Subject: Religions and sects

There is no any topic like this so I decided to create. I'd like to increase my little knowledge about religions and everything about that like beliefs, customs, celebrations, ceremonies, fetes etc :)

Let's write here about all religions and sects and about our opinions and persuasions in this subject..

What religion do you profess and what kind of religious activity does it require?

i am an atheist, i believe in men, what about you?

It's a hard question for me..I'm a Catholic because all in my family are Catholics but I don't know if I really believe in it.. It can be said that I'm looking for the most appropriate religion for me ..

..But I don't reject Catholicism totally, maybe it'll turn out the best religion or maybe I'll be an atheist like you..

im agnosthic

I believe in science ^^ Realigion is for weak people.

i'm serbian christian ortodox.

don't know what r the exact things you'd like to know about religion cause it's a very wide subject

here are the basics:
as all christians, we believe in jesus being the son of god. also we believe in holy trinity the god, the father and the holy ghost.
some differences from your catholic church is that our standard priests(not monks) can, well actually must marry. the churches are placed differently than the catholic ones(the position of altar and exit). our churches are painted inside with what is called fresques(guess that's the way to spell). our cross is slightly different. every ortodox church is equal to other ortodox church(russian, serbian, romanian...) and together they make the community of ortodox churches. every ortodox church has it's own leader called the patriarch. serbian ortodox church has 4 long fasts, and also wednesday and friday are fast days-you can't eat meat, or any other food/drink that comes from animal(milk, eggs, cheese, milk chocolate...) and you need to keep your mind clear during those days too

ortodox and catholic church parted in 1054 in event called the great schizm. now, i don't know what else is there that you'd like to know.
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i'm catholic and i'm happy about it. :)
hmm... it's hard to write something about, because i don't know what do you expect :P.

Agnosticism is a transition phase, at least it was for me.

To TS: you can't look for a perfect religion. You either believe something or you don't. When your believes correspond with the believes of other people (in big lines) than you're part of a religion. For example Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, Sikhism, etc.

People with certain beliefs talk with each other about what they believe and what it means and what it means that they have to do. They discuss with each other about what place religion should take in their lives and stuff like that and thet start to organise people of the same religion. Often this involves acquiring real estate and forming communities in where they can live according their religious beliefs and pray for their god(s). This is called a religious stream or stream and includes streams like Catholicism, Sunnism, Lutheranism, Mennonitism, etc. A religious streaming is often a social group which is more than the religion. Because it is a social group it often also includes a lot of people who are in that group because they have always been and recently started to argue with the underlying ideas or don't really know whether they agree with those ideas or people who just did never make efforts to leave that social group even though they know inside that they don't really believe in those ideas.

You perfectly can be Catholic while you don't believe in a god or don't believe in Christ. That's because you still feel you're part of the Catholic social group. In the end, however, you'll start to ask yourself why you still want to be part of that group and leave the group to find another one which does correspond with your beliefs.

What I mean to say is that when you say that your Catholic because your family is Catholic you're not automaticalliy Christian. Ask yourself the following question: Do I really believe in God? Do I really believe in Jesus? Do I really believe Christ=God=The Holy Spirit? etc.

If you answer one or multiple of those questions with no you're probably not really Christian. You may also want to ask yourself: Can there be a god? etc.

I am Romanian christian orthodox and as neuronmaster said above, orthodoxism unites more churches, but actually guides after the same principles, though religious traditions and usages are a bit different from one to another, especially in Russia.

And I cannot wait to see here someone from India ...:))) to find out some more things about Hinduism and Buddhism.

btw, do we have here Satanists?

to atheism you mean? ive been agnosthic for many years. Thats because i dont know if god exists or not, i only know that noone can know if god exists, noone has the answer, so if someone say what he says is the word of god..he is lying, imo. Thats why im agnosthic :)

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I agree with you about that and I have the same vision, but I add one thing: in my opinion the logic behind any god and the underlying religious system is incorrect.

For example: I was always taught that God is infinite merciful, but when you want to go to heaven every religious person will agree that you have to believe in God. That's no infinite mercy and therefore both statements can't be correct.

For a long time I have been thinking about this and similar paradoxes and I've come to the conclusion that it's irrelevant whether there's a God and that it's incorrect to accept the possibility of the existence of a god even though you know there's no way you can ever be sure.

From a more scientific point of view: if you research and find no information to strengthen a certain hypothesis, but a lot of information which would weaken the hypothesis or make it unlikely than you would rationally say the hypothesis is untrue even though you don really have unproven it.

To make it simple, the following hypothesis:
Garden gnomes exist.

You randomly inspect 1 million gardens (nothing escapes from your attention, no matter how small it may be) and don't find a single garden gnome. You know that this doesn't prove anything since there are still a lot of gardens you didn't inspect. Rationally, however, you would say that garden gnomes don't exist because you didn't find a single gnome after inspecting a huge amount of gardens.
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well put.

my grandmother was hungarian lutheran
my grandfather was hungarian calvinist

my other grandmother was german cathloic
my other grandfather was hungarian catholic


but i'm totally sceptic. :)))

For example: I was always taught that God is infinite merciful, but when you want to go to heaven every religious person will agree that you have to believe in God. That's no infinite mercy and therefore both statements can't be correct.

but it's logical :P.
if you steal, kill, rape etc, you go to prison, etc etc.
and
if you're hmm... (let's simplify) bad and doing wrong, person which loves you won't reward you, but it doesn't mean this person stop loving you.

hey luuut, write a bible...:D as I 've been recently said on the forum... or found a new spiritual movement :XD