That's essentially determinism

Strict atheist. I like the look of Buddhism and Taoism, though, and I'd like to think I follow most of their beliefs, but I don't believe in the soul's enlightenment or any such thing, just inner contentment.

Also, I don't know if you can add extra things to these polls, but I know there're at least two Taoists here that don't particularly want to just register under Buddhist. If we're seperating Christianity etc., may be nice to seperate the others too.

Catholic Baptism, now I just believe in God and that is it (not exactly sure what that'd be).

I know of Muslim factions are Shiite and Sunni (there is a 3rd one, I always forget its name).

Well, that's more agnosticism. At least that corresponds with my beliefs and I call myself an agnostic.

Actually I apoligized for not dividing the other religions as much. In order for me to divide them, I need to know what they are divided into. I only divided Christanity because being a Catholic is very different then being a Baptist, and they are both very different then a Mormen...

*eyes typo* Last time I checked it was still Pagan. Old Religionist here. If you dont know what it is dont ask me cause Im not interested in explaining it. And if youre a wiccan or driud and dont know what it is line up for a free slap.

Proud to say I am a Pagan in all definitions. *shoves her hedonist side back in its cage*

See my post in the other thread in regards to my typos and degradation of spelling skills as I use English less and less...

It is determinism, to the letter

Couple of things I think would make good corrections. If you follow Budhism or Confusianism there is no mentioning of a god.

I've always found the statement.. "I don't beleive in god because theres a perfectlly reasonable scientific explanation to everything" to really miss the whole point of believing in god.

I just saw the movie Colateral on the plane ride home, so I'll use a line from that movie to illustrate the point.
Jamie Fox: "You just killed him?"
Tom Cruise: "No, I shot him, the bullet and the fall killed him."

In that scene, I would Say Jamie Fox was someone who believed in Religion, and Tom Cruise someone who believes in "Science"

Second.. I'm a spiritual Jew, I believe that everything has a perfectly reasonable explanation for why and how it happened. Any scientific theory that has held out for a reasonable amount of time I believe to be true.
Science explains large groups and generalities, but it never explains the individual. I believe that if all the positions of all the atoms in the world where known, you could predict what will happen in a person's life for the rest of their life, unless that person believed in Change and Redemption. Because against all rules of nature, we have the ability to change our behaviour and fix the mistakes of our charachter.

Thirdly, I believe that anyone who belives that the first five books of the bible has only one literal meaning is a fool.

Of course, I was just pointing out how to update it, not criticising your not already having done so. I understand why you wouldn't've known, so no worries.

And Daganev, that's the thing. The "whole point" of believing in God seems to be to have faith, regardless of logic. I agree, logically, that Tom Cruise is right there. When it comes down to the nature of the universe, "science", and Tom Cruise, are more correct. I mean, people can believe in religion, and that's fine. I think most religion is a good thing up to the point where it starts hurting people and making them feel worse (I come from the philosophical perspective that says, "Hey, making other people happy gives me endorphins or whatever and makes ME feel happy, so why not?"), but that doesn't mean it is, strictly speaking, the right way of looking at things. Strictly speaking, the bullet DID kill the guy (or, impact or whatever, but you know what I mean), and that's just how it is. You can look at it as Tom Cruise killing him, and on a more down-to-earth level that's theoretically correct, but that isn't what actually happened.

Okay... That doesn't make any sense. You're saying its confusing to you why someone, who doesn't believe in god, doesn't believe in the point of believing in god? Isn't that the point of *not* believing in a god? If you don't believe in God, or Fate, or Destiny or anything else like that.. You don't take things on faith, because you don't believe in faith... so if you already don't believe in god, why would you care about the point of believing in god. And why would you say things happen because God made them so, when you don't believe in a god to do that?

First of all, I think what Daganev was getting at was along the lines of. God created stuff in a logical manner. Of course there is a scientific explaination for everything, because god is smart enough to make rules that fit in a logical fashion. Therefore scientific explaination doesn't disprove god existing.

Anyways, totally aside from probably the topic. I am finding it -insanely- interesting how religion touches everyone differently. Without attempting to offend anyone, we have people here who say essentially "I believe this, because I always have, and it's what I feel". To people who are right into science, and believe their religion because it's what they know.

It's also interesting to see so many different angles that religion can be looked at, I have always seen it from a sociological stand point, as that is how I feel most comfortable.

I particularly enjoyed Samuel Clemens, or determinism. It's something I have thought about before, although it led me into a circle of "If on the off chance, all the atoms in the universe happen to exist in the same place they do now, would time repeat itself" (seeing as I don't believe in the big bang theory, or that crap that a hydrogen atom just magically appears everyone 10,000 years or whatever). But that just freaked me out.

Anyway, as far as religion goes. I will believe in a god when I meet him. I will believe in heaven when I am at the pearly gates, and until the time I will die, I will do as I please so long as I don't hurt anyone else doing it. I call it "ultimism" muhahaha.

Could be wrong, but I think that's called humanism. If you're not believing in a God YET, odds are you're doing it because you don't like to see people sad? That's the way I figure it - I don't like seeing people sad, so if I try to make people happy, I will be too, so it's all fine. Well, that's the theory. It's impossible to please everyone.

Personally, I am of catolic origins and school / Highschool, even if at home my parents don't think about religion (they just send me to that school because they liked the level of it). The more I learn about Christian beliefs the more I think the Church follows other kind of ideas and some people take old books way to seriously. I mean, many things in the bible were just methaphores, a way to explain a concept so people without studies could understand it.

Personally, I'll believe in God (any God) when he/she/it is so kind as to introduce himself/herself/itself. Sceptikal at its best.

I can't describe how suprised I was to see Gnosticism listed as a choice and that someone other then I had selected it.

On another note its only modern Budhism that precludes the existance of divinity. Some sects of early Budhism accepted the Universal Mind as an actual 'God' figure.

It's Chassidic. Those are the guys with really big black furry hates and eastern-european accents.

For anyone that really cares, there are also Sephardic and Ashkenazi Jews.

Etanru, I do care... if I could add to the list, I would add those... but it wont let me... I have always felt bad about my ignorance of the Jewish Religion...

I just don't believe in god yet because I have no reason to, and it really makes no difference whether I believe it is real or not.

Seeing people sad doesn't bother me, I just think people should be able to do what they like, so long as it doesn't hurt other people. I find this to be a valuable rule of thumb running through most prominent religions. I think religions have alot of reasonable expectations to put on its followers, which are then surrounded by things like "Thou shalt not be gay" or "You are all born into a station, you can never move above it".

I don't see many advantages to organized religion, except that it serves to preserve a few decent ideals, and help people through grief or hardships.

I just came out of an Alpha course which turned me from Atheist to someone who is very uncomfortable with his atheism. The way I see it, if you have total faith in probability and the power of energy you can live a life completely void of any kind of divine intervention. This is atheism. If you believe that divine creation is one of any number of possibilities but not exclusively so, this is agnosticism. If you believe in probability + energy = divine intervention, this is faith.

If you believe that divine intervention could *possibly* have got us here, and from this come to the understanding that it is *possible* for this divine being to have instigated our existence and want a relationship with us, then you will be as mixed up as I am right now.

I would tick the agnostics box if it was up. Jesus was a pretty cool guy though.

I voted Agnostic. I'm not really sure what's up there, and although I'm not a very religious person, I don't want to risk burning in hell if there does happen to be Someone up there judging me.

Although my parents are "officially" Christian, we don't go to church or anything.