What is your Faith ?

Nice turn of phrase there . . .

I don't agree with religion, but i will defend to the last drop of someone else's blood, everyone's right to go be religious somewhere where i don't have to listen to it . . .

I have faith that there is a God, but all religions are bullshit and no one has any idea what the plan is, if there is one.

I would like to think there is an afterlife, but not a hell. that would suck, and life itself has plenty of its' "this sucks" moments without having to deal with more after.

rosborne<

Religion can be defined as "a cause, principle, or system of beliefs held to with ardor and faith." (See Merriam Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, Tenth Edition, [c]1999 Merriam-Webster Inc.; Springfield, Massachusetts, USA; p. 988.)

Now, applying this definition to Grand Duke's post, it is easy to see that the cause, principle, or system of beliefs he espouses is indeed a religion, even though Grand Duke seems to think it's not.

Thus, his religion is the absence of one, or "no religion."

Or from www.websters.com:

re·li·gion ( P ) Pronunciation Key (r-ljn)
n.

1. a. Belief in and reverence for a supernatural power or powers regarded as creator and governor of the universe.
1. b. A personal or institutionalized system grounded in such belief and worship.
2. The life or condition of a person in a religious order.
3. A set of beliefs, values, and practices based on the teachings of a spiritual leader.
4. A cause, principle, or activity pursued with zeal or conscientious devotion.



Grand Duke will have to speak for him/her self with regard to your interpretation of that post.

But I still feel that your attempt to claim that "no religion" is a "religion", merely by putting blinders around the least relevant of the definitions, is a specious argument to say the least.

If you use the last definition of religion (above) in this way, then anything/everything could be a religion simply because someone felt strongly about the idea. I'm fairly certain that even the definition you selected was not meant to convey such a lack of information.

Best Regards,

I agree wholeheartedly.

In a recent survey in Oz, only 64% of people said they consider themselves to be christians. The level of religious belief in this country is dropping like a stone.

With any luck this will spread to the rest of the planet and the cancer that is religion will be snuffed out forever to the betterment of all humans.

I'm with you on that Heliotrope, but i'm sceptical . . . as in, when pigs fly . . .

There will always be religion for the same reason that there will always be philosophy. Some people out there are actually interested in finding out why they're here. It's only a natural question to ask. As for institutions, that's just a consequence of people forming into large, unorganized groups.

Yeah you're probably right Rufio. One can live in hope though.

Why are we here has got to be one of the most fundamental questions it's even possible to ask.
I reckon that it's a bit more informative to have some system of finding out why you're here than just contemplating one's navel via religion or philosophy though.
Personally I'll take one observable fact demonstrated by a repeatable experiment over any amount of philosophising anyday.

True, but experiments won't do much in terms of determining existence. For instance, you might ask "what would the world be like if I wasn't here?" and you couldn't find out. You might be able to test for that, but you'd never see the results. You also can't test for "what happens when I die?" or "do we have souls?" So naturally, there has to be something. In all probability, if the world was such that there was no religion, there would also be no history, and no memory, as well. How horrible. And, that world would probably have problems very similar to ours anyway, as they are likely to occur no matter what the situation.

zen sufi catholicism, with a little ganga and periodic human sacrificies of young, nubile virgins...............okay, ex-virgins (its a reform movement)

'bout cover it?

truth
I kill chickens. It works every time.
But my faith is simply that I SENSE that all is ultimately right. This includes my losses, my own suffering and death, the end of the universe, and so on. All is as it should be (even when I don't like it). It's just a feeling, a blessed feeling.

...It's as though you cannot make a mistake, right JL? I feel it too. Every action and every consequence is natural, and *fits*; in some way. Even if the effects don't realize *our* goals, they do some other. I think this feeling comes from separating ourselves from ourselves, and seeing, even for a moment, the nature of the world without us (and without the concept of "I"). And such may be the nature of the delusion, or of reality; Perhaps they are the same.

Perception is reality, the world is as we see it and unfortunately the deluded have delusion as their reality.

Are they interested in why they're here, or are their frightened little minds just unable to come to terms with the billion to one accident that is their existence?

