Religion.

[tinkerbell12]

I believe that there's some sort of higher ... thing?... that is 'up there.'

I do believe there is a God/superior being/whatever you call it. I do believe that this 'being' can help you/provide miracles/etc. I'm not sure how to phrase it.

^^like that.

I just do not know what it is.

But I am not religious.
I don't say "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance.
I do not go to church.

I've been to many different churches and really listened to see if I fit in.
I really don't.

Therefore, I have no religion.

 

[Sparx]

I can read all day about the chemicals in brains that make people feel the way they do, but that doesn't amaze me.

what amazes me are the bonds between people. They're almost like fabric or string. They can be as thin as angel hair, with someone that you just know by sight, or don't know the name of. or they can be as thick as rope with close friends or someone you love. some can't survive a pair of scissors cutting them, but some withstand the blow of a machete and mend.

sometimes the fibers that hold people together are so thin that its amazing they even exist at all.

thats just something i've always thought of, i suppose.

 

[Nomi]

Okay. I love you.

How do you know? I could be lying. I could be telling the complete truth. But you can't know in daily life. Yeah, you could do tests. But in your day to day life there's no way to truely tell if I really do love you.

Well, most people cannot preform tests, you're right there. However, love is an emotion and is physicaly felt like joy, or saddness, so on an individual basis most people can decern love within themselves. Concerning how we tell if someone else loves us: we use clues picked up by our brain, like how much the person makes eye contact with us, how often they touch us, hug us, how much of their attention is put forward. Ultimately we cannot read the other persons brain, but we can read their actions.

For example: I have no way of testing if you love me or not beyond a reasonable doubt (for nothing in science is ever %100, the very nature of scientific meathod prevents it. Which is a good thing), however, I can rationalize that you probably do not beacuse for love to form, there has to be at least some form of continuous interaction, and for a person to feel the attaction that comes before love there does have to be some form of physical interaction, like talking, eye contact, ect. None of these have taken place, nor is there any evidence that you do. From that I can rationalize that you probably do not love me.

Okay. Your boyfriend/girlfriend says I love you.

You want to believe them. Don't you? But as I said before, you can't know in day to day life. All you can do is trust them. Because you love them. You trust that they're not cheating on you. You trust them because you love them. But, you can't prove that they love your or that they're not cheating on you in day to day life.

Yes, if one is in love they want to trust their partner. Love cannot really be proven, but day to day evidence can be found in favor of love. Love can be messy, as sometimes people fall out of love, into love with another person, ect, but the point is that there can be enough evidence for us to tell that the other person has some form of feeling for us.

Okay. You hope your boyfriend/girlfriend isn't cheating on you.

You trust that they aren't. But from my last example you see that you can't be sure that they aren't. You can't prove it in your day to day life. But you hope so. Even if there are clues to hint that they are, you may love them enough to ignore those hints and keep hoping they aren't.

Well, they would have to be very good liars for someone in love with them to not notice. When in love, a person spends more time closely observing someone, and is more able to notice changes in behaviour. If they are in love, they may ignore it.

All these things require faith. I don't care how much love, hope, and trust can be proven in laboratories. But from day to day, people don't have those kinds of tests. So you have faith that I love you. You have faith that i'm trustworthy. You have faith that the future could be better. You have faith in things not seen. Why then, can't you have a faith in God?

They require a form of faith, but it isn't blind faith. It is faith that is based on the evidence given. If a person is somehow deceived by their partner, they still were working of the evidence given, which is based of our past experiences and the way the individual tries to indicate to their partner they love them. On top of that we have the physical evidence of love (hormones, neurotransmitters) which only goes to solidify the theory of love. Now lets compare this to gods, for which there is no evidence. To belive in gods requires blind faith, which is very different than the faith I have that I am in love, or sitting in a chair. All the evdence I have indicates I am indeed sitting in a chair. I might not, I may be in the matrix and all my senses are lying. But given that there is plenty of evidence for the chair, and none for the matrix, I'm going to go with my chair.

The point is that basing faith of evidence is very, very different than blind faith. It's ok if you decide to believe in anything you want, but it's not really comparable to something like faith that someone loves you.

Sorry. Lol. I'm not saying you have to. I'm just kinda proud of my point here. lol.

No, it's alright. Disscussion and debate are always good.

 

[Nomi]

I can read all day about the chemicals in brains that make people feel the way they do, but that doesn't amaze me.

what amazes me are the bonds between people. They're almost like fabric or string. They can be as thin as angel hair, with someone that you just know by sight, or don't know the name of. or they can be as thick as rope with close friends or someone you love. some can't survive a pair of scissors cutting them, but some withstand the blow of a machete and mend.

sometimes the fibers that hold people together are so thin that its amazing they even exist at all.

thats just something i've always thought of, i suppose.

