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

"Men and the young don't seem to have the same need to believe in God."

Sakura, I think that says more about 20th century culture and the way the church in this country is at the moment, than Christianity as a faith. If you think back to the early church there were certainly a lot of men involved.

Older people have had more time to become Christian and will have grown up in a time when more people attended church in this country.

Men find it very handy that women are more 'likely' to believe in gods, because that is one of the main things religions are 'for' - not just keeping the designated slave class in its place but making it accept, happily, its allegedly inferior status. If you're constantly being told that not only are you 'lesser' and should accept it, but that you will be rewarded AFTER YOU DIE for eating shit uncomplainingly, well you might find that comforting. THis is why superstitions tend to be prevalent in people who have no hope of better actual lives and have been too ground down to rebel against their oppressors.
It;s one of the most depressing things about superstition, the number of intelligent women who actually believe there's a sky fairy that wants them covered up, obedient, submissive, ignoring or hiding their full human potential...

"I don't understand what is wrong with believing in God, or understand an athiest's constant desire to harass and question someone else's faith or denounce their religion at nearly every turn"

If believers were content to believe, and do their believing in the company of their family and friends then I wouldn't feel the need to question them. However, certainly in this country, theri beliefs are imposed on me and my children in school, in politics and in public life generally. So I think that gives me the right to question and challenge.

I was raised attending a Protestant church and primary school but never saw the point in any of it, really. I discovered faith for myself when I was 19 and was baptised.
I can honestly say this was the best decision I ever made. It's not that life has been easy (life-threatening accident and serious head injury, divorce, depression, redundancy) but it's that I know that God is there for me, through good times and bad. It's not that God won't let bad things happen to me just because I'm a Christian, rather He gives me the strength to get through it.

and therein lies the rub comtessa. You have a lovely comfort blanket in religion. But there's small print which is responsible for death, mutilation, extremism and intolerance the world over on its label. Time for a closer look?

No, though I have no problems with anyone else having a faith of any kind. BUT am sick to the back teeth of my DCs secular primary school ramming Christianity down their throats at every bloody opportunity. I totally agree with mrscrocduck.

yes, i like what seeker said. Keep your religion to yourselves and away from my children or be prepared to face opposition.

Flookcrow - under any other guise than religion, religious behavior would be seen as a mental illness. That is why atheists are gobsmacked when seemingly rational people insist that things have happened by magic.

However, as an atheist myself, i truly believe that other people are entitled to believe whatever they like as long as it does not change or otherwise affect their behavior to the point of detriment to otehr people.

Some peop[le do awful things in the name of religion, but I cannot blame religion for that - these people would be bad peolpe anyway. Similarly, I cannot reconcile the idea of an unknowable being being responsible for the grace that lies inside the human race.

the kindest and most sensible woman I know is a Christian - the difference is, I don't think she is kind and sensible BECAUSE she is a christian.

Believing in magic isn't a bad thing.

I understand and accept your argument though

Flookcrow wilfully imposing that magic as a form of irrefutable truth on the minds of children is wrong.

Maybe God doesn't want to be scientifically proven, as if we had no choice but to follow Him then that would remove our free will?

which is how religion self-preserves itself.

Raised Catholic. Now Atheist

Believing in magic isn't a bad thing, so long as at the back of your mind, there ia a kernel of self knowledge that reminds you that you are believing in magic because it's a nice thing to do and fun and charming and delightful and adds to the wonder of life - but ti's not real.

I also do not believe in teaching children religious beliefs in school. And I do not believe in teaching atheism in schools. I want my child to make her own mind up when she's old enough, and through her own research and findings. I think either all religions and attitudes to religion should be taught (unrealistic), or none at all. I also think schools should be more careful when teaching science that they emphasise the theoretical nature of many scientific givens.

Absolutely. So what can we do, to ensure that schools educate our children on religious beliefs - but stop trying to instruct them, or teach them as an absolute?

I believe in a God of love who loves us enough to give us free will to choose to love him back or ignore him.

I believe in a God of love whose heart breaks when that very same free will allows his children to murder hurt and upset one another, and whoose heart breaks when one of his children rejects him.

I believe in a world created perfect but tainted and poisoned due to rebellion. This is not how it was created to be.

I believe that there will be a day when Jesus returns and the world will be made perfect again as it was originally intended to be.

I believe that the victory has already been won and that we await this time in the way we await the birth of a child.

As a parent I would appreciate the oppotunity to educate myself in a christian school (as I was) which values my beliefs and as a result should create a loving accepting and encouraging environment for my son to grow in. If you don't want that for your child then send them elsewhere.

My God gives you the choice to accept or reject him, so I don't need for you to believe what I believe even though I think it's the loss of the most mindblowingly amazing free gift.

escorchio Either I would make sure there was a copy of every religious text (Bible, Koran etc) in the library so that the children can look at them in their own time, if they wanted to (yeah, right) or I would teach it in the same way that philosophy is taught. Something along the lines of 'some people believe this to be true and this has been important to our culture because of the following reasons'.

Rather off-topic, I know, but I think there is far too much 'absolute' teaching in schools. For me, the point of education is to allow someone to draw their own conclusions on any given matter by drawing on evidence, rather than reciting facts and figures.

colditz - I have these arguments with my mother, who insists that the people from the church who have helped her when she was ill did so out of "Christian charity" and because they are church people. I have tried to argue that they do it simply because they are nice people, regardless of the deity they sign up to. I get nowhere.

I sometimes despair that we live in a world where a snide, judgemental, selfish person can be decreed to be "going to heaven" just because they have a made-up "relationship" with an invisible friend - while a selflessly hardworking member of, say, Medecins Sans Frontieres who happens to be atheist would be decreed to be "going to hell" just because they don't have a supernatural belief. It's all so woefully simplistic. It's like a child made it up.

flookcrow - I honestly find it amazing that anyone can reach adult life without realising that it is not compulsory to believe in god, unless they live in some kind of extreme Christian commune. As seeker, escorchio and colditz have said, it is very important to question religious assumptions - this is not rude, it's just natural scepticism. You only cannot see this because you are inside the religious system which is being taken for granted. It's a bit like sexual or racial privilege. You need to be outside it to get any kind of objectivity on it.

Ah, finally all becomes clear as it emerges that UnquietDad's endless atheist crusade on Mumsnet has been proxy battle with his mother. Give it up. Mother always wins

Believe me, I abandoned arguing with my mother a while ago...

What "atheist crusade" anyway? Show me the last time I started a thread about it. Go on. I dare you.

Of course, now you have thousands of mothers to argue with.

Hmmm, that might explain a lot. Patronising, dogmatic, selective hearing, always believing she is right, not listening to the evidence, self-contradictory, resetting to zero before each new conversation... Yup, my mother would fit in very well among the religious in this section!

It may be hard to believe, but I seriously don't give religion any thought until someone puts it in front of me. Of course, I could always block the threads or just not get involved. But, you know. There's always SIWOTI.

Tell me, when you picture us all in your head, do we all have your mothers face?