Is it a sin to not be a fan of religion?

[anti_shrub]

I know this is a question that can easily be turned into a flamefest, but I hope we can stay above that level.

I know there's a lot of DU'er who are religious and devoted to whatever faith they choose, and that's fine. Nothing in the universe is completely good or completely bad so I know a lot of folks benefit from religion.

However, in my opinon (which with $5 will buy you coffee at Starbucks), most people are religious because it was ingrained at an early age to believe in God or else. Of course its never put in sinister terms like that, but that's what it usually boils down to. Kids generally aren't taught to believe in God because of all the peace and love he stands for, but to believe in him or else they'll face eternal punishment. I know that's how it was for me being raised in an Irish Catholic family. Even when I drifted away from church after my father died, my aunt who's been a nun for 50+ years said I should go because "thats what your father would want". Not because God is great or anything like that, but because thats what a deceased parent would want.

I'm sorry if this offends any deeply religious DU'ers, since if you post here you most likely don't instill the Fear O' God into your kids, but after seeing the result of religious loonery in Afganistan, Bagdad, Washington DC, and Alabama I find myself wishing religion would go away. The need to have an invisible being to explain the unexplainable pretty much gone these days.

[mjb4]

1. Religion in America ....

gets you a job, gets you established, keeps the freepers away. it is a necessary evil. I am moving away from religion, but in an interview will tell others that I work with the church...

[anti_shrub]

3. I guess in some parts of the country

You can't "come out of the closet" if you will, and expect to be able to land a job, but what does that say about how completely the right has co opted religion where you feel you need to embellish your church record to gain employment?

I don't know, it just puzzles me how most religions are either hardcore conservative or at least socially conservative yet any time someone points that out there's always people who ask you why you hate Jesus so much.... :shrug:

[joshdawg]

2. I have nothing against religion for people who want it.

I've tried religion of all different denominations. It does not work for me and I've since come to believe, much like Bill Maher, that religion is a neurolgical disorder. Just 1MHO.

[roughsatori]

4. My sister: "You will go to hell if you don't believe in Jesus."

So according to people who think that heaven exists and the only way to it is via Jesus, it is a big sin.

Her "Promise Keeper" husband told my VERY Catholic mother and father that Catholics "won't go to heaven either." (You think you've seen battles at DU, you could've been in my living room that day.)

[Rabrrrrrr]

Nope, not a sin at all

And when people say to me, "You're in the church? Man, I can't stand the church" or "Christians are loonies" or whatever, I totaqlly sympathize, because alas, only the loonies get any public attention (and also, only the loonies STRIVE for TV attention, which is an indictment of them, but also an indictment of my own denomination and others who are very progressive and loving and trying our best to be as much like Jesus as possible - our fault for not getting the word out as we should).

I can't speak for other religions in that way, but I totally understand why someone who has never been in the church doesn't want to be, and can also understand why a lot of people leave the church.

I think you're better off on your own than with those who would otherwise twist the words of Jesus and/or worship the structure of the church more than God, and pay more attention to rules and laws than to ihndividuals.

[PurpHaze69]

5. Amen my friend.

Religion shuts down progress in the world. Most modern social and moral progress has been made by people free from religion--including Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, Charles Darwin, Margaret Sanger, Albert Einstein, Andrew Carnegie, Thomas Edison, Marie Curie, H. L. Mencken, Sigmund Freud, Bertrand Russell, Luther Burbank and many others who have enriched humanity.

Most religions have consistently resisted progress--including the abolition of slavery; women's right to vote and choose contraception and abortion; medical developments such as the use of anesthesia; scientific understanding of the heliocentric solar system and evolution, and the American principle of state/church separation.

Religion is a powerful thing. Few can resist its charms and few can truly break its embrace. It is the siren who entices the wandering traveler with songs of love and desire and, once successful, turns a mind into stone. It is a Venus fly trap. Its attraction is like that of drugs to an addict who, wishing to be free and happy, becomes trapped and miserable.

But the saddest part of the dependency is the fact that most participants are willing victims. They think they are happy. They believe religion has kept its promises and have no desire to search elsewhere. They are deeply in love with their faith and have been blinded by that love--blinded to the point of unquestioning sacrifice.

[Skinner]

6. I'm locking this.

I can see where this is going.

We've already got broad brush statements about most religions being "hard-core conservative," we've got the obligatory reference to "invisible beings" and we've got another comment equating religion with mental illness.

I've got no problem with discussions about religion. But we can really do better than this.

Skinner
DU Admin

[nothingshocksmeanymore]

7. It's not a sin....and it's your right..it's also the right of others to

believe what they want.

Too often the anti-religious will irresponsibly post all the damage being done without factoring in the good that many mainstream religions do.

The bill of rights supposedly gives people the freedom to believe or not...too bad this is beyond some Du'ers to comprehend.

[wtmusic]

8. Agree

and my wife (who was raised Catholic) and I (who was raised agnostic, and antagonistic, as well) had a little showdown about sending our kids to a church-run preschool.

My point was that I don't think that kids should be preached to at that early an age. Her argument was "what's the harm? It's a good set of values".

Eventually I prevailed. Every day when it was time for "service" (where they we're taught songs like "Standing on the side of the Lord") I would go and pick him up for half an hour, then bring him back. It was a pain in the ass, and no other parents did it. In the classroom the school was great so it was worth it. I'll be damned if I'm going to have them being "taught" something that can't be rationally explained--at that early age.

[patrice]

9. There is MUCH error surrounding religion right now. - eom