I'm Agnostic, leaning Atheist. I grew up with a Southern Baptist family, so that alone should explain it. Granted most of the younger people are sane. But growing up listening to my grandmother all my life makes it extremely difficult for me to respect the religion, mainly because that's what I've always been exposed to and that's what I've seen it to be. For the record, my grandmother told my cousin's girlfriend in high school that she was going to hell because she's Catholic. Yeah. Even some of the more open-minded of my relatives cringe upon seeing anything, say, homosexual in nature. I was watching American Dad at my aunt's house and when the gay couple kissed after a moving and emotional scene, she just said "that's disgusting." My experiences with my family have lead me to staunchly dislike the Old Testament. The new is good, though. Or at least the morals it teaches.
I'm an Atheist Agnostic. I do not claim that there isn't a god, as I do not know for sure. I just don't believe there is one. Just thought I'd put that one out there. :derpe:
I actually believe there's an alien race out there somewhere that ancient civilizations worshipped as "gods". If you wanna argue between science and religion, "aliens = gods" is the most logical solution for both. :derpe:
I hate to come in offtopic like this, but this post bothers me a bit. Don't take any offense please, as this is NOT directed at ThePoeticPony, and I'm sorry for my amazingly blunt attitude. I'm pretty sure that just about any group/race/religion or lack of religion has a stereotype, and I sincerely doubt that there are people out there that are making you feel absolutely awful about your beliefs, and if they are then I doubt that they pinpoint Christians and only Christians. Not sure if you are American, but it seems to me to be much easier to be a Christian in America than it is to be an atheist, seeing as I've been a part of both worlds. I think that just about everybody here has been put in a situation where they are uncomfortable with their religion, sexuality, ideology, political party, what have you. "All christians are painted with the same brush" can apply just as easily to atheists, buddhists, muslims, hindus, republicans, democrats, lesbians, homosexuals, homophobics, cats, dogs, and bronies. That aside, I think the reason that people get so upset at Christians is because they have so much political power. I personally like the analogy by the amazing atheist, where you are allowed to pump your fists as much as you like, but as soon as your fist meets someone's face, it's not okay. That's exactly what's happening in the government, where someone else is forcing their moral code onto you. If it affects you* (violence, rape, reckless driving, vandalism, whatever) then it is okay to regulate it, but if it does nothing more than offend you (homosexuality, abortion, the separation of church and state) then there is no right for you to regulate it whatsoever. I think that the posts made mocking Christians are not there to mock you, your fellow Christians, or even the faith in general, although there are some that do. Most of them are there to mock the literal moral code that Christians follow, because that affects them directly thanks to regulation put in place by the government. If there is someone to blame, I would blame those that suppress the rights of others and not those that are being suppressed. After all, who are we to lash out at those who are defending themselves and their rights, no matter how offensive it might be. Not having the same rights is a lot more offensive than a blog post or a satirical forum. The last post is not a joke, and the comments prove that, but I certainly don't think that everyone in America thinks that ALL Christians are that way, and if they do, they are terribly misinformed, because Christianity is a majority in America, and we certainly don't see a Westboro Baptist Church on every corner. If there has been an instance where someone has actually blatantly hurt you because of your religion, I appologize for every non-Christian here. For me, I have had a very terrible experience accepting atheism, although I don't want to go into that. I have now fallen into one of the most hated minorities in America as polls show. If you doubt that, look it up on youtube. There are some real heartfelt videos up there. That is my two cents for said post. *I say "you" NOT as "ThePoeticPony" or any other Christian here, but am saying it hypothetically.
I have pretty much taken religion out of my life, i don't have any form of religion nor do i want even a hint of the word religion attached to me. not because i think negatively of any religion, but because i like facts, not faith. My family is christian and one of my closest friends is a strict christian. My parents... ehh, i will leave that out. But my friend, he is a great person. He knows i am a brony and does not have any negative thoughts about, he is only curious about bronies, not the show.\ Basically, if you talk about religion to me, expect very little reaction. I will actually get to talking about the wonders of life and nature and other facts surrounding us. Example: did you know that there is a single celled organism that can grow to be 3 square meters? and this organism can do math as naturally as walking is to us? crazy right? To finish off, Religion is a great building block to Humanity, without religion, we may not even have America, hell, life as we know it could still be in the era of cavemen. But everything that has a beginning, has an end. I do believe that the religion humanity holds, will become void in the coming future. The universe is too big to just feel that humans are alone.
