The Basics of Religion.

[eMaGyN]

Airlift...
I think in a lot of ways your situation can prove to be very beneficial...I was also actually shunned from a community that i grew up with because i spoke my thoughts of how there was no hell fore say...
and i think... its helped me. Because once you get so deep into strict religious communities you become extremely narrow minded...and extremely short sighted...
that was the last thing i wanted to happen to me.

and i do believe that people have lost touch with God... but that doesn't mean that God has lost touch with his people.
I don't believe that we will ever be able to fully comprehend the true meaning...and truth behind religion... but i do believe there are souls that are closer to the meaning... and souls that have touched it.

I decided that i wouldn't let my ostracization to ruin my drive to learn... as did you, which... in more ways than one... makes me feel connected to you on various levels.

I know that you are this amazing person... I catch this large sense of selflessness that just emits from you...

just because men have manipulated the words of God doesn't mean that his message to us is tainted... those words are here... inside us.
at least thats my opinion.


eMa

[Airlift]

Thank you, eMa. Seems like I start a lot of posts that way

What I find amazing is that the thread has stayed so civil. I expected it to hit the fan and catch fire in the first 10 posts.

Now what am I gonna with all this

[eMaGyN]

yeah, its something i'm grateful for...
I trusted the PSU community and they proved me right
Thanks guys! ya.


eMa

[Hijinks]

Religion is the opiate of the republicans.

pass it around airlift =p the page will catch fire soon 'nuff =)



Anyway, i believe just about anything is -possible-, yet at the same time i dont think it's likely..

I'd like to think after i die I dont simply end there, but, believing anything more then that would be hope, or faith if you prefer, that there is an afterlife...


no i guess i'm kinda on the side of living on only in the memories we instill in the people we leave behind... and once you're forgotten that's it... i guess that's why i'm constantly depressed? I dont seek out to make a 'name' for myself that'll be remembered more then a month after i'm gone, but as long as I'm living I'm going to do my best to enrich the lives of all my friends and family, and any others that i can help.. and if i do get a chance to live again, or continue on in an afterlife, then That'd be a pleasant end, and i'd finally be able to relax not needign to worry about my friends safety and wellbeing, hopefully...

[tazz]

I dont really know much about religion, as i dont really think about it all that much.

My opinion is that all religions have the same god, only through time they got different opinions and ideas and changed there god accordingly. Becuase if you look at the very basics of all religions, they are pretty much the same, but in different languages.

There is more to say, only to little words to say it in.

[Lexington_Steele]

All of the following is merely my take on things and is not intended to be read as fact.

I see religion as a tool for those seeking spirituality. There are just a number of things you have to keep in mind.

Organized religion is a good place to give you direction in a seach for spirituality. Organized religion is not to be the end of that search. I think that everyone should reach a point in their search where they cast off the structure of organized religion and have spirituality become very personal to themselves. However I believe that it is very helpful for some people to have an organized religion to start their search from and as a forum to begin discussion and questioning.

Holy books are there to offer you questions to ask yourself and think about. Holy Books are not there to present you with all the answers, or to tell you how to live. Life is not as easy as following a printed list of rules, and it is not as boring either.

The person behind the pulpit does not necessarily know more than you and is not privy to information that you do not have access to. However they do spend their lives thinking about and discussing spirituality with their colleagues, so they often have interesting and well thought out ideas on the subject.

As far as my exact personal beliefs, they seem to flip flop. At times I subscribe to something similar to the transendentalist idea of the oversoul (this concept probably predates trancendentalism).

The idea here is that there is a universal oversoul. Whenever anything is born, a chunk of this oversoul is broken off and enters a creature. Throughout the creatures life(using the term creature very loosely) this chunk grows and evolves. When a creature dies, the piece of soul returns the collective oversoul. So your soul is composed of pieces that have been part of the soul of many other creatures. When you die, the sections of your soul will end up being recycled and will become the part of the souls of many other future creates.

