Your personal beliefs/religion/ideology(no spam, spam tastes bad)

Cyro · Post by **Cyro** » Tue Dec 12, 2006 10:49 am

'Other'

I'm not really a religious person. I'm not saying there couldn't be a higher power, I just don't care. I have no intention of worshiping anyone, supreme being or otherwise.

Maharlika · Post by **Maharlika** » Wed Dec 13, 2006 1:35 am

Roman Catholic. Raised as one.

Tricky · Post by **Tricky** » Wed Dec 13, 2006 7:25 am

fable wrote:If anything, agnostics think more about their religious beliefs than many "believers" who have simply inherited their opinions along with their genes. Agnostics anaylze religious dogma, and believe that given the limitations of human perception, nothing can be proven one way or the other. THis is very different from simply saying, "I don't care." Google is your friend: try this site to discover more about it.

Please note I'm not recommending the content of this site, nor am I an agnostic.

Well then, I guess I am either an agnost who doesn't feel the need to analyze religious dogma all the time, or an ignost who doesn't mind to entertain the thought of doing so anyway. Maybe it can't be properly be discusses, but that doesn't mean it shouldn't be discussed.

Sigh. Can I just say I am nothing instead? I would far prefer that.

Magrus · Post by **Magrus** » Wed Dec 13, 2006 8:15 am

Tricky wrote:Sigh. Can I just say I am nothing instead? I would far prefer that.

That works, but I ran out of poll options, so that slots you in with "other".

QuenGalad · Post by **QuenGalad** » Fri Dec 15, 2006 3:02 am

DaemonJ wrote:I too had to vote "Other" as my beliefs are close to a combination of Druidism / Paganism / Wiccan.

It is really hard to explain but basically nature provides what we need so long as we take care of nature.

Exactly! I vote 'other' as well, being in fact a 'mother'

of a small tree-hugging, water-earth-and-fire-worshipping, beating-the-hell-out-of-pollutionists

and vegetarian community. We are trying to revitalize the old 'nature' religion, which is not easy, belive me, in the inquisitoring, only catholic and generally 'crossed' Poland.

Still, green is the best colour ever!

fable · Post by **fable** » Fri Dec 15, 2006 10:32 am

QuenGalad wrote:Exactly! I vote 'other' as well, being in fact a 'mother' of a small tree-hugging, water-earth-and-fire-worshipping, beating-the-hell-out-of-pollutionists and vegetarian community. We are trying to revitalize the old 'nature' religion, which is not easy, belive me, in the inquisitoring, only catholic and generally 'crossed' Poland.

Still, green is the best colour ever!

No air?

But what do you do when you invoke your watchtowers? "We summon thee, Air, to go find a nice clean patch of stuff to breathe in, perhaps from someplace in the Sahara, which would be the nearest unpolluted spot, and bring some of it here whenever you get the chance! See ya!"

(The above was meant as humor. No Wiccans were harmed in the writing of that paragraph.)

Magrus · Post by **Magrus** » Fri Dec 15, 2006 12:54 pm

@ Fable, :laugh: I thought I had heard such things for the last time years ago. That made me laugh. I needed that.

Tricky · Post by **Tricky** » Fri Dec 15, 2006 1:30 pm

I think humor should be worshipped too. Sarcasm in particular.

Magrus · Post by **Magrus** » Fri Dec 15, 2006 1:35 pm

If you're tossing in humor I'm tossing in women. That's just plain fun if you pick the right one.

Robnark · Post by **Robnark** » Fri Dec 15, 2006 5:33 pm

go atheism! I was never hugely impressed by religion as a child, and my parents were quite happy with that state of affairs. I still fondly remember being the only child in my primary school class who didn't even know there was such a thing as the lord's prayer.

it didn't help that the more I found out about the subject, the more I realised that the events and traditions that I actually quite enjoyed were, almost without exception, shamelessly stolen from pre-christian tradition - and the only carved figure in the village church was a bust of the green man grinning above the doorway. if they couldn't be bothered to put some effort in and think up something original, I don't see why I should give them my time and money.

