A couple of days have passed since my last entry. Mainly due to having been slightly more busy than usual setting up a forum as a co-admin. As promised, here follows an insight to my views on God(s) and the followers of such.
I was not brought up in a family of many religious views. Religion for me was always something that came up in bedside stories, fables, preschool and then elementary school. It was always there, but it was never talked about. I think my eldest brother was the first one I remember to talk about other beliefs. At the time it was present as healing crystals and chakras and chi, what now would be called "alternative medicine", but which I later found out to be heavily based on Hinduism. My second eldest later got me more interested in the concepts of Taoism and Buddhism but mainly on the philosophical side of them. To some extent, I believed in inner forces for a long time. Longer than I ever had believed in a mysterious bearded chap looming over me in the clouds, looking after me on this road of perils that is life.
It was actually from the 7th grade onwards that I started to see the futility of the Evangelical Lutheran Church. I had dropped any beliefs in a God long before that, but it was then that I began to seriously reconsider the organization that is the church. I for some time practised a more Taoist way of life, then got a craze for Norse paganism (around this time I was being heavily drawn into metal music and my research into what they were singing about peaked my interest) and finally a couple of years ago just finally decided that none of the religions was right for me, my lifestyle or my moral compass. I deemed myself atheist (NOTE: Not agnostic) and held strong to my belief that there was no God or Gods that had created the universe or even life for that matter.
I'm now nineteen. I've had complete control of my life for over a year now and that has also brought about some rethinking of my values. Not because I would doubt myself, but rather because I doubt the meaning of the categories I had set myself in. Simple atheism was not what I was about and it conflicted strongly with my political views over the freedom of individuality and beliefs. I am still an atheist but not to the same extent I was prior. My views these days are closer to anti-theism or even closer to antireligion.
The modern world is in a religious turmoil. Not because of the beliefs, the beliefs consolidate each others and the true believers of any one faith could never become violent rampaging crusaders for their own beliefs. It's not the person who throws the rock, but the man in a silly hat standing upon the balcony of his glamorous palace preaching for the throwing of the rock. The ridiculous amounts of dogma surrounding each and every organized religion is mind-boggling. Over the course of the last few thousand years, even the oldest religions have been thrown off their path of tolerance and faithfulness. Were Jesus alive this day, he would cry for what mankind had done to his beautiful vision of a new rising of Judaism.
Any religious leader who incites violence under the banner of his God is no better than any dictator doing so in the search of lebensraum.
Any believer who truly goes by the core tenets of his God(s) or prophet(s) will not stray from his/her path. Any believer will know not to judge others by their views any more than they would like to be judged for theirs.
Any true believer would not need a person to come between the believer and his God(s). Especially if this person acting as the middle-man of a God is naught but a heretic and a puppet to an old man in a silly hat.
I was not brought up in a family of many religious views. Religion for me was always something that came up in bedside stories, fables, preschool and then elementary school. It was always there, but it was never talked about. I think my eldest brother was the first one I remember to talk about other beliefs. At the time it was present as healing crystals and chakras and chi, what now would be called "alternative medicine", but which I later found out to be heavily based on Hinduism. My second eldest later got me more interested in the concepts of Taoism and Buddhism but mainly on the philosophical side of them. To some extent, I believed in inner forces for a long time. Longer than I ever had believed in a mysterious bearded chap looming over me in the clouds, looking after me on this road of perils that is life.
It was actually from the 7th grade onwards that I started to see the futility of the Evangelical Lutheran Church. I had dropped any beliefs in a God long before that, but it was then that I began to seriously reconsider the organization that is the church. I for some time practised a more Taoist way of life, then got a craze for Norse paganism (around this time I was being heavily drawn into metal music and my research into what they were singing about peaked my interest) and finally a couple of years ago just finally decided that none of the religions was right for me, my lifestyle or my moral compass. I deemed myself atheist (NOTE: Not agnostic) and held strong to my belief that there was no God or Gods that had created the universe or even life for that matter.
I'm now nineteen. I've had complete control of my life for over a year now and that has also brought about some rethinking of my values. Not because I would doubt myself, but rather because I doubt the meaning of the categories I had set myself in. Simple atheism was not what I was about and it conflicted strongly with my political views over the freedom of individuality and beliefs. I am still an atheist but not to the same extent I was prior. My views these days are closer to anti-theism or even closer to antireligion.
The modern world is in a religious turmoil. Not because of the beliefs, the beliefs consolidate each others and the true believers of any one faith could never become violent rampaging crusaders for their own beliefs. It's not the person who throws the rock, but the man in a silly hat standing upon the balcony of his glamorous palace preaching for the throwing of the rock. The ridiculous amounts of dogma surrounding each and every organized religion is mind-boggling. Over the course of the last few thousand years, even the oldest religions have been thrown off their path of tolerance and faithfulness. Were Jesus alive this day, he would cry for what mankind had done to his beautiful vision of a new rising of Judaism.
Any religious leader who incites violence under the banner of his God is no better than any dictator doing so in the search of lebensraum.
Any believer who truly goes by the core tenets of his God(s) or prophet(s) will not stray from his/her path. Any believer will know not to judge others by their views any more than they would like to be judged for theirs.
Any true believer would not need a person to come between the believer and his God(s). Especially if this person acting as the middle-man of a God is naught but a heretic and a puppet to an old man in a silly hat.