G-d

god is a concept by which we measure our pain - j leno, i mean lennon

Any superb chef is god to me.

I'm an athiest and a Catholic. What do you think about that?

All the answers will soon be revealed, dear friends:

http://www.clonejesus.com/

Ally - does that mean you're a relapsed Catholic that goes through the Catholic motions?

I've been baptized, communionized (sic?) & confirmed, so I guess I can get married in a Catholic church (huzzah!), but I'd like to avoid them if given the opportunity. Confession would last FOREVER, and I've long forgotten where my rosary beads are. I used to be in the atheistic, God-lovers-suck boat, "if there is a Hell, I'll see you there" boat (due to being shoehorned into the whole religion thing), but have jumped off in favor of a more accepting philosophy - there very well may be someThing out there, but I doubt that Thing is what any of the organized religions think it is. I sure as hell refuse to believe It made us in Its image. Thank God for zealots and televangelists like Dr. Gene Scott, though - they're funnier than Miss Cleo. But, yeah, agnostic all the way. (I do say "god damn" a lot, though, and I have a lot of guilt, so I guess I'm Catholic by default.)

YHWH?

I don't go thru any Catholic motions. I was baptized, that's the end of it. My mom renounced the religion after her father died, probably a bit before that, and became Pagan. She "relapsed", if you want to call it that, during an extremely bad period but then officially left the church for good after she was turned away for church assistance because, after years of donating spare change (which is literally all she had) into collection bins, she was told she had to prove she donated to the church via a cancelled check - very Christian of them, give us money and prove it, otherwise you can die on the street, bitch. My dad was forced thru a Catholic school system when in school and is embittered towards it - his official stance is that he's an atheist, though he has interest in Norse religion. Both went thru communion, confirmation, etc. I couldn't tell you any of the prayers, nor have I ever been to confession. I haven't even BEEN to church in my entire life, meaning some official mass or Sunday services - I've been inside them for one wedding (the other weddings I've been to have been outdoors, one was officiated by a priest so maybe that still counts), and my sisters' baptisms.

I do find myself following the saints though, if that makes any sense with the rest of it, and I reckon that's what I mean. I do go into Catholic churches and light votives for specific things - oddly they've always been Spanish churches. I have several crucifixes which I wear on a semi-regular basis...put me in the Madonna/Richey school of Catholocism I guess, in which you don't really believe in their outdated methods and beliefs, but still find yourself suckered in.

I am an atheist which is polite way of saying I am a reformed Catholic. Not lapsed, not non-practicing, but maybe recovered or rehabilitated. Or de-programmed.

I think the advantage of growing up Anglican is that Catholic guilt goes by the wayside, but you get all the pretty ceremonial stuff. Makes letting go all that much more easier.

That's the thing about catholic guilt. No matter what religion you call yourself later on, no matter if you become atheist or satanist or wiccan or jewish, you will live the rest of your life with that guilt gnawing at your soul. You never let go of it.

Hey Ned, if you're raised Methodist as I was you don't even get the pretty ceremonial stuff, just Christian socialism and something very down-to-earth and matter-of-fact which I could let go without hating or holding any grudges. I'm pretty much settled on atheism *now*, for the first time.

Methodism seems like a useful way to go about non-Anglican/Lutheran Protestantism, from what I can tell. Still, my biases against that general field arise from living in America, where such a bizarre, horrific combination of fundamentalist Christianity and social conservatism holds sway. I'm one for a bit of flash and incense -- and as Michele noted, I didn't have to worry about the trappings of zer Pope's Barmy Army. Anyone remember that one sequence in Joyce's _Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man_? Where the one priest goes on about hell? Good old fashioned nightmare fuel...

That part just bored me. I couldn't muster up enough imagination about hell because it's just not believable enough.

I was "raised" Methodist, if that's what you call being made to go to church and Sunday school until my teens. Not sure what exactly went on there besides lots of going to church and Sunday school. And potlucks and Sunday brunch cookies and coffee. Can't forget those.

All the other religions get pot lucks and brunches and cookies. All I got as a catholic was a cardboard-like communion wafer that took me 20 minutes to swallow. If I was lucky I got a swig of wine to go with it.

The potlucks weren't that good anyway. Lots of questionable casseroles.

at least you werent mormon.
That involved jello salad with meat in it.

What always bothered me about that whole wafer/wine thing was the whole "Eat his body, drink his blood" crap. I mean, what?! What kind of morals are that? "Here is your god, now cannibalize him!" Argh.

We used to have big Italian dinners in the rec hall after Saturday night mass at my Catholic church in Connecticut. God, what do you call that mass the night before? I can't remember.

Anyway, I really loved the way the host tasted and when my brothers and I were altar boys we would steal them to munch on later on. And we'd break into the wine. All that kooky altar boy stuff. Once we found a fish food at the local pet store that tasted *exactly* like the Holy Eucharist and we were so excited!

As for what I believe in, who I pray to, all that--I've pretty much jumped off the same boat as Mr. Raposa.

Atheist for as long as I can remember. I'm fascinated by religion and would actually rather like to be religious, but I'm not, no matter how much Kierkegaard I skim.

