Religion makes me uncomfortable

Its all a bunch of shit.

It seems that people's repulsion to Christianity depends on which denomination they were raised in.

By far Catholicism produces the most hate-filled anti-religious types. You just don't see that with most Protestants.

Maybe it has something to do with the fact that Catholicism is so far off from true Christianity (joy, freedom, guided by spirit and not ritual, etc).

My father was Jewish, my mother is Pagan, and my fiancée is Buddhist, so I’ve had the privilege of getting to experience a lot of different forms of religion in my life lol.

Most Abrahamic religions (Christianity/Judaism/Islam) really can be summed up as death cults. It’s a religion centered around death and dying, yet the (western) followers seem to be some of the most afraid to die out of all people on earth.

I’ve found some Christians use prayer as sort of a way to set the tone for their intentions, like a mantra or self-help therapeutic activity with more spiritualism involved.

Also some questions you can answer only if you want to; Which path are you going down? Left or right hand? Are you incorporating western Esotericism and occult community? Where does “Spirit” play a role in your craft?

It's fine if you dont feel comfortable with worshiping any god or religion. But moving on to Crystal's and rocks are kinda moving back in time religiously. Heck most of the bible can be taken as a metaphor, not literary.

My oh my. With a critical thinking and skepticism it's plain to see, once one pulls back the curtain (learn history) and blind(faith)folds -- all religions sprang from imagination and magical thinking in barbaric and completely superstitious times.

Not saying some good can't come from some aspects of spirituality, but organized religion serves only to control. And how 'good' can it truly be to brainwash children and indoctrinate masses, with NONSENSICAL THINKING? This does nothing to educate a populace in preparation for reasonably navigating the world today. Unlike the maths and sciences, religion's applications are less useful and creepily cultish to boot. That is why the world is full of ignorant (often willful) zombies willing to hate (non-believers) and fight (sometimes to the death) over beliefs many haven't even fully examined, all in order to avoid admitting they are bamboozled by mindless tradition.

i despise religobabble

'sacrament this holy trinity that bla bla bla'....on & on & on with a buncha abstract arbitrary stuff that all build this wall of lore that seems to make perfect sense to the indoctrinated but leaves me thinkin its a buncha made up bullshit preyin on peoples feara the unknown while grabbin power & cash

You have very valid questions. I also had some of the same questions many years ago. At the same time, there were a number of statements about things the bible actually said that most religions deliberate misstated (which is leading to some of your questions).

I finally decided to study the bible and those issues; and found about half were clearly true (Geniuses actually says "In the beginning - the gods created heaven and earth") and the old testament uses the plural "gods" many many times; and modern printings of the bible change virtually all of those to singular (The unabridged "hard sided" "The New Jerusalem Bible" actually identifies all the plurals and has extensive footnotes on them a variety of other things).

Many other "Christian Scholars" claim that they believe that the plurals were just occasional transcriber mistakes, and it re-translating them as singular corrects the mistake.

I personally found that all but one case that the sentence and paragraph made total sense with the plural "gods." Also, that the overall story presented of multiple gods doing things was consistent (and that Yahwey was just one of those gods). So, is it that there are hundreds of consistent transcriber errors occurred on just this word, or only one?

Older versions of The Catholic Encyclopedia explicitly state that the reason that these plurals of "gods" are all translated to modern English as a singular "god" was for the "religious significance." Duh... now isn't that nice. "We chose how to translate a word to form a specific religious concept." Wonderful... And now you know why they have all been translated in almost all modern printings as the singular word "god."

Another piece of evidence: Judaism is clearly not monotheistic. It and the old testament clearly acknowledge the existence of other gods. However, Yahweh and Abraham chose each other - and Yahweh would be the god of Abraham and his children. His children (and descendants) became the Jewish people.

Judaism is the religion most of those children and decedents chose, and others have joined - which emphasizes that only Yahweh is their personal god (and the others don't count). Thus Judaism has elements of monotheism; but, still admits those other gods exist (or existed) for other people.

How Christianity somehow became purely monotheistic out of that is one of the great mysteries of life...

I could mention many other things... but, in the end after many books including textbooks used in seminaries; I eventually accepted that there is a god in this world. Now, in the end I found that while hiking in the woods and though open prairie field on a sunny day by contemplating the world. I can offer no definitive proof one way or the other. But, I seriously studied the question for about 2 years and was looking for the answer.

At the same time... I have no idea about much of what the modern Christian Church teaches and how it acts (other than concentrating power and wealth in its leaders, which is not something I believe that Christ would believe in). There are common themes about caring for others, being honest and acting decently, etc. throughout both the Old and New Testament (and many other religious texts I have read from other religions). In fact; if you take what is considered the Christian "10 Commandments", and remove exactly who (or what) is worshiped and the day of rest and contemplation (the Sabbath), you will find all the others virtually repeated word for word (and certainly concept for concept) in every other major religion in the world.

We have a lot more in common than many expect.

I wish you well with your journey to figure it out... I found the journey to be very enlightening about the world - and give me great hope for the future..

