Originally posted by divegeester What advice can the panel give please?
What exactly does "giving up being religious" mean? Does this mean, in your case, that whatever those things and conditions are that currently make you "religious" are things and conditions you can just directly decide to forgo?
Originally posted by generalissimo its much better to listen to a-holes like dawkins instead of thinking for yourself, right?
I have read a few of Dawkins' books and - thinking for myself - I did not reach the conslusion that he is or was an "a-hole" as you put it.
How can one think for oneself without ideas to juggle and ponder? Do you consider "thinking for oneself" to be reliant on original thoughts that no one else has thought of?
What's with this new generalissimo campaign against reading books?
You read books not to have someone tell you what to think but to see other views and in some cases integrate them into your own views or sometimes to solidify what you disagree with them.
Originally posted by divegeester What advice can the panel give please?
Why be religious in the first place?
Religion is for the spiritually weak who think they can please God by their own efforts.
Except for those things proscribed in the law of God given to the Jews, religion is a system of rites, rituals, and ceremonies created by man for the purpose of making him feel like he's doing God a favor.
Originally posted by PsychoPawn You read books not to have someone tell you what to think but to see other views and in some cases integrate them into your own views or sometimes to solidify what you disagree with them.
I like to read things I disagree with. It either strengthens what I believe by testing it, or it results in me modifying what I believe. I think doubt is a virtue, too. I like to read in order to cultivate doubt. The intellectual curiosity of people who are very certain about what they believe, in my experience, is more often than not a facade.
Originally posted by CalJust In its truest sence, Christianity is not a religion (i.e. a formal set of doctrines and beliefs) but a relationship with the living Christ.
If Christianity is not a religion, and if everybody has a religion, then Christians must have some other religion. Aren't they thereby in violation of the First Commandment?
Christianity and Judaism are religions, even though there is no point of Judaism anymore, Religion is useful, it's guidelines to HELP you have a better friendship with God, reading can help or hinder it depending on what you read.
Originally posted by Conrau K In its truest sense, Judaism is not a religion (i.e. a formal set of doctrines and beliefs) but a relationship with the living G-d.
Originally posted by rwingett What, exactly, is this "fanatically held" world view that atheists allegedly have?
As I have said before in another thread, the need (in a "Spirituality", thread, which is a subject they deny) to denigrate others and prove that they are wrong!
Of course, you will immediately say that Christians (some, at least) also constantly try to prove others wrong.
The difference being that Christians (and Muslims, Jews, Hindus etc) believe in Spirituality, only different flavours of it, which you don't.
01 Aug '09 20:31
I'm thinking of giving up being religious
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