h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

At my highschool (yes, i'm 17 years old. sue me) we have a christian club. Our club will occasionally arange for a christian radio station to broadcast from campus. Quite frankly, this sickens me to the point of nausia. What ever happened to the good ol days when pagenism and Wicca ruled the worship of the masses? And another thing... why, when there is supposed to be a seperation of church and state, are religios groups allowed to inflict their beliefs on others? I don't mind christians, I just mind pushy "recruiters" who tell me that if I don't join them I'll suffer eternal flame. I personally think it would be fun to start up an "alternative religions" club on campus... spanning from Satanism to buddism, tao to wicca. Your thoughts on the subject, fellow researchers?

I'd go for it but make sure your life/medical insurance is paid up! (Heh, heh!)

A few year's ago Parish Councils here in the U.K. were trying to stop Yoga being taught in church halls as they considered it to be "heathan". Also, whilst we were living in New Zealand some poor chap who had errected statues of Greek/Roman gods in his garden for decoration had them smashed by local God-fearing Christians .... People can be so narrow minded and stupid!

Just a thought. Christians (or at least the devout ones) are required by the Bible (which is their 'big book') to recruit new Christians. That is, they should always go out and convert others over to their way of thinking, it's a part of their belief. It says so in the New Testament, which the Christians put a bit of emphasis on (as opposed to the Jews who disregard the NT, and concentrate on the Old Testament). A cynic could claim that this is a very effective way of making sure a newly started religion prospers, and making the ones you do get on your side worth a lot more (because they'll get you even more, and growth will be the result. Theoretically exponential growth.) So, it's not really good logic saying that you don't mind Christians, you just mind their trying to convert you. If they don't try to convert you they're not Christians, or at least they're not 'good' Christians according to their 'big book'. As I mentioned, just a thought.

Then again, a couple of years ago some people in the Bible Belt were going around burning down churches...just goes to show that intolerant morons exist in every faith.

Prayer in schools hasn't happened yet, and hopefully won't happen at all. But with all the shootings lately, parents want something to change, and that is letting religion leak its way into our hallowed halls of learning. In southern California, a school is flying in the face of its own School Board and putting up plaques with the ten commandments. Our schools have been getting dumbed down already, and if religion is allowed to creep back in, it'll get even dumber.

FWIW...the most popular religion in the world isn't Christianity...it's Islam.

Yes and we're all a bunch of "infidels"!

I am a natural cynic, I am also of the opinion that although faith itself is usually of a positive nature, organized religion is a VERY BAD THING!!

Religion has taken FAITH and it has perverted it, moulded it into it's own image and controls it's followers by telling them that they will burn in hell if they don't follow the rules...their rules!

Throughout history most killings have been motivated by religion. Killing someone because they won't believe what you tell them still happens today...look at the extreme groups that threatened to kill Marilyn Manson, is killing him a christian act? I think not!

Deeply religious people are usually deeply gullible people, people who don't have a path of their own to follow so they'll follow the path laid out for them by the preacher (who had his path laid out for him by 2000 years of power hungry and greedy politicians). It probably started several thousand years ago when a bright spark decided that he needed to control a group of people and that if he threatened them with the power of an unseen (but all powerful and angry) god. History finishes the tale.

Don't have Church in school! It is a remnant of our global culture from thousands of years ago, kept going by the people that own all the gold in churches the world over. Christian / Muslim / Hindu alike.

Finally : Why do organized religions have to revise their history every time a new scientific fact is discovered...The church denied the big bang theory outright..but now it's been proven, they call it the fingerprint of god...bullshit!! They have lied to us consistently for thousands of years, interpreting science in a way that suits them and calling it the hand of god.

WAKE UP! We don't need religion anymore, we need to have FAITH or HOPE in something positive, but not someone in robes telling us how to behave and what to do because he's only after your gold and your obedience!

Courier...

Sorry to but in, I may have missed something but I've got to say that I don't practice any religion at all and
I'm not a sadistic b*st*rd. At school I ignored all the religous stuff in my private and personal opinon it all
academic any way, if God was worried about us he wouldn't be hiding from us would he?

Got to go...

Taking things a bit personally, eh?

Anyways, I just thought I'd share a couple of thoughts with you.

