[Starling]

D, on 23 June 2014 - 01:57 PM, said:

My parents got all their kids roman catholic baptized and we used to attend church and the kids did Sunday school and all that jazz. In hindsight, I think we were pretty much just doing it to placate the grandparents, who were fairly serious catholics. Thing is (and I didn't realize this at the time), it's not like my parents stuck around for all the post-mass potlucks and other social aspects of being in the parish or anything like that... so definitely we weren't really big on the church thing but that doesn't mean they didn't seriously believe, though.

We did that for 8 years or so, then we stopped doing sunday school, then gradually stopped going to church every Sunday and soon it was only at Christmas and Easter. After a while longer, we stopped doing that, too, except for the occasional random one-off (probably depends on where we were. If we were in North Bay for Christmas, there's probably a better chance we'd go because the Xmas Eve midnight mass there is kinda cool). I think as they got older and started having more disposable income and the great north american shopping mall/box store/walmart culture came my grandparents started to relax about life and become more open-minded, and my parents realized this and felt the grandparents would be okay with us backing off on the whole church thing. Definitely if I or any of my siblings had wanted to we could have kept going, but none of us really cared all that much for it so we didn't.

This is almost exactly the same as my childhood, although since my family moved around a fair bit we did a bit of the social stuff as well, just to meet people. My mum's still fairly religious but she doesn't attend church because she can't find one that doesn't preach traditional roles for women. My dad's not that fussed, and even my grandparents have recently stopped attending church "because it goes on too long and the church is cold and we don't like sitting for so long".

I still try to get to midnight mass at Christmas, because I like the ritual and the ceremony, and it brings back good memories, and there's singing Any non-existent hypothetical children I had would probably get the morals and values I find important without the religion, except enough to understand that it's important to respect other people's religion so long as it wasn't hurtful to others.

[QuickTidal]

upworthywort, on 23 June 2014 - 07:47 PM, said:

No, very little of my early work has survived the years. You would think the world's curators would have been more on the ball, but everyone has their blind spots.

Kind of like how the Hoggle puppet from LABYRINTH got lost in transit once, and has since resided on display at the Alabama Unclaimed Baggage Center museum.

[worry]

That is the best post you've ever made.

[QuickTidal]

Ha!

[bubba]

Been asked to move this to the discussion boards. I will leave a link in the Inn.

[Gust Hubb]

Damned if you do and damned if you don't :/

[Gust Hubb]

And like the cat avatar.

[Shinrei]

That avatar makes my head asplode.

[Aptorian]

IT's better than that abominable smoking kitten

[Obdigore]

So it gets moved to the Discussion forum and all debate ceases?

I think we can all agree that the correct choice is to move this to the Crippled God forum so we can all argue once more if the
(Spoilers for the entire series)

Spoiler

the CG is the Abrahamic god

[Cause]

I have always maintained the somewhat unpopular opinion that you are either christian/jewish/muslim/etc or your not. If the religion says hate gays but you think that's absurd, you need to either abandon the religion or your own opinion. Gods word is or is not true. This is what troubles me, he can't be all about love and peace if he preaches so much hate. I feel like some people do the most astonishing mental gymnastics to justify all these contradictions. They think I am the crazy one. In short though, God and certainly religion are not the driving force of modern morality. The Bible hates gays, is okay with slavery etc etc. Morals and values can be taught without having to frame it in their language.

Also I think Dawkins is famous for saying it but I think it's a self evident truth. We identify children as young as a day old as being jewish or whatnot but would never think to say a child of a republican must be a republican or that the child of a dentist must become a dentist.

This post has been edited by Cause: 27 June 2014 - 12:44 PM

[Andorion]

The vast majority of the above posts seem to talk about a Christian religious heritage. I am from India wher the largest demographic is Hindu, followed by Muslim. I myself am an agnostic leaning towards atheism, which makes me a microscopic minority. I have a couple of questions about Christianity as practised in America or the West in general and I hope this isn't the wrong place to ask them:

1. What does Christianity teach about conduct towards people of another race, gender, sexual orientation?
2. What does it teach about people following another religion?

I realise Christianity has many different divisions and denominations within it, and I was just hoping if people could tell me what the major groups though or taught. I am asking this question here because from the various internet news sites I read, the view of America is extremely confusing. Also This forum is by far the most civilised, helpful and informative one I have found.
Some of the other forums out there........

[Obdigore]

You asked two very wide ranging questions Andorion. Some sects of Christianity embrace the 'treat others as you want to be treated' Jesus-style christianity. Some embrace the 'put your enemies to the sword' Old Testament style. And the rest are somewhere in the middle.

Depending on what parts of the bible you read, it can range from killing your enemies, making them slaves, kidnapping women to be your wives, delivering the heads of someone you don't like as a birthday present, and paying 200 foreskins to buy a woman as your wife.

The other side of that is essentially the Jesus (New Testament) part, where he suggested that you should treat others as you want to be treated, you should give your money to take care of the poor/needy, and to essentially mind your own shit and let other people do what they want, and try to help them become Christians.

