Personal Religious Practices

[The Dude]

As I've mentioned in chat before, I'm a Mormon, or as we prefer to be called LDS.

Mormons are Christians but we vary on different things. For one we've got an entirely different set of scriptures along with the Bible: The Book of Mormon, Doctrine & Covenants, and The Pearl of Great Price. We can't drink hot caffeinated beverages or alcohol because of the word of wisdom, which is a doctrine that promotes healthy eating habits. At the age of 19 men and women in the church are encouraged to go on a Mission to another country, either by spreading the gospel or providing service.
We don't believe in Polygamy, dispite what you've probably heard.

If you have any questions feel free to ask me.

Nice to see another Latter Day Saint on the site. Do you live in Utah? I live in South Jordan.

Do you wear the magic underwear?

I do. My wife and I were sealed in the Mt. Timpanogos Temple.

I'm a lax Latter Day Saint/Mormon. I do some things that we're not supposed to do, but that's because of my personal take on things. I also cuss like a sailor, but not around other Mormons. I have faith and strong belief in the LDS Church, but don't agree with them on some issues. No religion is perfect.

My views on the afterlife is: there is a Heaven and Hell (Outer Darkness). There are three levels of Heaven. Most people will go to heaven and be forgiven of their sins. Hell is not hot, it's the exact opposite. It is a complete absence from the light of God and so is very cold and lonely. Only a few will be sent to Hell for being the most evil of people. God is our literal spiritual Father and we are his children. Being our spiritual parent, and being a parent myself, I have a hard time believing a loving Father would have trillions of children, only to welcome back a few while shunning the rest for making mistakes. No good, loving parent would do that.

Also I would like to add that even though I identify as being LDS/Mormon I do not feel that my religion is the only true religion. It's just the religion that feels most right TO ME. I have friends who are atheist, pantheist, other Christian denominations, Muslim, my best friend is gay, and I love them all. I consider them all my extended family and have full faith that I will see them again in the afterlife. But, well, y'know, that's just like, uh...my opinion, man.

One last thing, I don't believe that a belief in a higher power and belief in evolution are mutually exclusive. One does not disprove the other. There is so much more to this universe that we can't comprehend. I tend to believe that God did create us, but did so within the confines of the natural process. I guess that's intelligent design? I don't know. But God using evolution to create us feels right to me. Again, my opinion and all.

 

[Zeorus]

Nice to see another Latter Day Saint on the site. Do you live in Utah? I live in South Jordan.



I do. My wife and I were sealed in the Mt. Timpanogos Temple.

I'm a lax Latter Day Saint/Mormon. I do some things that we're not supposed to do, but that's because of my personal take on things. I also cuss like a sailor, but not around other Mormons. I have faith and strong belief in the LDS Church, but don't agree with them on some issues. No religion is perfect.

My views on the afterlife is: there is a Heaven and Hell (Outer Darkness). There are three levels of Heaven. Most people will go to heaven and be forgiven of their sins. Hell is not hot, it's the exact opposite. It is a complete absence from the light of God and so is very cold and lonely. Only a few will be sent to Hell for being the most evil of people. God is our literal spiritual Father and we are his children. Being our spiritual parent, and being a parent myself, I have a hard time believing a loving Father would have trillions of children, only to welcome back a few while shunning the rest for making mistakes. No good, loving parent would do that.

Also I would like to add that even though I identify as being LDS/Mormon I do not feel that my religion is the only true religion. It's just the religion that feels most right TO ME. I have friends who are atheist, pantheist, other Christian denominations, Muslim, my best friend is gay, and I love them all. I consider them all my extended family and have full faith that I will see them again in the afterlife. But, well, y'know, that's just like, uh...my opinion, man.

One last thing, I don't believe that a belief in a higher power and belief in evolution are mutually exclusive. One does not disprove the other. There is so much more to this universe that we can't comprehend. I tend to believe that God did create us, but did so within the confines of the natural process. I guess that's intelligent design? I don't know. But God using evolution to create us feels right to me. Again, my opinion and all.

