Do you consider yourself religious?
 

?

Can we please just make all polls public, is there a way to do that?

I assume this can apply to anybody that takes their religious/philisophical beliefs very seriously, even if they don't believe in God or follow monotheism (otherwise why make this thread since there are no openly christian people here?). In that case, yes I am, very much so. If I were Christian I'd probably be looking into monasticism or something, that's how seriously I take my spiritual thinking and "connecting" with the other to try and understand existence.

Actually, fuck that, that's being "spiritual" not "religious". I take back my vote. Dumb thread. Hate you now, pizza.

nnnnnnooooooooooootttttttttt aggaaaaaaiiiiiiiiiiiinnnnnnnnnnn

"Death is the most terrible of all things; and to maintain its works is what requires the greatest of all strength." - Hegel

Would it all be absurd? Or might it make some kind of sense? I've mad myself sick wondering about it. I awake in the morning - just the way millions do, millions of boys, girls, infants and old men, their slumber dissipated forever... These millions, those slumbers have no meaning. A hidden meaning? Hidden, yes, "obviously"! But if nothing has any meaning, there's no point in my doing anything. I'll beg off. I'll use any deceitful means to get out of it, in the end I'll have to let go and sell myself to meaninglessness, nonsense: that is man's killer, the one who tortures and kills, not a glimmer of hope left. But if there is a meaning? Today I don't know what it is. Tomorrow? Tomorrow, who can tell me? Am I going to find out what it is? No, I can't conceive of any "meaning" other than "my" anguish, and as for that, I know all about it. And for the time being: nonsense. Monsieur Nonsense is writing and understands that he is mad. It's atrocious. But his madness, this meaninglessness - how "serious" it has become all of a sudden! - might that indeed be "meaningful"? My life has only a meaning insofar as I lack one: oh, but let me be mad! Make something of all this he who is able to, understand it he who is dying, and there the living self is, knowing not why, it's teeth chattering in the lashing wind: the immensity, the night engulfs it and, all on purpose, that living self is there just in order... "not to know". But as for GOD? GOD, if he knew, would be a swine. He would entirely grasp the idead... but what would there be of the human about him? Beyond, beyond everything... And yet farther, and even farther still... HIMSELF, in an ecstasy, above emptiness...

Cognitive activity: God comes to be known in ways that originate in God solely
God is nothing if He is not, in every sense, the surpassing of God:
in the sense of common everyday being, in the sense of dread,
horror and impurity, and, finally, in the sense of nothing...

He is mystery, indeed he is the absolute mystery
Divine disclosure is in direct proportion
To the degree of divine concealment
Intensification of revelation equals
To increasing of God's hiddenness
Descent of the Deus Absconditus
Vere tu es Deus Absconditus

The unreservedly open spirit - open to death, to torment, to joy -, the open spirit, open and dying, suffering and dying and happy, stands in a certain veiled light: that light is divine. And the cry that breaks from a twisted mouth may perhaps twist him who utters it, but what he speaks is an immense alleluia, flung into endless silence, and lost there.

Shall my only victory be available in conscience?
Why is absence the proof, when I demand palpable presence?
There is enough light to enlighten the elect and enough darkness to humble them.
There is enough darkness to blind the reprobate and enough clarity to condemn them,
And make them without excuse.

Our perception is subject to the fissure of concupiscence
Woestruck am I realising that the light cast on this
Chiaroscuro world is partial and selective
Division, election and predestination
Enabled by grace or left to one's own device...

Anguish is only sovereign absolute. The sovereign is a king no more: it dwells in low-biding in big cities. It knits itself up in silence, obscurring its sorrow. Crouching thick-wrapped, there it waits, lies waiting for the advent of Him who shall strike a general terror; but meanwhile and even so sorrow scornfully mocks at all that comes to pass, and all there is.

From very high above a kind of stillness swept down unpon me and froze me
It was as though I were borne aloft in a flight of headless and unbodied angels
Shaped rom the broad swooping of wings, but it was simpler than that.
I became unhappy and felt painfully forsaken, as one is when in the presence of God.

She was seated, she held one leg stuck up in the air, to open her crack
Yet wider she used fingers to draw the folds of skin apart.
And so her "old rag and ruin" loured at me, hairy and pink,
Just as full of life as some loathsome squid.
"Why", I stammered in a subdued tone, "Why are you doing that?"
"You can see for yourself", she said, "I'm God".

No use laying it all up to irony when I say of here that she is GOD. But GOD figured as a public whore and gone crazy - that, viewed through the optic of "philosophy", makes no sense at all. I don't mind having sorrow derided if derided it has to be, he only will grasp me aright whose heart holds a wound that is an incurable wound, who never, for anything, in any way, would be cured of it... And what man, if so wounded, would ever be willing to "die" of any other hurt?