First of all, I think I should point out that I'm neither pro nor con religion. I think it's good that some people can express themselves through religion. As long as they don't try to impose it on me. I'd rather find my own way, wherever it may lead.

Second of all, I find it a bit curious that the church broke one of their commandments when they went out on their crusades. If I'm not totally mistaken, one of the commandments specifies that 'Thou shalt not kill!' And since the crusades were basically all about going to battle and killing everyone that didn't convert into Christianity, that pretty much undermines the teachings of the church at the time, doesn't it? But I guess they could justify the Crusades by saying that if you kill someone not Christian by faith, it doesn't really count.

Third of all, school assemblies. In Sweden, where I come from, the school year started with an assembly in church with hymns, some prayers and people trying to convince the students how fun it was to go to school. The school year also ended in church, unless the weather permitted us to be outdoors, with more hymns, prayers and wishes from the teachers that the students would use the summer to gather motivation and energy to come back to school in the autumn. And every once in a while, like Christmas and Easter, we'd gather up and 'rejoice' at what the religion has brought us. Personally, the best thing religion brought me at Christmas and Easter was the breaks from school.

That's about all I thought I'd share.

LinS

Lost: I'm currently reading a book by a journalist who went through Sweden, and one of the interesting facts he points out is that Sweden has a completely state-supported Lutheran church, and yet only 5% of the population attends it. Onward the atheist crusade!

Anyway, for those of you interested in venting more about religion, just follow me to my user page. I have a couple of articles that you might enjoy, and if you follow the conversation threads from them, you'll find more articles. Call it an atheism support group, if you like.

Hi folks,

I'm not a religious person; I pretty much subscribe to the 'keep your beliefs to yourself' school; but let's be a little sensitive to the feelings of those among us - and there are quite a few - who hold a different view.

Remember: it may be a laugh throwing people to the lions; but if the lions are still hungry when the hors d'ouvres are gone, you might find yourself on the menu too.

JTG

Ah, but isn't this entire article about people who can't possibly keep their views to themselves?

Ah again... but, for the most part, they do it with a smile.

JTG

This has been true for a great number of years, but the church and the state will part at the end of this year. The funny thing about the swedish system is that you pay three different kinds of tax. State taxe, Church tax and Community tax (equivalent to the Council tax in the UK). This is all mashed up into one big 33% (generally speaking) income tax.

This may be strange in itself, but the fact is that everyone pays Church tax to the "official" Swedish church, even if they're Buddhists, Muslim or Jewish. It's not mandatory to pay the church tax, but everyone does it anyways, mainly cause noone gets asked if they want to pay it or not, they just assume that they want to. To get out of paying the church tax, you have to specifically tell them that you don't want to. If you do this, you get more money at the end of each month, with the drawbacks that you won't be able to have a church wedding (unless your spouse still pays the church tax) and you won't be able to have a church burial with a minister (although your family can rent the curch premises and have a city official or something to perform the burial service).

No wonder I moved to Scotland...
LinS

I think the long and short of it is this. I view religions as I would spit. I don't mind if you have it, but keep it to yourself. Sure, if someone were to ask me about my spit I'd be more than happy to tell them, or spit on them if they so wished, but the arbitrary exorcising of the salivating glands seems a little harsh to me, personally. Recently here in the States, there was a bill proposed to make posting of the ten commandments of christianity mandatory in all schools. I find this a prime example of spitting. Does anyone have some insight as to why they don't propose also to post the 5 Pillers of Islam? Or the eight fold path of buddism? Or Confucian sayings? Or the words of Odin? Or even the teachings of my personal favorite diety, Dionysis? Luckily, the bill was deemed unconstitutional, but I'm still worried at the thought.

Regarding ..

> alternative religions" club on campus... spanning from Satanism to buddism

Hmm. I think the press interest in this would suffer from the same sort of problems that the USA saw after the columbine, weco, and other such recent tragedies. Rebelling against 'moral autoritarianism' is one thing, but I watch your step very carefully on the satanism stuff.

To be honest, what is satanism anyhow. To believe in a satan character is in effect to beleive in all the christian stuff too, as it is one of the few religions that has a 'character' responsible for all the evil.

Buddhism, yes. Nothing wrong with that. There are many buddhists who are also members of other religions, and many buddhists who are athiests. One way to find out about buddhism is to go and read various books on the subject. Libraries are full of this stuff.

