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Current time: March 29, 2024, 8:09 am

Poll: How you work that out?
This poll is closed.
My religion represent God
3.70%
1 3.70%
I take from what religions say
0%
0 0%
No religion represent God
25.93%
7 25.93%
I wouldn't know
11.11%
3 11.11%
I am not interested
18.52%
5 18.52%
I have no other way to know so I just write what religions say
0%
0 0%
Nah.
40.74%
11 40.74%
Total 27 vote(s) 100%
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Do religions represent God?
#21
RE: Do religions represent God?
Except for a brief time after the death of my son, I've lived from one day to the next never thinking there was or wasn't a god. As Alan Watts wrote in his book The Way of Zen: "Zen does not confuse spirituality with thinking about god while one is peeling potatoes. In Zen, spirituality is simply to peel the potatoes."

After my journey in the front door and out the back door of religion, I've continued to live as if "god" exists only here on earth because of how people's religious beliefs affect their attitudes and actions. In that sense, "god" does exist. But call he/she/it "Legend" for they are many.

So my answer to the OP's question is a very general "Yes." And it's general because words are only handles to carry the idea of something to another person, not the thing itself, until we apply them to our attitudes and actions. And my experience with scriptural words has been that most religious people don't apply them to their own lives.

But I do benefit from reading words that convey how others have defined religious and spiritual. Below are just a few of the words I've collected over the years that juxtapose the words religious and spiritual.

"We only know what we interpret. We can't peek over the edge of our interpretations to see things in the raw." ~Thomas Sheehan

"Start knowing what you really know, and stop believing what you really don’t know.  False knowing is the enemy of true knowledge. All beliefs are false knowledge."  ~Tantric Teaching

"Spiritual attitudes and practices do not require belief in a supernatural reality or divine being. They can be about love, tolerance, forgiveness, harmony with others, how our lives fit into the greater scheme of things, where the universe comes from, why we are here and what happens when we die." ~Robert C. Fuller

"Spirituality says 'May the heavens open up and angels bless everyone with their own light.'  but religion says 'Only Jesus got the light, you're full of shit, and in the dark. We're the only ones that got it, so you've gotta go through us to get it.'  Man, in this life, the only thing that is holy is your relationship with your heart, your family and the air you breath."  ~Carlos Santana

"We can see a garden is beautiful without believing there are fairies at the bottom of it." ~Douglas Adams
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#22
RE: Do religions represent God?
(January 6, 2017 at 10:03 am)Little Rik Wrote: I noticed that most people in the forum when talk about God both in the positive and negative take from what religions say.
It never came in their mind that what religions say may be totally different from what God (if exist at all)
may think or say.
I brought the attention to this failing time and time again but people keep on falling in the same trap so I
open a poll to see what they think regard all this.

For all the woo that you've talked about in the forum, in the past years.... this is actually something that makes sense.

A distinction between the religion - the organized worship of a deity or deities.
And a god, the deity being believed in.

It is conceivable that people would believe in the deity without an organized system imposing such a belief.

Even if there was a god that was willfully hiding itself from humans, religion would have been a totally man-made institution, based on snippets of apparent interactions of that god with humans.
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#23
RE: Do religions represent God?
(January 6, 2017 at 3:40 pm)Minimalist Wrote: There is no fucking god.


There is just one fucking god which does not exist and His name is Allah, Jehovah, Odin, ...
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#24
RE: Do religions represent God?
[Image: 1h7pbm.jpg]
 The granting of a pardon is an imputation of guilt, and the acceptance a confession of it. 




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#25
RE: Do religions represent God?
Define "revere". If it involves crisco that is nonstandard usage.
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#26
RE: Do religions represent God?
(January 6, 2017 at 8:01 pm)Whateverist Wrote: Define "revere".  If it involves crisco that is nonstandard usage.

"Revere" as in "Vorlon is coming, Vorlon is coming!". Sorry.
God thinks it's fun to confuse primates. Larsen's God!






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#27
RE: Do religions represent God?
no one is going to accuse me of being polytheistic ?
 The granting of a pardon is an imputation of guilt, and the acceptance a confession of it. 




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#28
RE: Do religions represent God?
(January 6, 2017 at 9:35 pm)vorlon13 Wrote: no one is going to accuse me of being polytheistic ?

The guy with the cigar's name is poly?
God thinks it's fun to confuse primates. Larsen's God!






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#29
RE: Do religions represent God?
They attempt to represent something that may or may not exist. They fail.

Any real creator is likely to be far more mundane.
Feel free to send me a private message.
Please visit my website here! It's got lots of information about atheism/theism and support for new atheists.

Index of useful threads and discussions
Index of my best videos
Quickstart guide to the forum
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#30
RE: Do religions represent God?
(January 6, 2017 at 3:40 pm)Minimalist Wrote: There is no fucking god.


The poll was about whether people here have an idea in the positive or negative about God draw from what religions say.

Nothing to do with whether God exist or not.

Everybody already know your disbelieve for God so your post is totally off track.  Banging Head On Desk

(January 6, 2017 at 11:04 am)FatAndFaithless Wrote:
(January 6, 2017 at 10:52 am)Little Rik Wrote: Wrong.

Nothing to do with fantasies.
It was all about the priests desire to become intermediaries between God and the masses.
At that stage they had to create stories like hell and paradise so people would follow them.
It was a very evil plan rather than fantasies.  Lightbulb



Tell me something Fat.
What is the difference between religion and spirituality?  Rolleyes

I don't know of a useful definition for spirituality.  But a system of codified beliefs and values with attendant rituals, especially when attributed to a supernatural force is the definition of religion.


There got to be a teacher Fat.
Every type of knowledge require a teacher.
Without a teacher is next to impossible to get there.
So the job of a teacher is to explain how to get there therefore there got to be a system in place.
A system doesn't mean that you follow a religion.
When you got your degree didn't you follow a system Fat?
Was you system a religion?

You never thought about that Fat, did you?  Bird

By the way spirituality does not follow rituals nor external worship like a religion.  Lightbulb
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