QuenGalad · Post by **QuenGalad** » Sat Dec 16, 2006 10:11 am

fable wrote:No air?

No. That's because:
a) Being descendants of Dagoon worshippers of Innsmouth, we breathe trough water, and create small globes of it that surround our heads and move wherever we walk. Go Chtulhu!

b) Forgot about it, what gives away how dogmatic a woshipper I am...

BTW, isn't it funny how people interested in RPG are often of some original religious wiews?

Silur · Post by **Silur** » Sat Dec 16, 2006 11:16 am

QuenGalad wrote:Go Chtulhu!

The stars are aligned. The Old Ones will awaken. Nyarlatoteph shall preceed them and his thousand faces shall be seen across the Earth.

No matter how evil and destructive they are, I think they'd be amazed how well we've been destroying the place in their absence.

fable · Post by **fable** » Sat Dec 16, 2006 4:18 pm

QuenGalad wrote:BTW, isn't it funny how people interested in RPG are often of some original religious wiews?

I think many younger people have found paganism, roleplaying games, and the Web are good means to escape reality. Whether they are also good means of finding a way back into and embracing reality is entirely up to the individual.

Tricky · Post by **Tricky** » Sat Dec 16, 2006 4:38 pm

I don't blame those who can't. A fair amount of adults who are responsible for them at one level or another are much further out of touch with reality than they are. Kids aren't quite stupid enough to miss that. They wonder what the future will be like, and they see us. Not much to look forward to.

dragon wench · Post by **dragon wench** » Sat Dec 16, 2006 4:44 pm

QuenGalad wrote:BTW, isn't it funny how people interested in RPG are often of some original religious wiews?

I'm not sure if that is a trait of people who are into RPGs, so much as a reflection of the overall composition of Game Banshee's population.

For whatever reason, this particular site has attracted an extremely diverse group of people since it came into being. I've visited other RPG sites and the general atmosphere has been *very* different. It's a big part of why I've stayed around as long as I have

fable · Post by **fable** » Sat Dec 16, 2006 4:52 pm

Tricky wrote:I don't blame those who can't. A fair amount of adults who are responsible for them at one level or another are much further out of touch with reality than they are. Kids aren't quite stupid enough to miss that. They wonder what the future will be like, and they see us. Not much to look forward to.

That's part of the process, certainly. Opt out of working with the world you see about you, because of the mess it is. The problem as I see it is that too many people never opt back in to actively change that world. Alternative religions simply become a way of "playing dress up" and giving themselves a fake identity, just as roleplaying games become a substitute for finding out how fantastic interpersonal relationships and the real world itself are.

So if you a person plays RPGs to relax, or finds a religion--any religion--a method of truly engaging the world, great. But if it's an escape from dealing with people and the world and stops at that point, then the gaming has a strong chance of becoming an obsession, and the religion has a strong chance of becoming a toybox for grownups.

Magrus · Post by **Magrus** » Sat Dec 16, 2006 5:11 pm

fable wrote:That's part of the process, certainly. Opt out of working with the world you see about you, because of the mess it is. The problem as I see it is that too many people never opt back in to actively change that world. Alternative religions simply become a way of "playing dress up" and giving themselves a fake identity, just as roleplaying games become a substitute for finding out how fantastic interpersonal relationships and the real world itself are.

So if you a person plays RPGs to relax, or finds a religion--any religion--a method of truly engaging the world, great. But if it's an escape from dealing with people and the world and stops at that point, then the gaming has a strong chance of becoming an obsession, and the religion has a strong chance of becoming a toybox for grownups.

That could be applied for any religion, like Judiasm or Christianity however. Not just "alternative religions".

fable · Post by **fable** » Sat Dec 16, 2006 5:24 pm

Magrus wrote:That could be applied for any religion, like Judiasm or Christianity however. Not just "alternative religions".

