A change from politics...

[sqbr]

I've been pondering doing one of these for a while, but wasn't sure I'd get the wording right. Since it worked so well on his lj, I've decided to completely steal the language of angriest's recent post instead(*).

1. Tell me your religious beliefs. It can be as simple as "I am an X" or it can be a lengthy paragraph if you like. If you feel your religious and/or spiritual beliefs are private, either don't reply or leave a note saying as much.
2. If you want to reply to something someone else has written, feel free - particularly if you want to ask them a question about the religion you've always wanted to ask but have never been able to, or felt comfortable enough to.
3. This is one of the biggies: if someone asks you a question and you don't feel comfortable answering it, do not feel obliged to answer. Either don't reply at all, or drop a quick reply saying "I don't really want to answer that".
4. Religious intolerance will not be tolerated. I'm aiming this particularly at the aggressive atheists who seem to get their kicks scoring points, but the rule applies in any direction.

I know a lot of you are on both flists, I decided to do it now while it's still fresh in your heads. You are quite welcome to repeat/post a link to your comment over there! And yes fred_mouse I know you were also planning on stealing his idea, but, well, there's no reason it can't be stolen multiple times :D

(*)And yes, I checked it was ok. Don't want to be sued for copyright violation by the big mean famous writer :)

Comments

I'm really out of it, so hopefully this makes sense.

[greteldragon.livejournal.com]

I've been trying to work this out in my head for quite awhile.

I mean to start with I'm pretty strongly agnostic. We don't have all the information, so we'll probably never _know_ what's out there. Current scientific theory tells us that its pretty unlikely, but scientific theories change as we learn and discover more. So *shrugs* telling us science says there is no god, always did seem pretty petty and missing the point to me. Religion is more than about whether or not the is a god, I think.

I do however have a very strong ethical and belief system, it changes over time, but its something I stick to, study and use to try to make myself a better person. vegetus mentioned that being vegan was the main part of her beliefs, I wouldn't go as far as this (partly in that I'm 'only' vegetarian, but also I feel there's more to my beliefs than my eating habits/lifestyle). Still being vegetarian, is certainly the main thing people think when it comes to this, its easily the most visible.

My family seems to be a mixture of Anglican and atheist though. Dad doesn't believe there's anything out there, and while his parents do a lot of volunteer work which includes taking the elderly to churches and stuff, they don't seem to be religious either. Mum (and grandma) on the other hand, gets very very angry if there's any suggestion that we are anything else, even though she never goes to church. I think this determination comes from when Granddad died though, the need for there to be a better place, so they can move on (and I don't think any truth is really needed here).

I do have very little patience for people who are the bible-bashing equivalent of atheist though, perhaps even less than for the usual bible bashers, who've always been friendly to me (I don't mind getting told about religions, I don't know that much about them, and its always interesting talking to random people). I don't fully understand the anger that a lot of people express here (except of course when churches start interfering with other peoples lives). And I'm an angry angry person.

Okay and now for the reasons why I'm not various other religions (this seems to be important to me, because that's mostly how I define my religious standpoint).

I mean I'm not atheist, not just because I don't think its likely there is a god (in the traditional sense) but also because being atheist associates you with a rather strong standpoint that has no defined ethical or behavioral structure behind it, means I don't see any use for it. As well it ties in closely to this people believing in science thing, which REALLY annoys me. I'm trying to be polite about it, but really the idea of using something that seems to be a abstract tool to discover more about the world to guide how you live your life... that idea chills me somewhat. The reason science is so useful is that it doesn't actually require or need belief in its theories (in fact your understanding is helped in a lot of chemistry and physics if you can remember that its not 'real' so much as models that enable us to do things) to get what it can give us. Entirely different to a religion (which requires a certain amount of belief and following to get any of the benefits).

I also have an intense dislike of people saying things like relgion has never done any good for the world. Because (especially at an individual level) I've seen it to many wonderful things to people. I'm not saying their hasn't been horrible things that have happened, there have been, but that often the good things religion (even organized) religion can bring are often understated in arguments.

I'm not Anglican, probably mostly because I dislike being told I am, all the while, not going to church, not following or knowing ANY of the beliefs involved and getting a sneaking suspicion that those beliefs involved don't actually match all that many of the ones I currently follow.

Hm. For all that this is stupidly long, I'm not sure I've really explained my position well at all.

[stephiepenguin.livejournal.com]

I really actively enjoy discussing theology, but I very (very very very) rarely talk about my own beliefs.

