We have a lot of threads here where people talk about religious topics, like the one about Bliblical literalism, but one thing I see missing is people actually talking about their own religious beliefs and why they hold them, so I figured I'd start a topic specifically for religious debate. I'll start:
I'm an Atheist. I have been all my life, up until I turned about 15... I got kind of into Christianity and Judaism. I liked the concept of spirituality, and oddly enough, I perceived the yarmulke as an interesting symbol(humility), but the thing is, that was the thing I could really bring myself to like about it. For a long time, I looked for evidence of God and I remember being kind of frustrated because I couldn't find any, but looking back at that now, that was a very good thing -- My critical mind doing its thing. In light of that, I absolutely stonewalled the idea of God or any supernatural being for that matter. So after a lot of soul-searching, I abandoned my search for a suitable religion, and having investigated religions with a skeptic mindset afterwards, I'm really glad I didn't become religious. I see a real danger in religion - Had I already been predisposed to faith in the manner that people in the United States for example are, I would have been ripe for harvest by extremists, and let's face it - People who convert to a religion mostly become extremist in their beliefs, because what's the point in dedicating your life to a totally new ideology if you're just gonna water it down? I think it's a kind of defence mechanism to stave off initial doubt --- I'm dedicating myslf 100% to this, because I found something I really agree or can relate to. I believe it was Ken Ham who talked about how if we could throw out Genesis as allegorical/whatever, then the other stuff could be thrown out as well, and where does it end? That's how he became a literalist/Creationist; either all of it is true, or none of it is. False dichotomy, applied to a largely fictive work in my opinion.
We're the masters of our own destiny, limited(and futile in the grand scheme of things) as it may be, and I see a real danger in the world-view that takes away that responsibility by way of fear and threats of eternal damnation. This kind of thinking is demonstrably dangerous. For example, that U.S senator urging his fellow friends-in-senate not to worry about global warming because the Earth will only end when God sets Armageddon in motion, how the way the Abrahamic religions paint women as slaves. How can we progress when we have stuff like that stuck in our most revered literature? To our incredible luck, most people disregard these passages. In other words, most religious people like Christians have a cafeteria kind-of-thing where they walk down the isle -- Ok, I'll take "turn the other cheek.", no "Dip a live dove in the blood of another one to cure leprosy.", but give me some of that "Love your neighbor as yourself." now what's that over here? "Women are naturally inferior and should be slaves of men." .. Hmmm, am I getting married any time soon? I think I'll hold off on that for now.
All of that is nasty, but held as personal beliefs, it doesn't even come close to the danger posed by powerful people pushing this stuff on the public at large, like the Texas State Board of Education pushing Christian revisionism and pseudo-science on little kids. By the way, isn't lying against the Christian religion? Again, picking and choosing.
So those are my beliefs and opinions on religion in general.
