Do you believe in God and are you religious? If so, how 'actively' do you practice this religion, or are you just religious simply by family, or something similar.

Personally I am an atheist and find it completely illogical how someone of this day and age can believe in God and other such things. However, it does intrigue me and I would love to know what it feels like to have a strong blind faith in something just so I could see where someone is coming from when they do believe in God, or if in actual fact they have some kind of niggling doubt about their own religion.

Vote/discuss away!

Atheist... big bangs FTW!

I was obviously cared for by a weird lady inside my mother's womb that erased all my memory of her when I was born.

I'm currently stuck halfway through a one hour 45 minute wait at Chester station, thus proving, once and for all, that there is no God.

I'm an atheist. I just don't care to spend my life trying to please a person that might not even exist.

I'm not really any of the three. I always consider myself a jewtheist. A cross between an atheist and a jew.

I think it takes as much faith to be an atheist as it does to believe in a deity.

I don't believe or not believe. Indecisive agnosticism for the win.

I don't believe in God. Religion plays no role in my life, expect for the laws dreamed up using Christian values by the political powers that be.

I wouldn't say I'm an atheist because I don't care that much.

God/religion is irrelevant in my life but I love church buildings and am fascinated by the way people dress up in silly clothes and devote their life to something unproven. It's like a cult.

This. Except I'd change this:
to

I am an atheist, but I don't like to make a fuss about it. I find it absurd people could believe in God, but provided they're doing no harm and not forcing it on me, then they're fine to believe whatever they like as far as I'm concerned.

I like Ganesha and Airavata. Phurski and Girimehkala are cool too!

I'm an atheist, but not a practising one

I'm in an odd position that until I was in my early 20's, I was a pretty devout Christian. So I know a lot about the Christian church, the way it works, the theology, the rituals and the "myth".

I also know that when you're embedded in the society, it's hard to break out of the mindset and "questioning" isn't encouraged.

I also know that it isn't all paedophiles and brain-washing. There is, at core, good there. However, it's not anything that shouldn't/couldn't be instilled by parents.

I know my faith started leaving when I had to question the religion. It began with the Nicene Creed which asks God to forgive all those who aren't Christians (along with a load of other stuff). I couldn't understand it. If I was born an Indian or Chinese, my faith would almost definitely not be Christian. I'd be whatever faith my parents were. So I learned a bit about other religions and found that there are other monotheistic religions that essentially worship the same God in pretty much the same why. Why would God make me say a prayer that asked for Muslims to be forgiven, when they worship him too? Surely all He wants is for his little people on Earth to praise him and get along?

The cracks appear then. You notice that a lot of "good Christians" aren't actually very nice people at all (again, this isn't a blanket thing, there were certainly a lot of very pleasant Christians). They're greedy, selfish and manipulative - even up to people who are "ranked" like the church wardens, readers, etc.

I realised that in truth, some people don't really seem to actually believe in God as much as they believe in the Church, or the rituals. Certainly the things taught by the bible and faith seemed to pass them by completely. Christians should help each other, be genuinely nice to each other and avoid "sin". Yet some wouldn't say hello in the street (and certainly would think four or five times before pissing on you to put you out if you were on fire) and most of them regularly sinned and repeated the same sins.

I couldn't understand a couple of things really.

1. How can they go to church each week to be absolved of their sins and keep repeating the same sins and claim to be "religious"? Surely when you stand in front of God and he says "why, week after week, did you do the same things and make no effort to correct your ways"?

2. How people who act (outside of church) in such an un-Christian manner can call themselves Christians? It's a way of life, not something you force yourself out of bed for every other Sunday, if you can be bothered.

Once those cracks were in place, the whole thing started falling apart. Religion just doesn't work.

Then you start to research beyond the doctrine and find out that the entire thing is balanced on the belief that God told people (the same kind of people who play act at being Christians each week) what he wanted in his religion and how people should behave. You have groups through history making decisions based on "God's word to them". People "directed by God's hand". What if, just what if, these people weren't? What if they were doing it for their own political gain? What if the sin they asked for redemption for every Sunday was the sin of "religious manipulation for selfish reasons"?

Religion is built upon the broken foundations of corrupt/corruptible men.

I spent a bit of time wallowing around in agnosticism (and by definition, all atheists are to a degree agnostic), but in my late 20's I did more reading, more research and had a lot of discussions with people about it. I eventually came to the conclusion (which was always obvious) that if there is a God, then he has no influence on us at all and is worthless and chances are, there just isn't one at all.

