Religious/Philosophical Profile Thread

[Ó Cathasaigh]

how the hell can someone be Marxist but live the bourgeois life i don't know

Marx was Bourgeois, after all.

[Arch-hereticK]

Marx was Bourgeois, after all.

I've always found that so funny; his ability to empathise was his greatest strength. But in the end it was the main reason why his ideas failed.

[Cúchulainn]

I was a Protestant or a Catholic, I'm not sure I have one of both as parents.

Now I am neither.

I have no real time for philosophy as thinking of how you think of things eventually falls on its arse as a means to explain reality.

But if I had to define myself, it would be a Nietzschean inspired outlook

[Bongfu]

I am a very avid reader of Sartre. I believe I have a lot of thoughts leaning towards Existentialism.

[Vladimir Lenin]

Biography:

Baptised Lutheran, Confirmed Episcopalian, now Atheist/Dialectical Materialist.

[MaximiIian]

Marx was Bourgeois, after all.

Very true. Marx was able to see the corruption of the bourgeoisie in 19th century Europe because he was surrounded by it, amongst it, and part of it. One does have to keep in mind the context in which Marx developed his philosophy.

[Salvatorel]

I was baptised as orthodox christian,though my family never was religious in any way and therefore in my case baptism was more keeping a tradition then motivated by religious views,so i had not any serious religious upbringing,there was time when i was religious,then i began doubting,it was not what i've wanted,it was very politicised and was not sufficiently focused on spiritual matters and was full of extremists(mostly with "who is not an orthodox christian he/she can not be a Georgian" types,but there also were other types of extremists,from pan orthodox Russophiles to quasi nationalists) both,among the faithfull and clergy,enough reasons for me to leave it.
Now I simply identify myself as a non religious,leaning to agnosticism,though not as sufficiently as is needed to be classified as a complete agnostic

[Taxandrius]

raised as a catholic, but gradually became atheistic ( age of 12 or something). I've been reading a lot about philosophy lately and I seem to have most in common with existentialism.
favorite philosophers: Sartre and Nietzsche (more used and quoted in the wrong context than any other individual... )

[Tigrul]

Nietzsche (more used and quoted in the wrong context than any other individual... )

I'd say that Albert Einstein's declaration about his belief in "god" is the statement most often quoted wrongly. Theists will so often throw this in your face and ignore the fact that Einstein specifically said that he didn't believe in a personal god and that he found all religions to be childish superstitions.

How is Nietzsche misquoted? (I mean... could you give an example of which of his sayings is most often misused?)

[Taxandrius]

the theory of the "übermensch"

[Tankbuster]

the theory of the "übermensch"

You remind me of Ricky Gervais who said exactly that.

[Veni]

I have always been an atheist detesting most of the bronze age religions, especially the Abrahamic ones.

[Del Valle]

Baptized/Confirmed Catholic. Have a strong belief in God, yet have slightly Deistic point of view in that God will only help after you have failed in all attempts.

[Claudius Gothicus]

I was born and baptized Catholic, my family never went to church though
Some years ago I stopped believing in religion, so you can call me irreligious.
The existence of God is a big ? for me but I tend to believe that there has to be some kind of independent creator with some sort of reason that we can't understand and never will.

[MaximiIian]

I am a neopagan polytheist, currently practising Wicca, a modern neopagan religions based on Western Esoterica and Occult traditions as well as European, mainly British, mythology and folk magic. Something people might not know about Wicca, considering the influx of new agers and fluffies, is that it had a history of being a highly traditionalistic and initiatory religion. It's only in the past thirty years or so has it gradually shifted towards being more variable and heterodox. I am mostly middle-of-the-road, practising with a coven.

I believe in a core observation of ethics based on the Golden Rule and Epicureanism. My opinion is that happiness, true happiness, is the ultimate moral good; but it should be pursued in ways that to do not impede the happiness of others. One is responsible for one's own actions and the consequences, both positive & negative. Claims of "The devil made me do it" simply do not fly. I am quite existentialist when it comes to this: because our perception of the world is in our hands, so are our actions. You have no excuse for doing evil deeds; your actions are your responsibility. This fits with Wicca's traditional ethical beliefs, which is that one must take responsibility for one's actions and be tolerant and open towards others: "Do what you will, if it harms none".

As a hard polytheist, I believe very strongly that all the gods are individual beings with their own personalities and associations. I now worship Pan and Hecate. Alongside them, I do venerate guardian spirits and tutelary spirits, which I see as lesser gods.

The philosophers I am most influenced by are Plato, Pythagoras, Locke, Marx, and Sartre. I also take a lot of influence from Sallustius, in the area of theology, and Scott Cunningham and Ray Buckland for my religious practices.

