Religion Thread

Okay.

If you are religious, do you think your religious beliefs are the result of them being engrained in you at an extremely early age, and that because your parents taught you to be religous you have a deep desire to believe in your religion? I think that being taught to be religious before the age of puberty actually changes the shape of your brain, to a degree; it is proven that those who are deeply religous are different in some parts of their brains than others. That’s why if you’re taught to be religous, you have that desire to believe in God or your religion or whatever for the rest of your life. Now I know that those who are religious doubt their faith at some point, but what I’m asking is if you think you have some choice about the desire to believe. Do you actually think you have some choice in the matter?

I read religious stuff. My parents are too stupid to have a religion as far as I can see, so it wasn’t them. Anyway, I became religious as a result of wanting to be religious as opposed to having it forced upon me.
Anyway, I have my own views on such things.

You had to go and do it, just to push the proverbial boat.

Any bets on how long this will take to turn into a huge flame war?

By saying the brain is a different shape, do you mean to a degree visable to the human eye, or different sets of neural pathways are formed?
I’m not religious at all, my parents were brought up in a society where they had to go to church every Sunday, or they would be caned the next day at school, but they are not religious. I attendeed a C of E school so we had to sing hymns and pray in assembly. I was christened at birth but the only time i ever went to church was with scouts, because you had to go once a year to cary on going. so in some ways ive had a partially religious upbringing, yet i dont beleive in any all powerful being.

Different pathways and neural connections. You know - elasticity of the brain.

Events and such that happen to you when you’re a child affect you a lot more then any other age i would say. Would only be natural that some of your religious beliefs are formed then. I’ve only been to church less then 10 times in my life, but my mom at one point did get me a bible. I remember crying when some girl died or something and asking god for her to be my friend or that she would be okay, i was maybe 6 or 7 then. Also remember listening to some radio station that played some christian music and would cry sometimes for i wasn’t perfect. Would read the bible at times too. Now i am agnostic, getting my ideas from movies and tv, other people and religions. Wish i could make my own beliefs, it feels as im stealing or being unoriginal for combining all the ideas i like into my belief; but in a sense is that original or does it seem as if plenty more people do this as well? I’m also a Christian hater deep down inside, because of the infamous ones that make appearances on tv and elsewhere. I know that not all Christians are like the bad apples, am trying to change my judgemental ways. However i do give Christians some admiration for they believe in something which isn’t tangible, something which cant be proved or disproved.

I don’t wish to offend anyone with my stupidity, i apologize.

Ahhhh the worms get them off me!(opened a can of worms…) >_>

I think my religiousness is the result of exactly that. But lately, looking at the similarities between different religions (especially Judaism, Islam, and Christianity) leads me to think that there’s definately a (benevolent) God out there, even though those religions weren’t exactly isolated from each other and could’ve influenced each other. All religions are the same basic ideas, and I’m pretty sure it’s more than just a coincidence or an excuse for law and politics.

My religion was originally imparted to me as a child, but as a teenager I independently decided that my beliefs were correct and that I should continue in the path I was going in. That’s not to say I don’t have the odd question here or there (no religion is immune to those) but they are not major enough to shake my beliefs in any way. And the good thing about Judaism is that questions are generally encouraged rather than frowned upon.

I’m not one for religion, mostly because it just seems too farfetched for me.

I read about religion & the brain once. If I remember well, it has to do with neural pathways that deal with emotions. Being religious won’t make anyone more or less inteligent.

I was raised as a catholic, but later on I started reading a lot of stuff and now I stick to most of the ideas taught by Kardecism. I do have a crush for Xamanism, too, so sometimes I am kinda like the witch XD

My experiences with religion and society have made me disdainful of it and most of their believers. Ironically , my lack of religion might be due to a series of childhood and teenage events.

I’ll see what happens when I get shot in the face.

hahaha… sounds like a plan.

Anyway, my parents are both Catholic, but neither are very religious, and neither felt the need to push their beliefs on me. I stopped going to church (we only went for holidays, anyway) when I was around 9, and when I was 12 I started looking into other religions, like buddhism, etc. I was lucky that my parents were so open to my exploration, and if I felt like having a discussion about why I thought god didn’t exist, they wouldn’t try to shut me up or anything… They would listen to my points, bring up some of their own, etc. They usually ended up agreeing more with me than I with them. <.<

No good will come of this.