Just to let you know. :o)

[emma-in-oz.livejournal.com]

This is such a tiny thing, but I do feel guilty when I take advantage of the Christmas postage reduction to send out my cards. Why on earth does the Government sponsor cheap communication for Christians. Not that I don't take advantage of it.

[alias_sqbr]

You can haz feminist intellectual fangirls?

Sounds to me like they're fangirls of Sophia. I don't begrudge her them, I do have hundreds of philosophies to call my own :)

[alias_sqbr]

At least in America they have Thanksgiving, and a large enough jewish population celebrating Hanukkah(*), that "The Holiday season" actually makes some sense. Though I get the feeling it means people have trouble getting their head around any religions having major holidays outside that period or none within it.

That said: I'm not christian, and still sometimes send christmas cards :)

(*)Although apparently this isn't actually that big of a festival compared to some of the others at different times of year

[col-ki.livejournal.com]

I think it's interesting the way you talk about the "separation of Church and State" when what you really mean is that you want politicians to act as if they don't have religious beliefs.

Last I checked, aligning your moral system with a particular religion didn't make you a member of the clergy, and the last Bishop who tried to influence an Australian politician got slapped pretty hard by Church *and* State.

Social groups and religions are allowed to have a say in public policy. A separation of Church and State has been lost when judges consult religious texts instead of laws, not when politicians vote to ban gay marriage and go to church on Sundays.

For the record, athiest. Or, as the Dalai Lama says, "compassion is my true religion".

[col-ki.livejournal.com]

I don't see your logic. You think sending christmas cards is about being christian? Last time I checked, they mostly have Santa on them.

[alias_sqbr]

Noted. And it's cool, I certainly have plenty of stuff I don't like discussing.

Instead, have an adorable story about a penguin: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1084037/Lonesome-penguin-cheered-new-friend--stuffed-toy.html

[alias_sqbr]

I did a bit of searching, but I can't find any information about these opt-out Special Religious Education classes

My state school had someone come in and teach us all creationism, and it was definitely opt-out (not that my parents would have minded RE in principle), but that was years ago.

[alias_sqbr]

Thankyou.

[emma-in-oz.livejournal.com]

I don't see your logic. You think sending christmas cards is about being christian? Last time I checked, they mostly have Santa on them.

No, I think the public holidays and subsidies are for Christmas, which for me is actually a celebration of my faith (though my Christmas cards are just catch ups). It means one faith gets it made easy to celebrate.

[alias_sqbr]

I think mandragora2003 has a similar catholic-themed-not-catholicism. I have a very protestant themed atheism, I guess, though it's not quite the same thing.

I believe that theism derives from an human tendency to anthropomophise a mind-bogglingly huge and complex universe into something more cognitively manageable. In this, I suppose, I have a lot in common with panthiests

Same.

[lauredhel.livejournal.com]

I wrote about SRE here. It's opt-out by law, though some school may choose it to be opt-in. (Your location may vary.) Schools are not permitted to offer any programmed educational activities to opted-out students during SRE time. And parents and humanist societies who wish to offer a secular ethics option instead have been refused on the grounds that they were not offering an approved religious persuasion.

WA's State Education Department has no idea how many students have been opted out or what religions are being taught in their own State schools. They don't collect that data, and can't answer the question.

On the swearing on a Bible: it matters not to me that politicians can "swear on whatever they wish". I think they _shouldn't_ be swearing on any religious text when taking public office. If they must swear on a wodge of paper (which I find a bizarre concept in itself), how about the Constitution?

Claiming we have no State religion doesn't really ring true to me while the Lord's Prayer is routinely said in Parliament and State schools routinely teach Christianity.

I'm not going to dignify the "if you don't like it, move to China" with a reply. I don't want a government that's "anti-religion"; I want one that's religion-neutral, and that considers religion - all religion, whatever flavour - to be a private matter with no business in State institutions.

Re: I'm really out of it, so hopefully this makes sense.

[alias_sqbr]

telling us science says there is no god, always did seem pretty petty and missing the point to me. Religion is more than about whether or not the is a god, I think.

Absolutely. And really, all science can do is comment on individual specific religious claims, and normally the less important ones (the age of the earth isn't actually the core tenet of christianity etc)

Also, I'm not sure anyone actually uses science as a religion. People may try to act in a rational way, but logic still has to work from some sort of arbitrary principles, and you have to choose those somehow. I used to hang out with lots of atheists, and there were all sorts of different ethical/political etc belief systems, about the only thing they had in common was a tendency not to be super conservative about stuff like sex.

