An Agnostic ponders religion.

[Ray9]

At 72 I am an Agnostic but I’ve been thinking about religion. I was confirmed a catholic in 1960 but I have a hard time seeing the Pope as the living God especially after he leaves the bathroom. In addition, the Catholic faith has a real problem with its silence during Hitler’s extermination of Jews. And there are those piles of wealth accumulated Mafia –style. I’m no Catholic.

I want to pick the religion that has the best God but I’m not going with the Jews because they’ve got one mean God with “wrath” as his middle name. Historically, they write backwards which affected their map reading skills likely explaining why they got lost in the desert for forty years. And I’ve become fond of a part of my anatomy that I don’t want lopped off. The Jews are out.

I have no desire to return to the Middle Ages with medieval crusades and barbaric discipline that buries females up to their necks in dirt while the people test their pitching skills by launching rocks at a human head. Anything Muslim is off the table even though we are probably just around the corner from the first Sharia states in the US.

My problem is that I don’t believe in anything intensely enough to kill other people for it. I do support the Golden Rule but only those who are suicidal would kill for it. As an Agnostic, I’m not sitting on the fence; I’m hiding behind a wall.

All this religious love in the world is downright dangerous and the slings and arrows of the past are nothing compared to what’s festering just under the surface of contemporary religious human culture. Mike Pence’s injection-molded haircut does nothing to mitigate my anxiety about the atavistic direction the human race is veering toward.

I thought I had it figured out in 1973 when I rode my motorcycle to the “Summer Jam” at Watkins Glenn NY to atone for missing Woodstock. I saw naked people rolling in the mud Bonobo style, with no way to keep themselves clean. They just came home, went through penicillin by the barrel and were right back at it again. We call them Atheists today. Aleister Crowley and Rasputin are not on my list either.

I conclude that I cannot be saved by religion; I just can’t get excited enough to bayonet non-believers. If I spend an eternity in Dante’s Inferno for the sin of sloth then so be it.

 

[norwegen]

Nuwaubianism seems like a good choice. Here's a partial list of their beliefs:

1. It is important to bury the afterbirth so that Satan does not use it to make a duplicate of the recently-born child
2. Furthermore, some aborted fetuses survive their abortion to live in the sewers, where they are being gathered and organized to take over the world
3. People were once perfectly symmetrical and ambidextrous, but then a meteorite struck Earth and tilted its axis causing handedness and shifting the heart off-center in the chest
4. Each of us has seven clones living in different parts of the world
5. Women existed for many generations before they invented men through genetic manipulation
6. Homo sapiens is the result of cloning experiments that were done on Mars using Homo erectus
7. Nikola Tesla came from the planet Venus
8. The Illuminati have nurtured a child, Satan’s son, who was born on 6 June 1966 at the Dakota House on 72nd Street in New York to Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis of the Rothschild/Kennedy families. The Pope was present at the birth and performed necromantic ceremonies. The child was raised by former U.S. president Richard Nixon and now lives in Belgium, where it is hooked up bodily to a computer called “The Beast 3M” or “3666.”

The Nuwaubians built a city modelled on Ancient Egyptian buildings in Putnam County, Georgia. It has now been demolished.


10 Extremely Weird Religions

 

[Old Man Grumbles]

I am a Christian. Not Catholic (I was raised Catholic and repudiated Catholicism as a teen), Lutheran., Methodist, etc. That being said I abhor anyone shoving their religious beliefs down peoples throats. When it comes to a person's beliefs and behaviors, that is between that person and God. It's not my place to act in God's stead.

I will discuss religion only when asked to. Those who choose to "bayonet non-believers" may well find themselves bayoneted on judgement day.

 

[norwegen]

I am a Christian. Not Catholic (I was raised Catholic and repudiated Catholicism as a teen), Lutheran., Methodist, etc. That being said I abhor anyone shoving their religious beliefs down peoples throats. When it comes to a person's beliefs and behaviors, that is between that person and God. It's not my place to act in God's stead.

I will discuss religion only when asked to. Those who choose to "bayonet non-believers" may well find themselves bayoneted on judgement day.

When Jesus instructed his disciples go and to make disciples of the nations, he didn't tell them to go and wait until they were asked to.

 

[Weatherman2020]

At 72 I am an Agnostic but I’ve been thinking about religion. I was confirmed a catholic in 1960 but I have a hard time seeing the Pope as the living God especially after he leaves the bathroom. In addition, the Catholic faith has a real problem with its silence during Hitler’s extermination of Jews. And there are those piles of wealth accumulated Mafia –style. I’m no Catholic.

I want to pick the religion that has the best God but I’m not going with the Jews because they’ve got one mean God with “wrath” as his middle name. Historically, they write backwards which affected their map reading skills likely explaining why they got lost in the desert for forty years. And I’ve become fond of a part of my anatomy that I don’t want lopped off. The Jews are out.

I have no desire to return to the Middle Ages with medieval crusades and barbaric discipline that buries females up to their necks in dirt while the people test their pitching skills by launching rocks at a human head. Anything Muslim is off the table even though we are probably just around the corner from the first Sharia states in the US.

My problem is that I don’t believe in anything intensely enough to kill other people for it. I do support the Golden Rule but only those who are suicidal would kill for it. As an Agnostic, I’m not sitting on the fence; I’m hiding behind a wall.

All this religious love in the world is downright dangerous and the slings and arrows of the past are nothing compared to what’s festering just under the surface of contemporary religious human culture. Mike Pence’s injection-molded haircut does nothing to mitigate my anxiety about the atavistic direction the human race is veering toward.

I thought I had it figured out in 1973 when I rode my motorcycle to the “Summer Jam” at Watkins Glenn NY to atone for missing Woodstock. I saw naked people rolling in the mud Bonobo style, with no way to keep themselves clean. They just came home, went through penicillin by the barrel and were right back at it again. We call them Atheists today. Aleister Crowley and Rasputin are not on my list either.