At the end of the day, beleifs and faith are personal things; I don't believe that organised religion is a good thing for anybody. It's probably the cause of most of the bloodiest conflicts the planet has seen, and will be until they all start practicing what they preach, i.e. peace and good well to all men.

There was a proudly athiest comedian in the UK, Dave Allen (I think), who's parting words were "May your god go with you". I think that's a good sentiment for everyone to use.

Now, would someone please write up on taoism, because I know next to nothing about it.

May your god go with you.
Jim

To address your question of "what is satanism anyhow?"

I personally am not a satanist myself so don't go bitchin to much if you are, just correct me. Satanism is not about god or the devil but it is a representation of how man is the superior animal, the god, not a little pawn to be told what to do or how to live. It represents a religion that tells you to indulge not abstain. It says to give love to those who deserve it not to waste love on ingrates and so on and so on. I don't have the time to continue codifying, so if you are more interested you might want to read the satanic bible by Anton Szander LaVey (he created it)

Also may the god that goes with you be yourself.

x1692 has given you most of the lowdown on Satanism... one of the ironic things in it is that they don't actually believe in satan. That name was given to them by Christians due to the kind of behavior they indulged in, which wasn't necessarily bad, but was deffinetly not advised by the bible (oh, and no, Satanists don't believe in human or animal sacrifice, they don't kill babies, and as far as I can remember they don't eat hearts). Of course, they say "hail satan" every now and then, and then bitch about inconsistancies in other religions... oh well. (incidently, in case you were wondering as to why that may be, it is because Satanists view their own human nature as "satan" because it is human nature that is, to them, the satan depicted by the christians.) Personally, I'm starting my own religion, but that's a topic for a different time.

As for Taoism, to the best of my knowledge it is the origen of the in and yo, (typed as they are pronounced, not as they are spelled) or ying and yang to us western folk. Beliefes in balance and the duality of everything. I believe that taoism also includes very strict belief in Karma, moreso then hinduism. In taoism, so far as I can remember if i'm not getting my religions mixed up, Karma takes place during one's current lifetime as opposed to future ones, which is the Hindi belief. Of course, i could be completely mistaken in this as I have only a general understanding of most eastern religions... of course, I DO pay them much more attention then western religions, so that should account for something.

I seem a little out of place in this discussion. As a christian myself bI guess I may get lynched for even raising my head!

This issue of Christians enforcing and pushing their beliefs onto others may seem a valid one. However, our belief that true life only comes through knowing Christ is so powerful that we simply want to pass the message on. Don't stop reading know! this isn't turning into some evangelistic outpouring - but simply an explanation of why Christians want to spread the news. At the end of the day, the choice is of course yours; we don't talk about our faith for our own benefit or gain in heaven - there is nothing to be gained, Jesus has already won the battle, our works and deeds can gain us nothing. Our only reason for spreading the Gospel is for you! Sorry if you can't accept this as genuine compassion for fellow man.

Well, the audience doesn't appreciate it. It's why us unbelievers have to get together and rant like this, because the damned christians won't leave us alone. You see it as compassion, we see it as a constant annoyance. And in the case of mixing religion and school, we find it dangerous. All the world's most heinous crimes are tied to money or religion, and religion has a higher body count.

The previous two messages by Dave and GargleBlaster are very similar to a pair of letters published sequentially in the Houston Chronicle (Texas, USA - I think a school here started the current Supreme Court Case on prayer in school). The first letter from a Christian complained about the "whiners" who wouldn't be polite enough to simply bow during the prayer. The second letter pointed out that it wasn't too polite to force a large number of people, in a captive audience, to endure a religious rite they don't agree with.

I went to Catholic schools through highschool, and have since "fallen away". The schools were good, though, typically better than the public schools. And, of course, were paid for by the Catholic Church, no tax money. With the USA being successful so far using a policy of separation of church and state, I certainly hope the Supreme Court maintains its historical record of supporting that policy. I think its an old Arab saying about letting the camel get his nose into the tent ...

I don't believe the question is "which God?", but rather what does that word even mean? With Wittgenstein I believe what you can't know you can't talk about. And yes, as a non-religious person, I resent the intrusion of religious folks into the public schools I am paying for.