You forgot me!

I was born in West Valley but moved to New York as a kid (I'm still there, finishing my BA). Sounds like we're more or less in the same theological area (particularly that bit about creationism versus evolution).

 

[The Dude]

You forgot me!

I was born in West Valley but moved to New York as a kid (I'm still there, finishing my BA). Sounds like we're more or less in the same theological area (particularly that bit about creationism versus evolution).

I'm sorry! I didn't see your post until after I had posted! If you ever make it back out here hit me up and we'll hangout.

 

[klystron]

I used to live in Draper. I went to Southeast Christian which is a non-denominational Christian church.

Dude, wasn't there a very famous Mormon named "Goldy/Goldie" who couldn't help but swear up a storm?

Oh, and a friend who was brought up in a Catholic school in the 60s (old friend) was taught that while evolution may certainly be possible it's important to remember that God designed it. So I think even the Catholic church agrees one does not disprove the other.

 

[The Dude]

I used to live in Draper. I went to Southeast Christian which is a non-denominational Christian church.

Dude, wasn't there a very famous Mormon named "Goldy/Goldie" who couldn't help but swear up a storm?

Oh, and a friend who was brought up in a Catholic school in the 60s (old friend) was taught that while evolution may certainly be possible it's important to remember that God designed it. So I think even the Catholic church agrees one does not disprove the other.

There was a member of one of the Quorums, I forget who and which Quorum, who would cuss from the pulpit during services. I figure as long as I'm not blaspheming or taking the Lord's name in vain I can say whatever the fuck I want. They're only words. However, I do take other people into account when I speak around them. If I don't know them well or know they don't cuss then I watch my French around them.

 

[klystron]

There was a member of one of the Quorums, I forget who and which Quorum, who would cuss from the pulpit during services. I figure as long as I'm not blaspheming or taking the Lord's name in vain I can say whatever the fuck I want. They're only words. However, I do take other people into account when I speak around them. If I don't know them well or know they don't cuss then I watch my French around them.

I'm conflicted on this. When you read up on the Bible and swearing you find things like James 3:9-12 and Ephesians 4:29. These seem to me to read that we shouldn't use the power of our tongue to bring others down but rather uplift them. You can certainly be uplifting saying something along the lines "put down that fucking beer and let's go get you cleaned up" or something like that. I would consider it falls under the guise of "idle speech" which is clearly all over the place in the Bible.

But then again the Book of Mormon talks about 5 tribes of Israel leaving the Holy Land and coming to America, right? Everyone knows Jews swear a lot so....

 

[The Dude]

I'm conflicted on this. When you read up on the Bible and swearing you find things like James 3:9-12 and Ephesians 4:29. These seem to me to read that we shouldn't use the power of our tongue to bring others down but rather uplift them. You can certainly be uplifting saying something along the lines "put down that fucking beer and let's go get you cleaned up" or something like that. I would consider it falls under the guise of "idle speech" which is clearly all over the place in the Bible.

But then again the Book of Mormon talks about 5 tribes of Israel leaving the Holy Land and coming to America, right? Everyone knows Jews swear a lot so....

Just asked my wife who it was that swore at the pulpit and which Quorum he was with. It was J. Golden Kimball and he was with the Quorum of the Seventy.

Here are some quotes from him:

“I don't know about this here eternal marriage business. But it seems to me that if you can't live with the sons-of-bitches on earth the Lord won't force you to remain with them in heaven.”

“Cut me off from the Church? They can't do that! I repent do damn fast!”

“A sermon should be like a woman’s dress. Long enough to cover the essentials but short enough to keep your attention.”

“I may not always walk the straight and narrow, but I sure in hell try to cross it as often as I can.”

