How much thinking is excessive and produces nothing of value and worth? Maybe it's better, sometimes, not to think, but to engage in spiritual practices that are healing to consciousness.
So, you completely ignored the fact that "spiritual" is NOT defined as a belief in God. Yes, believers are well known for either not understanding the definition of words are usually more often decide to re-define words to suit their deluded agendas.
God being the Holy spirit is a Christian belief. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holy_Spirit_(Christianity)
Mazulu Spirituality is a FEELING of connectedness, be it to a deity or to nature(some people get spiritual about money), it has nothing to do with any particular belief.. Spirit(noun)has not been shown to exist, a subtlety I'm sure you just don't get. Another case of mixed up meanings. GrumpyPlease Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
Neither have wave-functions been shown to exist; or dark matter; or other planets with life on them. You're point is not made.
Google disagrees with you mazulu. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wave_function The only one which is theorized: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_matter The other ones may surprise you. http://www.newscientist.com/article...-flourish-on-purple-planets.html#.UpecUtAshOc Just to give some quick examples.
Returning to the topic, "Insulting religion" This little bit of irony lifted from the thread "Props to moderators" Even as they try to compliment the moderators of this secular Forum, it seems impossible for religious people to refrain from hurling insult, not only at the forum but by extension at the people who frequent this forum. I find it truly confounding, but then.......... God promised to confound the languages because the ones "he made in his image" had "become like us" (in his image). Go figure.:shrug:
That's not at all true. You're redefining the term to fit with your insistence that theism is inherently a religion. To be a religion, it requires more than just beliefs and theology. Specific practices, typically including codes of behaviour and how to conduct oneself in society, are just as key to defining a religion. And certain ones emphasise practices much moreso than the 'beliefs' end of it. That's true of a very small number of religions in the world--the Abrahamic ones, mainly. There are plenty of religions out there whose practices and beliefs are not to the exclusion of other ones. There are some that are framed with the idea in mind that one can practise more than one simultaneously--or at least in parallel. For instance, my primarily religion is Wicca. But it is not the only religion that I practise. I am also a Hellenistic polytheist and Celtic polytheist. Both of which contain different sets of religious practices and rituals, to say nothing of the different gods and cultures they are framed around.
I am not disagreeing, but by definition any "religious practice" is exclusive to that religion. If not it becomes a secular ethical practice. You are right, I was addressing the Abrahamic religions (I specifically mentioned the "same god"). This is why I am much more favorably inclined to polytheistic religions (each godhead is identified as an abstraction of a specific natural condition). I am even more accepting of Deism, which may not have a godhead at all. But your ability to avoid conflicting priorities makes you the exception rather than the norm. IMO.
Not according to the definitions. Sorry to burst your bubble. Sorry, but religion has several definitions that may include those things, but they don't demand all those things.
Irreligion (adjective form: nonreligious or irreligious) is the absence of religion, an indifference towards religion, a rejection of religion, or hostility towards religion.... Irreligion may even include forms of theism depending on the religious context it is defined against, as in 18th-century Europe where the epitome of irreligion was deism. A 2012 survey found that 36% of the world population is not religious and that between 2005 and 2012 world religiosity decreased by 9 percentage points. ... According to one source, it has been estimated that 40–50% of non-religious people hold belief in at least one deity, or in some higher power. - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irreligion When ~36% of the world population is not religious and ~80% believes in a god there must be some overlap who are both, regardless of your naive inability to differentiate the two. (Q), can you provide refuting statistics? Do you have anything other than a religious-like proclamation of "truth"?