My religion was forced into me at an early age, and lately I’ve begun questioning it, but I really have no choice to be anything but catholic because my parents (mainly my dad, actually) won’t let me do anything else.

95% of my relatives on my father’s side are pretty much Christian fanatics. I was forced to go to church a fair amount when I was 10 or younger and I hated every minute of it. So, I suppose from that is where I developed a disliking of Christianity and religions similar to it. And the fact that when ever I go to see my grandmother or go to family get-together someone begins preaching about “all non Christians are going to hell”, just sorta adds fuel to the fire.

Lately though, I’ve read a bit about the beliefs of different religions from various parts of the world, and though I don’t agree with some (read: most) of their beliefs, it has helped me to be more accepting and tolerant of other people’s religious beliefs.

As for my own beliefs and morals they’re just ideals I believe in that I discovered on my own. Though some are some of the principles of different religions, but none of the religions I’ve read about dictate the same beliefs as my own. I don’t consider myself a member of any religion nor do I consider myself an aethiest or an agnostic, simply because I don’t see much point in attaching a label to myself. I’d much rather think of myself as insert RC’s real name, a human being.

I had an interesting mix when I was young. I used to be rather religious, as I went to an absurdly religious private school for elementary school. After having the Bible beat on my head constantly for 7 years, I went to a less religious (albeit still rather religious) school, where it was continued to a lesser degree. However, I’ve ended up remarkably less religious than almost anyone I know. I think it’s a combination of an atheistic/non-denominational family and a general disdain of those highly religious people around me. I may still be considered religious, but I don’t follow any sort of Western religious customs persay.

As a young lad I was baptised, and that was the extent of my involvement with organized religion. I have a natural aversion to churches, probably because I only ever go to them for funerals and piano recitals (sometimes I wonder which is worse).

I’ve never really needed a religion or ideology to guide me through life, and I can’t really see myself partaking in one in the future. I remain pretty much neutral towards religion, mostly because it seems like a very neutral practice to begin with; it can bring out the best and worst in people. My girlfriend is Presbyterian, I’m agnostic and some of my best friends are atheist, so I have to stay pretty open-minded on the topic anyways.

And I think family and schooling are a huge factor regarding religion. If you “train” someone from a very young age to believe in God and goto church it becomes second nature to them. This is obviously not applicable for everybody or even most people, but it is definitely something to be considered.

My parents are Catholic, but they never pushed religion on me much beyond attending Cathecism. I don’t believe I qualify as very religious, I don’t know all that much about any religion and I’m not a big follower of Catholicism(sp?)-I blame the teachers, they knew very little of what they taught.
I guess I’m not very religious because my parents aren’t, it may still have to do with my not being trained at a young age.

I try to call myself an agnostic, because atheists can get pretty fanatical about their beliefs. But I do not believe there exists a personal God or an afterlife.

My favorite take on religion is Matthew Alper’s “God Part of the Brain”. Essentially he says as man developed, and realized its mortality, it couldn’t handle it. Man’s biggest desire is survival. So man created religion as a way to escape inevitable death.

He goes on to say just like our brains have different aptitudes for music, they also have “pre-wired” aptitudes for religion. Example: he compares someone who’s tone deaf to an atheist. I don’t know how much I buy that, but his studies were interesting. godpart.com is his site.

I was force fed Fundamentalist Christianity, and I think the entire premise is the biggest contradiction ever. Omnipotent Loving God, eternal life in heaven or hell…doesn’t make any sense. It gives you the best situation possible, or the worst - and then offers you a choice. Duh. It’s easy to see why it has been successful.

Some of it is good, “see you in heaven” offers people much peace, fear divine judgement keeps people moral…but it also allows religious authority to take advantage of people (ex: terrorists). Since people already are putting their faith in something intangible, authority can tell them anything, and they’ll go for it. As I rambled on a few days ago, plenty of wars are due to this sort of thing.

Quite frankly, I think religion will eventually destroy this planet. I think getting past it is the next phase of “evolution”. It’s one or the other.