Why that particular religion?

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I was just looking through the poll topic 'What religion are you?' and I began to wonder. What is it that's brought you to where you are currently in terms of belief? Something you were brought up with? Something you just found and it felt right? Why do you believe what you do?

 

I was born Catholic, and I imagine I am not too different from everyone else - most practice the same religion as their parents, because that was what they were exposed to as a child. As I have aged, I have moved away from the Catholic church, and quite frankly I doubt I will ever regularly practice any religion in the future. That having been said, if I ever do, it will be Catholicism.

Like it was said in the earlier topic: Religion is as much a matter of ethnicity as it is anything else. The religion we are raised with usually imprints indelibly upon us. I could not change the religion I was raised with any more than I could change my race or ethnicity.

 

Pretty much everything Aldeth said applies to me as well although I am a Protestant instead of a Catholic. I still attend church a few times a year but generally only to accompany my mother when she asks me do so because my father refuses to attend church in this province (Ontario's churches have historically been very anti-alcohol and as such they tend to substitute grape juice for Communion wine - my father being a good Quebecer thinks that doing so is intolerable).

 

@Aldeth - You could not change your religion? Why? What is stopping you from finding out if it truly means anything to you, and why you follow that faith as opposed to any other?

Why do you doubt you will practice any religion in the future? Is it because you have no inclination? Is it because you've researched them all (the major ones, at least) and found nothing that feels right?

Why, if you were to find faith again, would you return to Catholicism rather than, for example, Buddhism?

While the majority of people stick with what they know, I think it's because it's simply that - what they know. I think it tends to be a lack of interest or a presence of social pressures which prevent exploration of other belief systems.

Why does it have to be an organised religion at all? Why not just figure out what makes sense to you?

 

@Midwinter

Well, now that I'm 30 I could certainly convert to any religion I choose. I was referencing when I was a child. My parents are Catholic. I did not attend Protestant, Buddhist, Hindi, Muslim, or any other type of service. I was never exposed to them and had no ability to be exposed to them.

Nothing is stopping me, and I already know - it doesn't mean anything to me at all. If it did, I would have either remained a "good Catholic" or I would have taken strides to explore other religions for personal fulfillment. Religion is so far down on the list of things important to me, that I really can't even be bothered.

Yeah, that's pretty succinct. I'd agree with that assessment.

Hardly. I know quite a bit about Judeo-Christian faiths, but I must admit that I know only a little about Islam, and virtually nothing about Hindu or Buddhism. I just don't need a spiritual grounding in my life. To me religion in any form is an attempt to explain things that cannot be explained. I'd rather accept there are things I will never understand, then conveniently believe in someting that has no scientific or logical backing.

Convenience. Like I said, I don't really see much of a difference between religions - they all try to explain what can't be explained. If I go back, it may as well be to one where I already have the ground work laid. I've received baptism, communion, confirmation and marriage with the Catholic church, so I figure it would easier than going through the bother of converting. Plus, my wife is Catholic, which is why I was married in a Catholic church. So, if I went back it would be more for her than for me, and she isn't religioius either, so the answer is probably neither of us will ever go back.

Well, that's pretty much what I do now. While I may not be very keen on any type of religion, it doesn't necessarily mean that I am a horrible person. I do live by a moral code, and generally am quite the nice guy who helps his fellow man (or woman) in need. I'm not a bad guy, I'm just not a religious one.

 

My parents went to church occasionally but I couldn't tell you which flavour it was. One of the Christian brands, no doubt. I went to Sunday School for a little while then stopped. So religion was never a serious part of my life when growing up and it continues to take up very little of my attention now. So I suppose that, like others, means that I chose my relative non-religion as a result of my upbringing as well.

 

@Aldeth - returning to a religion usually only happens because one feels faith is needed, for whatever reason. Returning to the most 'convenient' seems almost 'false', for want of a better word. I'd guess you're not likely to return unless something spectacular happens.

I in no way suggested you were a horrible person, nor implied that not being religious was tantamount to being a bad person. If that were true, I'd be a pretty nasty piece of work. I too have a moral code (although it's fluid, because I'm hopefully learning and understanding new concepts all the time, and this changes my outlook), and lack the faith of an organised religion.

My respect goes to anyone willing to help those in need.

 

I was born Baptist. My father is a Baptist Minister. I have a lot of difference of opinions with my father about religion. I don't believe a person needs a fancy building to worship God. I don't think God will be wearing a Rolex when I see him so I don't think God needs money. God needs my faith and belief. I think all religions have good and bad points. I believe religion is like a comfortable pair of shoes. If they fit you wear them but don't try to nail them on someone elses' feet. I don't argue about religion and I don't argue over the politics of religion. One thing that does bother me is religious people who want to judge what is right and what is wrong. Until I meet a perfect person, nobody has the right to lay judgement on another persons life. The same goes for people who don't believe in God at all. Unless you read the Bible or any book on religion you cant judge something you don't even understand. I suggest educate yourself and make your own choices. Would you declare a video game bad without playing it first? What we believe should not interfere with how good we treat one another. The ability to reason, love, and do good deeds is what separates humans from all other species of creatures.

