Do you believe in God?

[VirtualPA]

I am interested to know what the majority of people belive.

I personally believe in a Christian God, Heaven and hell etc.

I raised a strict an athiest

um, you do know that the Christian churches in this country believe in evolution and transitional fossils and all that? It's only a small minority, given an outsized voice by the media and the likes of Dawkins that don't.

Nothing wrong with that, Bonsaibab. It just means he's not a fundamentalist who takes the Bible literally.

"Unlike being an 'atheist' or 'agnostic' or 'bright', I believe that being a Christian (literally a follower of Christ) is not just a set of beliefs, but a lifestyle choice which affects every aspect of your life from what you say to what you spend your money on."

But I have a moral code and ethical beliefs and a political philosophy that affects every aspect of my life from what I say to what I spend my money on. Atheists don;t live in a moral vaccum, you know!

But your political philosophy and moral code are not a product of your atheism though - isn't that the point that poster was trying to make?

Not sure I follow that argument completely though.

I have religious beliefs, which I think inform my political philosophy and moral code, but these are quite different from, well, the pope's for example .

no

I tried to find God in much the way I tried to find a smoking habit. In earnest. Now I am at least grateful for my clear head and lungs.

And no one has been brave enough to answer my qestionof some houra ago "Where was God in Auschwicz?

No I don't and I think the world would be a happier place without religion - the cause of more conflicts than even nationalism.

Having said that I do think some of it's teachings are good for young people as they do set a moral tone.

@knit1purl1 I think the reason people get upset to be called "creationist" is because that name tends to imply that you believe not only that God created the world but that he did it in 7 actual days, plus a whole lot of stuff related to the earth being younger than scientific research suggests it is. Lots of people who do believe that God created the world don't necessarily think it had to be in 7 days literally, or the rest. If you say you're creationist it's giving the impression that you subscribe to a particular set of beliefs regarding creation that you might not do.

backtotalkaboutthis, "Christians can move beyond that and still believe because of faith -- faith that a logical impossibility can exist"

I thought you were arguing for religion? That doesn't sound like a recommendation for belief at all.

ZephirineDrouhin, I agree with your point about us having no information about it.

I agree with "why anyone would imagine that they knew more about it than a person with an opposing view is beyond me" since it sums up the position of most of us non-believers.

After all we wouldn't be giving it any thought at all if not for those believers who want to push their belief on our children. Trying to incorporate the wishes of their god into our laws etc.

We would quite happily drop the whole subject until someone turns up with some real information one way or another.

Erm, 'Christianity' before Jesus Christ was (allegedly) around was 'Judaism'.
Reminds me of the old verse -
Roses are red
Violets are blue-ish
If not for Jesus
We'd all be Jewish.

Hmm. As I said before, I do believe my views and principles are informed by my faith, but I don't see why that makes them less valid. As I said, they are on the whole quite different to the Pope's, so I'm not just blindly following the leader. And if I were, is that worse than people who ape the opinions of their parents? Or their social group? I can justify my principles without just saying "because I'm a Christian" - as could most I would imagine. And I would use much the same language as any other pinko liberal, regardless of religious persuasion or otherwise. I object ot having my carefully thought out opinions disregarded on the basis that they are informed by religious belief. I appreciate that some atheists set themselves up as rationalists, but that rationalism applies to faith. They will make irrational decisions based on their own experience, just as we all do without necessarily realising it.

But I have no intention of forcing my beliefs on your children. As I said below. I am a secularist with respect to education.

You live, you die, worms eat you. That's it. IMHO.

seeker, I googled that for you:

'"Where was God in those days?" asked the pope. How could a just and loving Creator have allowed trainload after trainload of human beings to be murdered at Auschwitz? But why ask such a question only in Auschwitz? Where, after all, was God in the Gulag? Where was God when the Khmer Rouge slaughtered 1.7 million Cambodians? Where was God during the Armenian holocaust? Where was God in Rwanda? Where is God in Darfur?

For that matter, where is God when even one innocent victim is being murdered or raped or abused?

The answer, though the pope didn't say so clearly, is that a world in which God always intervened to prevent cruelty and violence would be a world without freedom -- and life without freedom would be meaningless. God endows human beings with the power to choose between good and evil. Some choose to help their neighbor; others choose to hurt him. There were those in Nazi Europe who herded Jews into gas chambers. And there were those who risked their lives to hide Jews from the Gestapo.

The God "who spoke on Sinai" was not addressing himself to angels or robots who could do no wrong even if they wanted to. He was speaking to real people with real choices to make, and real consequences that flow from those choices. Auschwitz wasn't God's fault. He didn't build the place. And only by changing those who did build it from free moral agents into puppets could he have stopped them from committing their horrific crimes.

It was not God who failed during the Holocaust or in the Gulag, or on 9/11, or in Bosnia. It is not God who fails when human beings do barbaric things to other human beings. Auschwitz is not what happens when the God who says "Thou shalt not murder" and "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself" is silent. It is what happens when men and women refuse to listen.
'

www.aish.com/ho/i/48961526.html

Hear, hear Jenbot.

Does religion really cause as many conflicts as people claim? Or is religion used by some as a plausible "excuse" for conflicts that they would have had anyway?

I believe in God and I am a church going Christian.

I am maybe being strange here. I can't help mentally tickng off the names of the 'believers' and 'non believers.'

I will look out for their names on future posts and always see the opinions from a religious or non-religious angle.

I have always loved Mums Net because I didn't care and didn't know the race/ethnicity/religion/class/ or whatever is the PC term. The advice came from people who cared or wanted a laugh or had experience in that area.

If you can help someone because you have been there/seen it/done it then post.

I have personally been helped by the anonymous and wonderfully named Mumsnet crowd

Oh dear, onager, you may say you agree, but on here you repeatedly make it clear that you believe your position to be somehow more neutral and more rational than that of people with faith. It isn't, and we certainly do not agree.

Seeker, re Auschwitz,
Perhaps no-one can fully answer your question, perhaps we all need to find our own answers to questions like that.

It is possible to block the windows of a room and seal the door and make it totally dark, but that doesn?t mean that light does not exist. If people choose to deliberately turn their back on light/life/love/God then they can make an evil place.

Can we leave religion out of it - post on the relevant site and leave Mums Net a neutral site for all?

If someone's religion is mentioned, why does that make a difference to how you view their posts, any more than if they mention their favourite film or where they last went on holiday?

lamplighter, there is actually a whole 'Religion' subforum here, though it unsurprisingly is a little more skewed towards religion than this thread has been.

You might want to hide this topic then perhaps, if you are upset by your inability to see beyond a person's stated religious position to the merit or otherwise of their argument.

Someguy

I just go along with the whole tenent that politics and religion should stay out of a debate - it will only lead to tears