What are some misconceptions about your religion?

[Hexenwolf]

What if I'm not sure what I am? Sometimes I believe in God, sometimes I don't, it really depends on my mood.

Realistically, I would say that my belief is that I don't know. I acknowledge that it is impossible to truly prove beyond all doubt whether or not God exists.

I'm not agnostic though, because it's not a "well, there might be a god" thing. It's more like sometimes I strictly feel "there is no God," and at other times I truly believe in religion (defaulting to catholocism because that's what I was raised as) and that He exists and you need to go to church and confession and all that jazz. Both are acceptable to me.

I don't know anyone else that has the same beliefs as me, and I haven't really explained my beliefs to anyone else before now, so I can't say that anyone has any misconceptions about my beliefs xP

 

[Spaceman_Spiff]

I have no morality nad worship Richard Dawkins. I'm an Atheist.

 

[Kajin]

Humans didn't evolve from monkeys. In fact, nobody in their right mind believes that. Homo Sapiens evolved from a long line of progressively more intelligent and modern-shaped humans. I'm just confused as to whether you believe that humans have been exactly the same for millions of years.

I actually agree with this. Monkeys are our closest living relative, but that doesn't mean we evolved from them. It just means we have a common ancestor that split into two different evolutionary directions.

 

[spinFX]

Humans didn't evolve from monkeys. In fact, nobody in their right mind believes that. Homo Sapiens evolved from a long line of progressively more intelligent and modern-shaped humans. I'm just confused as to whether you believe that humans have been exactly the same for millions of years.

I actually agree with this. Monkeys are our closest living relative, but that doesn't mean we evolved from them. It just means we have a common ancestor that split into two different evolutionary directions.

No. Apes are our closest relative because we are in fact, still apes by definition.

 

[Hydro Imp]

I'm gonna say I'm agnostic, that means that I'm open to the idea of a deity but I don't follow any conventional religion. I feel that religion has good moral lessons in it but when people take it too literally or misinterpret a part of their teachings to the point of violence then religion goes bad.

 

[PureChaos]

i don't have a religion

 

[The Tommunist]

snip

Is it true that jews don not belive in hell? Because i've considerd becoming Jewish if that was true.

nope, no hell

 

[cainx10a]

I'm a Muslim. And God knows how many misconceptions people hold against us, seriously.

Let's start with the suicide bomber notion. I know that most of the people here aren't morons and therefore understand that most of the Muslim population believes that strapping a bomb to yourself and running into a crowd is extreme and pretty un-Muslim.

Allah tells us to protect human life and take good care of it, including our own. It's a gift from God that I'm alive today. This is why we are not permitted to drink or eat pork, because the Quran dictates that these things are bad for your body. Suicide bombers are effectively destroying this rule by killing themselves in order to 'cleanse' the world of 'heretics'.

Um. Feel free to ask questions? I don't know how these things go.

Another thing:

1. That all Muslim men are wife beaters and evil little beans.
2. That all Muslim women are oppressed by their fathers (those evil little muslim men).

Those are two misconceptions that pisses me off to no extent.

Now I just wish my mom would stop beating my dad for losing the family cat, again.

 

[cobra_ky]

unlike most atheists, i have no problem with atheism being called a religion. just like any other religion, my atheism is a personal set of beliefs that i developed from years of learning and introspection. i also think my beliefs deserve the same legal protections as any other religion.

Is it true that jews don not belive in hell? Because i've considerd becoming Jewish if that was true.

yes it's true. although there are also christians who don't believe in hell.


EDIT: oh, and by atheist i mean that i am open to the possible existence of God but i do not live my life any differently because of it.

 

[Signa]

I was raised Catholic, and I've heard some nice ones. Like how Catholics are really Christians.

While I'm not trying to be confrontational (I think I may have misread this)... What do yu mean by this? I'm a Catholic (kinda) and I believe in Jesus, which makes me a Christian...

OK, misconceptions about me as a Catholic...

Gays are bad - no. The only types of gay people I hate are the flamboyantly camp ones, who I hold with the same level of hatred as Fundies, Suicide Bombers and Gangstas - the people who embody the worst traits of their group in such an obvious way it's what everyone thinks of. Luckily, I have mates who are perfectly normal human beings and sleep with guys, so I can think of them.

That we don't believe in Evolution - This is why I led with the "gays are bad" misconception. Everyone sees the Fundies going on about it and assumes that ALL religious people are like that. I believe in evolution. The last time I went to church, the sermon was on how religion and science can coexist perfectly (including facts and lines from the bible that support evolution, which both sides tend to forget. Wish I could remember them now...). It basically boiled down to "Evolution happened, pretty much how Darwin said it did" "Because God did it." I fail to see the downside for anyone in that compromise.