I think that theism clearly is a religious belief. (Actually a vague category of religious belief, but you know what I mean.) That doesn't mean that it's "a religion", in the sense that it's a socially established system of group religious belief and practice. Then what should we make of the many millions of people whose religiosity is highly individual and unique to them? Yeah, it's true. Most of the world's socially established religious traditions are probably closer to orthopraxies (right-practice) than orthodoxies (right-belief). Most group-religiosity seems more concerned that prescribed practices are performed (sacrifices, public prayers, ritual acts...) than that members all believe specified doctrines inside their own heads. Christianity, especially its Protestant variety, is kind of atypical in that regard. I think that when that happens, it's often a matter of specialization. For example, we often find Buddhism combined with other religious traditions in East Asia. A traditional Chinese would often be a Confucian when it came to social ethics, a Buddhist when it came to salvation, and a Daoist when it came to this-worldly fortune and magic. It isn't so much that the religions overlapped, but rather that each of them was supreme in its own sphere of life interest. Greco-Roman-style polytheism was very inclusive in a different way. They accepted that there are lots of gods. Individual Greek city-states had patron gods or goddesses, and honoring that particular deity was as much a patriotic observance as a religious one. When ancient Greeks visited different cities, they would often pay honors to that city's deity, without any anxiety about practicing a foreign religion. And when the ancient Romans, who had similar ideas and practices, spread their empire into places like Gaul, they had no problems at all in treating the Celtic gods and goddesses that people recognized there in the same way. These were just more gods that people worshipped in distant places, and no big deal at all. It wasn't seen as challenging or contradicting their own observances, and making an offering to a Celtic god wasn't an occasion for any kind of anxiety or crisis. As time went on and many Romans settled in Roman Gaul, we see Roman religion and Celtic religion syncretizing. As Romans and Celts intermarried and their cultures blended, they started to imagine that they were all really worshipping the same gods and goddesses, just with different names and mythological stories attached in different places.
Common definitions are not religious like proclamations of truth, but then, I don't pull things out my ass like you do, those numbers, for example.
Here are some numbers for you: Although the literal definition of “atheist” is “a person who believes that God does not exist,” according to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, 14% of those who call themselves atheists also say they believe in God or a universal spirit. That includes 5% who say they are “absolutely certain” about the existence of God or a universal spirit. Alternatively, there are many people who fit the dictionary definition of “atheist” but do not call themselves atheists. More Americans say they do not believe in God or a universal spirit (7%) than say they are atheists (2.4%). Not all atheists see a contradiction between atheism and spirituality. A quarter (26%) say they think of themselves as spiritual people, and 3% consider themselves religious people. - http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2013/10/23/5-facts-about-atheists/ And I am STILL waiting for you to offer ANY numbers at all. You know, instead of just running your mouth.
That makes no sense, obviously those who call themselves atheists but believe in a god are not atheists, by definition. That would be similar to those who don't want to be called religious event if they believe in a god. I call bs on that. That one is too easy. Sure, there are those who were born Jewish, but have become atheists, even though they retain their Jewish heritage, Bill Mayer is good example. Again, I call bs on that. I don't see the numbers you claimed at all. Where is the 80% and 36% you added up?
In fact, the existence of God is one of the few things almost all Americans consistently agree on. Recent polling by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press and the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life found that 96% of the public says they believe in God or some form of Supreme Being, roughly the same number as in a 1965 survey cited in the Time piece. This is not to suggest that religious belief and observance in the United States were unaffected by the decay of organized religion noted in the Time piece. The number of Americans who think of themselves as “secular” has grown noticeably in the past 40 years. According to the General Social Survey (GSS), which has been asking Americans about their religious preferences since 1972, the number of those expressing no religious preference has doubled, from just under 7% in the 1970s to just over 14% at the beginning of the 21st century. - http://www.pewresearch.org/2006/04/04/god-is-alive-and-well-in-america/ Sorry, my numbers were off, which is why I use the tilde to indicate "approximately". But as you can see, the majority of those who have no religious affiliation believe in god. The 80% I used was actually those who "never doubt the existence of god". Similarly, the percentage of Americans who say they never doubt the existence of God has fallen modestly but noticeably over the past 25 years. In 1987, 88% of adults said they never doubt the existence of God. As of 2012, this figure was down 8 percentage points to 80%. - http://www.pewforum.org/2012/10/09/nones-on-the-rise/ And the 36% was irreligion in the world. A 2012 survey found that 36% of the world population is not religious and that between 2005 and 2012 world religiosity decreased by 9 percentage points. - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irreligion Which admittedly are not directly comparable. But that does not change the fact that... According to one source, it has been estimated that 40–50% of non-religious people hold belief in at least one deity, or in some higher power. - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irreligion In every poll, the unaffiliated far outnumber the atheists/agnostics, and necessarily overlap with belief in a god. While the number of Americans who do not identify with a religion grows at a rapid pace, 68% of them say they believe in God or a universal spirit. - http://www.pewresearch.org/daily-nu...iously-unaffiliated-still-keep-belief-in-god/ Now are we EVER going to get any numbers from you? Or just bare assertions and arguments from incredulity?