 

@DHB - a cynic might say that also humankind's potential for unbridled savagery is another distinguishing trait.

I agree. However, problems tend to arise when beliefs foster enmity between people, as has so often happened throughout the course of history.

I agree again. I also find it puzzling to meet atheists who haven't explored more than one or two religions.

Off-hand, what is your definition of 'perfect'? People lay judgements all the time - I've yet to meet anyone who didn't do that, even with the best will in the world. In making your statements, you are in fact making judgements on other people's religious views.

 

I'm a Christian because I believe it's true.

That may sound trite, but to judge from the polls (not just here, nigh-on everywhere in America) a lot of people believe in belief itself. Doesn't matter what you have faith in, so long as you have faith - 'cause it's just faith that matters, right?

Ideas have consequences; bad ideas have bad consequences; and bad ideas about tremendous things have tremendously bad consequences.

I believe in Christianity because reality - from a logical, realistic, scientific perspective - doesn't make sense outside the Christian context. We pretend it does, but that's only because we let emotions and foggy thinking stop us from taking our observations and principles to their logical ends. Only Christianity can make sense of what we see every day: good and evil, beauty and ugliness, power and weakness, purpose and randomness, design and destruction. Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, and even atheism can't account for all those things - and when they do, it ends up in logical mush (like evolution trying to explain everything by chance+time+sex).

Oh, well, t'be honest...I'm not really a logical machine...far from it! I talk (pray) with Him regularly, and not a day goes by when I don't see some way that Christ is working in my life. So, yeah, my connection to God is not one of books about an idea, but love and devotion for a Person. But it hardly seems right to appeal to my own personal relationship with God when cold logic should suffice!

 

I too, am also a Christian to some extent. I don't believe in everything the Bible tells us to believe if we want a one and only to rescue us. Mainly I disagree with the homosexuality issue which some of you already know about, because even though I am not homosexual, my brother is. I also have a very strictly Christian step-mother who does not know how to deal with the issue of my brother's sexual preference, and has caused great discomfort in the family. This has forced me to distance myself from her and Biblical ways because she can't accept anything that does not agree with the Bible's teachings, of which she has studied thoroughly. Aside from this recent chapter of my life, I think that if you are open-minded enough you can come to your own conclusion of life and be satisfied with it, or if you still think their is more, you can either believe history and match that with the forefront teachings of some religion, or buckle down into a close-minded niche of "everything this religion says is right, and everything they say is wrong."

I also wish to leave you with a poem that helped me think a little deeper into the religions and their beginnings: [But for right now I can't find the one about was god being lonely and he creating man, or were we lonely and we created god... It sounds much better in a poetic for, anyone wanna help me out, I searched for two hours.]

 

I was born and raised Fundamental Protestant...even as a kid, I could thump my Bible with the best of them. In college I left the religion of my youth and spent a few years as an Agnostic/Atheist (wavering), then for my early adulthood, I was first Pagan then Wiccan.

Around the age of 25 I began to search for answers to hard questions. I found those answers in the Roman Catholic Church...HORRORS! The antithesis of everything that I believed gave me BETTER answers for life than any system I had held!

I converted on Easter of my 27th year, and have never looked back. I have Catholic friends who tell me that I should write a book about my faith journey, but at this point, it is far too personal to share without care.

 

I was born into a family that isn't very religous.

I've kind of developed my own faith, because I don't want to be athiest and believe in nothing, but I'm certainly not going to follow any branch of Christianity or anything like that because in my opinion they have some very skewed logic about how people should live.

So I'll just believe that something is controlling our fates, something created us, and when we die, we get what we deserve.

 

I could agree with pretty much everything GM said.

The difference is, he's Presbyterian and I'm Catholic.

Roman Catholic, just Roman Catholic. Not pre-Vaticanum II, contrary to what some people tend to think Yes, I go to Latin masses when I can and I pray in Latin sometimes, but I know the language. Otherwise I could as well go and listen to the mass in Suahili. God doesn't have a language barrier for everything that isn't Latin, Greek, Hebrew or Aramaic, does He? The Church before Vaticanum II wasn't worse or less Catholic, nay. But the changes it has brought are good.

I was born Catholic. Didn't convert to or from any other religion, although I used to care less. I was tempted to believe otherwise - with no false modesty, not many people have learnt about this many religions. I'm growing suspicious when more attention is being paid to saints than to God. I feel bad when icons stop being icons and turn into idols. But hey, that's what the Roman Church really teaches, despite common misconceptions. Whenever I thought "they seem to be more right on this one than we are", I would discover that I had a wrong idea about what "we" believed.

