How did you find your religion/beliefs?

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I was a Christian...okay,I was NEVER a Christian,I just tried to be one because my family and friends were,and it's what is expected down here.

I was unhappy,so I started studying religions.

I tried Wicca...it just didn't work out for me.(I'm not gonnah say why,because I don't want to offend anyone.I don't have a problem with it,it just wasn't what I believed in.)

I tried Atheism..it didn't seem exzactly "spiritual" enough for me.There's nothing wrong with that,either,I'm just saying.


I tried Buddhism,and it worked out GREAT for me. It had things that I already believed in,and when I studied more about it,it sounded even more logical to me.


-SpaceCase

Buddhism is evolved wisdom.


I go to a Buddhist centre in Croydon to do meditation 1 to 3 times a week

Heh... I've had some fun (mis)adventures with religion before...

In the beginning I was raised by pseudo-fundamentalists. Preach against sin 1 day, get drunk off their asses the next. You get the idea. Never bought into it, never cared, thought this "God" person would make a good videogame character.

Somewhere along the line I got dragged into wicca/paganism by friends, bought into it for awhile... still retain some valuable life lessons from that experience (and a resulting focus on intellectualism), but ended up not buying into "do-it-yourself theism".

At about the same time I was teetering between that and buddhism. I still do SOME of the practices, but as of late I've been seeing more and more of the BS factor, and really don't call myself that by name anymore. It's like Hinduism and the caste system; the base ideas are good but somebody always adds crap to it later on to exploit people.

After that I went into a particularly peculiar piece of paganism called 'otherkin'. It's composed of people who believe they're dragons, gryphons, demons, LOTS of vampires, etc. (Typically as retaining things from past lives of having a "non human soul"). No offense to anyone in this, but I consider it a cult in practice. After seeing the group as a whole, I decided it just wasn't gonna work. That was actually WAY recently.

In 2004 I discovered the Church of Satan. Our idea of a holy prayer would be throwing custard cream pies at a statue of crucified Jesus if that gives any insight into the 'spiritual' beliefs. Take no pipe-dream seriously, live life for what it is, and do as thou will (Despite 'meanness' and such things not being a sin in the least, Satanists from what I've heard, generally pretty nice.)

Today I'm a Satanist in practice, with small streaks of unitarianism and all 4 major Eastern religions (Hinduism, Buddhism, Confuscianism, Taoism).

I am basically Athiest, with mild (and ever decreasing) Deist leanings.

When I was a small child, my parents were both Christian, but couldn't find a church that preached the same things that they believed. They briefly joined a Quaker church, but ended up leaving it because of the phoniness of some of the people there. In Quaker meetings, you speak if something comes to mind, and according to my mom, it was the same people always speaking, and their speeches had obviously been rehearsed. They left the week some woman broke into song "spontaneously"

At any rate, I never went to the meeting, I went to Sunday school. And the only thing I remember about it was being the only kid in the group not allowed to hold the Jewish Wreath they brought in as a show and tell sort of thing. Oh yeah, and volunteering to be Goliath in an acted version of the David and Goliath story, then refusing to fall.

After that, my extended family on my dad's side tried various things to bring me into Christianity. His older sister was the worst. She'd wait until my mother was unavailable, and then twist my ear and tell me how I was going to go to hell and die. They also tried things like excluding me from things my cousins got to do, and on the slightly better side of it, bribing me with promises of presents and outings if I went along with the program. To their credit, they did fulfil those promises when I'd consent to go to church.

In brief defense of my Aunt, she sincerely believed that if I didn't become a Christian I'd die and go to hell. She was so worried about me going to hell she thought that whatever she had to do to make me Christian, it would be worth it.

But, it didn't stick. By the time I was six, I was wondering why anyone believed in that load of bunk.

When I got to be middle school aged, I got tired of the constant evangelism, and converted to Satanism. Well, fake-ass poseur Satanism. I wore lots of black and red and pentagrams, and that was about it. I never did a Satanic prayer, read any scriptures or anything like that. About the time I began high school I dropped the routine.

In High School, I almost became a Christian, because two of the nicest people I've ever known were both Christian. And one of them listened to me, listened to all my doubts about the Bible, and actually TALKED with me, instead of telling me I was going to hell for not believing what she did. She also quoted a Bible passage for me, I forget which one, but it said "Every man must find his own Salvation."

So that's when I quit worrying about it. I try to live a good life, be kind to people and animals, and generally leave things better when I leave then they were when I got there. If it all turns out to be true, I've got no worries about the whole ordeal, because according to one of the good Christians, after you die, you get another chance to accept Christ - which if it's true, I will. And if it's not, then I'll be too dead to care.

My mild Deist leanings are because I don't know where the World came from or what started it. However, I think what happened may well be beyond mortal comprehension, and it's nothing I need to concern myself with.

Meditation and independence. Is that a religion?

I basically did the same thing Buddha supposedly did - I went off to find myself and I am currently working on it. Right now, love is difficult and hard to understand but I'm picking away at it.

I looked at Christianity, I looked at a lot of religions.

None of them, NONE OF THEM, made any sense to me. They all seemed to contradict themselves, they all seemed controlling, and some seemed discriminatory. They all stated belief in things, things which made no sense. How is a god possible?

As such, I'm a pure athiest who does debate against religion. I don't hate religious people-- I only hate religion when it tries to stick its fingers in politics. OR when it's disciminatory.

nowing ful lwell a lot of religious people don't fit into those, I don't hate them all. In fact I dont' hate a LOT of them. If there's any religion I truly admire, it's Buddhism.