[Imperator Mvndi]

I was pretty much raised a Fundamentalist Roman Catholic, with simplistic views on moral philosophy, metaphysics and social justice. However, in my high school years, I found myself more and more drawn to theological theories like Neopaganism, Islam, and even Agnosticism, in light of the narrow-minded, Fundamentalist philosophies, such as Creationism and temporal existence of spiritual entities, which, in my experience, seemed to necessarily accompany Christianity in general; they implied that together with Christian Faith must come a blind disregard for rationalism and traditional logic.
I studied these and other foreign religions with great enthusiasm, but simply could not come to any settling conclusion. Rather than search for a reasonable religion, than, I began studying various philosophers from different tie periods, beginning with Classical Greece and Rome. I was enthralled by the Stoics, the Pantheists, and even the Manichees, but one philosopher in particular struck my interest: Plato.
Plato posited a theory which was unprecedented in the Pre-Franciscan world; he taught certain principles of formal reality, extending beyond simply material forms and into abstract forms. He, though an atheist by the day's standards, even believed that the forms of matter were empowered, in the human mind, by three principle powers, which were simply analogies of a universal energy: knowledge, justice and love. I didn't know it at the time, but this is nearly identical to Christian interpretations of the Godheads in the Holy Trinity.
Highly impressed by Plato's rationalistic work, without the use of theology, I continued on to study other philosophers who followed his school of thought. The first of these was Aristotle. Now, Aristotle's theories on planetary cosmology are obviously slightly askew, but it does not change the fact that, using Plato's theory of a universally governed set of forms, he made an extremely accurate observation of the world, though this observation requires a closer look for this to be realized. He divided all matter into 5 elements: earth, air, water, fire, and aether. Obviously, earth, air, and water are his names for the three basic forms of matter, solids, gases, and liquids (plasma and dark matter had not been discovered yet). Fire, or heat, is today known to be simply the manifestation of potential energy being released into kinetic energy. Even scientists today divide the physical world into matter and energy. Finally, the ether is what he describes as the unchanging, eternal things. This was my first encounter with rational metaphysics being used to distinguish spriritual matter from time, something which must necessarily be deduced from Einstein's Theory of Relativity.
Eventually, Plato's ideas expanded and matured into what is today known as Neoplatonism, which defines Plato's forms as parallels in empirical figures in human perception, all governed by universal mathematical principles, as the "atheist-trinity" had come to be known. Evil was also now understood not to be anything which was bad by nature, but a good thing which had some part of its formal cause efficiently deterred from its final cause. However, I encountered here one extremely striking Neoplatonist which opened up countless doors of theology to me, which had previously been locked. St. Augustine was a new Christian, recently converted from Manicheeism, who was struggling with the concept of evil in Christianity. Manicheeism teaches that there is a good deity and an evil deity, good things coming from one and evil things from another. Christianity however teaches that God, Who is good, created all things good. How could there then be evil? Of course, the Neoplatonic theory explained this very well for him, and he moved closer to his decision to receive Baptism into the Church.
This was all interesting enough, but what caught me very shocked was this: Augustine chief obstacle to Christianity was Scripture. He was a rationalistic, scientifically-minded person who simply could not accept that God popped the universe into existence in week, when there seemed to be no reason to do so. However, one friend of his, St. Ambrose, who was then a Catholic Bishop, pointed out that perhaps the Bible was not intended to be a geological or astronomical textbook, but a collection of historical events and fables which taught, in one way or another, how God desires His children to live. Inspired by this, Augustine wrote an extensive interpretation of the Creation story as an allegory of God's Grace being infused into a sinful human race through Christ and the Church.
The one thing I didn't understand was this: I had heard Catholic religious officials say before that God really did create the world in seven days, and I thought that the Catholic Church considered itself to be infallible. I did some more research on this and found that the Magisterium, the Holy See in Rome, was considered to be infallible only on matters of Faith and morals. How the earth was formed was not considered to fall under this category, and so Catholics were permitted to believe whatever they felt inclined to on this matter, as it had nothing to do with religion.
Only one thing remained. How could I be sure that Catholicism was the true Church instituted by Christ? As far as I can tell, historically, there is no proof against this, and evidence seems to indicate an unbroken line. If I ever find proof against this, I will gladly accept it.
There it is. I am a Roman Catholic who primarily follows Neoplatonism as a metaphysical guideline. I also support Darwinism, Chaos Theory, the concept of a Nietzschean ubermensch, the Big Bang theory, global Capitalism, interracial marriage, free speech, the use of alcohol, tobacco and marijuana, capital punishment, racial equality, and imperialism (though not imperial government).

[Habelo]

I have never meet anyone smarter then me on earth. And since like im going around in kindergarden when people come up to me with their thoughts i consider myself unique. None thinks like me and have such a deep sympathatic mind as me.

[IrishHitman]

Biography:

Baptised Lutheran, Confirmed Episcopalian. Briefly an Atheist and had a crisis of faith. Through conversations with a Catholic friend of mine, I began to realise how silly my position as a rigid Atheist was. During a Good Friday Mass, we went to kiss the feet of Jesus on a crucifix, as I knelt on one knee and kissed his feet I was filled with a sense of wonder.

There's nothing rigid about being an atheist.
There aremany things rigid about being a Christian....

[Habelo]

There's nothing rigid about being an atheist.
There aremany things rigid about being a Christian....

By being atheist you will go to hell, and you will encourage others to go to hell?

pwned

[Brain_in_a_vat]

Are you serious?