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I usually stay out of the religious threads for obvious reasons. But here goes.
I was raised a STRICT southern baptist. I have since become a pantheistic Druid. The road was long and bumpy.
For me it is not my religion, but my way of life. It is free of the dogma and rigid beliefs that plagued my youth. I believe that Nature is both divine and sacred and "God" is present in everything. And like many of my pagan brethren, I believe in successive reincarnation.
I am a member The Order of Bards, Ovates, and Druids. Bards are the storytellers and musicians Ovates are the healers Druids are the teachers and judges I do a little of all three, and not necessarily well.
IMO you do all three very well. Just for the record.
I usually stay out of the religious threads for obvious reasons. But here goes.
I was raised a STRICT southern baptist. I have since become a pantheistic Druid. The road was long and bumpy.
For me it is not my religion, but my way of life. It is free of the dogma and rigid beliefs that plagued my youth. I believe that Nature is both divine and sacred and "God" is present in everything. And like many of my pagan brethren, I believe in successive reincarnation.
I am a member The Order of Bards, Ovates, and Druids. Bards are the storytellers and musicians Ovates are the healers Druids are the teachers and judges I do a little of all three, and not necessarily well.
This kind of practise/way of life has always intrigued me, but I'm pretty much uneducated except for portrayals on TV or the movies and such. Care to expand a little?
I've always been taught that God is all knowing, all powerful, and all present, which would of course mean that God is present in everything. I've also been taught that man is set apart from other living things on this planet by his free will. Man can choose between good and evil, and even can deny the existence and presence of God. These same concepts exist across many religions. Since the universe and nature must follow God's laws (physics, dynamics, life cycles, evolution) set for them, wouldn't it make sense to study these things to get a better sense of who/what God is? We have virtually an unlimited amount of creatures, plants, and other living organisms to gain knowledge on how to not only survive, but live our lives from. We can study physics or astronomy to find out just what we are and how things work.
It really bothers me that churches as institutions would intentionally put themselves diametrically opposed to science because of ideological reasions. The more you know about God's creations, the more you know about God. The closer you are in harmony to God's creations, the closer you are in harmony to God. They take texts that were written by people with significantly less understanding of their own exietence much less the world around them, and treat them as holy literal truth. It's quite common for someone if they witnessed something they could not explain to attribute it to God, or for currupt leaders to claim it's God's will for them to annihilate and kill everyone in their enemy's villiage. That still happens today.
Now wheter you believe in God as a single supreme entity, or some external driving force that we can't fully perceive in our current state of existence, is just a matter of faith and difference of opinion. But either way, what direct effect on the way we live our lives should that have anyway if our goal is to be closer to God? There's no possible way to scientifically prove/disprove the existence of "God" in some form. It must always be taken as a matter of faith by the religious. So why not study everything and learn more about your God? At best, you get closer to God, at worst, you become a more educated person. Who cares if Adam and Eve didn't really happen? So what if Noah couldn't fit 2 of everything on his Ark - thus killing the dinosaurs? ;D They shouldn't effect how we live today one way or the other.
Man has been seeking "God" in some form or another for thousands of years on this planet. What we have in the Bible and other religious texts are documents of people and civilizatiions for a good deal of that time. There's a lot of good things to be learned and a lot of good teachers to learn from. I just think Jesus does present a path to what I would call God. There may be, and most likely are others. I would think a loving God would present a way to anyone who really seeks him in a way they can understand, and we understand our would much differently than we did 2,000 years ago.
Post by hibouxdufromage on Jul 2, 2009 13:13:19 GMT -5
I'm a buddhist. Specifically, Vajrayana - Nyingmapa, but I don't really adhere to sectarian lines. I'm just that because that's what my teacher is, so it's more of a lineage thing than a denomination thing. I find myself struggling with hostility towards so-called "monotheist" religions. They're really bitheist, because Jews, Christians, and Muslims all have an evil god that they use as a scapegoat/scary monster. I also believe that any religion that needs to use proselytizing for growth is inherently misleading. If you have to send people out to try to convince other people that your religion is worth buying into, then it obviously isn't. If it were, people would naturally gravitate towards it. Regarding a belief in "God", if the definition thereof is a belief in some separate entity (or entity that is possible to separate yourself from) that makes rules and watches from afar, waiting for us to die so he can send us to heaven or hell, then I think that's the most ridiculous idea ever, and it makes me sad to think that so many people buy (and literally pay for) into that. Secondmost is zombie worship and ritual zombie-god cannibalism. Third is that if you get yourself killed for the cause, you get sent to heaven for eternity, but you get a finite number of virgins to get it on with, but since you're dead you don't have or have a need for reproductive organs. Seriously, these aren't very well thought through ideas. Told you I have soem hostility issues with the so-called monotheists. Probably because I was raised and live in the bible belt, and have to deal with these kinds of morons on a daily basis. I believe the Universe is a living organism, made up of other living organisms, and if you want to call that God, then go right ahead. I don't.