While there's a degree of that in every religion, I suspect a fair number of mainstream believers who choose (as opposed to inheriting) their religion actually do so to deal directly with reality--especially mainstream evangelicals of all sorts, Christian, Islamic, Jewish, Hindu. The connection between their religions and interactions with the daily world is quite close, though neither you nor I are pleased with what they bring from those religions, or how they put that particular wisdom into the world.

That's also why people who as a group identify themselves as pagan are often so ineffectual. They wear satin gowns and robes a few times a month and pray for the earth to be fruitful, but you'll rarely find them buying acres of land slated for development and planting orchards. That's just an example, and shouldn't be taken as a concrete instance, but I think there are many ways some people who proclaim the beliefs that pagans do could actually deal with the real world if they wanted to. Not true for all pagans, certainly, but there's a fairly large number in the US (if Witchvox is anything to go by) who appear to be simply seeking escapist entertainment rather than anything else.

Magrus · Post by **Magrus** » Sat Dec 16, 2006 5:37 pm

All true. However, you don't need to go out and stop forest fires or fight war or the like in order to "touch the world" either. I hold my beliefs inwards to myself. I don't push them on others to believe in. Yet, everything I do is in accordance with my beliefs. Everyone I come into contact may be affected by them indirectly because of that. Just by being me, I have been told time and again since I was very young that I have a tendency to change people that I meet and spend time with. Teachers, peers, co-workers, friends, etc.

Simply being around people of differeing beliefs can have a ripple effect on a community if the person isn't shy about being who they really are or how they think. Even if all of the others around that one person don't like or accept the new beliefs and attitudes, it may change a handful. It could simply be by making them acknowledge that are other options and possibilities than what they previously thought. That could lead to a change in how they raise their children, and how their children think and so on. Leading to a slow, but inevitable change in things.

fable · Post by **fable** » Sat Dec 16, 2006 6:01 pm

Magrus wrote:All true. However, you don't need to go out and stop forest fires or fight war or the like in order to "touch the world" either. I hold my beliefs inwards to myself. I don't push them on others to believe in. Yet, everything I do is in accordance with my beliefs. Everyone I come into contact may be affected by them indirectly because of that. Just by being me, I have been told time and again since I was very young that I have a tendency to change people that I meet and spend time with. Teachers, peers, co-workers, friends, etc.

Simply being around people of differeing beliefs can have a ripple effect on a community if the person isn't shy about being who they really are or how they think. Even if all of the others around that one person don't like or accept the new beliefs and attitudes, it may change a handful. It could simply be by making them acknowledge that are other options and possibilities than what they previously thought. That could lead to a change in how they raise their children, and how their children think and so on. Leading to a slow, but inevitable change in things.

All true, but neither you nor I are typical. And this applies as much to any behavior, rather than a belief system.

But to bring this back around, the pagan groups I specifically refer to (and I'm only speaking to US-based ones; those UK-based groups I know are consistently more serious) see "alternative religion" as a badge you wear on a few nights, along with silly identities you choose (invariably with Lord or Lady in front of them--which says something about these people clamint to follow religions sprung from peasant worshipping patterns). They don't change anything. I've known quite a few of these people over the last nearly 3 decades (30 years in 2008) since I formally entered the Craft. They're middle-aged martini lunching types who think the sports hunks they married and divorced prove all men are evil, and that Womyn originally Ruled. Or that instant truth can be gained by buying the next new alternate religion book (and the next one after that, and the next...), or that power requires only purchasing a wand from some online occult store and reading the right comic books, or that mysteries can be learned in a paid online course, or that the earth can be cleansed just by getting together with a dozen Unitarians and talking about alternate religions, and maybe reading a ritual.

This is unfortunately a lot of what appears to be modern USian paganism. A retreat from reality married to the American dream of power without responsibility. Only there's no power in such an equation, as we both know. Just a lot of moths who think they've reached the sun while fluttering around a 40 watt plastic light bulb.