to all christians jews muslems hyndus and so on

i dont know where i am realy going with this thread but it is just something i have been thinking about i am a christian brought up in a mainly christian country but what if i was braught up in say maybe asia would my christian beleefs still be with me were they there from when i was born or would i be shoutng alah from the roof tops or would i be worhip all the hindu gods or if i was born in isrial would i be jewish this is just a thought that has been going thu my head because i was not brought up as a christian but i pryed to god every night never started going to church until i was 39 thats when i was baptised
so what do you think would my view of my god still be with me

sorry in advance for the spelling

reply to post by digby888


Reminds me of a comment Richard Dawkins made to a young lady at one of his presentations. You might be interested.



And I agree with him. We are products of an interaction of many influences... environment, culture, genetics, experience. Religious belief, and then which religion you follow, are not preset at birth and are open to change. Though initially we are all born Atheist, because infants don't have the capacity or experience necessary to believe anything. They don't even recognize their own consciousness the way adults can self-inflect, even though they experience it. So by the time the infant grows into a young child capable of learning religious concepts, the perceptual framework of religion is often already established just by observations & experience of being in a religious environment.

[edit on 11-1-2010 by Lasheic]

I am a Muslim.

Everyone is born in a state we call Fitrah (which is being pure, and in a state of Islam). As they grow up, their parents influence them and may make them into a Christian, Hindu, or what have you, but true belief is worshipping God alone with no partners. Judgement Day is near, no matter who you believe, so it would be good for all of us to get ourselves in order and be ready.

reply to post by Lasheic

the point is a was not brought up a christian when i was a child i f any thing the nearest religon i had in my life was two friends who were catholics so should i have become a catholic and thru my late teens i had realy good mates that were pagens and did try to turn me to there way of thinking but never could the point is i have been praying to god since i was very young before even school so where did it come from if it wasent there from birth then i dont know

Most people only take what their parents shove down their throat.

I don't think this is acceptable for intelligent human beings to do.

As for me... I'm white, in the USA. I was raised atheist. I was my first 25 years until I found out about a numerical code in the Quran.

Now I'm Muslim.

It's not good enough to just accept the traditions of our parents. We have to use our own brains when it comes to faith.

reply to post by digby888


100% psychological influence. Think about what you knew when you were little, from what influences. Theres
-parents
-school
-religion
-cartoons

And as such we 'know' there is such thing as god/aliens/definite line between good and evil, just cuz we were repeatedly exposed to it. Theres no belief, we 'knew'. Even atheists will say 'Oh my God' not because of the meaning of the saying, but because of the repetition they heard it when they were little. It becomes 'common'.

I think your beliefs in god and personal nature would be the same, but of course different cultural influences would change your stated religion/customs. It can change though. I was born into Catholicism (not hardcore though), then was atheist for most of my life, and considered myself 'transcendentalist' (whatever that means ) for a bit, but nothing seemed right. But I am now a happy agnostic!

reply to post by digby888


S & F.

Your beliefs are your own. Do not let others try and change them.

Everyone should be free to believe in God or anything else.

Just follow your heart.

Obviously, the religion of one's ancestors enjoys a great advantage over competing belief systems. One of the problems that early Christianity had was its once-novel notion that religion was something that the individual chose, and that this choice was to be based on belief. Nowadays, we take it for granted that individuals, not nations, have a religion, and that what the individual does with the religion's story is to believe that it is true.

You have found a religion that speaks to you. That is all anybody can say of their religion, I think, very much including the religion that is atheism.

Would you have found the same religion if your search had begun in a different place, or with different resources? Nobody can say for sure.

Your story does show that you made an active search. You did not limit your horizon to something your family followed.

On the other hand, you undertook your search in a space where Christians were thick on the ground. Also, it is very unlikely that you exhausted the search space. I doubt any person could really explore even all the different versions of Nicene Christianity in one lifetime.

I suppose the odds are that if you had begun somewhere else in the search space, then you would have ended up somewhere else in the search space. But maybe not... Christianity could easily have had a "beacon" effect for you, and you might have refused to settle until you found it, because of some affinity between who you are, and what it is.

Taking advice from members of one credal religion about your own religious choice, already made, is probably not a great idea. Atheists, Muslims, Catholics... all of the elective credal religions will tell you that you really ought to have chosen theirs... 'cause after all, that's what your advisor chose.

And the sweet part is that the Atheist, Muslim, Catholic, or whatever, each knows what the others say, each knows that they all say the same thing, and yet each is convinced that his or her religion is different from the rest - in the sense of being factually correct. The only one that is factually correct.

If there is a god, then he must find this spectacle hilarious, maybe starting with the hoot that a bunch of apes could think that they know anything about gods in the first place. And if there isn't a god, then that's just tragic, that such a great gag like that is going to waste.

[edit on 11-1-2010 by eight bits]

reply to post by digby888


Hi digby888

My answer would be yes, it makes no difference because Religion has nothing to do with God. I'm a Scientist, I found God in numbers. I was raised Catholic, but that did not help me, had it not pushed me to look elsewhere, I would have to say it hindered me.

