Not a conspiracy theorist, however..

Mostly, I'm grateful that so many people actually do believe in an afterlife where they will exist in eternal happiness. Can you imagine how people would behave if they didn't believe in some sort of cosmic karma? No one would be safe.
 

OldFeller said:
If religion has any value to society, then it is to establish a groundwork that leads to civility in dealing with others.

Since I was raised in a country where religion has been a dominant

Who cares? When you grow up, you decide the role of everything you've been exposed to in your life time and give priority to what matters the most to you personally. Any religious training is just a part of your story if has been.
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Actually, that's not quite true. There's something known as the "reminiscence bump", which defines how we remember things in later, and earlier life. It is defined as: "the tendency for older adults (over forty) to have increased or enhanced recollection for events that occurred during their adolescence and early adulthood."

Early teachings are formed while our identities and sense of self are falling into place, and they stick with us in a way that doesn't happen later in life. As such, an indoctrination in youth will, ultimately, be more powerful than the same exposure in an adult. Which is why I posed the question, I wonder how many believers there would be if you weren't allowed access to the indoctrination until they were 18 years of age.

I agree to an extent with your first sentence, I just don't think religion is a critical component in that. You can achieve the same thing without religion.

IMO YMMV.
 
Gary O' said:
True


I know that one too well

For the longest time I considered Christianity was a fable for old women and small children......Santa Claus.....the easter bunny


Not so now
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As long as you've found happiness and conviction, then that's good. I don't begrudge you that. Contentment is cool!
 
Rich said:
Mostly, I'm grateful that so many people actually do believe in an afterlife where they will exist in eternal happiness. Can you imagine how people would behave if they didn't believe in some sort of cosmic karma? No one would be safe.
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This, I think, is a fallacy. I believe we innately understand the difference between good and evil. We understand that hurting others is wrong, because when others do it to us, we don't like it. We inherently understand community, and health. In fact, if we didn't, man would never have gotten this far, early homo-sapiens, 200,000 years ago, would have wiped themselves out.

I want to have joy in my life, and to help others rather than hurt them, because I know today is all I have. I can't do bad today, but go confess it some God and be forgiven for it. I have to live with the consequences. I think not believing makes time more valuable.
 
VaughanJB said:
This, I think, is a fallacy. I believe we innately understand the difference between good and evil. We understand that hurting others is wrong, because when others do it to us, we don't like it. We inherently understand community, and health. In fact, if we didn't, man would never have gotten this far, early homo-sapiens, 200,000 years ago, would have wiped themselves out.

I want to have joy in my life, and to help others rather than hurt them, because I know today is all I have. I can't do bad today, but go confess it some God and be forgiven for it. I have to live with the consequences. I think not believing makes time more valuable.
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We'll have to disagree on this point. Interesting discussion though.
 
Mr. Ed said:
Not a conspiracy theorist but there are questions in life that don’t add-up.
i calimed to be a christian based on upbrining, lack of exposure to any other type of belief system. I question the validity of faith and reality. It is said among believers that Jesus was sacrificed so believers can have communion with the father. Why do Christian’s praise Jesus for his love when there is no evidence of his to be had?

There is no evidence that faith-based religions produce the promises and solisitation asked for by humans. I think prayer is something other than religious duties of organized religions. It has nothing to do with religion, prayer is a time to reflect, restore balance and ground yourself in the moment. I view this as communicating with life and whatever is managing all that is or god.

Most of my life I have tried to conform to church religion, preacher religion, organized religion to realize none of these religious variants work for me and was led to believe it was my fault for thinking differently.

When I post something of this nature on SF, members have told me to get over it and reprimanded my actions out of disgust for my thoughts and words. I am sorting things in my attic and writing them down helps me take out the trash.
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I think I feel similarly. I don't think a religion should attempt to provide you a comprehensive set of beliefs for every occasion. Rather I think as you say of prayer, it should facilitate your achieving a state of mind that keeps you grounded in a larger perspective on what we are as human beings. Excessive conformity is off putting as is incorporating doctrine whole cloth as ones own personal beliefs.

Church could be a positive experience I guess if it was truly a community of true seekers looking to grow in faith and understanding, where all questioning was honored rather than being a place to signal ones compliance and brow beat and shame those who don't. I've had zero experience of church religion, preacher religion or organized religion but I have spent a few years conversing online in Christian forums. I find many who I admire but they tend to be those who understand doubt is not the opposite of faith and who do not assume their denomination or even Christianity generally is the only tradition capable of providing spiritual growth.
 