I don't understand where you are coming from here, rufio. How would an absence of religion cause an absence of history and memory? Is the arguement that without religion there would be no Creation and therefore no world in existance? Or is the argument that religion has caused a written history of religious events to be in existance, and a lack of religion would have caused a lack of written history? I propose that someone would have been writing this stuff down anyway, religion or not.



I also propose that there would have been far fewer wars and far more tolerance if there was no religion. Would Hitler have gassed the Jews if they hadn't been Jews, just a small section of society with a slightly different ethnicity? Would the Arab world have such a problem with Israel (and the US and Europe by proxy) if the split was not Muslims vs Jews/Christians? Maybe it would only be Israelites vs Palestinians?





I do not believe that having "no religion" is a true religion, in the same way that black is not a true colour (being the absence of other colours) or even that white is not a true colour (being all colours).

I do believe, for example, that the sun will rise in the east tomorrow morning, that it will provide heat, light & energy for life on the planet - giving life. I do not however worship the sun. I also believe that Jimi Hendrix was one of the greatest guitarists to ever live, providing joy to millions. I do not however worship him (not in the religious sense anyway :wink:)

So where does all this leave me? Is a lack of faith a faith in itself?

Ah, but you do have faith Grand Duke. You have faith that the sun will rise in the East tomorrow. Presumably faith the we exist in a material world governed by the laws of physics, at least so far as we know them. If you ponder the meaning of existence and those eternal questions that fall outside the bounds of strictly material science, then you enter the realm of philosophy and religion.

Philosophy and religion have in our species history played an essential role in making us what we are. Our history is driven by ideas, and our art reflects the prevailing cultural belief-system. In a system based entirely on the material world I can not help but think that the drab world of Communist Ideology, or the brute Law of the Jungle would prevail. However, I believe that such a system is foreign to our species and could only exist itself as a philosophical/religious ideal. We are wondering creatures after all.

The frontiers between philosophy and religion are not clear, and unambiguous. The Abrahamic religions insist upon a separation between existence and a single omnipotent God who created the World and maintains at least some interest in it. Buddhism, on the other hand, holds that the material world is illusory, that there was no beginning to the World, there is no God, nor even such a thing as a "soul". Both of these two extreme positions are religions. The writings of Kant and Plato, Marx and Sartre, are all philosophies, yet they all deal with the nature of existence and reality. Are the writings of St. Augustus religion, or philosophy? Confucism is one of the three great religions of China, but is it philosophy or religion? A whole lot depends upon the point of view of the person who surveys the boundaries.

You pose the question of whether the Holocaust would have happened if religion did not exist and there were no Jews to gas. You seem to suggest that a "small section of society with a slightly different ethnicity" might have escaped the hatred that made The Final Solution possible. I think that antisemitism would have existed, and that chauvinism would have fueled the Holocaust even if religion were never invented (if such a thing could have happened). The religious beliefs of Judaism and Christianity, of course, provide ample ground for chauvinism. "The Chosen People" v. "The Elect of God" are concepts that are pregnant with potential violence. However, long before Abrahamic faiths dominated the world, chauvinism existed and provided the rational for violence. The notion that "our" group is better than "The Other" is common everywhere. In almost every tribal group I know of the native word describing the tribe is "The People", and everyone else is regarded as somehow not quite human. Long before history began to be written, our ancestors huddled together for sustenance and survival. Often survival depended upon group cohesion in defense of territory and food sources from invasion by other groups. Chauvionism no longer has the survival value it once had, and has throughout much of our species history provided the root cause for intergroup violence. Hitler's Germany, even in the rosiest "What if?" scenario would probably have murdered all the "non-Aryans", The Other, that they could get their hands on. The mass murders carried out by other 20th century totalitarian regimes provide other examples of genocide not based on religion.

But wait, is Communism a "religion"?

truth
Rozborne, and even if we see that it IS a mistake, we can see that is ULTIMATELY o.k. It can be perceived as a mistake, a bad outcome, a misfortune, but only at the level of ego. but, if one sees this clearly, he sees that it is only a misfortune RELATIVE to the wants of a fictitious ego. At the ULTIMATE level there's no problem. Yes, Gozmo, if we can only get past the delusion of a substantial self to whom good and bad things happen we're alright.

JL, I agree