My parents were atheists. Much as I loathe to admit it, I never really tried being religious. It's not that I haven't studied religions, but none of them have ever appealed to me. Buddhism is interesting, but I could never be a Buddhist because of various reasons. For example, I'm too consistantly-uncomfortable to ever be able to meditate. I'm not what you'd call spiritual, and I don't need a book or a web site to tell me what's right and wrong. I know what's right and what's wrong by the emotional results that come about because of our actions.

Recent convert to LeVey satanism.

Been an atheist since birth. Some of the people pointed to me to the LeVey satanic bible. I can say this is the most logical religion on Earth. Recommended to anyone.

I'm a christian daoist with a hint of zen and a dash of hinduism .
I believe in God, not as in "ADHD guy sitting on a cloud" which many people seem to visualize it, but more like Brahman, Dao or the ultimate source of existence.
I believe that Jesus existed (as a materialized angel/son of god) and gave his life to offset the sin of Adam, and of course that he's a really good role model.
I don't agree with the hypocrisies of many christians. You know what I mean.
I totally agree with philosophical daoism, which affects every aspect of my life.
I'm also into zen buddhism and a bit of hinduism as well.

I'm strong in the notion that there must be an ultimate reason for everything, which may be sentient or not, but I'm leaning towards sentience, since we are, so if nothing else, the sentience of god would be the combined sentience of all of us.
Being interested in systems and patterns and keeping an open mind, I am interested in seeing how the patterns of various beliefs intersect.

When I was a child my mother was Anglican, my father was Catholic, and my grandmother who was my primary caregiver was a Catholic, but she was superstitious to the point of bordering on witchcraft. I was dragged to church regularly, but overall I saw hypocrisy there, which I could not understand, as the faith putatively rested on purity of heart. Around age 12 my friend's family tried to convert me to Catholicism; they were traditionalists but not sedevacanists. I think briefly they had been SSPXers. It didn't work as I could not make the leap from logic to faith. I did not see God's hand in anything, I saw only circumstance and chance.

Around age 16 I read a book about atheism and decided I was an atheist, and I remained so until about age 21. I found myself wanting to believe in God but unable to believe in God. Around this time an older friend of mine (who later left me, and she is not in contact with me to this day, because of our religious differences) was also trying to convert me to Catholicism; she would bring me to a Catholic church that used the liturgy of St. John Chrysostom (I had also been attending traditionalist masses around that point, nearly married a traditionalist, and also had attended other so-called "Eastern" Catholic churches). Although I liked the feeling of being in church I continued to lack faith. I saw it all as a phenomenal case of the emperor’s new clothes (Blessed are those who have not seen, and have believed, etc.).

A little later I began attending an Orthodox Church because after research I felt it was better to attend a place that adhered to the Nicene Creed without the filioque. I attended the Orthodox Church for a long time. Then, one day, when I was talking with the older friend of mine (before she had left me, obviously) she mentioned something in passing about Judaism and something "lit up" in me, it was a very profound experience and suddenly the belief I had wanted filled me and I was no longer an atheist. I began attending a synagogue and while I was not entirely welcome by every person there, I was for the most part well treated. However the first beit din I appeared before forbid me to convert because I did not have my husband's consent. After the initial rejection by the beit din I had a vision of Jesus (as I was walking away from the synagogue).

I continued to have experiences like this, even while attending synagogues. For instance, once, I was walking home from shul with two members and they said something disparaging about Jesus. The moment the words escaped from their lips I felt a wall in front of me and could not proceed for a few moments, I froze in my tracks. So I did recognize during this period that I had some sort of belief in Jesus, but that church was not the place for me. Years later I did gain permission from a beit din to convert and my then three children and I were converted in an Orthodox mikveh. During this period I began writing a book commenting on the gospels, drawing from traditional Jewish sources, like Talmudic and mystical texts.

I was about 1/4 completed with this when I became gravely ill with a bacterial infection that was antibiotic resistant. I was too sick to attend synagogue or to go anywhere else, for that matter. I was essentially confined to my home and even had trouble getting up the stairs. On one particularly bad evening, when I was bedridden with a raging fever and agonizing pain, I watched the Russian film Andrei Rublev, on my laptop, in bed. I was only able to watch about half of it, but at that midway point, I collapsed and fell asleep or lost consciousness, and I began to hallucinate or have visions, where I saw Mary and Jesus as living beings. I saw their presence; I realized I was so ill that I wasn't even fully in this life anymore, I was seeing parts of other dimensions or "other sides." The visions continued for several nights; I was also able to see spirits of people who had passed away; they were here with us, but in the other dimension. Most people couldn't see them because they were spiritually broken and dysfunctional, like smashed radios unable to pick up radio signals. I was spiritually broken, to be sure, but I think the illness pushed me over to the other side temporarily. The visions lessened, but continued for a month.

When I finally recovered from the illness I could no longer recognize myself spiritually. I could not bring myself to attend either a synagogue or a church; I felt alienated from both, that I no longer had a label of any kind.

Athiest due to personal experience.

Your all sick. Satanist and all that s**t.
Do you even have any idea, this is not right, normal. That means you support evil, and any type of evil. Your just a bunch of sick, deluded fools.
I never, ever expected this from somebody with aspergers syndrome.
As a Christian, I feel like I am being targeted at, when I hear this.