Do you believe in God? Options

[Kymra]

Just curious.

[Wambangalang]

all christians believe the world was created in 7 days. I was raised a strict catholic, and the mere mention of evolution was a punishable offense. fucking poison. Religion is poison. Im drunk so fuck off. Dinosoars. "The devil put dinosour bones in the earth".......hahaha

[XtasyOfDreams]

all christians believe the world was created in 7 days. I was raised a strict catholic, and the mere mention of evolution was a punishable offense. fucking poison. Religion is poison. Im drunk so fuck off. Dinosoars. "The devil put dinosour bones in the earth".......hahaha

I grew up Lutheran and while my parents weren't very strict (no Lutherans really are) I did go to a Lutheran school for 9 years. One of my teachers did try to tell us that the dinosaur bones were just put in the Earth and that no dinosaurs actually roamed the Earth. That was one of the craziest things I was ever taught at that school.

As far as what I believe now? I'm actually a little lost on that subject. After going to church for so many years of my life, I feel guilty for thinking outside of the Lutheran religion. But, I can't help but realize that it doesn't seem like there's really anything else out there besides what we can see. Then again, isn't that what faith is? Believing even when you can't actually see something?

...the answer is: I don't know what I believe in.

[FishOutaWater]

The religious right frustrates me very much, mainly because of the hypocracy and the very contracted, limited way of thinking. In my personal opinion, those who ascribe to the religious right are thinking with the mentality of a child. Black and white, right and wrong. Strict rules that must be followed. A father-figure God who sits in judgement and will punish us for transgressions. Prayers for favors and blessings. Ascribing to a set of beliefs in exchange for personal salvation. Even doing good deeds is only performed for the goal of personal salvation (rather selfish motivation). Being on the "right" side of God and getting access to heaven whereas others are condemned unless they believe what they believe. Believing everything you read in the bible word for word, because it was written by God. I call that juvenile spirituality.

If you read Ken Wilber's work called integral spirituality, he describes the situation pretty well. He describes the decades of research in stages of human development, from the "magic" level of development where one believes in absolute powers of good and evil and miracles that take place in the world, right up to an advanced, nondual stage of development. The same spiritual experiences can happen to anyone, but how one interprets that experience depends upon the lens through which it is experienced. And that lens is crafted from the stage of development the person has reached. So a right wing christian fundamentalist may experience a hightened spiritual state and confirm that it was definitely the Lord Jesus coming from heaven above to answer prayers and bestow blessings because of the virtuous and faithful (i.e. believing) actions of the person. An awakened mystic could have the same experience and interpret it as a state of nondual consciousness.

After studying many other of the world's religions, my paradigm has changed and I can no longer accept the exclusivity of salvation under christianity. In fact, I can no longer accept looking at the world strictly as duality (I'm in here and everyone and everything (including God) is out there). And after studying the historical, scholarly analysis of Jesus's life and early christianity and the early writings (both the gospels and the "gospels" that were ultimately not included in the bible), I can no longer accept the set of beliefs that were presented to me as a child. In fact, I think that anyone who bothers to read a dozen or so books about Jesus and early Christianity such as the ones they teach to misiters and priests in seminary school, their view of who and what Jesus was and what the bible says would change dramatically.

I personally believe that the bible was written by humans as an interpretation and expression of their experience with the divine at that time, at their stage of spiritual development. That is what it meant to them at the time. But it is not necessarily the universal truth that everyone should "believe" word for word. Today we should take it all in and process it for ourselves, along with our own spiritual experience and truth.

About the world being created in 6 days: If the Jews can believe that the torah is largely metaphorical, and they don't believe that the world was created in 6 days, 6,000 years ago, then why should Christians hijack the Jews spiritual text and change the meaning to believe that?