When I have to address a situation from a standpoint related to religion, morals or social issues, and later I come accross Catholic documents taking a stance in the matter, I practically recognise the thoughts that had come to me. Does it mean I've never been wrong? Well, no. As I said above, I've had a couple of misconceptions. However, reading into it, I was always convinced otherwise, and the arguments that did it were not "the Church on basis of its apostolic authority" etc. I don't really read those parts, anyway.

I don't believe the Church, any Church, has all answers. We would need neither God nor faith if we knew everything for certain. I don't believe God acts only through the Catholic Church, nor even through Christian Churches, nor even monotheistic religions. No. Spiritus flat ubi vult. The spirit blows where is wants. God can't be constrained by anything mortal.

I've challenged lots of beliefs - Catholic and others, taking them on my logical workbench and applying (how not nearly perfect, especially in my performance) logical methods on them. Point by point, and I'm not sure if I always stopped short of forcing human logic on the supernatural - that is, applying human characteristics and human patterns of thought and behaviour to God is illogical per se, as God is by definition neither human nor a limited mortal being, anyway - which still doesn't mean God can't take human form and face all limitations of human form, and ultimately die a human death. Realising I didn't know anything physically, nor could get definite answers from any source on the earth, as well as acknowledging my own limitations was very helpful in the process.

Still, it's faith that ultimately matters. "Come to me as children," Jesus said. Paradoxically, a whole adult and mature logic fest may only result in that, when it comes to God, divinity and faith.

A sad thing is discovering how petty misunderstandings have divided Christianity (as I said somewhere in the beginning). How it split over interpretations and not even the matter of revelation. The "good" thing is, from a historical standpoint, those were political conflicts often on economical (papal tithes, Church property) or social (mediaeval heresies typically gravitated towards anarchy along with ideas close to utopian communism... oh well, some of them believed group sex was necessary for salvation) background more than anything else. At least they don't stain the faith itself. Well, we shouldn't apply our contemporal concepts to people back there in time, anyway.

 

To nit-pick briefly, you seem to be confusing spirituality and belief in God with religion. I see a significant difference in those two concepts. One can be strongly spiritual and have a deep relationship with God without interference from a formal religion. Also, someone could easily have realized early in his/her spiritual explorations that they lacked a fundamental belief in a higher being.

So it went with me, to a lesser extent. I was raised strictly Catholic but I had many, many conflicts between the teachings of the Church and my personal convictions. As I looked at other religious practices I realized that I never felt that spark of belief in Christ as my personal savior that was required for by these systems. Not wanting to be a hypocrite, I turned away from Christianity to Judiasm. In those studies I discovered the two-way relationship with God that so many other religions lacked for me. I found my “old shoes.”

@GM:

An intriguing sentiment, but you’re missing the phrase “to me” at the end of it. I find plenty of logic in the world; it’s people and human behavior that doesn’t make any sense.

 

@Rallymana - I was suggesting it is odd to disdain one form of spiritual fulfillment, whether it comes from personal spirituality or organised religion, without researching what is on offer from other sources (ways of life, organised religions, etc).

I can only speak for myself here - I do not know if I believe in a higher being. Perhaps God is real, perhaps he\she\it isn't. Perhaps all gods come about through human belief.

I don't know if I believe everything is coincidence, nothing is, or somewhere in between. Today, I'd say somewhere in between, but if you ask me in a week's time, or maybe even tomorrow...

@chevalier - have you ever found anything in the Roman Catholic Church that you totally disagreed with?

 

I don't mind what religion people practice so long as it doesn't affect ME in any negative way (for example, being blown up because I'm a different religion, or being hassled to join a particular religion, or being excluded from a job etc etc). So long as this simple criteria is met, I welcome all religions as providing a fascinating diversity to the world.

 

@Harbourboy - a very, very good philosophy!

 

Sounds like the old proverb: "Man was created in God's image, and ever since Man has been returning the favor." As dmc says:

So in other words, you have adopted a virtue (tolerance), compared it with other moral systems ("stacks up as well as, if not better than..."), taken it to its most extreme form (if tolerance is good, it must therefore be evil and dehumanizing to not tolerate, and therefore it's not right for anyone to exclude for any reason), pushed aside all other virtues (is it truly wise and loving to be completely inclusive, regardless of behavior?), elevated it to divine proportions, found the divine lacking, and since a god which is lacking is no god at all, any followers are ultimately deluded, and valuable only for the "symptoms" of religion (high morals, clean living, sweet naivete, etc.).

Ta da!

Not really. It sounds gracious but it can actually be pret' selfish in its indifference. Not that you are, Harbourboy, judging from your other posts - just that formalized "live-and-let-live" is often synonymous with "die-and-let-die". What if religion is really what its practitioners claim it to be - truth that serves as medicine for the soul? It wouldn't be very nice to say, "I don't mind what logic people practice so long as it doesn't affect me...", or, "I don't mind what crazy traditional medicines people practice - if they get sick, it doesn't affect me...", etc.

Well, now that I've alienated all my best SP friends...! Uh, love covers over a multitude of sins, uh, right, guys?