Religion

Oh yes. Perhaps I should have read the frontpage.

I am a pastafarian

May you all be touched by his noodly appendage

Ramen.

But yeah, that's just to show that I'm "in".

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-1202810/Camp-faithless-Is-Britains-atheist-summer-camp-harmless-fun-worried.html

Discuss.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/8196786.stm

Fruitcakes

you know stories like that make me wonder if middle eastern people have functioning brains.

I swear there was one guy asleep on the end of that video, or dead

As a loose Christian, there's nothing I hate more than Christians.
I was undecided as to whether I should post in this thread, because Kaviar had been so scathing and right, I felt like a dick just believing in a God. But atheists are right to have no respect for those with faith when the main example set by religious people is that we are crazy.
My basic view is, the Bible is my own personal guideline and it's none of my business whether other people are following it or not, which leads me to my bugbear with Christians. Most Christians believe that they're better than atheists because of their faith. This is the fundamental flaw, in my view, with a belief system. If we're wrong about the existence of God, we're inferior to atheists. If we're right, we're inferior to atheists.
If we're right, everybody sins in the eyes of God. But atheists are sinning just because they don't believe in God and haven't agreed to follow the rules. When Christians sin, they do it with full knowedge that they're going against their own belief system, instantly making them worse than atheists. Every time I go against the Bible, I'm not only sinning, I'm being a hypocrite. Due to this, I find it hard to understand why most Christians think they're so great. They should recognise their inferiority instead of bragging about a faith that others are already sceptical of.

That just makes me wonder why you bother at all. If you're sceptical yourself and hate practically the entire institution, what's left to gain?

There are reasons too numerous to list as to why I continue to believe linked to "religious experiences" and things I've seen that I cannot explain. But you do raise a good point with the scepticism and it's something I think about extremely often, especially given that I've had various problems relating to mental illness the past few years. It's occurred to me many times that I may be insane and that atheists are absolutely correct, and I have to counterweigh that with the overwhelming sanity of my Christian friends. Even if my experiences have been real, how am I to know that Christianity is the right religion. I think the main reason I continue to believe is that the alternative is that I am genuinely insane and not just mentally troubled, and while it's true this is probably the wrong reason to turn to religion, i think the whole insanity thing would be too unbearable. In truth my religion is my cowardice. But I think it's important to state that I don't base my faith on blind hope and fear, but more on a conclusion that if it is my mind playing tricks on me, I'm pretty much fucked anyway, so to believe in God seems to make sense.
I hope this didn't sound too self-pitying, because what I'm aiming for is simply to explain my comprehension of why I'm religious.

I think you've done very well McGugan.
Your humility has also knocked my vision of the religious as self-satisfied braggarts no end.

mcgugan got angry at me once in Paris because I said God was a lie, then I got naked, naked and angry, angry with the irish lads. "I'll rip out your oesophagus and shit down your throat you potato c**ts" I yelled, and they threw a glass through our window. And I did lots of air guitar. That's actually a 100% true story.

that wasnt nice seany, throwing a glass through your window, shame on them.

Tally ho lads, I daresay I can sense a knees-up in Paris with all the lads in the coming year. What say you all?

You're in the teahouse, have some damned decorum.

i don't remember the air guitar... but apart from that, 100% accuracy corroborated.

I may have dreamed I was doing air guitar

You'd be scared if you knew how strongly I wanted to go out with you guys.

Religion has held civilization back at every turn, it has stifled independent thought held back science (the church was against the use of the decimal point and numbers as we know them today because it came from Muslim origins) imagine if we were still using Roman numerals

It wield political influence where it does not belong, the dude who let the Locerbey bomber made references pretty much saying God will judge him more harshly then we ever could.

I world with out religion would be a better world

Much as I love The Times, I had to laugh at the title of this article, bearing in mind the folly of labelling children discussed in the campaign:

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/faith/article6925781.ece

EDIT: I also get the feeling that maybe the people involved in making the ad looked for childen who just happened to look happy. I don't think any atheist would claim that "Christian" children are incapable of smiling.

An atheist wouldn't claim the children were Christian, that's kind of the point. Anyway, it's not advocating atheism, just refraining from pigeon-holing kids from a young age.

"Christian children" probably are happy, because they're raised by generally nice people in middle-class households. It's not like the church is horrible or anything, but it does have a nice tradition of brain washing. I asked a kid who went to church at my old work if he liked it. He went "IT'S SO BOOOOOORING, I HATE IT!" and I lol'd.