Well, some of us happen to think that it is amazing that chemicals and the function of the brain can form such close bonds that make us feel emotions intensly, to feel so connected to people. For me, tacking on suprnatural things like gods, spirit, souls.... that seems to make it less for me, as if to need these things love must not have been good enough for people in the first place.

Love can be likened to a string I suppose, but in can also be likened to a fire, to a bridge, to a flower, to a star.... what matters is that love is love, I suppose.

 

[STOPxmickeytime]

Dont worry, I know what you mean .

But no, I actually dont. I think love, hope, trust, human emotions, intelligence, nature and reality in general are all amazing in and of themselves. Like I said, I do not think that learning about reality lessens these things in any way. In many ways it makes them more amazing.

I know science must be as un-baised as possible, but that is no reason for it to be cold. Science gives us medicine (this goes as far back as learning what plants help heal a wound), architecture, technology. Plus, my favorite (art student here), science and art are getting more and more melded every day. Thats far from cold and sterile.

And even though our brains are effected by our genes, environment, and chemicals, our brains are us. To be more precise, we are what our brains does. So even though my brain is effected, all these changes, subtle, still are within my brain, and those changes then are me. This one I`m having a little trouble saying.... well, it`s the morning. So it all depends how you define free will. Most biologcal urges can be overridden, sociological pressure can be ignored. There are a million possible things I can do today if I choose, and my biological makeup does not stop me from doing any. (It might stop me from, say, stepping in front of a bus, but I do not really have a problem with that. I could override such a desire to not step in front of a bus, but I choose not to. Free Will). I could go on a tangent about how some religions, if they were true, would really make us have no free will, but I`ll refrain from that.

All in all, I think science is really neat, and reality is more amazing and awe inspireing than any of us humans can make up.

There, I hope that answered your question for you!

You're really good at phrasing things :]

And I guess I agree with you, to some point. I understand the science behind it, and I appreciate it as well.
But, if the way I look at it was put on a scale, the science behind it all would be nothing compared to how I feel about raw human emotion. Like, the un-scientific viewpoint of it.

I feel like you could read about all the bio-chemical reactions in the brain that cause the emotion for your whole life, and never really understand what love is until you actually see it and feel it.

 

[Nomi]

You're really good at phrasing things :]

And I guess I agree with you, to some point. I understand the science behind it, and I appreciate it as well.
But, if the way I look at it was put on a scale, the science behind it all would be nothing compared to how I feel about raw human emotion. Like, the un-scientific viewpoint of it.

I feel like you could read about all the bio-chemical reactions in the brain that cause the emotion for your whole life, and never really understand what love is until you actually see it and feel it.

First off, thank you very much!

True, learning about an emotion and feeling it are two different things. (Like leaning about disneyland and being there are two different things, for example!) Still, that does not stop the raw emotion you feel to still be caused by those things. A rose by any other name, you know.

It's just my opinion that one can learn about their reality and still feel raw emotions to their fullest degree, learning doesn't stop that for me. Learning about my world is very importent to me, so perhaps science measures higher on the proverbial scale for me than you. Or not, who knows.

 

[ktbutterfly2011]

Well, some of us happen to think that it is amazing that chemicals and the function of the brain can form such close bonds that make us feel emotions intensly, to feel so connected to people. For me, tacking on suprnatural things like gods, spirit, souls.... that seems to make it less for me, as if to need these things love must not have been good enough for people in the first place.
Love can be likened to a string I suppose, but in can also be likened to a fire, to a bridge, to a flower, to a star.... what matters is that love is love, I suppose.

Ah, that is the point you don't understand.
I feel that God is the BEST form of love. Better than anyone else.
He will never leave me or forsake me. He already knows what's happning in my life, but if I tell him it pleases him. He loves me unconditionally, a love that could never be found here on Earth.

It makes me smile just thinking about it.

 

[disneydance]

I'm actually really confused with my religion right now.
I haven't gone to church in a while, and I never made my communion. I was SO close, but 1 CCD lesson scared me for life. Let's just say my teacher was very PUSHY!!! when it came to religion. Basically if you don't do/do XYZ...'You die and go to hell now!!'. To a bunch of 7 year olds.

I do believe there is a God/superior being/whatever you call it. I do believe that this 'being' can help you/provide miracles/etc. I'm not sure how to phrase it.
I'll just say there are certain aspects of religions I agree with. If there was a religion that had a combo of all religions with select rules, I'd probably agree with them.