If there is nothing that surpasses our powers and our understanding,
If we do not acknowledge something greater than ourselves,
Greater than we are despite ourselves,
Something which at all costs must not be,
Then we do not reach the insensate moment towards we strive
With all this is in our power and which at the same time
We exert with all our power to stave off.

I can utter no word, O my God, unless I be permitted by Thee,
And can move in no direction until I obtain Thy sanction.
It is Thou, O my God, Who hast called me into being through the power
Of Thy might, and hast endued me with Thy grace to manifest Thy cause.

The act whereby being - existence - is bestowed upon us is an unbearable surpassing of being, an act no less unbearable than that of dying. And since, in death, being is take away from us at the same time it is given to us, we must seek for it in the feeling of dying, in those unbearable moments when it seems to us that we are dying because the existence in us, during these interludes, exists through nothing but a sustaining and ruinous excess, when the fullness of horror and that of joy coincide.

As I waited for annihilation, all that subsisted in me
Seemed to me to be the dross over which man's life tarries...

"Diabolus Absconditus": the conjunction of intellect in psychotropic-altered
senses supported by insinsted and archaic sounds.

I don't believe in a religion or even a specific deity; I have a lot of vague thoughts about potential supernatural concepts, like karma, so I'd conclude that I am spiritual in some way. I also get offended when I hear blasphemous things about Christianity [only]. Not necessarily because I'm Christian, since I am not (by belief, at least; I am a confirmed Catholic, but that wasn't my choice), but because it's just a... sensitive issue. I can appreciate the shock factor of saying something like "Fuck Jesus! LOLOLOL" but it's obnoxious and, what the fuck... if Jesus actually existed he sounds like a pretty cool guy. It's like making fun of that ultra nice person who never gets mad about anything every one of you knows; it feels wrong, man.

who else attended a christian school? My first 6 years of school were at a christian private school, and I saw enough bullshit even as a naive kid to know that christianity and religion in general were a joke. I forced my parents to send me to public school in grade 7 and that was the most refreshing school year I ever had.

I went to Catholic school all 12 years, dude. It sucked, I guess, but I got over it. For one, we missed an hour of class a month for school mass. For two, uniforms are cool because you never have to worry about finding an outfit or wondering if you're gonna look like the faggot everyone makes fun of (although we still found a way; like if you wore your pants the "wrong" way, haha...) Even the nuns were fairly nice, except a handful but that's the same with normal teachers, too. Overall, I'm glad I attended, plus it's usually associated with a higher level of education, though I don't know how true that actually is.

hahahah @ the epic Deathspell Omega post

I don't get offended by blasphemous things because I don't think anyone really like... hates "jesus" so much as they hate the things and ideas that are carried out in his name. Jesus is just kind of the mascot for Christianity, and like it or not, alot of really bad things have happened in the name of Christianity. I feel like what I'm saying here is too vague for you really to understand what I'm trying to articulate. I guess I'm saying that Jesus isn't really like... a "guy" he's more of a concept?

Nah, I gotcha. I'm not trying to be rational about it. I am explaining how I feel when I hear it.

man why would anybody send their kid to catholic school

like that seems like the most efficient way possible to just totally fuck your kid up for life

How so? I had a normal education and I turned out relatively normal (I guess). There's not much difference except some mild religious undertones, uniforms, and more discipline which, aside from the religious undertones, are better preparation for the professional world than public school.

i dunno

I didn't want to do this because private polls are generally more honest. Or rather, some people feel more comfortable voting the "unpopular" option. Or whatever.

http://www.3dmm.com/showthread.php?t=36024 We already had a non-public version of this thread. >:[

I'm amazed at how anti-religious I used to be.

Nothing is part of everything.
God is everything.
Therefore, God is nothing.

My feeling has always been that in terms of actual knowledge, humans are working with limited resources. I won't rule anything out when it comes to God or supernatural forces. We just don't know.

I'm not religious in a go to church on Sunday kind of way. But do I believe in some sort of higher being? Yeah, I'd lean that way.

I voted yes because I am god. Seriously part of my theistic belief.

I get the "I am god" thing.

This ^

I believe in the Christian God though I don't really know what denomination I fit into the most. I don't suppose it makes much of a difference.

I'm all about the Egyptian gods.

the Egyptian gods are way more interesting than any of the god's that people worship nowadays, sure all the people were probably batshit insane, but look what they accomplished. they were obviously doing something right. nowadays religious groups just moan and groan and blow themselves up.

Yeah, they accomplished so much.
Pyramids out of stone. Mummified remains.
I mean, we haven't built space stations or frozen bodies or anything. This generation pales in comparison top the Egyptian times.

wtf are you talkin about bryce. I mean society coming together because of religion and actually progressing science and technology in a monumental way. building space stations has nothing to do with religion obviously, i'm talking about how religion hasn't really helped/progress society for ages