For People Who Do Not Need Religion

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Clearly a thread aching to be created.

Obligatory Questions

Have you always found no need for religion or have you lost faith in the need for religion?

Were you raised to be religious?

What are your reasons for finding religion unnecessary?

We know you find organized worship (religion) unnecessary, what about individualistic and unstructured supernaturalism (spirituality)?

Are you metaphysically naturalist?

Finally, the most pertinent question of all...

Did somebody already beat me to the punch and obviated this thread?

Never needed it and always found it a fraud and a plague on human rational development.

always found no need for religion

was raised to despise religion

find religion unnecessary because i feel that the connection to God must be the most intimate and private one so every one must create it in his own unique way

in your words i believe in and practice "individualistic and unstructured supernaturalism" and I'm a "metaphysically naturalist" among many other things

Times change. Religion doesn't. It is possible the beginnings of the bible were to reflect views that would be accepted. If god was female, no-one would care. Now it is more feasible to accept this theory.

If you apply science to many things that happen, it's possible the original becomes molested and altered down the line.

no need for religion

no

I don't beleve in it

I don't worship anything. I have often wondered about life, like there is no logical reason for life to exist.



I don't know or care what that is.

Raised Catholic. Left religion behind when I was 12 after much reading.

Happier without it. Enjoy setting up my own code of honor and being independent. Works for me.

I'm spiritual in a poetic sense but I have no personal need for worship of any top-down kind. Walt Whitman's poem Song of Myself is as close to describing how I feel on the matter.

Both.

But my need for religion wasn't religion per se but trying to find meaning or purpose in life. It was comforting to think that the people I saw die would go to a better place. I was also heavily into mysticism...trying to find answeres out on my own. To my dismay, I found nothing but that which could only be explained physically.



Not necessarily.

My dad was an atheist and my mom was a spirutualist..not sure how to word her. She just wasn't one of those people who read the bible and took it word for word or believed in a heaven or hell. She usually used higher power in place of the word god. My grandma on the hand, made us go to church. Both my parents never pressured us...we use to love to go. But I think it had more to do with being around children our age and getting to see my grandma which was rare.

My dad however has now changed his tuned since his sobriety. He isn't religious though but believes in the same loose concept as my mother....a higher power or meaning in life. Not sure what he means when says that.



I've seen it invoke and cause more hatred than anything else. Also, I've seen how people take away rights of others in the name of religion in this country yet are ok with whatever suits their needs. I've found it more hurtful than helpful in that it seperates humans from understanding eachother even on a "spiritual" level. Not sure how to define spiritual but learning one's individual's needs and positive contribution in the world without judging them by what their role in is "suppose" to be in the name of religion.

IMO, religion does more oppressing than embracing one's individuality. Not that I'm saying that people who believe in something are mere sheeple. Just in the extremes I've seen such as marriage, sexual orientation, role, gender, and other stuff people do not feel a "natural" inclination for who are a prison because of what religion dictates. I've also seen it hurt families. My cousin's roomate is gay and was kicked out by his religiously conservative family because he came out of the closet to them. He's told us both his mom and dad don't want to see his face and a long lecture about what will happen to him if he doesn't change his "lifestyle". Sadly, he's still devoutely religious even though this is happening to him.



I don't see anything wrong with it. As long as they're not harming people or using things such as scams to cheat people out of their money.

My mom was one of these people and she's a reasonable person at least imo.



Yes and no. I'm agnostic so I remain open minded or would like to think of myself as one who hasn't got it all figured out. But yes, I do believe that most eveything can be explained by natural occurences and nothing out of the ordinary so to speak.



Yes and no.....

Looks like they weren't willing to let other views such as this one or others that aren't religious per se be included. So this is the first thread for people who aren't converted or decided that religion is the ultimate choice and answere to life.

religions are elaborate poems.

ever since the first time i heard about dudes waking from the dead, and dead people in the sky. it simply never made sense.
i was lucky enough to be informed that this world view IS optional. "oh thank god for that, mom."

so.
never been religious.

poems make a lot of sense
at least to me they make as much sense as science
it's the way they are translate into organizations that make religion sucks so badly
BTW
the same is also true for science

what i meant is, im not gonna trust my world view to poems.
ill trust it to observation and measurement.
if poetry tells me the world consists of the body-parts of a giant (as my ancestors would have believed)
and observation tells me the world consists of mostly iron, and is a planet in space, i will go for the observation based one, rather than the imagination-based one.

of course, imagination makes sense. like the abrahamic notion of "from dust to dust" and so on. organic material, circle of life, and all that. but humans does NOT evolve from soil. its an idea that makes sense, but its far from true.

of course, both concepts will be abused. people abuse religion, and scientific discovery as they please.

Always found no need for religion but have tried to get involved "to see if it was something for me" but it wasnt...



Yes, my whole family and the big parts of my relatives is religious more or less
My mum is most religious of them all but I havent followed her footsteps like my brother did



um...dont know....I dont miss something like it... I cant believe in something that is abstract to me
This worldwide phenomenon is completely strange to me....
I mean they build houses(churches) and gather together around something that only excist in peoples mind...



Sounds just as weird as religion to me...



?? a what? (no wonder why I never enter the PPR forum, I dont understand what you are talking about)



Have not the slightest clue! Its the first time EVER I enter the PPR forum at all!! !

Last edited by xalepax on 11 Aug 2009, 10:00 am, edited 1 time in total.

I was raised Roman Catholic, even attending a Catholic grade school and confirmed when I was 13 years old. When I was young, yes, I did believe in all the God stuff, Heaven, miracles, and all that; children are credulous. I don't know if it really served a need because children are too young to have the worldly fears that make adults cling to religion. For children, it's just another fantastic story like a cartoon or movie.

As a person reaches the teenage years, they begin thinking more and more for themselves and not just accepting things as they are. Catholic dogma had long run against my worldview, but for a time I had kept the cognitive dissonance in check by just ignoring the parts of Catholic teaching that didn't fit. I rejected the asceticism of Christianity, the arbitrary rules like abstinence from meat on Lenten Fridays, the prohibitions against premarital sex, and the lack of gender equality in the Church. In other words, I rejected the authority of the ecclesiastical hierarchy and the canon and dogma, so for a time I was only Catholic in the sense of a vague Christian-esque spirituality with a tie to the Catholic Church more from ancestry than faith. As I focused more on the scientific theories behind things and compared the existence of many different religions in the world, I came to doubt the existence of any god and at any rate to find the idea superfluous to life here and now (yes, that sounds like a mix of agnosticism and deism, but I never really stuck in any of those stages). This brought me to atheism although I prefer the term nonreligious because atheism carries negative connotations in our culture (too many uptight Christians) and it's more descriptive: I do not believe in any of the supernatural ideas.

To me, "spirituality" still falls under the broader banner of religion.

I've always heard the term materialist (contrasted with idealism), but this metaphysical naturalism sounds similar; I'd say probably yes. I am also a determinist philosophically.

Study quantum physics. You might change your mind.

ruveyn

people evolving from dust is also scientifically correct
and just any dust but the poetic "star dust"
besides, as of reality is still way beyond the measurable and the observable science too is very much imagination-based and the poetic may hide some very solid facts as intuitions and feelings are part of reality as much as materials
u may also take into consideration that as our science is evolving it grows to include terms that were consider subjective in the past
physic theories of our days sounds like an LSD trip

our ancestors rejected the concept of zero because it is unmeasurable yet it proved later to be one of the most important concept of science

I am familiar, but I don't think it amounts to a defense of free will.

It is closer to being an explanation of the appearance of Free Will.

ruveyn