Sorry if this post is really confusing. It didn't really make sense to me either.

I had a Sunday school teacher I'm still terrified over it and thanks to her I dont know what I believe I think Mormanism has alot of my same belief like they believe that God sent us all back to earth and we were all once in heaven but thought that we should spend some time down here but I believe that theres a god but I dont believe in some of the Christianity ways which just kill me and all but I just dont know

 

[Nomi]

Ah, that is the point you don't understand.
I feel that God is the BEST form of love. Better than anyone else.
He will never leave me or forsake me. He already knows what's happning in my life, but if I tell him it pleases him. He loves me unconditionally, a love that could never be found here on Earth.

It makes me smile just thinking about it.

Well, if you find anything positive in religion than good for you. However, the fact remains that any form of attraction, to another person or a fictional character (some people fall in love with, or more correctly have a crush on the idea of, Harry Potter, for example), is a physical response as are all emotions, and are none the less for it.

 

[Cassidy]

My parents dont like me watching or reading Harry Potter.
They think a with or a whateveryoucallit wrote and directed it.
I agree with them, but they are fantastic books!

 

[Nomi]

My parents dont like me watching or reading Harry Potter.
They think a with or a whateveryoucallit wrote and directed it.
I agree with them, but they are fantastic books!

Do you mean a witch? Well, in the first place, J.K Rowling is a Christian. In the second place, most real-life witches (wiccans) are the nicest people (Spread only good, any bad you do will return to you tenfold, ect), and the books are about as far away from 'real' (though less, er, irritating wicca is as silly to me as christianity) witchcraft as is possible.

I love the book for getting more kids to actually read instead of watch TV though!

 

[AmandaSparks730]

OP, ITA with Wicca! It seems to be really awesome! I got this book on it from the library, and it seems really interesting, being one with nature, connected to all things around you...wow.

 

[Steffi]

Sorry, wrong username.

 

[CheezDoodle]

Do you mean a witch? Well, in the first place, J.K Rowling is a Christian. In the second place, most real-life witches (wiccans) are the nicest people (Spread only good, any bad you do will return to you tenfold, ect), and the books are about as far away from 'real' (though less, er, irritating wicca is as silly to me as christianity) witchcraft as is possible.

I love the book for getting more kids to actually read instead of watch TV though!

Actually it's threefold, not tenfold, and Harry Potter is fiction and isn't like the Wicca religion at all. And like you said, J.K. Rowling is a Christian.

Sorry, but it's pure ignorance to say 'Well you can't read that book because it's written by a witch and witches worship THE DEVIL'. Witches don't even believe in the devil.

 

[ktbutterfly2011]

Well, if you find anything positive in religion than good for you. However, the fact remains that any form of attraction, to another person or a fictional character (some people fall in love with, or more correctly have a crush on the idea of, Harry Potter, for example), is a physical response as are all emotions, and are none the less for it.

I don't see how you could not find one thing positive in religion.

I don't care if science has proved love is a physical response or not. All I know is that I feel His love. And that is good enough for me.

 

[Axel]

Actually it's threefold, not tenfold, and Harry Potter is fiction and isn't like the Wicca religion at all. And like you said, J.K. Rowling is a Christian.

Sorry, but it's pure ignorance to say 'Well you can't read that book because it's written by a witch and witches worship THE DEVIL'. Witches don't even believe in the devil.

ITA. I went to catholic schools all my life, but we were always allowed to read these books because they have a good moral center and they say a lot about growing up in modern society.

 

[chisnpeke]

I don't even understand the whole Harry Potter debate. I read the first three books and never even felt like I would want to be a witch. Though, some of the stuff was pretty cool at the time!

 

[Axel]

I don't see how you could not find one thing positive in religion.

I don't care if science has proved love is a physical response or not. All I know is that I feel His love. And that is good enough for me.

As it should be.

I'm part of the respect all religions thing. I will from time to time point out some of the crazier aspects of certain religions, but it's mostly just when arguing a point.

I don't like offending people based on religion because I hate it when people attack me and stereotype me based on mine.

I think that love, whatever it is, and wherever you feel it from, can cross any boundary imaginable. My current crush is republican to my democrat, christian to my satanist, conservative to my liberal, and almost every opposite you can imagine. But he's a great guy and I admire him for who he is.

LOVE CONQUERS ALL!

 

[DisGirlAllie]

So many people have died over religion. Is it really worth it?

Yes.

I'm a type of Christian.

 

[CheezDoodle]

Yes.

I'm a type of Christian.

That's one thing I'll never be able to understand.