After a speaker at a conference gave a long, scathing call on sinners and repentance, J. Golden Kimball was the next speaker. He was not impressed by the negativity of the talk and began his own by saying, “Well, brothers and sisters, I suppose the best thing for all of us to do is to go home and commit suicide.”

"Young men, always marry a woman from Sanpete County. No matter what hard times you experience together, she has seen worse." This is particularly funny to me because my family SETTLED Sanpete County!

So I guess you can say I'm the J. Golden kind of Mormon. Strong on faith and testimony, but a bit of an unorthodox member.

 

[kagayaki]

Catholic of the Roman Rite and proud of it.

 

[Pickle Inspector]

I'm agnostic because I don't understand how matter can come out of nothingness and there are currently no verifiable answers.

All comes down to purpose. Depending on what you want, caffeine is absolutely good for the mind. It's really great for computer programming.

I don't know about alcohol and the mind. I guess sometimes I want to silence my mind, and just fucking do something. Y'know? It's depressing to spend your time obsessing over every little detail. Obsessing until you're frozen with inaction. Alcohol helps me make decisions. So I guess would say that alcohol is more good for the soul than the mind.

As the talmud teaches us, drink until you can't tell the difference between your curses and your blessings.

Talking about programming and alcohol have you heard of the Ballmer Peak?

 

[klystron]

Just asked my wife who it was that swore at the pulpit and which Quorum he was with. It was J. Golden Kimball and he was with the Quorum of the Seventy.

I knew I had heard something about that. Kudos to your wife to backing me up.

 

[Marvin]

I'm agnostic because I don't understand how matter can come out of nothingness and there are currently no verifiable answers.

Oh, easy answers. There wasn't nothingness. The big bang (assuming that's what you're talking about) is talking about an infinitely hot, infinitely dense ball of matter. All that ever was or will be was in that ball.

Talking about programming and alcohol have you heard of the Ballmer Peak?

Goatkcd is way funnier than xkcd.

Heh, but yeah, I never expect to program when I'm drinking. Sometimes I play a game where I try to program while drinking, and see how long it takes for me to become useless.

 

[bradsternum]

I was raised Greek Orthodox. Greek culture centers itself around the church, so I still feel a connection to it even though I don't believe in God.

 

[Drawets Rednaxela]

Oh, easy answers. There wasn't nothingness. The big bang (assuming that's what you're talking about) is talking about an infinitely hot, infinitely dense ball of matter. All that ever was or will be was in that ball.

Pretty much. I word it as everything that exists in the universe today existed prior to the BB in an infinatly small space. So it's not so much "Something from nothing" but rather "Something tangible from something non-tangible".

 

[Ancani]

I was raised Episcopalian/Anglican/Anglo-Catholic/whatever you want to call it, by very progressive and open-minded parents who encouraged--and continue to encourage--me to think for myself, examine things critically, and not simply blindly believe what I'm told. I'm quite grateful towards them for this, as I ended up breaking from the church completely by the time I was sixteen (seventeen at the latest). I simply found that organized religion wasn't for me, and I couldn't bring myself to believe in certain aspects of Christian doctrine.

My beliefs nowadays are a bit complicated; they're kind of cobbled together from a variety of sources. Overall, though, I'd call myself an agnostic deist, but with strong spiritual elements.

For those not in the know: Deism is a belief system that, to quote Wikipedia, "holds that God does not intervene with the functioning of the natural world in any way, allowing it to run according to the laws of nature. For Deists, human beings can only know God via reason and the observation of nature, but not by revelation or supernatural manifestations (such as miracles) – phenomena which Deists regard with caution if not skepticism. Deism does not ascribe any specific qualities to a deity beyond non-intervention."

