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Questions For Memebers Of Religious Organizations


Jamesasaur

Confidence in Religion  

  1. 1. What religion do you identify with?

    • Christianity
      34
    • Judaism
      2
    • Islam
      2
    • Buddists
      1
    • Hindu
      0
    • Sikhs
      0
    • Other
      8
    • I Do not follow a religion
      28
  2. 2. How Confident are you that what your religious leaders tell you is true?

    • 1 - not confident
      2
    • 2
      4
    • 3
      11
    • 4
      11
    • 5 - very confident
      7
    • I do not follow a religion
      27
    • My religion has no leader
      13
  3. 3. Do you take everything your holy scripture says literally?

    • Yes
      3
    • Most of the time
      6
    • Sometimes
      24
    • Not at all
      13
    • I do not follow a religion
      29
  4. 4. Have you ever had doubts about your religion?

    • Yes
      13
    • Most of the time
      1
    • Sometimes
      27
    • Not at all
      7
    • I do not follow a religion
      27
  5. 5. How did you come to join your religion - Choose most applicable

    • Raised in a religious household
      28
    • Friends
      1
    • Researching
      8
    • Other
      12
    • I do not follow a religion
      26

This poll is closed to new votes


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I just want to start by saying it is not my intention to offend anyone, if i have then i am very sorry.

So, Religion and the concept of god facinate me immensely so i thought i would make a poll about the confidence that members of religious organizations have in their religion.

With the information being widely available on scientific studies like the big bang and evolution on the internet.

Again, i apologise of i have offended anyone, it is not my intention.

Thank You.

And any spelling errors let me know and i will correct them.

Also, for those of you who put "other" as their method of joining their religion, would you mind telling me by posting a reply or sending me a private message?

Thanks.

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I would like to say that I technically joined my religion by being raised in it. But as an adult I researched other religions to be sure that I was not blindly following the wrong one and chose to continue in my religion of upbringing. So I kind of joined through upbringing and kind of joined through researching.

Also, I have never doubted the truth or validity of my religion. I believe it is right in everything, and what it dictates is accurate and the right path to follow. However, I do choose to not follow everything that it dictates. It may appear to an outsider as if I've begun to doubt my religion or stray from my faith, perhaps weakening it. I have not in the slightest, but I do however choose to deviate from what is right and good in certain matters for the sake of my sanity. I recognize that what I do is wrong, but I have come to terms with my lowliness and darkness.

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I would like to say that I technically joined my religion by being raised in it. But as an adult I researched other religions to be sure that I was not blindly following the wrong one and chose to continue in my religion of upbringing. So I kind of joined through upbringing and kind of joined through researching.

Also, I have never doubted the truth or validity of my religion. I believe it is right in everything, and what it dictates is accurate and the right path to follow. However, I do choose to not follow everything that it dictates. It may appear to an outsider as if I've begun to doubt my religion or stray from my faith, perhaps weakening it. I have not in the slightest, but I do however choose to deviate from what is right and good in certain matters for the sake of my sanity. I recognize that what I do is wrong, but I have come to terms with my lowliness and darkness.

Its nice to see someone who is part of a religion and has actually researched other religons. There are so many people who know absolutely nothing about others.

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Its nice to see someone who is part of a religion and has actually researched other religons. There are so many people who know absolutely nothing about others.

Curiosity, intellectual pursuit, and eventually evangelism is what led to my researching other religions. I think it is important to understand where people are coming from if we are to connect to them in any deep and meaningful way.

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I was raised in a Catholic home and went to Catholic school for a few years, but as I got older I put some of my own thought into it as well. I came to the conclusion that I am definitely Christian, and Catholicism is the branch of Christianity that I mostly closely identify with. I still tell people I'm Catholic went they ask, and I still go to Catholic mass and things like that, but I don't agree with my church leaders 100%. To me, religion is a very personal thing, and although I use the Catholic church as a guideline, I think it is important for me to come to my own conclusions about what is moral or true.

I have had some doubts about religion, especially in the past, but I think giving myself the freedom to let my own beliefs stray from the church has helped me feel much more comfortable in religion and has strengthened my spirituality. I suppose I still cannot prove for certain that my religion is true (but then again, you can't really prove that any religion is true), yet it is what I feel most comfortable in so I am sticking with it

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I used to belong to a right wing ultra conservative baptist church. After being away from the influence of this organization for 12 yrs I really have a hard time not calling it a cult. I was taught so many things and also much scripture. But since I have been away from it, I have studyed not only other religions which was frowned upon, but also alternative thoughts on how mankind was started and my gut feeling about our origins completely flies in the face of "The church" and organized religion.I can no longer accept what has been handed to me as "truth".

