension with family.
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Post by haplotype on Aug 4, 2009 16:17:32 GMT -5
I'm getting my PhD in statistics. From my perspective, atheism requires every bit as strong a faith as being a Wahabbist or Mormon. Atheism is tied to scientific reasoning; but then, science makes dogmatic statements about the universe which are every bit as fanatical as the Taliban. Scientific theories are turned upside down all the time, and with predictable regularity, scientists who thought they understood everything turn out to have not understood anything at all.
Scientists thought they understood the theory of evolution, but every month there are new findings that turn the scientific wisdom upside down. Within the past generation, the "tree of life" describing evolutionary relationships has undergone drastic revisions, looking nothing like it did when I was in high school. They said back then that archaea are extremely rare bacteria that live only in extreme environments; now, it is understood that archaea live all over the place, including the human gut. The evolutionary tree includes a huge grey area of "protists" who are not quite animal, plant, or fungi; by scientists' own acknowledgement, they are a garbage bin of creatures that don't fit the conventional classifications. Currently, they say that DNA relationships between organisms are a measure of their evolutionary proximity, but increasingly, scientists acknowledge that DNA does not tell the whole story of inheritance, or even the majority of it. RNA, methylation, and many other mechanisms of inheritance have been witnessed; we merely lack the tools to observe them more widely. There were supposed to be four DNA building blocks of life, but now there are six, and the fifth and sixth letters have been found in humans in abundance. Evolutionary dogma has held that organisms increase in complexity over time, but increasingly there are examples of organisms that devolve into simpler beings over time. Viruses are an example of creatures that are thought to have devolved from bacteria. There is a huge grey area of not-quite-organisms, starting with viruses and extending to prions, nanobes, and many other pseudo-organisms. Birds were supposed to have evolved from dinosaurs, now dinosaurs may have evolved from birds. When did humans migrate out of Africa? Every scientist has a different answer. Did life start from DNA or RNA molecules? The pendulum has swung back and forth. What caused the sudden extinctions of the past, based on fossil records? Scientists of the 1990s were sure that meteorites caused the extinctions, every bit as fanatical as the creationists, but now they are not so sure. The fossil records that their theories are based on are a crude measure that depend upon stable isotope decay. Do we have reason to believe that they were stable for millions of years?
Physics cannot account for 90% of mass in the universe, and they have tried to fill this gaping hole with imaginary "dark matter particles" that have yet to be found. Physics is built upon the dogma that says physical laws do not vary at all over space and time; but then, we have not tested these assumptions much outside of Earth. Earth's gravity does vary by a few percent from place to place, and this is explained by variations in rock density that must exist somewhere deep in the Earth; but this has not been directly observed, so it is based on faith. Rockets that flew far from Earth have flown much faster than predicted, so physicists have added an ad hoc explanation of an "anti-gravity constant".
Doctors have spent decades claiming that being cold will not cause people to catch colds, but some recent research has found that it does in fact increase risk. They said a generation ago that brain cells cease to grow in adulthood, now they find that it undergoes plenty of growth. Until last year, they said heart muscles never regenerate, now it does. I think we all know how unreliable medical science has been.
Currently, the Great Inquisition of science believes in "global warming", and anyone who questions this is branded a heretic. This is in contrast to 30 years ago when scientists were absolutely sure that the Earth was in an irreversible cooling trend, and the Earth was supposed to turn into an iceball, and billions of people were supposed to starve to death by 2000. Apparently, I am supposed to believe that scientists must be right this time, because they have their computer programs written by graduate students which shows the Earth being covered with red patches.
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Post by Subuatai on Aug 4, 2009 16:44:10 GMT -5
I'm Tengriist, the world considers us "Pagans", whatever that means. Though I haven't been involved in any of such spirituality. Mostly an Atheist by heart. My wife is Christian, and although I disagree in her views that there is an all-loving God due to what I've witnessed on the street and present racial climate of the world, I do agree that there is a higher-power somewhere, but in my opinion, the higher-power just doesn't give a crap about us humans. Nonetheless there's no conflict with religion. Agree to disagree, even husband or wife has no right to interfere with each other's individual spiritual journey. Nor does father or mother to their child.
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Post by D.A on Aug 4, 2009 20:12:28 GMT -5
@ Betahat
Haha, nah I wish... it was more a tongue in cheek response. My mother did put us through Scripture (Catholic) at school, but that was about it. At the time I thought it was a load of baloney, but more for the reason that I could be going to non-scripture and having free-time... non-scripture, highly underrated. I was just mentioning that I will state my position as agnostic from knowledge, atheist from philosophy.
I have met an atheist who was strictly Catholic and brought up with that faith. Being an intellectual guy, he thought it might be a good idea to actually sit down and read the bible, in which he found it purporting misogyny and anti-homosexuality... so he became an atheist.
@ Haplotype
Your attacks on Science are highly unjust and very defensive. Science is constantly under scrutiny and criticism by Science themselves, which improves the quality, reasoning and (potential) discoveries of Science. Even philosophy has criticised the methods and quality of Science, but so far it is currently the best structured methodology we have in finding out empirical knowledge. Science has provided a higher standard of living and improved quality of life to the developed world. If you are so dissatisfied with Science then start growing some food, produce your own source of energy, stop using medicine and health services and stop using technology.
Sure it’s not 100% correct, and it doesn’t claim to be, but at least it’s trying to improve itself, rather than just arrogantly rejecting any ideas or logical reasoning which point out large contradictions and fallacies.
Further, I don’t believe Atheism is inherently tied to scientific reasoning. It was first brought about through Philosophy, have you ever heard of the quote by Nietzche ‘Gott ist tot’? If not perhaps you should google it, oh wait Science brought you that technology and Science is highly unreliable… better not.
Science attempts to find out the facts, the media and general populace is more responsible for the propaganda. Attack ‘churn’alism.
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Post by hapatite on Aug 4, 2009 21:41:42 GMT -5
Haplotype, you're criticising the scientific process of constant review and alteration in the search for a better idea of how the world works. This is opposed to a major religion (say Christianity because most of us know more about it than other religions) which takes an outdated view of looking at the world and then continues to drum the same belief into followers as dictated by scripture (which is written by man). It is only when we take a look at the world through a broader spectrum of vision that we understand it better, for example... when people thought the world was flat, it was a perfectly reasonable assumption, but when you get a few thousand or even hundreds of feet above the ground it is obvious that the Earth is not so flat. Only with the development of technology as time goes on can we see with broader and broader frames of reference.
With science, when there is new evidence or a better idea, it leads to... revolution! A new theory emerges which offers a better explanation than the previous one, otherwise this new theory is falsified and the existing theory is withheld following this scrutiny. In less than 70 years we've gone from the Wright brothers' first flight to putting a man on the moon, not to mention that medical science has doubled life expectancy in the last 100 years. Biotech companies and agriculture science have got so advanced that in a country like the US, there is an obesity epidemic. Ideas of say, evolution change frequently as you say, but it's something we're far from fully understanding, it's the tip of an iceberg my friend- that goes for astrophysics too. The foundations of major theories however, have not been discarded. Darwin's ideas haven't been abandoned, we're arguing about the intricate details of macromolecules now- Darwin had no idea about DNA, he just established the starting tenets of evolution. Science isn't claiming to be 100% right, it's just the best estimation we have with the knowledge at our disposal.
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