Admittedly, this description doesn't entirely fit me, but most of it does--I'm somewhat skeptical in regards to miraculous occurrences, and I think that while there is some form of higher power (or, indeed, more than one), said higher power does not interfere in day-to-day life in any way--essentially, that God (or whatever that higher power might be) created the universe and put it into motion, and then let things happen on their own. I also believe that God gave us the ability to reason and look at things from a logical perspective, and that we should use those abilities as best we can. I also don't subscribe to any particular religion, though like I said, some of my other beliefs are cobbled together from various religious/spiritual sources.

All that being said, I also think it's impossible to know whether or not God exists, or whether any given religious/irreligious belief is true. It's simply not provable, at least not given what we do and don't know, and to claim one belief system--be it Christianity or Buddhism or atheism or anything--is objectively correct is incredibly presumptuous, and indeed a bit self-centered. That's the agnostic bit--I don't know that my beliefs are correct, and I don't believe it's possible to know.

I believe that there's an afterlife of some sort. Specifically, a positive one--something along the lines of Heaven. The concept of Hell (and any other form of negative afterlife) always bothered me, though I do believe that some form of punishment awaits the truly wicked when they die. Like, I don't think Hitler or Stalin or Bin Laden or anyone of the sort is going to Heaven anytime soon. I also believe in the concept of a soul, and--by extension--ghosts. (In my defense, I've known far too many people who've had personal experiences with ghosts, including both of my parents, to be completely incredulous. Plus, if one assumes souls exist, I'd think ghosts would be a pretty logical extension of that. *shrug*)

Finally, I have a weird, pseudo-religious relationship with--of all things--fiction. Specifically, cartoons and comics. I don't think my favorite fictional characters are real or anything, but in some cases I draw a sort of strength and comfort from them, from their struggles and their stories. They're almost like figureheads, in a way--they represent values and virtues and traits that I admire and would like to have, but I know they're not real entities and I don't, like, worship them per se. But I do have a sort of spiritual-ish devotion to them, if that makes sense? It goes beyond "I really adore this character", but not in a creepy "I am literally this character but trapped in a different body and different universe" or "I am married to this character on the astral plane" or "this character is actually God" sense.

The closest analogue I can think of is, of all things, LaVeyan Satanism's view of Satan. They're symbols, rather than actual entities. The characters I look up to and get so invested in are, more than anything, figureheads--symbols representative of what I feel I should aspire to, of things I admire and respect.

I dunno, it's weird and hard to explain and probably sounds dumb as hell.

 

[klystron]

Oh, easy answers. There wasn't nothingness. The big bang (assuming that's what you're talking about) is talking about an infinitely hot, infinitely dense ball of matter. All that ever was or will be was in that ball.

How is that an easy answer? Where did that come from? The universe is a set that contains all of creation. Therefore, what contained the ball of matter? How can anything exist without a universe?

God, according to the Bible, is infinite and forever. Always was. If the ball of dense matter always was then is it God?

 

[Marvin]

How is that an easy answer? Where did that come from? The universe is a set that contains all of creation. Therefore, what contained the ball of matter? How can anything exist without a universe?

God, according to the Bible, is infinite and forever. Always was. If the ball of dense matter always was then is it God?

It's easy in that it's a solid answer with decent support to the questions you're asking. The questions you're asking aren't these big problems that no one has an answer to.

Space and time are properties of the universe, so talking about what contains the universe is a nonsensical question. There can't be a "container," spatially.

If you're just asking about if there's something outside of normal perception, sure, it's possible. But it has an extremely limited ability to impact the universe. As far as we can tell, the universe evolves according to very predictable rules, rules that are only getting more predictable thanks to the steady march of scientific progress.

The universe might be god, but I avoid making comparisons like that. There are valid arguments you can make in that area, but it seems to me that a lot of the time it waters down the meaning of the word "god". Like you might start saying gravity is god or storms are god. Like yeah, perhaps they're god, but not really in the traditional western sense of a diety that subjects you to its conscious whims. To me, it's just a natural phenomena, like a ball rolling down a hill.