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I used to belong to a right wing ultra conservative baptist church. After being away from the influence of this organization for 12 yrs I really have a hard time not calling it a cult. I was taught so many things and also much scripture. But since I have been away from it, I have studyed not only other religions which was frowned upon, but also alternative thoughts on how mankind was started and my gut feeling about our origins completely flies in the face of "The church" and organized religion.I can no longer accept what has been handed to me as "truth".

Thats exactly how i felt when i left Christianity. I started looking into Deism and it freed my mind up a great deal and allowed me to think for myself.

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I belong to a non-denominational (not to be confused with mixed denominational) Christian church called the Vineyard. My pastor, Rick, has been the pastor of my church since before I was born. He is a phenomenal pastor. My mom has left that church to join another because she things the church is "too loving," or, as she would say, 'does not encourage people to give up their bad habits.' I disagree--there are addiction recovery groups, there's marriage counseling, and I've never heard the pastor say it's okay to pretend you're perfect. It is a very humble and service-based church, which is very important to me. They encourage people to think outside the box, ask questions, experiment, and research, which is also important to me. They are not afraid that doing research or playing with fire will lead people away--quite the opposite, actually!

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I was raised Catholic and I studied it a little.

I absented from christianity, but I still see the catholicism as one of the best ways for you to understand the christian mythology.

Lately, the Catholic Church is even trying to conform with science, and I seriously like it, althought I think that both things shouldn't overlap, I see it as positive because it shows how the Catholicism is really one of the few institutions that want to embrace everyone.

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I belong to a non-denominational (not to be confused with mixed denominational) Christian church called the Vineyard. My pastor, Rick, has been the pastor of my church since before I was born. He is a phenomenal pastor. My mom has left that church to join another because she things the church is "too loving," or, as she would say, 'does not encourage people to give up their bad habits.' I disagree--there are addiction recovery groups, there's marriage counseling, and I've never heard the pastor say it's okay to pretend you're perfect. It is a very humble and service-based church, which is very important to me. They encourage people to think outside the box, ask questions, experiment, and research, which is also important to me. They are not afraid that doing research or playing with fire will lead people away--quite the opposite, actually!

I can understand this, my church is like that. Very welcoming and supportive and completely non judgemental. A great set of people.

I guess it all depends on what chruch you were raised up in to get the right impression of your religion.

Heres looking at you Westborough Baptist Church.

I was raised Catholic and I studied it a little.

I absented from christianity, but I still see the catholicism as one of the best ways for you to understand the christian mythology.

Lately, the Catholic Church is even trying to conform with science, and I seriously like it, althought I think that both things shouldn't overlap, I see it as positive because it shows how the Catholicism is really one of the few institutions that want to embrace everyone.

Yes, although i do find it difficult to imagine with creationism and the big bang theory. But i imagine they are conforming with the parts that do not contradict?

I love what Pope Francis is doing. One of the best things to happen to Catholicism in a long time. Embracing people will get many more followers than pushing them away.

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You know the creationist theory is post-catholic protestantism.

It is much more fundamentalistic.

The Catholic Church even presents, per example, the big bang theory as a proof of the god's existence :D

I think that it is nice to see how the Holy Institution is always welcoming.

I even defend it when I see someone discrediting the Church. Because I know it a little more than the average.

I don't know if I can answer the questionnaire :c can i do it 2?

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I was raised Catholic and I studied it a little.

I absented from christianity, but I still see the catholicism as one of the best ways for you to understand the christian mythology.

Lately, the Catholic Church is even trying to conform with science, and I seriously like it, althought I think that both things shouldn't overlap, I see it as positive because it shows how the Catholicism is really one of the few institutions that want to embrace everyone.

I don't really agree about the Catholic church being one of the best ways for a person to understand Christianity. If you actually were to study the other Christian denominations, you would find that viewing Christianity with the focal point being Catholicism would be extremely inaccurate. The Roman Catholic Church may be the most worldly wide known and recognized Christian denomination, but it is not in accords to most other denominations. It deviates greatly from the Bible and basic Christianity in favor of a lot of non-Biblical traditions and rules for the church.

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You know the creationist theory is post-catholic protestantism.

It is much more fundamentalistic.