That if you don't believe what we believe you'll go to Hell - Wrong. Wrong wrong wrong. If you're a good person, you'll go to Heaven. Only the worst of the Fundies believe that if you're not a Christian you'll go to Hell. Eeeeeeeeeeeevery Christian I know believes that Jews, Muslims, Sikhs, Taoists etc will all end up in Heaven (or their version of it, which is exactly the same place!) if they haven't been cunts to people. I personally also believe that Bhuddists get reincarnation if they aren't ready for Nirvana (which I think is how it works?), because that's what they want, but I'm unsure of the churchs official position.

As a side-note (because I've never heard of this before this thread), I also believe that animals, like people, have the ability to get proper souls that go on to Heaven. Partially because the idea of "Doggie Heaven" still appeals to me as a man in my mid-twenties, and also because I hate the idea of there JUST being humans in Heaven - I LIKE playing with my dog to get away from people for a bit, and I'll be damned if that's gonna change just because I'm dead.

Wow, I feel reaaaaly bad because I missed writing the "n't" after "are." The line was supposed to say that people think that Catholics are not Christians. Good post otherwise. All stuff I knew as a Catholic of course, but good to get that info out there.

On a side-note, did you catch the Penn and Teller episode on the Vatican? Interesting stuff. I stopped going to mass a few years back because some of the bureaucracy that was highlighted in that episode started to bleed through to my church. Nothing scandalous, mind you, but it just made me feel like the belief and worship of God was taking second place among much less important things.

On a side-note of a side-note, if you've never seen Penn and Teller's Bullshit, starting with an episode that highlights fallacies and mistakes of your religion may not be an awesome idea. Regardless, I strongly recommend at least seeing the recent video games episode. They attack Jack Thompson, and what could be more entertaining than that? Maybe the older Bottled Water episode, but I digress.

 

[Spacelord]

As a secular humanist, some misconceptions I feel need clarification:

- Being secular (that is, non-theistic) does not make me immoral, or incapable of moral judgement.

- Science is, contrary to popular opinion, actually NOT a quest for truth. The philosophy of science states as purpose to increase the amount of so-called objective knowledge. This objective knowledge should not be confused with 'truth', which is a metaphysical concept, not a scientific one. What science pursues is an approximation of knowledge of the natural world as it exists. Many philosophers of science believe our knowledge of the world will never completely correspond with the world as it is. The tools of empiricism and falsifiability just are the best things we have at our disposal so far.

- We do not outright reject metaphysical discussion. If anything, I believe metaphysical discussion enriches our world in many ways. We just don't believe it will enlarge our objective knowledge of the world. At least not usually.

- While not believing in the deitification of historical personas, we sure worship some of them (or, at least, we should). People like:

Spoiler: Sir Karl Popper

Founder of the criterion of falsifiability for the demarcation between science and metaphysics

Spoiler: Kurt Vonnegut

Humanist and very witty writer

Spoiler: Midas Dekkers

Biologist and professional cynic

[small]On a side note: isn't it interesting how people get more and more popular after they've died?[/small]

 

[Zacharine]

That people think that atheism

a) is a religion, as in a "particular system of faith and worship." (COED 11th ed.)

b)can only be a positive statement of belief

c)is worshipping Darwin

d)is being angry and rebellious at (or ignorant of) 'god'.

e)amoral or immoral by definition.

That's about it.

Oh, and about humans evolving from monkeys? This is a gross misunderstanding.

No, humans and monkeys evolved from a common ancestry. All primates that are not prosimians (lemurs and tarsiers) or apes, are monkeys. Monkeys are therefore a separate offshoot of primates, while apes are another offshoot. The seperation happened at infraorder Simiiformes (or Simians), when New world monkeys (Platyrrhini) and Old world Monkeys (Catarrhini) evolved separately. Humans are part of the superfamily Hominoidea (unlike Old world Monkeys, who are Cercopithecoidea). Hominoidea includes gibbons and great apes.

The classification is

Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Chordata
Subphylum: Vertebrata
Class: Mammalia
Subclass: Theria
Infraclass: Eutheria
Order: Primates
Suborder: Anthropoidea
Superfamily: Hominoidea (the most recent ancestry with gibbons)
Family: Hominidae
Genus: Homo
Species: sapiens

To say humans evolved from monkeys is like saying rats evolved from cats. There is a common ancestry far enough back (both are mammals for example, and belong to subclass Theria but seperate after infraclass Eutheria), but no direct relation between the two groups.

 

[Venatio]

Athiesm, and this applies because Congress has classified atheism as a religion.

Quirky huh?

