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Post by Crouton on May 16, 2014 17:46:30 GMT -6
I think I understand. I'm atheist but I watch a lot of documentaries about different religions, I have a huge interest to them. And since I am atheist I'm not tied down by any type of religion, so I've watched things on all forms of religion just because I want to know about them.
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Post by sjfaerlind on May 16, 2014 19:21:48 GMT -6
I think I understand. I'm atheist but I watch a lot of documentaries about different religions, I have a huge interest to them. And since I am atheist I'm not tied down by any type of religion, so I've watched things on all forms of religion just because I want to know about them. I'm Christian and I do the same thing. There's all kinds of different ways of looking at the world. It doesn't at all scare me to learn how other people view it. Actually, I find it quite fascinating.
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Post by Crouton on May 16, 2014 20:11:52 GMT -6
I think I understand. I'm atheist but I watch a lot of documentaries about different religions, I have a huge interest to them. And since I am atheist I'm not tied down by any type of religion, so I've watched things on all forms of religion just because I want to know about them. I'm Christian and I do the same thing. There's all kinds of different ways of looking at the world. It doesn't at all scare me to learn how other people view it. Actually, I find it quite fascinating. Same, one show I REALLY liked, which you may be interested in too was a series I watched called Around the World in 80 Faiths. It's about this Christian pastor from the UK who travels the world and experiences 80 different religions. I enjoyed it heaps.
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Post by sjfaerlind on May 16, 2014 20:28:30 GMT -6
Sooo Crou and I got talking in the "Reading goals" thread and somehow got onto religion. I've moved the off-topic posts here.
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Post by Crouton on May 16, 2014 20:33:45 GMT -6
Could we put something about religion in the title of this thread? Just so people know what it is. If someone wanted to discuss this topic they may get confused by that title.
But yes, for anyone interested in a lot of different religions I recommend Around the World in 80 Faiths. The whole thing is on youtube and I liked it quite a lot.
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Post by sjfaerlind on May 16, 2014 20:39:27 GMT -6
OK, I'll see if I can edit the title of the thread.
That does sound like a good program to watch Crou! Lately I've been doing a lot of reading on Eastern philosophy and new wave spirituality stuff (which seems to be based on Eastern spiritual traditions). Wow! It's totally unlike anything I've encountered previously... very cool.
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Post by Firiath on May 17, 2014 3:59:55 GMT -6
I'm Christian and I do the same thing. There's all kinds of different ways of looking at the world. It doesn't at all scare me to learn how other people view it. Actually, I find it quite fascinating. I think that's a great way of thinking! Instead of distancing oneself from other beliefs, learning about them can teach us so much about other people, and probably also about ourselves, so you profit from it on both a personal as well as on an intellectual level. (But that's not restricted to learning about religions, I suppose.) I consider myself an agnostic, but I work with Christian theology a lot (that's something you can't avoid as a medievalist), and I think you don't have to believe in it in order to learn something from it.
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Post by sjfaerlind on May 17, 2014 5:48:51 GMT -6
I think that's a great way of thinking! Instead of distancing oneself from other beliefs, learning about them can teach us so much about other people, and probably also about ourselves, so you profit from it on both a personal as well as on an intellectual level. (But that's not restricted to learning about religions, I suppose.) I consider myself an agnostic, but I work with Christian theology a lot (that's something you can't avoid as a medievalist), and I think you don't have to believe in it in order to learn something from it. Exactly! I take an "eternal scientist" approach to viewing other people's experiences of the world. I never dismiss their beliefs as "delusions" like fundamentalists seem to prone to doing to people whose views are different than their own. To me, that's just ignoring the evidence, which is extremely unscientific . There is a massive amount of knowledge and wisdom buried in all the religious traditions, science and so-called "pseudoscience" of the world. It's constantly amazing to me how I find it there. I'll never forget sitting in church one Sunday and hearing a passage read out from the bible. It was about God showing someone how dead, dry bones could be brought to life. To me it was a metaphor for how atoms and other "lifeless" things can be used to create life. It's quite amazing what the ancients understood really. Though we explain it by different mechanisms today, the underlying knowledge is still the same. That's pretty cool in my books! The other thing that's pretty cool about it is that the person next to me will probably get something completely different out of the same reading.
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Post by Liv the Librarian on May 17, 2014 11:25:34 GMT -6
I'm a Hellenist ^_^
But I was raised agnostic (my mom always believed in a "higher power" but that's changed now, she's more of a believer in the universe, alternate realities, and reality isn't real etc.. a lot like me, really), became Christian in grade school, became Catholic in high school, became atheist in college, became a Hellenist at 23/24. There was a short amount of time where I considered Judaism, Buddhism, and even Islam after atheism. Not believing in anything just doesn't work for me. Hellenism is the most logical religion, in my mind (very clearly not for everyone).
