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

Not believing in a 7-day creation doesn't disprove Christianity, SITMWY. Many Christians don't believe in a literal interpretation of the Bible.

My point is, that the majority of tenants of Christianty have been knocked down. Everytime we have evidence either way concerning Christainity, it is disproved. It is never proved.

There is a lot more evidence for the non-existence of God - or at least the benevolent Christian God than for his existence.

For example - there has never been a properly proven example of prayers being answered - and answering prayers is something that God definitely said he'd do.

And - for me the clincher "Where was God in Auchwitz?" Or Darfur. Or Dunblane.

Was raised a catholic by a catholic mother, during my childhood years my buddhist (!) father did not get a look in.

Now I actively dislike catholicism, as I feel that it does not allow people to think for themselves and burdens them with unecessary guilt.

Buddhism makes more sense to me, that it is a philosophy and I do believe in reincarnation.

Basically, I just believe that we are all fragments of universal consciousness, which is a greater intelligence which we can all tap into. (you know when you meditate, or have been puzzling over a problem and then suddenly you are in the shower and the answer comes to you in an "aha" moment.)

I believe that all the great figures in major world religions, such as Jesus, Buddha, Mohammed, etc were all just very spiritually aware people.

Organised religion tried to explain away (what i call) universal consciousness as an omnipotent being (God / Jehovah etc...) and packaged into something which they could use to control simpler, unsophisticated people from hundreds to thousands of years ago.

Now I believe that we are in a new age, where people are "waking up" and seeing religion / spirituality in a new way. (I am a big fan of Eckhart Tolle who makes a great deal of sense to me.

Was fully baptised Pentecostal as a teenager, after Alpha course. Ds1 attends catholic school, due to dh's family being catholic. I always wanted to beleive in god. wanted to desperately. but just never actaully DID.
where does that put me ?

Yup seeker I'm with you there. If there is a God, he cannot possibly be omnibenevolent, omniscient and omnipotent. Because there is far too much inexplicable shit in the world.

However, there still could, in theory, be a God who was not omnipotent or omnibenevolent etc.

No, I do not believe in God at all. I was christened and had my first holy communion in a catholic church, but stopped believing soon after, not because of an event, but just growing up.
Some parts of Buddhism make a lot of sense to me, oher bits do not.
I have enormous problems with the Bible and especially with the RC church.
The Bible is not comlete as it does not contain all the Gospels, and frankly I do not believe all the non-cannonical gospels are automatically heresy just because some early RC christians decided they were. After all the same people got together a couple of hundred years later and voted on whether women were human beings or not
Who says the early gnostic christians were not the ones who were right?

"As an aside though, why do atheists only reserve their condemnation for Christians or Christianity?"

We don't!

But, seriously - where have Christians been "condemned" on this thread?

And also another thing about the old testament- in it, God spontaniously combusts a man who dares to collect wood on the sabbath! However in a nearby place in teh Bible, God condones the gang rape of a teenager
God didn't blast the rapists into dust before they raped and killed her. Why?
What kind of God is that? He does this not once, but twice in the Bible.

Hmm, I don't condemn Christianity as awhole, just the xtremist parts, including lots of RC teachings. I aslo condemn muslim exremists, Hindu extremists, any extremists anywhere.

I just see more probles with Christianity because I have read the Bible cover to cover, and went to church, therefore I know more about it than any other religion. So it faces the brunt of my criticism

I aim my arguments primarily against Christianity as I grew up in a nominally christian country. I actually hold the same views on all religions and supernatural beliefs. Please don't feel that it's personal to Christianity. I think it's all codswallop.

I believe in there being a greater 'meaning' to life above and beyond us all being complex bundles of carbon and water. I believe that there is some sort of energy that connects all living things.

I do not accept the teachings of organised religions (except for the fact that many of my own beliefs are similar to those promoted by buddhism). I do not believe that there is an omnipotent deistic figure that controls our lives and categorises us for an afterlife, dependent on whether or not we have performed a specific set of rituals.

No, to me it is an interesting part of history and that is where it should stay. Time for humanity to let go and move on.

Nice buildings though- it would be a shame if they didn't last.

No, was raised atheist and am atheist

Christianity is the majority faith in this coutry - of course it's the one used as an example on threads like this. Also, the majority of mumsnetters, I am guessing, were raised in this country so are probably more knowledgeble about Christianity than any other faith, so know whereof they speak.

Don't worry - happy to say I don't believe in any other faith either - and happy to think they all do more harm than good, and the world would be better without them.

No

I was raised without religion.

Most, if not all of the critiques of Christianity here can equally be applied to the other Abrahamic religions. After all, Christianity is merely Judaism v2 ("Now with 90% less smiting!") and Islam is Judaism v3 ("Now with 90% more smiting!").

lol, thumbwitch, I have always thought of reincarnation as recycling! Although, I'm always sure I can even get my head around that. Sometimes I have to content myself with the idea of genetic memory

oops "not sure"

ROFLMAO Snorbs!

I believe firstly and foremost that world religions are an enormous force in human behaviours and as such respect any set of beliefs people hold so long as they don't harm others. We are hoping to teach DS that it's important to have some understanding of as many religions as you can, as a means to understanding motivations in the world, and individuals. In the end, I hope someday he finds something that he will believe as there can be such comfort in it for those that do. That said, while I think it's important to educate yourself about religions for human understanding, I personally have difficulty reconciling many of the tenets of most organized religions.

I was raised a Christian. DH was raised an athiest.

I do believe in Something. Quite strongly actually, and would be quite upsetting if I lost this (due primarily to the what's after death issue). My beliefs are my own and though they do not fall into any defined "religion" perfectly, they would most closely resemble Buddhism if asked to define.

I must say that CheerfulYank's description of the God she believes in is more beautiful than any standard description I've ever heard and a lovely thing to believe.

I agree with GetOrfMoiLand's idea of life after death. Happy to be worm food and nothing else after I'm gone. At least I'll be doing something for the earth