God is real. Stop being a fag and start believing in the bible, or I see an indefinite stay at the hotel hell in your future. God's message is simple and clear. Turn or burn!

Religion is just another form of entertainment. No different than music or TV or whatever lifestyle.

The only problem is when people use it as an excuse to act stuck up or like pricks.
Like when you are around someone's grandfather who is right wing conservative fundamentalist christian. Like oh boy, we better clinch our asses extra tight when his old judgemental ass is around.

BTW, how come most people don't see to get holy and righteous until they are close to the end of their lives?

The standard-brand religions, whether Jewish, Christian, Mohammedan, Hindu, or Buddhist, are, (as now practiced) like exhausted mines: very hard to dig. With some exceptions not too easily found, their ideas about man and the world, their imagery, their rites, and their notions of the good life don't seem to fit in with the universe as we now know it, or with a human world that is changing so rapidly that much of what one learns in school is already obsolete on graduation day.

A possible answer to one of you questions on evolution.

If you follow the religious texts of many religions around the world... the formation of the world and peopling of it took time.

Who says that whatever god, or gods, is or are... that they did not use evolution as a way of creating mankind.

Please don't fall for the concept that the modern translation and use of the word "day" necessarily meant "24 hours"... Most seminary books that I have reviewed it present it "day" as a period of time. In the days of old... kind of interpretation. So, who says the biblical "day" was not a million of our current years - or perhaps closer to a billion. Who knows...

Most people have an innate desire to believe that they're part of something much bigger and much more significant that just a self-aware, squishy bag of biochemical reactions that happened to come into existence due to the random genes in an ovum and a sperm joining and producing a viable embryo. And lots of people never really grow up in the sense that they always find it comforting to believe that there's an invisible, wise father-figure hovering somewhere who takes a personal interest in their well-being, nods approvingly when they do something good and frowns and shakes his finger at them when they're naughty.

Many people find it easiest to just accept whatever brand of religion their parents believe to be true, but the fact that there are something like 10,000 distinct religions in the world makes it pretty clear that the religion you grow up being told is The Truth is almost as random as the combination of genes you inherit from your parents.

There are not 10,000 different explanations for how gravity, electricity or chemical reactions work, and there are not countless different versions of the Periodic Table. The rules for those things are universal and were set at the moment of the Big Bang, but all religions are human inventions and the priorities and values of cultures have varied greatly during human history.

Religious beliefs are nothing more than a matter of opinion and traditions that gain in perceived value due to the passage of time. Some religions are more socially positive in that they allow societies to work in a way that means individuals can enjoy their lives as much as possible, maximise their potential and care for their fellow human beings. Some are socially evil because of how they restrict and oppress individuals, very often in a way that results in the leaders of the religion gaining some worldly benefit or a psychological pay-off.

I firmly believe that everyone should have the right to hold whatever religious beliefs they choose so long as those beliefs down't infringe on anyone else's basic human rights and as long as they don't lead the believer into surrendering their freedom to someone else or physically or emotionally harming themselves.

As far as I'm concerned, Wicca is just another religion, and it's pretty much benign. Like all religions, it has a fair amount of BS attached. In particular, Wicca is a much more recent invention than is usually claimed, and some of the claimed roots of the religion have been refuted by researchers.

While I don't accept that the things which you believe to have some mystical power actually do, the human mind is a weird place, and if you get something positive from messing around with them and from performing rituals, then there's no harm in that. Connecting to nature and the passage of the months and the seasons is definitely a positive thing in a world where there are so many pressures and temptations to distance ourselves from the reality surrounding us.

"I'm the only one in my family who truly isn't religious. Instead I turn to witchcraft..."

You're religious.

Im by no means a Christian but I have huge doubts about the big bang theory, and how we evolved from fish or whatever. Just seems silly. Scientists like to play smarter than they are. They throw numbers around with no shame like "420 million years ago a squid turned into a fish" like how do you know it wasnt 300 million years? That specific number reeks of bullshit. Theyre guessing they have no idea.

If you believe and are wrong.. you've lived a good life treated people the way you would have liked to be treated and asked a higher being for forgiveness when you did something you thought was wrong. You're now dead and there is nothing. However if you decide not to believe and you're wrong, well let's just say you better be right...

Technically you're not uncomfortable with religion, because Wicca is a religion, or religious practice, but it's not a big organized religion like Christianity.

Normal. Organized religion can often come across as stilted, stale and creepy.

I think that in a perfect world everyone would be able to pull a Buddha and set aside several weeks to just sit somewhere and think until they create their own belief system from scratch. Otherwise, choosing among existing spiritualities feels like deciding whether you want to be a bot, a snowflake, or both.

If you question if God is real or where he came from, you just have to believe. There is no findable answer to those questions. You cannot prove he is, yet you cannot prove he isn't. You cannot prove the Bible is; you cannot prove the Bible isn't. You cannot prove we evolved from primates, either. I have thought of what it would be like if Christianity weren't true, and my first thought is death. It's better to believe and go to Heaven than not believe and go to Hell.