The thing is, it does take a long time to leave indoctrination and think for yourself. Religion is built on guilt and ignorance. You must remain ignorant and unquestioning or we'll make you feel guilty.

The thing is, I'm not actually anti-religion. I'm anti-religion trying to affect the world. Hixee's amusing post above sums it up. I think there are some things religion teaches that we should follow. We should be nicer to each other and stuff, but it's just the kind of thing people should learn anyway.

I'm struggling at the moment because Maxi-Minor_Furie is a firm believer in God and Jesus. His school isn't supposed to be religious, but it is in the way all British schools are. I could say I want him excluded from all religious ritual, but... I believe that you can't make a choice without experiencing all the options. I also believe it's healthy and natural for a six year old to have imaginary friends.

The biggest issue is that I'm not going to get into a theological discussion with a six year old. It's something that is hard to do, to tell your child that his teachers are wrong. At that age, there is a level of trust that "adults in charge" are right about stuff, especially big stuff like God and Santa. To destroy that trust is a problem. Who does he believe? It's tough at that age to understand that different people can believe different things when it comes to fundamentals. It's something we'll have to tackle soon though and he can make up his own mind, just as long as he doesn't expect me to go to a church service and pretend to say things I don't believe in.

I like many am atheist but not a practicing , I have no problem with peoples religious beliefs, but it`s not really for me, I have a hard time believing something that cannot be proven by cold hard evidence, same as ghosts and aliens really.

I don't really believe in any god, however I still do a short prayer before I go to bed (if there are other people in the room etc. then I do it all silently) it's just something that I've done since I was a kid (you know when you're 4-5 and it's cool to learn a small verse by heart), it's just stuck with me, when I was very young I used to think I get nightmares if I don't do it (lol..), afterwards I just kept it on for some unknown reason. It's not like my family is religious at all, my mom goes to church on Christmas, maybe one time more a year that's the most religion there's in my family.

There are lots of bad things with religion that furie has covered well in the post above. Having said that, I really don't like people, either atheist/believing who feel/act if they are superior than the other part. To be honest I've encountered those attitudes more often from atheists than regular Christian's/muslims etc. (well of course, mainly because I really don't know any very devout/extreme believers etc, but still). It feels like the atheists generally have a lot harder to accept people who are unsure about what to believe in than, if I would say talk to an average Christian about the same issue, at least that's what I've encountered.

For some bizarre reason my parents are adamant that I'm Christan purely because I was Christenedadasd, or however it's spelled, when I was a wee lil' minikim. When explaining my reasoning for this they go into a denile mode and it gets quite comical when I explain why they are equally not Christian.

However, I kinda used to be like Furie, a dark smelly goth wannabee who hated all religion, EXCEPT SATAN, but I've kinda changed that outlook. I started reading up on other stuff in Bhuddism and Hinduism and although I don't necessarily belive in anything they're saying I can still appreciate what is written in them. Hinduism is esspecially great, it's got like weird ladies throwing them selves on fire and then being reborn and , and tigers bombing around being on fire as well, but it's supposed to be and there's like Kali, who isn't evil like in Indy, she just had some PMS and went insane, I think. Then there's Ganesha who has an Elephant head, I like Elephants. That's why I like Airavata. There's always some completely entertainingly insane story in pretty much all religions and mythologies.

One thing I can't really agree on is religion seems to promote either a Black and White thinking or put in a very strict shades of grey. They always seem to put events in Either This is a good thing or this is a bad thing, but this thing isn't as good as this or if you do that you'll get a lesser punishment. And I don't think that is the right way to go about things. 2 examples of this (one I'm going to have to do quick research on again cause I can't remeber his name or what exactly happened) are;

The Chuggers, their intentions are good, yes? and as such with a religious out look they'll be praised! But they're annoying and you want to strangle them, which is bad, but if they weren't nice then neither they they'd probably still be breathing.

That Nazi dude who worked at either a camp or possibly a castle used as a makeshift prison. He was called Dr Death, I think, and he used to take the prisoner people and do a considerable amout of grizzly experimentation on them. Again, his intentions are statistically good. His experiments did actually help medical sciences advance, I think. But he is condemmed as sick twisted evil man.

What I'm getting at is Religion is stoopid and shuts off the big picture. I'm not saying that we should abandon all forms of order and go all V for Vendetta (The proper way, not the silly movie way.) but stop shunning all things and stuff. I lost my train of thought. Oh well.