 

[Foulmouth]

How is that an easy answer? Where did that come from? The universe is a set that contains all of creation. Therefore, what contained the ball of matter? How can anything exist without a universe?

God, according to the Bible, is infinite and forever. Always was. If the ball of dense matter always was then is it God?

He works in mysterious ways motherfucker.

 

[klystron]

It's easy in that it's a solid answer with decent support to the questions you're asking. The questions you're asking aren't these big problems that no one has an answer to.

Still no answer for where the materials that created the BB came from. You said it was some dense ball, and sure that's possible. Where did it come from?

Space and time are properties of the universe, so talking about what contains the universe is a nonsensical question. There can't be a "container," spatially.

Interesting point about time, but the universe is where all matter resides therefore it contains all space. I would argue that there is nothing larger than the universe containing the universe. Assuming time is not a force (thus having some physical property (energy) in this universe) then it may just be an overall property of existence. From my limited study of physics and philosophy I really do not know any decent way to quantify it.

If you're just asking about if there's something outside of normal perception, sure, it's possible. But it has an extremely limited ability to impact the universe. As far as we can tell, the universe evolves according to very predictable rules, rules that are only getting more predictable thanks to the steady march of scientific progress.

I would argue that God and His domain are possibly outside our current ability to perceive. So what is getting more predictable exactly? There are some things I feel science does not have a good explanation for. Like particle-wave duality and double-slit diffraction. I have this friend who spends all his time trying to prove everything is waves, and so that inspired me to do a report for an Englishn class (argumentative essay) about that concept. Another friend gave me a physics book from the 60s. It said "although we know a photon to be a quantum, and thus impossible to split, we must assume that somehow it does split in order to explain double-slit diffraction." (paraphrasing) The thing is that sometimes the scientific community becomes so invested in an idea that rather than pursue the truth they pursue the idea. Recently I read that double slit diffraction is explainable by holes in cardboard causing photons to simultaneously exist in multiple dimensions at once and then manifesting itself against the wall. I want some magical inter-dimensional cardboard.

Anyway, you see this line of thinking often in the pursuit of grant money. For example some egg association says they want a study that shows if eggs are bad for your heart or not, and the study says they are great. Then some group of animal rights people want a study that shows eggs are actually bad for you and it does.

 

[Johnny Bravo]

Atheist. You could say I'm 'hard' atheist when it comes to the Christian god ("I don't believe he exists") but in general I'm more agnostic. There could be a god-like being out there somewhere in the universe, but it's probably not one that we know of or worship.

The only thing I really practice is skepticism. I used to be very gullible and I can honestly say that becoming a skeptic has vastly improved my life and the way I see the world. Other than that, I just try to be a good person. I used to be big into debating theists, especially creationists, but I lost interest in that around 2010 (officially considered myself atheist in 200. I don't believe that religion is evil, though it can certainly be used for evil purposes, whether or not the religious realize it. The only time religion gets under my skin is when it tries to infringe on my rights or the rights of others or when it is used as a justification for violence or bigotry.

Was raised in a non-denominational household. My mother considers herself Christian, but is more spiritual than anything as we've never gone to church even for Christmas or Easter. Not much to say about it really. Feel pretty happy about my outlook on the universe, even though it's not exactly rosy.

 

[ToroidalBoat]

My beliefs are basically that God is love itself, the afterlife is more or less an "externalized inner reality" (to quote contemporary philosopher David Staume) beyond the physical universe, and that any of God's providence in the natural world is normally more or less indistinguishable from natural laws and chance (to paraphrase 18th century theologian Emmanuel Swedenborg). My beliefs go deeper than that, but those are the basics. I currently consider myself Christian, though not Catholic, Protestant, or Orthodox, and I'm not really a fan of organized religion at the moment.

The only 2 commandments for moral living that are really important, as I see it, are "Love your neighbor as yourself" and "do unto others as you would have them do unto you." As it's more or less stated in the Bible, others merely follow as a logical consequence of these 2.