There are certain atheistic dogmas which claim to be the One True Atheism, but they're all diametrically opposed to each other :) My grandma is a communist, and I've encountered lots of very obnoxious capitalist libertarians, so I understand the "If that's atheism count me out" reaction. I used to refuse to call myself an atheist for that reason, but eventually decided I wasn't going to let them tell me what "atheist" meant. (I mean if it doesn't mean you fair enough, but I don't like the way the word gets coopted by the extremists)

I also have an intense dislike of people saying things like relgion has never done any good for the world

Me also. You can argue over whether or not it's done more harm than good (personally I think it's too hard to disentangle it from culture to say) but it's definitely done some good.

[lauredhel.livejournal.com]

I think it's interesting the way you talk about the "separation of Church and State" when what you really mean is that you want politicians to act as if they don't have religious beliefs.

No, that's not what I mean.

A separation of Church and State has been lost when judges consult religious texts instead of laws, not when politicians vote to ban gay marriage and go to church on Sundays.

One of these things is not like the other one.

[bunny-m.livejournal.com]

OK, I'm definitely going to have to take the time to read through this and add a hopefully more coherent and shorter comment than I did on angriest's LJ.

I'd love to do it now, but it is late, I have to be at work in too damn soon, and I sadly can no longer access LJ at my place of employment. *sadbunny*

Reply to this in case I forget to follow through on this promise.

[terrycat.livejournal.com]

I've been thinking about this for a while....
I've said I was Roman Catholic, but that isn't so much my beliefs as what I'm labeled.
I believe that on the one hand, gods exist. Even if they only exist in our minds, they still exist and can affect us.
On the other hand, religion is not that important. I'm curious about what comes next, but religion isn't going to tell me. And if the only reason you're being good is the hope of a reward or fear of punishment when you die, then you aren't really being good anyway.
So the way I see it is believe what you want, but try not to let that get in the way of doing good.

[col-ki.livejournal.com]

Well then, please accept my apologies for dressing you up in straw!

Could you elaborate on what you mean when you say that we are failing to separate Church and State?

[alias_sqbr]

nb: you replied to me, col_ki probably didn't get notified.

Wow, ok, so if that's still in force when I have kids there will be Words.

So certain non-christian religions are allowed? I'd prefer United Universists or Bahai etc to christian, and at least that way the kids would be getting an alternative to the pervasive christianess of society (not that they shouldn't know a bit about christianity too, if only in a "these stories underpin our culture" sort of way. Cam had no religious upbringing and doesn't know useful things like "why is that Supernatural episode called "Lazarus rising"?" etc)

[lauredhel.livejournal.com]

(Don't people sub to whole threads? I use subthread notification very sparingly. Ah well, I figure if he's keen on the conversation, he'll come back.)

I've seen the occasional parent report a Baha'i class at their school (again, it wouldn't be my choice - they might give good PR, but their beliefs are sexually repressive, anti-gay (believing as they do in faith-based "cures" of this "abnormality"), and not in favour of repro rights). Anglican, Uniting Church, Catholic seem the commonest faiths taught. I've heard of JW classes, and the occasional Islam one. Never heard of a UU course in Australia.

The general teaching _about_ Christianity falls under GRE, General Religious Education. Obviously, I have no problem with that, and we're teaching it at home same as we do every other cultural feature.

I've also had local Church advertising sent home in the schoolbag from time to time, in State kindergarten, which either means that our teachers are spending time distributing it, or some random outside person is being given access to the kids' belongings on-site during class time.

[alias_sqbr]

*blinks*

I have a feeling I'm going to feel dumb if I ask what you're talking about :)

[alias_sqbr]

It's easy not to realise how christian centric the christmas "season" is if you're not a member of a religion whose primary holidays are at a different time, and have to try to schedule work/family etc around them with no help (or understanding) from the government or surrounding culture. I didn't realise until I read some discussion by jews and muslims.

[alias_sqbr]

I just have notification for all replies to comments I make on by default and tend not to subscribe to much else. Is there a way to set "notify me of any replies in threads I've started" by default?

Huh. Did not know that about the Bahai.

[col-ki.livejournal.com]

I can see that. It must be annoying being forced to spend nearly 2 weeks of your annual leave when everyone else is on holiday and travel is expensive, when you'd really rather take them at some other time when your family and friends are involved in your cultural / religious festival.

I still don't think christmas cards are about christianity, though. Like Easter eggs and Valentine's presents.

[penchaft.livejournal.com]

Well, Sophia is actually a Greek name (omg we're name origin twins), so...