God is who/whatever you believe him/it to be, and that is always individual to you. No two people can know/experience God in the same way.

God is. God is everything. You are God, God is you. All is one, we are molecular expressions of a concept, in agreement to cohabit in a shared Quantum Hologram.

Apologies to anyone offended, it's just my personal individual version.

Ziggy Strange

reply to post by digby888


We each have our own path to follow. If your start in life is within any religious or societal structure, then that is the beginning of your path.

Where we begin is not the issue. The choices and decisions we make, how we react or respond to life events or to the collective wisdom of the society we are born to, shapes us and defines us as individuals.

reply to post by digby888


as for me, i believe as the quran says- that god sent messengers to ALL peoples with the same message- but every time, to paraphrase, people effed it up by making it over to fir their needs and desires. yes i believe we were create to believe in our creator, and to treat each other with respect and fairness and love.

that said, ALL "religions are man-made and full of -sorry- crap that needs to go. including islam the way it is widely practiced, including sectarianism and near worship of rasulullah.

to me perfect religion is one that eschews superstition, man-made practices, raising creation to the level of the creator, and most importantly, avoiding lowering the creator to the level of created. god is so very far outside our understanding, and the nature of awareness and freewill that we have been given lead us to want to quantify and qualify everything, including this amazing being.

For this reason- our will not god's, we have done horrible injustice to others and ourselves thru the ages of our existence, without causing god the least bit of harm. sadness, perhaps, but not harm. so far beyond us is god that nothing we do or don't do causes good or harm except to us and our fellow creations...

all paths of light have some truth and some corruption. the most spiritual of any faith all tend to believe the same truths and behave the same ways...



[edit on 11-1-2010 by ExParrot]

I have to wonder why you want to waste time pondering hypotheticals.

If you were born in the ocean you might be a dolphin.

If you stick to the facts, life dosn't get quite so confusing.
The facts are what they are, you should be proud of everything that has
guided your life.
You could waste a lot of time getting snared while looking at glimpese of what if?

i agree with you randyvs...i'm an atheist now, but i was brought up as a christian. religion is used for many reasons, but like my signature says, i always follow the money now, and there is easy money in religion, and it can bring about a pretty easy way of living. i mean people donating money to your "church" just for giving comforting words from time to time. it has been a viable profession for those that didn't want to actually sweat and slave with manual labor. and the amount of respect you recieve for doing this is impressive. of course you have to be good at hiding any sinful indescretions, but that is all part of it.

Yeah, I'm a Hindu and yeah, the environment your in, parents and so on - they have a huge impact on you so most likely, being used to the religion, celebrating it with the parents and so on...you follow it.

But, I would say, follow your heart - you see many people converting or just "try" the religion.

We're born Atheist but wouldn't you say that e.g. in Christianity, you get baptised right? Like some get baptised when their born straight away; so wouldn't they be Christians from that moment. Sometimes we are just pushed into a religion and slowly get used to it or other times we just rebel against it - all depends on our views of the religion and where you really want to be.

And well, [me believing in rebirth], if I was born into e.g. a Chinese family, I do think that I would eventually find myself to Hinduism. But that's just my opinion. I do personally think even though our religion is just a by-product of our environment etc, you will eventually find yourself to the religion that suits you.

Starred and Flagged, interesting read

This is a subject my husband and I have been discussing more and more lately. He is an ex-catholic, and was raised in the church - he is now somewhat of an atheist but probably more realist. I was "born" Jewish, and raised in a secular household while attending Hebrew school and had a bat mitzvah. My stepfather was a Presbyterian, and never attended Church. My mother never attended synagogue. She allowed me the freedom to attend worship services with my friends of various faiths, and even indulged my teenaged self when I decided to become a Wiccan.

Now I would consider myself agnostic, with the majority being rationalist.

But I have children, so I had to decide how I would help them "identify" themselves. My 9 year old is just now beginning to question the ideas of religions and his personal heritage. To give him his free will with a strong foundation of knowledge and the ability to decide for himself, we celebrate all holidays in a secular way. we discuss the meanings and origins of various faiths and their holidays, we have offered to attend church or equivalent with him, and he sees our open minded discussions and views on spirituality.

I have spoken with him about my history with religion, and how I now believe firmly in scientific fact but feel it a positive attribute to have an open mind and not to rule out any possibility. we emphasize knowing for ourselves the differences between right and wrong, and encourage tolerance and kindness to others. Not for salvation, but for personal contentment - with a side dish of karmic principles.


My daughter is not yet 2, and I have no idea yet what her take on her personal identity will be, but I believe it very important that my children have SOME sort of foundation, even if it is a mixture of everything. Something, in my view, is much better than nothing.

I feel this way because of the paths and struggles with religion I have had in my life. I had too many unanswered questions and conflicts with Judaism, I had too many questions and conflicts with trusting in an amalgamation of ideas as a personal savior. I like to see for myself, and have issues in falling on faith alone. So I studied, I experimented, and I learned. And I feel on very solid ground because of it. I want that for my children.