fair enough

amen

Someone who stays up nights wondering if there is a dog.

I don't have enough generosity to be a Christian. How can I possibly spend so much time worrying about the problems of everyone else when I have more than enough on my own plate already?

christian chicks will suck a dick quicker than lightnin strikes.

pay the man shirley

I think the only real problem in the world today is lack of consideration for your fellow human beings.

I also think that, being raised a Catholic gives me a much better insight into how the rest of the world thinks. Its good as an upbringing but not that great as an actual religion. Abortion? Gays? I thought we were supposed to make up our own minds.

And for the record, everyone is entitled to MY opinion. AKA If I want your opinion, I'll beat it out of you!

I think there's a song about that...

my grandmother was a catholic, but i'm no longer religious.

WHAT?!

That was not my experience...

:-/

Protholox


Which roughly translates to a perma-lapsed Catholic.

my maternal grandparents are protestant as fuck. my dad's mom was catholic.





i'm orthodox nothingtarian.

irish catholic atheist

Fucking ex-Catholics all over the place.

I am not talking about unifying Christianity for old-time political clout like in Counter Reformation era. I am talking about honest Christians, who can deflect any of there political intentions or inclinations as Christians, should stop fighting against and condemning other Christians for purposes of denomination. Like peter tosh sang, "No mind denomination, that is all segregation.."

If we are Christians, we are all Christians, and until we begin to think that way, we will only be self-destructive. History powerfully demonstrates how dangerous Christians can be..


deep


THANK YOU!

that is precisely the kind of cultural baggage I wanted to discuss! Another example many Anglicans are often carrying the cultural baggage of anti-Catholicism, almost being against anything remotely popish for the sake of spite alone! American Christians generally carry this same baggage, and the distance of time and place have greatly distorted it to the extreme that many americans are hateful bigots against Catholics but have no real knowledge or understanding of why..

When I talk to Christians of all denominations, what often shocks me the most is the amount of prejudice, ignorance and just plain baggage that these people are carrying, and for what? That is not Christianity! That is bullshit! Getting rid of the bullshit is what I am talking about, not necessarily make new bullshit to replace it ;)

that speaks volumes.. thats why I took this little survey, I was curious all the different perspectives. I myself was raised strict Baptist, like hard-core.. but I was not feeling all that baggage so I first became a jack ass and then I became a Rastafari, because Rastafari people are more accepting of jack-asses so long as they are sincere and their antagonism is the baggage of people's so-called religion, and not worship itself. I never rebelled against God, I always felt a need to worship, however I felt a lot of angst against the baggage of the institutions. Today I am an Orthodox convert to Ethiopian Orthodox, ironically a Church with perhaps the MOST cultural and historical baggage BUT buried in all the bullshit is one of the most sincere, authentic and beautiful renditions of Christian faith. Orthodox gave me a complex language to express my faith, one which my baptist upbringing was too stifling to develop.

every sperm is sacred

ahh, the psychology of sexuality stiffled by catholics.. don't feel bad baptists can be worse! At least the idea of sanctity gives a bit of purpose to abstainance, many baptists/protestants just have a lot of sexual guilt trips to complicate the expression of their sexuality.

ironically Orthodox does not necessarily have this problem, because culturally sexuality (at least hetero) has a lot more psychological freedom than in the West. An Orthodox Bishop explains this well in a discussion between the contrasting interpretations of The Fall and Adam and Eve narratives and their theoligical significance. Traditionally and cultural, many Eastern Orthodox thinkers interpret these stories in a spiritual way, and not really giving any sexual connotation, but many Western Christians strongly affiliate Original Sin and Sexuality. In fact in Western Christianity, sexuality itself can be seen as a manifestation of said Original Sin! Thats just a bunch of nonsense! The bible is actually a pretty kinky book, Christians should cut themselves a lot more slack in this regard ;)

At the risk of saying anything... I'm a swimming world of NO but also 'but...' with regards that.

Same here; raised Catholic. I excommunicated myself years ago, but the damage was already done. Buddhism sounds peaceful and genuine. The Jewish faith sounds pretty cool also.
I say no to Jehovah's Witness, Holy Rollers, or those who speak in tongues, tho.

apparently, there are some 'christians' who think that catholics aren't christians. How fucked up is that?

George fucking bush is the worst christian on the planet

My father was raised Catholic, my mother was raised Lutheran.

My parents pretty much raised me to be Christian, but not in line with any church. I have a rather negative outlook on churches because they all seemed to be preaching a distorted Christ. I've always thought of Christ as tolerant, loving, and ultimately forgiving, but in every church I've seen lack of tolerance, hatred, judging, and damnation. But I think that might not just be the church, I think that might just be fucking humankind in general.

True that!
Also, I like the fact that many religions are truly Christian (i.e. believe in God). I like it because apparently many Catholics think they are first on God's list because they believe in God "the most."

good bumper sticker: Hate is not a family value.

And what is unclear, vague, or ambiguous about 'thou shalt not kill'

Everything. Taken to its most extreme, its impossible and contradictory.

What is the life that can be killed?

No risk at all because, shying some context, I have no idea what you mean.

Hope you don't mind.

What Catholics do you know? The Catholic condition that I grew up with was the complete polar opposite. Catholic guilt, and all.

Then again, a lot of traditional Catholicism has been tainted by that even more repulsive born-again trash.

I want to make it clear, though, that I absolutely oppose this assumption that the source of this apparent army of the faithless from Catholicism is necessarily originates in its oppressive sexuality. That may be a comfortable idea for the remaining faithful to consider the lot to be carnal hedonists but they're wrong.

If anything, I've met lapsed Catholics that are more spiritually awake than your most fundamentalist believers of any faith.

Turning atheist for me wasn't anything to do with oppressive views of catholicism or the church, it just seemed like
the most natural way of thinking when I've adopted Marxism . I can't really claim to have had particularly bad experiences with any religious people of any faith either.

Roman Catholic, although all my family is perfectly atheist.
I don't even remember now how I turned up to have a faith.

I remember. You were strapped for cash and started a thread in which you sold your soul to the highest bidder. In the last few seconds of the auction the Vatican managed to outbid me by 20 cents.

Wonder what would have happened if you had won?

Oh, I'm just a soul broker. You know, trying to make a small profit here and there.

Fair. It's all to do with the impossibility of escaping the epistemic, and what the notion of 'orthodoxy' means in that context. I tend to think of theism as the prima facie of epistemics, but I've no intention of arguing about it on a messageboard.

I just don't understand how someone thinks unified christianity would improve the world in any sense. Wasn't it a bit worse and more intolerant before?

I can't stop thinking that religion should be a private thing. I don't see the point of preaching it to someone who's not really asking for it. (I am not talking about anyone here).

If you really wanna improve the world, stop mixing religious bias with politics and laws, that's gonna be work for generations anyway.

Humans love to belong.

inhumans hate to belong

good logic. not necessarily true tho.

"christian" does NOT mean you believe in god.

It means you believe, SPECIFICALLY, that Jesus Christ was the one and only incarnate Son of God, that he was God made man here on Earth, and that his "sacrifice" redeemed all humans from all sins from the beginning of time to the end of time.

very different than believeing in "GOD"

my mother is Lutheran.

I'm a monotheistic pagan.

I hope this helps.


tell that to Dr. Frankenstein's monster; or, say, the lion, the tinman and that little dog.