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05-02-22 05:29:42 PM
Jul - General Chat - Church New poll - New thread - New reply
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Bagel

Giant Red Paratroopa
without music life would Bb
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From: bear

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Posted on 05-14-10 08:49:56 PM (last edited by Bagel at 05-14-10 05:52 PM) Link | Quote
My family are active church people who participate in services and such and even work there. But I have no interest because ... well. I stopped going regularly at about age 18. Didn't hold my interest, frankly, and it wasn't doing me or anyone else any good for me to continue going through the motions. It just seemed ... childish. Like having an imaginary friend. Plus ... every single person in the congregation is a huge hypocrite. Sure, no one is perfect but these people are entirely different on Sunday morning than they are any other time. It might be more convincing that you believed in this stuff if you actually acted like it. It's all posturing. "I'm a better Christian than you are because xxx" -- it really is one of the things that convinced me that there is no such thing as an adult; everyone on the planet is just a child, using any excuse, religion, money, whatever, to be able to assert themselves to the top of the pecking order. I prefer to stay out of this as much as I can.

Then there's the lack of social progress based on religious things ... it just leads me to believe that religion is becoming more and more just a part of a political agenda, based on a mentality like "I'm right, you're wrong, because God says so" ... can you back that up please? Gays getting married is going to result in ... what. The oceans haven't dried up. I don't see any plagues of locusts. It's not like anyone's forcing you to be gay and marry. Good grief.

No offense is intended, that's ... just how I feel. I like to be open-minded -- it'd be great if there was some entity out there watching over us but I'm very very far from being convinced.

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Ctenophorae


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Since: 06-19-09

From: Oregon

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Posted on 05-15-10 12:07:33 AM Link | Quote

I used to go to church as a faithful Christian boy, but that changed. Everybody at my church was ridiculed and called sodomites and liars, people would throw rocks and many people got hurt including me. I still don't know what brought this around, I was too young to know then and never learned about it to this day. Applegate Christian Fellowship was a pretty nice place, I have to admit, but we ended up leaving it for obvious reasons.

We then started attending smaller services elsewhere. At first, the people there would be kind and open but would talk behind each others' backs with such vile hatred and I was a prime target (at the age of 13) of such abuse. Since I was different from them (I wore black every Sunday instead of that sickly blue that grandma wore or whatever), they called me a Satanist. Ironic considering that I was probably the only person there that actually read his Bible outside of church!

Well, I went to school with one of the bastard kids and him and his "gang" would harass me daily. They would follow me snickering, waiting for me to turn my back and then they would spit on me. The dean at school did nothing to help until I swung. I put up with this shit the previous year, trying to get help but being given the cold shoulder by every "authority" in the school. I knocked the fucker out cold but got the shit kicked out of me for it. One versus four wasn't very good odds. I was the only person that got suspension (in-school suspension, wtf) and the next day was my 14th birthday. Nothing like spending your birthday with delinquents!

Well, the Ms. Bergen (the dean) called my mother and was very nasty to her, calling her a bad parent and saying that I needed anger management. Wait, what? Me? I put up with this crap for how long before snapping?! That day sucked.

Sure enough, next Sunday was a nightmare. I had a chipped tooth, bruises all over my body from being kicked and what felt like a broken rib or two and I couldn't move my right wrist at all. All anybody would say to me is "how could you do that to poor Mikey?". I was putting the little shit in his place, getting rid of one of the world's bullies but nobody would listen to me. My parents weren't even on my side. The prick didn't show up to church because he was hurting so badly (yeah, right) and here I was, a fucking train wreck, and I came to pray to the Lord like I always did every Sunday. "You're going to Hell for what you did to my son!" his mom would hiss with a forked tongue. Even the Pastor hated me, looking in my direction whenever he mentioned sin.

Something inside of me clicked that day. Every single one of these people, by rules of my religion, were going to Heaven. That's when I stopped believing. I knew right then and there that I would rather go to Hell than be in the same eternity as these monsters. These were some of the worst people imaginable and they simply sucked up to Jesus to feel absolved.

I tried to get back into going to church a few years later, but the new place I tried was full of bigots and racists and I truly just gave up. Once I gave up I really just felt unburdened. People stopped harassing me, thinking I was the anti-Christ or something, and I made new friends outside of the church. If you've ever seen Moral Orel, it was pretty much like that for me.

I'm not exactly against religion now, though I do feel sorry by those who are trapped in it, those who hate it yet turn to it to be justified. It's a horrible circle! For those who are uplifted by it and are truly good people because of it, I want to see more of you.

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Originally posted by Keitaro
So. I ran in to a shiny Graveler a few nights ago. He proceeded to self destruct. I hope he's in hell right now.