The Catholic Church even presents, per example, the big bang theory as a proof of the god's existence :D

I think that it is nice to see how the Holy Institution is always welcoming.

I even defend it when I see someone discrediting the Church. Because I know it a little more than the average.

I don't know if I can answer the questionnaire :c can i do it 2?

Of course

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@The Wreyck,

Yea. Maybe I say that because my view is quite tainted because it is what I've studied most.

Put that aside, the whole christian mythology is best depicted in the books made holy by the catholicism.

Ars Goetia per example, is not a book made holy but is endorsed by the Holy Institution in your studies as well as the Dictionnaire Daemonicum which branchs into another part of the Christianism. There is also another book which specifies the Heaven's hierarchy (I forgot the name) which also is endorsed by the Holy Institution.

Which is the kind of book that is not even mentioned, per example, in the post-modern protestantism (evangelism), that is part of the christian mythology.

Besides the plethora of books that branched from the apocrypha, per example. Like the letters from Paul.

If you want to see the most fundamentalist side of the christianism I suggest reading the Testimonies of Jehovah's translation of the primordial scriptures, the Bible used by some churches were, mostly, translations from the greek version of the Holy Book.

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I went with Other in the first question.

I'm living my own spiritual path in a way that makes sense to me, without any scriptures or leaders I'd consider dispensers of "The One Eternal Truth". If an objective, capital-T Truth exists, I hold it to be unknowable to humans - including both me and any prophet, leader, or spiritual author past, present, and future. Thus, I reject proselytization, no matter if it's aimed towards me or going out from me.

I've arrived at my own spiritual beliefs (a form of panentheism, strongly influenced by Buddhism, but neither identical to it nor formally a part of it) through research and critical thought. They are very different from the RomCath Christianity I grew up with (despite me still finding a lot of wisdom in teachings of that carpenter-turned-wandering-rabbi from Nazareth :)). Once I found my belief system logically consistent, I chose to surrender all doubt in it, because I had already logically established that blind faith in something is inevitably neccessary to function as a human being. Should a logical flaw/inconsistency be pointed out later, I'd still be open to modify it and would then choose to blindly believe the altered version. (All in all, I rated that as "sometimes" doubt... but that "sometimes" is to be understood as "very rare, indeed", in practice, since logical counterarguments to my faith are pretty much nonexistent, and the value of faith-vs-faith arguments is arbitratry by definition.)

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Atheist, and nothing anyone from any religious denomination has ever said to me, or shown me, has done anything to alter my viewpoint

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littleheartsofjoy

Even though I was raised in a Christian household, that didn't mean that I actually took Christianity into a personal, strong consideration. As for religious leaders, I really like my pastor(s), but since they are not God, I rated a 3. My sister was the one who really explained it to me, and that was how I took it into personal consideration.

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House of Chimeras

Hellenic (Greek) polytheistic reconstructionist/revivalist here.
My religion has no religious leaders.
My religion has no holy texts.
I don’t have any doubts about my religion. (I have doubts about my sanity, but that’s another mater.
Other, as I don’t really recall how I became a Hellenist. I just naturally “grew” into it shall we say as a child. (I was raised in an atheist/agnostic/we don't take about our personal beliefs family.)

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I was raised ultra religious, both sides of my family are ultra religious, my parents met in church. I was raised Charismatic Christian, but most dads side of the fam is Catholic. I went to a private Christian school for a few years, followed by Catholic schools then a private Lutheran high school. All that said I am NOT religious, and tend to have very much anti-religious veiws.

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  • 10 months later...

I'm Christian and I'd just like to raise a point that since the bible was translated from hebrew and greek, it's kind of important that the bible isn't taken literally in english but rather readers should try to understand what the writers were trying to convey in their own language. this is usually because there are some words in hebrew and greek that don't translate nicely into english and hence the original meaning is lost.

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I was raised in a vaguely Christian household, but started to doubt religion when I was about 8 years old. When I was 11 I decided I didn't believe in a god anymore.

Ironically, it was saying the Lord's Prayer at my junior school every day which made me start to doubt Christianity.

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  • 4 weeks later...

Cradle Catholic, went through a falling out period, came back with a vengeance.

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I was raised Christian, but I have my disagreements with Christianity so when I was in middle and early high school I looked into as many other religions and as much science as I could find. I came to the conclusion that Christianity makes the most logical sense and therefore decided to stick with it.