The reason why I like this idea is that it seems to make natural sense to me. It is very similar with what happens in nature with what we are physically made of. When we are born, we are made up of many particles (atoms, subatomic particles, ect) that have composed many things before us. When we die, our pieces will become part of future things (trees, grass, maybe other people). The idea here is that you soul works in a similar way.

At other times I see myself as a very self contained entity and that when I die, there will be a part of me that will continue on in some other shape or form, but will still continue to identify itself as a singular, self contained entity (possibly still calling itself Lex). Withing this belief I flip flop between whether there is a singular driving force behind the universe or whether we all have the potential to become the driving force of a universe.

These two ideas are a bit conflicted in which direction I should head in a quest for spirituality. One involves trying to relate to the rest of the universe while seeking out this thing that I am ultimately a piece of. The other is trying to get in touch with something strictly within myself.

Well after all that rambling, I hope that I didn't bore you too much. I also hope that this will give you new ideas, new things to think about and new questions to ask yourself.

[Tobias]

there are powers far greater then us out there, thats my only real thoughts on god.

[Nohimn]

nobody flamed me.......... THIS IS A FIRST!

[Sandtaco]

I'm in between atheist (someone used a fancy word that better suits me but oh well) and catholic. I was raised catholic, and currently go to an all guys catholic school (it's not that bad, you'd be surprised how many girls you can meet at the parties) but anyways... I'm really not sure what to believe in now. I do think that there is destiny, but I don't think that there is a god. Sooo.... I'm not sure what I would be "classified" as

[Nohimn]

agnostic

[Doobz]

i wanna see one of those conservative bastards read this thread and say all gamers who play games with violence are mentally unstable and the like.

very nice thread here, i enjoyed reading it

[Nohimn]

hurrah! ANOTHER ATHEIST! good-bye... you're not checking back...

[Denali]

First of all, Nohimn are you asking to be flamed??? Masochist or something eh? Now that's out of my system...


I could go on a nice, long, uninformative rant on this topic like I did in the "greatest misconception" thread, but instead I'll just dole out moral support. eMa, I liked your thread. The fact that you know what you believe in and why is good stuff, you're lucky. I'm not sure what I believe in half of the time. I know that there is a God, but whether his name is Jesus, Allah, Yahweh or whatever I don't know. I don't know where he is at this moment, or how active he is with human beings at this very moment. I'm not sure if the Bible is the flagstone we should build our world upon or merely a torch to set us down the right path. I do know that I can feel God sometimes, when looking into the eyes of a newborn child, when being surprised by an old friend or making an amazing touchdown pass. I feel that sometimes when I talk aloud to myself (and try to bite me ear...j/k) that someone really is listening. Who what when where and how I dunno. Maybe that's the fun of it To the agnositc crowd, hey you have just as much hard evidence as the God-fearing believers do that there is a greater being watching over us, I say believe in whatever creams your twinkie. Damn, I ended up with a rant anyways. Oh well.

den

[Airlift]

I have an allegory and a followup question for anyone that wants to take it:

Let's geek out for a second. You buy a new computer, and it has a big ole 3 gigs of ram. You load up your Planetside beta and a lot of that memory gets written to. Those memory addresses are born into the purpose of holding a bit, which they carry out well enough if the dimm is good. Eventually the memory will be released, only to be rewritten when the next process needs it. When you're playing, you don't think about whether each of your bits is healthy until the beta crashes to desktop. It isn't that you don't want your memory to work, you're just too busy doing other things. The individual memory addresses might as well not exist for you because you don't think about them. To your bits who may be dying awful little ram deaths, you would seem like a cruel and vengeful user. Many would doubt your existence, and really that's ok with you as long as your computer works. The moral of this story is that even if you don't believe in God, you should try to be a good bit and deliver your 1 or 0 intact at the end of your cycle.

Having said all that, my question is do you think the Tron 2.0 PC game is going to be any good?