RahanAkero

The End of the World
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Posted on 05-15-10 03:05:38 AM Link | Quote
I'm... oddgnostic, I guess you'd call it. I've been to church twice when I was little, to see what the hubbub was about. D: Didn't really click with me. But, living in a house with a: greek orthodox mom, b: roman catholic dad, c: Santera (practicioner of Santeria) eldest sister and d: wiccan older sister... there's lots of gods around. So, I have a weird little polytheistic "anything goes as long as it's good" thing. I have a little altar in my room that I light candles at when I feel I should, which is... really, really rarely. But, it makes me feel good, and that's really the point, isn't it? :o

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MajesticLight
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Posted on 05-15-10 05:29:17 AM Link | Quote
I was raised Roman Catholic, but I don't go to church on my own. I feel that with so many splits in religion, and with each saying that theirs is the only correct one (except a couple), so long as you're a "good person," you're all set.

When I was little, there was no doubt in my mind that the Trinity existed and that everything was true and so on and so forth. Now, though, I no longer accept the "mystery" argument that people tend to throw out when they can't explain something from the Bible, like contradictions and such ("It's a mystery to us. Only God can understand it, for He is all-knowing.").

I'm also tired of the whole "everything God does is according to His plan." Does His plan really include killing off my pets, one by one? If He's all-mighty and powerful, can't He make His plan work without having to make me and my family suffer? And if the plan does include that, then does that mean He enjoys seeing me suffer? Is that His plan? To make me suffer?

I see God more like a being who created something, and now is just watching us do stuff. No master mind "time line" of events. Just casually watching, and He might respond to a prayer occasionally. To me, most events happen the way the do because of chaotic chance.

One more thing: if we supposedly have free will, but God knows exactly what we're going to do before we do it, doesn't that kinda defeat the purpose of free will? That means that, if we have a choice between sin and not sin, and God knows we're going to pick sin, He'll let us pick it. He knows every one of our actions, so before we even come into existence, He knows whether or not our sins "total" to a trip to Hell or not. So basically God creates us knowing if we're going to Heaven or Hell. So our afterlife is, essentially, predetermined (or at least pre-known).

...I don't really know what that makes me, religion-wise... I normally go with "loosely Roman Catholic."

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Danielle
600
I like chicks.
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From: California

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Posted on 05-15-10 07:27:00 AM Link | Quote
BlackNemesis13
1150
I am ***** but it's hard to pronounce, so you can call me Geno after the doll.
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Posted on 05-15-10 05:04:53 PM Link | Quote

Originally posted by MajesticLight
One more thing: if we supposedly have free will, but God knows exactly what we're going to do before we do it, doesn't that kinda defeat the purpose of free will? That means that, if we have a choice between sin and not sin, and God knows we're going to pick sin, He'll let us pick it. He knows every one of our actions, so before we even come into existence, He knows whether or not our sins "total" to a trip to Hell or not. So basically God creates us knowing if we're going to Heaven or Hell. So our afterlife is, essentially, predetermined (or at least pre-known).

I think you'll enjoy reading Dante's Divine Comedy, specifically canto XVI of purgatory. That canto in particular deals with exactly what you stated. Dante Alighieri was a devout Roman Catholic, a complete poetic genius, and an uncorrupted politician, so reading up on his personal perspective can be very enlightening, even if it is from a 14th century perspective.

His main point throughout the comedia seems to be placing emphasis on human responsibility regarding our own fate. Each of us chooses exactly where we'll end up in the afterlife, and the afterlife itself is merely a reflection of the life we chose to live. If someone chooses to live their entire life in sin, then in hell, they continue to live in the same sins that they chose to value above all else. The only difference is that in hell, anything that seemed glorifying about that sin in life has been removed, and all sins in their true form are torments that enslave us, whether we are alive or dead. It is also characteristic of the souls in inferno to blame someone else for them being there, and to not want to believe that they have done anything wrong. Inferno is made up of people who do not want to take responsibility for their own actions, and who want to ignore the nature of their sin. Therefore they have rejected the burdens of knowledge, freedom and choice. Since they rejected these in life, then in the afterlife they are forever stripped of them. Since they chose to live their entire life in sin, then their afterlife too is spent living in that same sin, only now they are forced to see how detrimental they were to themselves by doing that.

That summary is really a butchery of everything that it has to say, and that is but one of MANY points that it makes. But anyway, according to Dante, although God does have a master scheme, any one of us can choose to work contrary to God, and those choices are NOT predetermined. The world is a messed up place to live in due to our own actions alone. If our actions were predetermined then it would be unjust to separate the afterlife into Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso. The three divisions of the afterlife are each created as places of justice above all else, so to place people there unjustly would eradicate the system.

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Gabu

Star Mario
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Posted on 05-15-10 06:49:36 PM Link | Quote
I don't go to church. I haven't really attended on a Sunday since I was in Sunday school. When I was 5.

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Garr

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Posted on 05-17-10 08:50:30 PM Link | Quote
The last time I went into a church building was during my father's funeral.

Even before then, I stopped going. I just don't feel right in churches. They give me this feeling of being watched, stared at, unwanted. I don't like it.

I'm not really one for structured services or the (often-feeling) forced sentiments that come with churches and church services. I was raised Mormon, but I could just never get 'into' it.

I've often wondered about what this means and why I feel this way, and in the end I can only imagine that the Christian god or the collective will of Christian practitioners or whatever manifests during those services just doesn't like dragons.

I'm sort of officially agnostic.

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Jul - General Chat - Church New poll - New thread - New reply


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