My personal belief though, is that everyone is right and it's a very grievous error to say that someone is wrong about what god believe in. Now, there are aspects of religion that are definitely socially and ethically wrong in today's world, but that's for another discussion.
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Post by Shogun on May 17, 2014 20:04:34 GMT -6
I would consider myself somewhere between soft atheism and deism if forced to self identify religiously, but I find that storytelling is a lot easier when using religious themes and references. I have some friends who hate reading things that clearly establish things like gods as existing and playing roles(a la Preacher) because they feel like accepting any god as real is unacceptable. To me that's stupid, the joy of fiction is accepting things that aren't necessarily true in your world view.
I've also had a fascination with the occult ever since reading H. P. Lovecraft for the first time, and I've read a decent number of books on the subject. Granted, I find myself rolling my eyes a lot while reading said books, but it's still fun.
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Post by sjfaerlind on May 18, 2014 20:38:26 GMT -6
^^ lol for the rolling of the eyes Shogun! I recently read "Hands of Light" - a book written by a spiritual healer. It's kind of like a manual on how this healer does what she does and how she perceives the world around her. It's pretty "out there" compared to the way most people I know perceive reality... all about auras and chakras and spirit guides and the like. I remember thinking the whole time I was reading it: OMG...really? She actually perceives all of this on a daily basis? I can't say that I have ever experienced anything even remotely similar so I will admit that it was a bit of a struggle for me to overcome my skepticism. In the end though, it was a lot of fun to read and to learn about a completely different perspective on reality. One of the coolest things was to try one of the exercises in the book and see that it actually worked for everyone in my family. It was an exercise in seeing what the author called "the Universal Energy Field". The easiest way to see it is to go outside on a sunny day, lie on your back and look up at a patch of blue, cloudless sky. There is nothing to focus on really so your eyes just kind of relax and go slightly out of focus. If you are patient and keep looking, a subtle pattern of almost sparkly, white, moving ... things (for lack of a better word...lol) emerges with the blue sky behind it. I have no idea what that pattern actually is or what it means but the fact that me, my kids and my husband could see it at all was pretty freaky.
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Post by Taliesin on May 18, 2014 21:55:54 GMT -6
Are you sure drugs weren't involved?
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Post by sjfaerlind on May 18, 2014 22:43:51 GMT -6
Are you sure drugs weren't involved? I might have taken an ibuprofen beforehand. I dunno what excuse the rest of my family has though..... You should try it Tal and report back to us...lol
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Post by Taliesin on May 19, 2014 0:19:05 GMT -6
I might have taken an ibuprofen beforehand. I dunno what excuse the rest of my family has though..... You should try it Tal and report back to us...lol Truth be told, you've got me intrigued now...
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Post by Liv the Librarian on May 19, 2014 10:35:34 GMT -6
^^ lol for the rolling of the eyes Shogun! I recently read "Hands of Light" - a book written by a spiritual healer. It's kind of like a manual on how this healer does what she does and how she perceives the world around her. It's pretty "out there" compared to the way most people I know perceive reality... all about auras and chakras and spirit guides and the like. I remember thinking the whole time I was reading it: OMG...really? She actually perceives all of this on a daily basis? I can't say that I have ever experienced anything even remotely similar so I will admit that it was a bit of a struggle for me to overcome my skepticism. In the end though, it was a lot of fun to read and to learn about a completely different perspective on reality. One of the coolest things was to try one of the exercises in the book and see that it actually worked for everyone in my family. It was an exercise in seeing what the author called "the Universal Energy Field". The easiest way to see it is to go outside on a sunny day, lie on your back and look up at a patch of blue, cloudless sky. There is nothing to focus on really so your eyes just kind of relax and go slightly out of focus. If you are patient and keep looking, a subtle pattern of almost sparkly, white, moving ... things (for lack of a better word...lol) emerges with the blue sky behind it. I have no idea what that pattern actually is or what it means but the fact that me, my kids and my husband could see it at all was pretty freaky. Unfortunately, the "energy" thing is nothing but a parlour trick If you stared at your ceiling you would get the same result, or even if you did stare at one object, your eyes would eventually become blurred around everything but that object. I don't know the scientific explanation behind that, but I'm sure there is one. Though, if you want to, you could easily say that no matter what you're staring at, eventually you could see the energy coming from it or the universe or whichever. That's the wonderful (and sometimes dangerous) thing about belief systems; they can be applied to anything =)
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