I conclude that I cannot be saved by religion; I just can’t get excited enough to bayonet non-believers. If I spend an eternity in Dante’s Inferno for the sin of sloth then so be it.

Your Catholic background is a handicap.

The faith is about you and God, nothing else. John 3:16.
All the rest is commentary, so now go study the word.

 

[Old Man Grumbles]

I am a Christian. Not Catholic (I was raised Catholic and repudiated Catholicism as a teen), Lutheran., Methodist, etc. That being said I abhor anyone shoving their religious beliefs down peoples throats. When it comes to a person's beliefs and behaviors, that is between that person and God. It's not my place to act in God's stead.

I will discuss religion only when asked to. Those who choose to "bayonet non-believers" may well find themselves bayoneted on judgement day.

When Jesus instructed his disciples go and to make disciples of the nations, he didn't tell them to go and wait until they were asked to.

You are correct. I, being an imperfect human, find it difficult to corner someone and force feed then the Good News. There is more than one way to make disciples of the nations.

 

[Old Man Grumbles]

Your Catholic background is a handicap.

The faith is about you and God, nothing else. John 3:16.
All the rest is commentary, so now go study the word.

I couldn't have said it any better. Thank you.

 

[norwegen]

I am a Christian. Not Catholic (I was raised Catholic and repudiated Catholicism as a teen), Lutheran., Methodist, etc. That being said I abhor anyone shoving their religious beliefs down peoples throats. When it comes to a person's beliefs and behaviors, that is between that person and God. It's not my place to act in God's stead.

I will discuss religion only when asked to. Those who choose to "bayonet non-believers" may well find themselves bayoneted on judgement day.

When Jesus instructed his disciples go and to make disciples of the nations, he didn't tell them to go and wait until they were asked to.

You are correct. I, being an imperfect human, find it difficult to corner someone and force feed then the Good News. There is more than one way to make disciples of the nations.

Nobody "force-feeds" the Word. They simply share it.

People express their beliefs and opinions all the time. It's what people do. But for some reason, when Christians share their belief, they're accused of forcing it down peoples' throats.

It's an accusation only a snowflake would make.

 

[Old Man Grumbles]

There is, in my experience, those who share the teachings of Jesus it is done in the most positive and loving ways. Yet there are those who choose to to be vile and hateful is spreading the Word to others - one of the best examples of that is the Westboro Baptist Church.

All religions have those in their faith who force their beliefs on others.

Now, for the record, I have shared the teachings of Jesus with people. Has it had an impact on their lives? I certainly hope and pray it did. But, I did it my way and if that way is wrong I will answer for it at my judgement.

 

[jwoodie]

A true agnostic simply acknowledges that there are ultimate questions which are beyond human understanding. But that does not mean that existing religions should be disparaged.

 

[Ray9]

A true agnostic simply acknowledges that there are ultimate questions which are beyond human understanding. But that does not mean that existing religions should be disparaged.

Recounting historical and empirical facts disparages nothing.

 

[BreezeWood]

.
the prescribed, original spoken religion of antiquity the desert religions have abandoned is a single sentence - the triumph of good vs evil - will be the final judgement, rendered from the travails of noah and the 1st century. the people on the losing end, the flood do seem to have reemerged.

 

[ding]

Apostates are the worst.

 

[BlackFlag]

The Jews and Buddhists have the best philosophies, IMO. No belief that you have to terrify people with eternal damnation or bribe them with eternal rewards. Of course like every religion, they also have their crazies.

 

[Penelope]

If Protestant you follow Paul.
If Catholic you follow Jesus.

 

[Picaro]

Ah, yet another thread wherein ignorant people insist on attributing distinctly pagan pastimes to Christian theology, and of course falsely claim Christians were more violent than the alternatives, which is a giant load of rubbish as well.

 

[Picaro]

A true agnostic simply acknowledges that there are ultimate questions which are beyond human understanding. But that does not mean that existing religions should be disparaged.

Recounting historical and empirical facts disparages nothing.

you aren't recounting any of that, so no problem.

 

[BreezeWood]

A true agnostic simply acknowledges that there are ultimate questions which are beyond human understanding. But that does not mean that existing religions should be disparaged.

Recounting historical and empirical facts disparages nothing.

you aren't recounting any of that, so no problem.

.

But that does not mean that existing religions should be disparaged.

and of course falsely claim Christians were more violent than the alternatives,

- and of course falsely claim Christians were more violent than the alternatives ...

what alternative ...

you aren't recounting any of that, so no problem.

and if they were ... sicko the attack dog cooks a steak.

 

[Meriweather]

I was confirmed a catholic in 1960 but I have a hard time seeing the Pope as the living God especially after he leaves the bathroom.

The Pope isn't the living God. The Pope is the servant of the servants of God. Could it be that you also got an abundance of other things wrong, not just with Catholicism, but with Judaism, and even non-Catholic denominations? Love God, love your fellow man (which primarily means family, friends, work community). It is that simple.

 

[BULLDOG]

I am a Christian. Not Catholic (I was raised Catholic and repudiated Catholicism as a teen), Lutheran., Methodist, etc. That being said I abhor anyone shoving their religious beliefs down peoples throats. When it comes to a person's beliefs and behaviors, that is between that person and God. It's not my place to act in God's stead.

I will discuss religion only when asked to. Those who choose to "bayonet non-believers" may well find themselves bayoneted on judgement day.

When Jesus instructed his disciples go and to make disciples of the nations, he didn't tell them to go and wait until they were asked to.

No. He intended that they should beat the converts into submission, and to keep the whip close at hand in case they started to backslide.