I said that yes, I doubt, and that is very much true. (At one point, I was following Isis. It was interesting, but not for me.) However, at this point what I doubt is the details, not the core beliefs of my religion.

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I'm a Eclectic Pagan and an Eclectic Augury Witch.

It's a lax belief system in some ways, we don't usually have central 'leaders' aside from the occasional Priest/Priestess or Witch.

I converted to it from Agnostic Christianity a while back after some research.

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I say Christian because I was raised as a Christian, but really I'm more agnostic. I don't really know what's out there and from searching, I just have more and more questions. I'm not an atheist as I believe there's something that forms the moral code that drives humanity toward spreading kindness generally. I won't get into why I believe that because it goes too far into philosophy and other topics for this poll forum section. I am not fully Christian because there's many aspects of the Christian faith that I cannot agree with, but I have been enjoying discussion with some open minded Christians that see the Bible as a grey book that can be very open to interpretation instead of the black and white manual that many tend to take it as. These discussions have opened me back up to Christianity more again, but it's interesting to see what's out there and learn about other people's perspectives.

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I don't follow a religion. I guess you could say I'm agnostic.

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I am a Christian (Roman Catholic) raised in a household that follows those beliefs (for the most part). For my trust in the Pope in general, I put a 2, but with our new leader Pope Francis, I'd probably bump it up to a 4. I really do trust him, and the things he says. :)

As for taking the Scriptures literally, I put sometimes. Not everything in the Bible should be interpreted literally. That's not very smart.

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I'm not really part of any religion. There are stuff I still believe, but it doesn't fit in any religion that I've heard of. Maybe I could create one. I already created one for writing, which was based on some stuff I believe, and Greek religion. Maybe I can create a branch that isn't polytheist, and that could be my religion. Meh.

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I would like to say that I technically joined my religion by being raised in it. But as an adult I researched other religions to be sure that I was not blindly following the wrong one and chose to continue in my religion of upbringing. So I kind of joined through upbringing and kind of joined through researching.

I try to follow the Qur'an, which is the book of Islam and I believe it to be the complete message from the creator of this world to mankind. I have studied other religions, not with the depth that I have Islam (an average person only has so much time haha); but though I find religion as a whole extremely interesting, I don't feel that need to compare with other books because I believe the Qur'an to be the true book. What's much more worthwhile to me is to instead test the reasoning in the Qur'an itself, and I have personally found its teachings to be sound so far - but, as I grow and evolve as a person, I must continue to check my understanding against the Qur'an. At the same time, the Qur'an should provide me with insight to grow and evolve as a person.

I grew up in a 'religious' household, which means to say that I was exposed to Islam, Christianity, and Judaism at home. I was also sent to an Islamic weekend school and generally felt like a 'Muslim', but the seed which was within me didn't sprout until I began my own journey for understanding. The benefit I had is that I knew where I wanted to start looking, and the resources were easily accessible. It might be interesting to note that I first started with reading the Old Testament.

Now... here's where I'm differ with the majority of Muslims out there. The Muslim community (and majority of scholars) holds 2 things to be the foundation of our religion: the Qur'an, and the Haddith. Haddith are teaching of Muhammad, similar to the Christian Gospel, and are collections of varying authenticity and narrative. Many Muslims will say that one cannot be Muslim without believing the Haddith (at least those of the highest authenticity) to be truth, and following it accordingly. However, the Qur'an itself is the known to be the complete guide for mankind. The Qur'an is (according to itself) protected by God from tampering and dilution. The Qur'an is what Prophet Muhammad himself followed, so why is it suddenly not enough for us - that we need to follow things that Muhammad supposedly said and did as if they were law? That honestly makes no sense at all to me. Mind, I'm not saying that Haddith has no value, at all. It contains alot of wisdom and historical reference, and can provide insight into what the Qur'an teaches; but, it is NOT (nor anywhere near) on the same level as the Qur'an, which is God's book to mankind - how could it be? What I'm saying right now is near blasphemy to many Muslims. Much of the Shari'a (Muslim law) is based off of Haddith, and I just don't see how that can be legitimate.

Anyhow, I greatly enjoy discussing Islam and other religious topics, so feel free to send me a PM about anything along those lines!

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  • 2 weeks later...

This poll is being locked and moved to the read-only Census Archive for 2014. As part of ongoing Census Forum organization, and in an attempt to keep the demographics of the polls current with the active user base at the time, each poll will last for one year. However, members are allowed and even encouraged to restart new polls similar to the archived ones if they like them.

Census Moderator

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