I took communion once because I wanted to see what it tasted like. I told this to our year's "bad boy", walking back afterwards with him, and it was the only time I've ever seen him shocked.

i think i gave up my get into heaven free cos yr a catholic card when i used my rosary beads as anal beads...oh well.

Don't pray to nobody but I probably should, the way things have been going recently. Father and father's father ordained Methodist ministers. Couldn't say "gosh" around my grandparents. They were so hard-core they didn't play cards because face-cards were icons, graven images, tools of the devil. So we played Texas 42 (which is a great fucking domino game, no matter what Ally and Mike say).

From all that I have come away with some "beliefs" (unsure what their relation to an all-powerful morality-enforcing space-alien is).

was raised in socialist house. atheism's the thing y'know. will always be atheist i reckon.

anyone noticed the rise of spritual/alternative groups in london at the moment? also, the rise of alpha. as organised religion vacates the public sphere, allows space for crackpots to colonise and target the vulnerable. of course this has been the always been the american way, but noticing it around london in the last year or so. thoughts?

Alpha seems to be more about turning believing christians into members of the charismatic dribbling movement than targeting random non-believers. However, given that a shining eyed alpha-ite had the nerve to tell me at my best friends wedding that I wasn't really an atheist because we don't exist(!) I reckon the whole business is a big dud. Saying that I'm wrong is one thing, but telling me I don't exist is a whole other pot of lobsters.

You should have pulled the old "Alright then, if I don't exist let me punch you in the throat" trick.

Am I the only person on this board who's finding himself drawn closer to religion (specifically the Episcopal church) as he gets older? I used to be a virulent atheist, then became a cautious agnonstic, and am now a privately spiritual person who hates organized religion but thinks that Episcopal/Anglican choirs shore do sing purty.

agnonstic = someone who isn't sure whether teflon is a spin-off from the technology discovered in crashed saucer at roswell

Atheist, you've got to be when you have a face like mine. I use Godel's Incompleteness Theorem to prove the non-existance of an omnipotent God. It doesn't actually work but it impresses people, and then bores them so they tend not to want to hear it anyway.

What I find odd is that magistrates courts in the UK have a person whose job it is to ask what religion you are when you are being sworn in. You then get the requisite oath (on the Koran / Bible et al). However if you say atheist they give you a non-denominational oath which pretty much says "I promise that I ain't liying" - which is what all the other ones say without a refernce to God. Is their oath more solemn than mine?

Or was this where the Tory Party were going to make their 8 billion pounds worth of cuts - getting rid of this job in all courst throughout the land.

Mark has officially made me his Bitch of the Day. When will I learn that proof-reaidng is my friend?

I'm a Quaker and pray to God.

“How then do we come to believe in a world of the spirit? Is it by blind faith? Not at all. The inner reality of the spiritual world is available to all who are willing to search for it. Often I have discovered that those who so freely debunk the spiritual world have never taken ten minutes to investigate whether or not such a world really exists.

Let me suggest we take an experiential attitude toward spiritual realities. Like any other scientific endeavor, we form a hypothesis and experiment with it to see if it is true or not. If our first experiment fails, we do not despair or label the whole business fraudulent. We reexamine our procedure, perhaps adjust our hypothesis, and try again. We should at least have the honesty to persevere in this work to the same degree we would in any field of science. The fact that so many are unwilling to do so betrays not their intelligence but their prejudice.”

Richard J. Foster Celebration of Discipline

My father comes from a long line of very Scottish, very protestant ministers and church elders and church people, and he is a devout atheist. My mother comes from a long line of atheists and free thinkers and had a huge conversion experience when I was about 3. She found a Bible one day while unpacking boxes, read it and was utterly flabbergasted, and rang up the nearest Church demanding that they send someone round to explain it. Converted on the spot. That was the way things happened in the early 70s, I suppose I'm lucky that she found a bible and not the Bhagavad Gita or the Koran or something. She studied for the priesthood, but is currently in a bitter fued with her local Bishop, and I think she might actually leave the church because he is an arse and refuses to ordain women.

I was raised Church of England, and if people ask me what religion I am, that's what I tell them. (I'm Church of England. Do we worship god? No, we worship England.) I'm not Christian but it seems to me to be the most tasteful religion, and combines the best bits of Catholicism with the best bits of Protestantism. I don't actually believe any of it, I haven't been to a Church or even prayed in years (unless my mum makes me go on Xmas or something) but they've got the best smelling incense and the prettiest churches.

I'm not sure I actually believe in anything except that nebulous sort of concept of fate which we discussed over on the other thread. I believe there's got to be *some* sort of god, because, honestly, how do you justify the existence of dalmations - I mean, spotted DOGS - otherwise, but I just don't know what or who it is, or if who is even a justifiable question when talking about a divinity.

I don't know, I find this question very hard to answer. I took one of those online tests about what religion I'm supposed to be and it told me I was a pagan, probably of the Greco-Roman variety. So there you go.

I put panthiest on the census form because I believe in something but not one thing in particular, and see that all faiths are 'valid', maybe more of a collective concious (sp? help me out!)...the universe...I think my religious views are probably more Spinozian in vision...in that 'God' is in all things...I probably need to read more Spinoza, to properly explain my views.