Mr. Ed said:
Most of the time I can stop intrusive thoughts, however, at times when these thoughts sneak into my natural flow of reason. The human brain is one of a kind and perhaps the most loving and deadliest muscle in the universe. Weapons of Mass Destruction, The effforts of the brain have devised countless ways to inflict pain and cause death and destruction.
When negative thinking overrides my composure I remind myself with a slight tweaking of my thought process I can turn water into wine, not really but the miracle of reprogramming your outlook on life carries a similar possibility of a miracle within your brain.
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That's the beauty of our brains I guess, infinitely malleable and we just have to be willing to 'do the work'. Unfortunately for us too though, things like fatigue, habit and societal pressures can too often get in the way.
 
Teacher Terry said:
Don’t be sad for me because it’s all just a way for early man to explain phenomena that we couldn’t understand because people were uneducated. So men wrote a book to explain it to the uneducated masses and included a moral code to live.

They also decided religion was a great way to control people as well as to fill their coffers. The Catholic Church for example is very wealthy. Then they realized it was also a convenient excuse to start wars and disguise that the real reason was to conquer others and take their property and wealth.

Religion was handed down through the generations and people use it as a crutch. There’s something very comforting about many church songs and the rote responses from the congregation.

Things that we are taught as children are often difficult to discard as adults because it involves questioning beliefs that we were taught as being true. It’s not different than believing in Santa but at least in that instance adults own up to it being a falsehood.

When horrible things happen people say it happened for a reason or it’s god’s plan. Life is random and there’s people that are pure evil. Read the god in the Old Testament if you want to read a horror story. People say turn your problems over to god. What they really mean is I am too intellectually lazy to think about this.

I love John Lennon’s song “Imagine.” He imagines a world without religion and other entities and it’s truly a better world. The best people I know help others and do wonderful things not because they are trying to buy their way to heaven but because they have empathy and love for others. That’s a world that I would prefer to live in.
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I'm not intellectually lazy. I read and think about what the Bible says. I have come to my own conclusion that it is the truth and that Christ was who he said he was. Nobody forced me into believing.
I turn my problems to God in prayer because I know he is real.
 
VaughanJB said:
True. :D

But again, as a non-believer, this world is all I have. Heaven is, for me, wishful thinking, a flight of fancy. It's not real. As such, the price we pay for doing bad things are what happens in the here and now. On my side of the fence, the concepts of heaven and hell are delusions that are used to excuse many sins.
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I believe the opposite. That this life is but fleeting, heaven is where my real destiny awaits and it will be lasting.
 
Debrah N. said:
Well thanks for replying. It's been a very long time since I read those so I'll just take your word for what you understand about them.
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I encourage you to review those books
Prophecy shows Jesus is now in the Holy Place of the heavenly temple (the temple the Israelites replicated in the wilderness)
The judgement books are now open
Once they are closed, the end shall come

'He that is unjust, let him be unjust still: and he which is filthy, let him be filthy still'
Revelation 22
 
VaughanJB said:
There are some things we'll never know. I don't think we'll ever know what caused the Big Bang, what there was before it, and so on. It's unknowable. But science can narrow the gap little by little. When we look at how much we know today, it's truly amazing. Our first ancestors came around 6m years ago. The first homosapian was only 200,000 years ago. The first satellite was sent up in 1957. The computer revolution started in the 1960's.

In other words, the Universe is estimated at something like 14 BILLION years of age, and we've only had the ability to send satellites up for 66 years! Everything we know, from speech to nuclear power stations, to the man on the moon, we have achieved in 200,000 years, from sitting around a fire in forests, to our concrete jungles. It's not a small amount of time, it's not the blinking of an eye, it's impossibly small. A tiny tiny fraction of time. If that isn't amazing, I don't know what is.
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It is absolutely fascinating. When I think of what my parents saw in their life times- (born in 1911) - from the first automobiles to landing on the moon- in such a short period of time- it boggles my (admittedly easily boggled) mind.
 
Debrah N. said:
We'll all learn someday and it's not unthinkable that whatever source has brought this miracle of a world and universe into being operates within the realms of the science that we now understand and far beyond our understanding.
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That's entirely possible. I have no idea. Seems to me we are but tiny things in a vast universe.
 
OlderThanDirt said:
You have got to be kidding. You must have had a charmed life. I've seen many instances where good definitely did *not* prevail. I was a social worker. I saw horrible things happen to very nice people.
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I'm referring to the new earth.....not this one

I too have seen much
But this will pass
 
Gary O' said:
I encourage you to review those books
Prophecy shows Jesus is now in the Holy Place of the heavenly temple (the temple the Israelites replicated in the wilderness)
The judgement books are now open
Once they are closed, the end shall come

'He that is unjust, let him be unjust still: and he which is filthy, let him be filthy still'
Revelation 22
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Damn, I'm glad I don't believe in a god or gods who judges and likely condemns. I feel so blessed to not have to believe that stuff. Whew, so glad I got out while the going was good. I feel sorry for you who are awaiting the judgement of an apparently wrathful god. Sorry you have to live thinking you're that important. Why is your god such a jerk? You couldn't pay me to worship the god of the bible or Koran. What a nasty being.
 