As a note, most of that first part encompasses all three Abrahamic Religions, which would be Christians, Muslims, and Jews (as a religion, not race). Iirc, Islam recognizes the Christ character as a prophet, but not the son of god, and the Jewish faith obviously doesn't recognize Christ in any way.

This post has been edited by Obdigore: 28 June 2014 - 08:45 AM

[Studlock]

Yeah that question is hard to answer because it can differ from Church to Church let alone denomination. The history of Christianity in America is very interesting because it slides from slave owners justify their ownership of other humans via the bible to slaves using it as an inspiration to keep own going (fun fact: many African slaves favored the stories of Moses over other parts of the Bible. I wonder why...haha). Till this day Christianity plays a big part in the African-American community.

And since I enjoy staying on topic, my 23 year relationship with religion has slowly moved from strongly against (mostly vehemently against Christianity, and till this day the Anglican, Presbyterian, United, and Roman Catholic churches of Canada can rightly go fuck/ kill themselves for their part in the residential school system) to more accepting. I enjoy parts of the philosophy of many religions though I don't follow any close even to considered a member. Lately, on a follow-up to a class I took in uni, I've been looking in religious tradition that originated in India (kind of the reverse of Andorion), I really enjoy the idea of Atman but I doubt I'll ever have the discipline to achieve such a thing.

[Andorion]

Obdigore, on 28 June 2014 - 08:44 AM, said:

You asked two very wide ranging questions Andorion. Some sects of Christianity embrace the 'treat others as you want to be treated' Jesus-style christianity. Some embrace the 'put your enemies to the sword' Old Testament style. And the rest are somewhere in the middle.

Depending on what parts of the bible you read, it can range from killing your enemies, making them slaves, kidnapping women to be your wives, delivering the heads of someone you don't like as a birthday present, and paying 200 foreskins to buy a woman as your wife.

The other side of that is essentially the Jesus (New Testament) part, where he suggested that you should treat others as you want to be treated, you should give your money to take care of the poor/needy, and to essentially mind your own shit and let other people do what they want, and try to help them become Christians.

As a note, most of that first part encompasses all three Abrahamic Religions, which would be Christians, Muslims, and Jews (as a religion, not race). Iirc, Islam recognizes the Christ character as a prophet, but not the son of god, and the Jewish faith obviously doesn't recognize Christ in any way.

Ok I understand but is the division really that simple? Old Testament=Nasty, New testament=Nice? Also what type of ideas do the Baptists follow? I know something about Catholics, but I not them.

[Andorion]

Studlock, on 28 June 2014 - 11:17 AM, said:

Yeah that question is hard to answer because it can differ from Church to Church let alone denomination. The history of Christianity in America is very interesting because it slides from slave owners justify their ownership of other humans via the bible to slaves using it as an inspiration to keep own going (fun fact: many African slaves favored the stories of Moses over other parts of the Bible. I wonder why...haha). Till this day Christianity plays a big part in the African-American community.

And since I enjoy staying on topic, my 23 year relationship with religion has slowly moved from strongly against (mostly vehemently against Christianity, and till this day the Anglican, Presbyterian, United, and Roman Catholic churches of Canada can rightly go fuck/ kill themselves for their part in the residential school system) to more accepting. I enjoy parts of the philosophy of many religions though I don't follow any close even to considered a member. Lately, on a follow-up to a class I took in uni, I've been looking in religious tradition that originated in India (kind of the reverse of Andorion), I really enjoy the idea of Atman but I doubt I'll ever have the discipline to achieve such a thing.

If you are intersted in indian philosophy, you are in for a bit of a ride. Hindus don't have one Holy Book. You have the Gita, which is really important, the Upanishads which have some fairly high level philosophy, the Vedas, which are supposed to be the oldets texts but which existed for hundreds of years in only oral form, and so on. The Vendangas, the Vendantas, the Brahmanas etc etc. Then you have the epic poems like Ramayana and Mahabharata which also have some philosophical insights, especially the Mahabharata

[Studlock]

I'm most familiar with the Ramayana (read it in my comparative world literature), and the Upanishads (which we had to familiar ourselves with in my Intro to Asian Philosophy where we also touched upon Buddhism and Jainism). But it's the oldest active religion in the world so I assume it has a great variety of holy texts and what not.

This post has been edited by Studlock: 28 June 2014 - 02:02 PM

[Stormcat]

I am absolutely fascinated by the Hindu religion. I have read as many scholarly texts as I can get my hands on and several purely religious books as well. I have a deep love for the Pantheon and read up on them every chance I get. Overall if I had to slap a label on myself I would be a Pantheist.

[QuickTidal]

Though my learning of it is slow-going (and assisted by my uncle's girlfriend who happens to be Hindu and can help me) I find that the Bhagavad Gita is one of the most fascinating pantheonic books in existence. It's simply massive, complex, and endlessly interesting.

[Andorion]

The Mahabharata is probably one of the greatest works of epic poetry in the world. It's got politics, war, family wrangling, philosophy, everything