That we dont respect other religions
That we have no morals
That our belief in the absence of deities comes from ignorance
We are all bound for hell or whatever underworld exists out there (fundamental beliefs)
Atheists are a unified group, like a church
Most criminals are atheists (the opposite it true)
Atheists are stubborn and closeminded
Atheists make bad parents

And thats that.

And to those who believe that atheists are narrow minded I say this:

If he exists, let God show himself to me and I shall be the most loyal of servants.

 

[ProfessorLayton]

One misconception is that all Christians are always trying to shove religion down everyone's throats and that we are very uptight egotistical jerks that love to complain. It's not true at all.

 

[Chipperz]

*MEGASNIP!"

Wow, I feel reaaaaly bad because I missed writing the "n't" after "are." The line was supposed to say that people think that Catholics are not Christians. Good post otherwise. All stuff I knew as a Catholic of course, but good to get that info out there.

Ahhh... Yeah. Putting an n't makes a lot more sense

On a side-note, did you catch the Penn and Teller episode on the Vatican? Interesting stuff. I stopped going to mass a few years back because some of the bureaucracy that was highlighted in that episode started to bleed through to my church. Nothing scandalous, mind you, but it just made me feel like the belief and worship of God was taking second place among much less important things.

On a side-note of a side-note, if you've never seen Penn and Teller's Bullshit, starting with an episode that highlights fallacies and mistakes of your religion may not be an awesome idea. Regardless, I strongly recommend at least seeing the recent video games episode. They attack Jack Thompson, and what could be more entertaining than that? Maybe the older Bottled Water episode, but I digress.

I don't think I can get Penn and Teller over here in the UK, but I'm seriously considering going out of my way to find some episodes to watch, seeing as they've beemn highly reccomended by a decent number of people

Also, I have no issues with people poking holes in my religion - one of the last things I asked my old priest was why, if god was everywhere, we have to invade his house every Sunday to worship him there.

 

[Horticulture]

Here's a common misconception about my religion.

That we really give a shit.

Catholics are about the most apathetic people you're likely to come across. You've got two brands, though. The totally apathetic and the plain ordinary pathetic. The pathetic ones still show up to church, still listen to the man in the collar drone on and still give when the collection plate comes around, despite having lost faith about the time they first learned about the non-existence of Santa Claus. The Apathetic spend their Sundays sleeping in, sin their arses off and enjoy every minute of God-given life they have, only putting down Catholic on the census forms because atheism is just too much effort.

This is why all the newer brands of Christianity hate us so much. We're having a much better time, despite technically clinging to an older out-dated belief structure. Also, because we have a Nazi Pope.

Repent for your hedonism with fifty Hail Marys!

 

[SadakoMoose]

I am a goddess worshiper;
This does not mean that I am some balding, pathetic, nerd that says he "worships" women in a misguided attempt to get a girlfriend. It means I believe that the divine forces at work in the universe are inherently female. I thus apply that sort of thinking to how I treat my girlfriend and the women around me. Better than I would treat other men and with way more respect. I don't build shrines to my girlfriend or anything, who is in on the whole goddess thing btw, I just treat her with a great importance. In return she treats me with the kindness and respect I have earned. I can break up with her anytime I want, and she does not control me. I did not vote for Clinton during the primaries, either.

 

[Julianking93]

I don't get the OP's thing about evolution. You say you exept it, yet you...don't? Evolution says we evolved from a long line of growing homosapiens that have become more intelligent and more adapt to their land over time and that certain genes are passed down from generation to generation. That's natural selection. But saying that humans are the one, single exception out of the millions of species of animals, plants, and trees is completely ridiculous.


And when brought science that explains in full detail of how evolution works, you just say God guided science and evolution. Thats a complete fucking copout because you can't prove your religion.

 

[WayOutThere]

That has offended a lot of people. I really need to clarify that. I don't actually believe you are all confrontational assholes. I know a lot of athesits who are perfectly pleaseant people. What I meant was that they are out there and bound to find this post eventually.

I was going to make a bit deal out of that but then you also said "insane fundamentalist christians" which made it clear you were saying nothing more than the obvious, "people, in general, are stupid".

most of us admit that things didn't exactly happen this way.

good

What we reject is the idea that Humans evolved out of monkies.

That means you do reject evolution.

Because, this implies that humans are not spiritual beings created in the image of God, but that we're a random accident like all the other animals.

Your god still could have planned us out from the beginning.

We do not believe that animals do not have a soul. Animals have souls. What we believe is that animals do not have IMMORTAL souls. Your pet has a soul... it just disappears when he dies.

So, you define "soul" as to mean what gives life value? If so, why does a being need this otherworldly thing in them to have worth?

 

[wootsniper]

but I'm all for homosexuality.

fag...

sorry :O just had to say that

OT: Im not a believer however i dont like the term "athiest"
i just thinks religion is kinda (you now... the opposite of smart)