This is all quite interesting to me actually seeing as the religion I follow is my own and thus I do not follow any other religion in the world. Mine is simply mine and that's what I like about it, I don't diss or insult others that follow religions such as Christianity I just see them as people believing in their religion essentially they are being themselves and that's all I want from them. My religion is vastly different from other religions, yet it is also similar to some of them in the same way. My motives may be different, even looked down by some, but that's just part of my religion. I've talked to some people about it already, but the definition I gave them was the condensed one as my religion has many secrets and many things that may be misunderstood by others. One thing does remain the same however in that MLP:FiM does show some aspects of my religion in which I'm glad, but that's not why I watch the show I watch it because it's a great show and that's it for me at any rate.
True, to a point. Without tolerance, though, conflict is more prominent. But this is not the thread to discuss this.
I agree with you. Even though I might call myself a christian, my religion is also unique to me, in fact, I deny many teachings of christianity, mainly because I distrust the bible, I distrust it because it is written by humans, humans with their own agenda that may differ from God's. I am neither a protestant nor a catholic or any other established faction, I may be something new entirely. The main difference between my own faith and mainstream christianity is that I don't believe in salvation or damnation and I don't think Jesus is God himself because God for me is not a person, but a cosmic force. However the core of Jesus teachings are good, and as a human I respect him far more than as a god(Altrough he is the chosen of light, so his sacrifice mght have made him immortal), I call myself a christian because I am inspired by his teachings, which at it's core I think is true altruism.
Y'know, I'm kinda the opposite, since I've started watching MLP:FiM I've started to try to distance myself from christianity and religions in general. They all seem to be too caught up in the worship of the deity, instead of the morals the religion should instill. I go to a christian church (not sure what kind), but always spend the whole sermon thinking over what is being said, weighing the time spent on worship and the time spent on values, and comparing said value's to the Brony values, and I've come to some conclusions from it. 1. Often half of the sermon is spent on the topic of worship, on how God is the only god and all that stuff. However there is often at least one message (though it's rarely a moral or anything) to take from the worship. eg. Today it was that expression of belief can lead to ridicule (only thing that irritated me was that it was phrased as a warning not to hold to one's beliefs if they conflicted with the Lord's) 2. Roughly a quarter of the sermon tends to be about how we have done wrong, and praying to god to forgive our sins and such. 3. The remaining time is spent on announcements (After Sermon) and morals/values (During Sermon). All of these tend to be morals taken straight from the bible, and are often something about how someone was healed or saved by God. Because of this it takes so long to decipher the moral that we only often get one very confusing idea of it, which seems to relate to how we should all be servants to others, for they are the greatest. Now these things are the main reason I drifted away from christianity as: 1. I don't need to worship a deity in order to do what is right, and often the worship creates a negative reaction to other religions, or the idea's of the deity conflict with the idea's of another's and people get angry over each other's religious beliefs. 2. When i do wrong, apologizing to a god won't prevent the fact that I have done wrong, it will only give me the belief that it is no longer my problem. Therefore I choose to bear the weight of my own sins and to acknowledge them, so that I may take the burden off myself through helping others. 3. Something that really irks me about these morals is that, though the basis of them is helping others, they tend to imply that there are people out there who are weak, (In our sermon today there was something about the weak being the strongest which i really didn't get) and this conflicts with one of my personal beliefs. There is nobody out there in this world who is weak. A man who is weak in body will be strong in mind, or something else. We all have things we are good at, so when we start getting told about those who are weak, it makes me want to scream. I have a feeling that it's more my parents that turned me off christianity than it was MLP:FiM. My mother's is one of those kinds that believes that if you don't believe in god then it's a terrible thing that needs to be rectified, and when i told her i was a brony she instantly developed a fear that I'd joined some cult (which took about three months of explaining to her before she became satisfied that Celestia wasn't trying to be the new Lord Almighty). But personally I don't really care anymore about religions. What matters to me is what we do with our lives and what we offer this world while we live, whatever our gifts may be.
Actually Darkmoon my religion is entirely new to the world. I made my religion by plucking some gods and goddesses from Warhammer40k/Fantasy and then creating my own religion out of it that I believe in 100% no matter how silly it sounds.