OlderThanDirt said:
Damn, I'm glad I don't believe in a god or gods who judges and likely condemns. I feel so blessed to not have to believe that stuff. Whew, so glad I got out while the going was good. I feel sorry for you who are awaiting the judgement of an apparently wrathful god. Sorry you have to live thinking you're that important. Why is your god such a jerk? You couldn't pay me to worship the god of the bible or Koran. What a nasty being.
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I saw a Youtuber comparing Christianity to living in North Korea. :D

OlderThanDirt said:
It is absolutely fascinating. When I think of what my parents saw in their life times- (born in 1911) - from the first automobiles to landing on the moon- in such a short period of time- it boggles my (admittedly easily boggled) mind.
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I remember my father buying the first color TV. Now they have screens you can roll up and carry around. I saw a projector that doesn't have to be shone on a flat wall, you can shine it into a corner and it works out the angles to correct itself. And that's only the current stuff. It truly is something else.
 
Mr. Ed said:
Not a conspiracy theorist but there are questions in life that don’t add-up.
i calimed to be a christian based on upbrining, lack of exposure to any other type of belief system. I question the validity of faith and reality. It is said among believers that Jesus was sacrificed so believers can have communion with the father. Why do Christian’s praise Jesus for his love when there is no evidence of his to be had?

There is no evidence that faith-based religions produce the promises and solisitation asked for by humans. I think prayer is something other than religious duties of organized religions. It has nothing to do with religion, prayer is a time to reflect, restore balance and ground yourself in the moment. I view this as communicating with life and whatever is managing all that is or god.

Most of my life I have tried to conform to church religion, preacher religion, organized religion to realize none of these religious variants work for me and was led to believe it was my fault for thinking differently.

When I post something of this nature on SF, members have told me to get over it and reprimanded my actions out of disgust for my thoughts and words. I am sorting things in my attic and writing them down helps me take out the trash.
Click to expand...
old age, research, looking at the BIG picture has pretty much made me a tin foil hat wearer....not only religion ..all seems to be inventions of man for what purpose? self profit, control, mass brainwashing--news, wars, covid, religions- seem none can survive in depth scrutiny -countries, governments, etc i.e. --now, ufo's current? or been here all along ...Atlantis, was there really a Jesus a Santa Claus, easter bunny, tooth fairy- pyradmids, and on and on and on,-----NOPE -- I am not buying the company line...sorry-
 
boliverchadsworth said:
old age, research, looking at the BIG picture has pretty much made me a tin foil hat wearer....not only religion ..all seems to be inventions of man for what purpose? self profit, control, mass brainwashing--news, wars, covid, religions- seem none can survive in depth scrutiny -countries, governments, etc i.e. --now, ufo's current? or been here all along ...Atlantis, was there really a Jesus a Santa Claus, easter bunny, tooth fairy- pyradmids, and on and on and on,-----NOPE -- I am not buying the company line...sorry-
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You know, I've made fun of conspiracy theorists plenty of times, they can be humorous (listened to one yesterday that said JFK jr. was not only still alive, but he was actually Mike Lindell, the pillow guy. :D)

But saying that, I think the reality is, there's nothing wrong with being a conspiracy theorist in principle. You can tell the more foolish ones by the language they use. You know, talking about a conspiracy and saying I don't believe them because "you've been brainwashed by mainstream media", types. They're repeating phrases they've picked up over and over, and you know they're followers, not leaders, and ironically have been indoctrinated.

Not everything is a conspiracy theory, which is another way to tell the truly curious from the followers. Some things just are. Governments do have secrets. Hell, companies have secrets - lots of them! But we must be careful when assuming intent. Me, I like UFO's and talk of aliens. But when I hear someone telling me the lizard people are here already, well...........
 
chic said:
After a lifetime of questions about formal religion I agree. It is mind control, wealth attainment and preservation of the status quo. :(
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If it is mind control it is unconscious. I went into the ministry not to control others but to comfort them in their daily lives by preaching about LOVE! The unconditional love of God and the joy we get from committing loving acts for others.

And of all of the churches where I had the privilege to be their Pastor, none of them was even close to being rich!

However I developed a dislike of strict doctrine, dogma and tradition which robbed many people of the joys that life had to offer, so am not "wholeheartedly" supporting organized religion, because it is too rigid and too dogmatic in too many instances.

Call me a Christian Free Spirit!
 

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