"The groups, practices and systems that we identify as "religions" are so diverse (not all religions refer to God or gods, not all religions are concerned with morals, not all religions have beliefs about the afterlife, etc.) that it is no easy task to bring them all under one simple definition"
(http://www.religionfacts.com/religion/quotes.htm)

I myself was brought up a Catholic, but would not really attempt to classify myself under any specific religion as there are parts of each that I aggree with.

I'm interested in knowing how people define their own religions?

I'll let Mr Marx get you started:

"Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, just as it is the spirit of a spiritless situation. It is the opiate of the people."
—Karl Marx

This is a fascinating topic. Why has no one replied? Shyness? Modesty? A reluctance to examine, and put on "paper" their beliefs? I will try to put my thoughts down when i have a little more time.

i suppose ill bite.
right now i would consider myself a wannabe Orthodox christian.
I suppose that is summed up quite nicely in the Nicene Creed, well, maybe not the wannabe part.
I believe in one God, the Father, the Almighty, Creator of heaven and earth, and of all things visible and invisible. And in one Lord, Jesus Christ, the only begotten Son of God, begotten of the Father before all ages. Light of Light, true God of true God, begotten, not created, of one essence with the Father, through whom all things were made. For us and for our salvation, He came down from heaven and was incarnate by the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary and became man. He was crucified for us under Pontius Pilate, and He suffered and was buried. On the third day He rose according to the Scriptures. He ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of the Father. He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead. His kingdom will have no end. And in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the Giver of Life, who proceeds from the Father, who together with the Father and the Son is worshiped and glorified, who spoke through the prophets. In one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church. I acknowledge one baptism for the forgiveness of sins. I expect the resurrection of the dead. And the life of the age to come. Amen.

Staff meeting finished early. I used that otherwise fairly non productive time to put pen to paper. I believe that religion evolves from a conscious and sub conscious desire to make sense of the world around us. This desire itself comes from a basic need to feel safe and secure. As humans, we feel safest in a familiar environment, which we understand so well that we can control and manipulate our surroundings within it.

The specific religion of a person comes from many sources. As with our other beliefs and philosophies our first religious experiences will come with our "mother's milk". That is from our parents. As we develop into independent entities, each person's religious experience, and therefore beliefs, comes from a number of sources, which may occur both concurrently and sequentially (at the same time, and over a period of time).
The first of these is a theoretical construct. We read, listen, debate, and analyse a number of different possibilities, all the time trying to find the "best fit" for our rational and emotional requirements. If it does't sound/ feel right we are likely to reject it.
Secondly we are influenced by our life's experiences. This may range from the spiritual/paranormal, eg. being visited by an angel, or having a miracle occur, to the mundane, (or perhaps this is also spiritual) such as falling in love with someone and adopting their beliefs, along with the rest of the package..
Finally, as we age and have more experience, we are able to adjust our beliefs, based both on a greater knowledge /understanding of how the "world" works, and also on experimentation. For example, we can try different things and measure the consequences. (Sort of a "suck it and see" principle) This is a good way to establish the more universal truths of life such as; Karma , what goes around comes around, and do unto others...., as well as testing the validity of our individual belief system.
Lastly, we must clarify that which we are able to accept in faith and that for which we can establish independent validity. For me, that means that, as I have seen and heard angels and been the beneficiary of their miracles, I must believe in them. As evidence of god, I have only the answering of prayers in such a humourous/ironic way that I am now very careful what I pray for, and very specific about how I would like him to answer my prayers. Nonetheless, looking back I can see that he has answered the prayers directly and promptly, just not in a way that I would have ever considered. Thus, I have to take god on faith, even though I have an intimate relationship with him, because the evidence is not yet solid enough to move from belief to knowledge. You can probably see now why i found this topic intriguing.

Thanks for you ideas on this Mr. W. It is obviously something which you have really thought about for some time. You seem to be suggesting that your defenition of religion changes with maturity and experience. Does this then mean that you chose to play your own game based on common religious beleifs and are therefore part of what can only be defined as your 'own religion'?

I am interested in your experience of prayers being answered and your experience of miracles. If something particulary negative happened (god forbid) in your life I presume this would make you change your current thoughts and force you to re-define your own religion again?

Do you think that you could ever get to a fixed definition of what you beleive?

I am a Pagan, a Druid, and member of the ADF, A Druid Fellowship, branch of Druidry. I follow the Celtic pantheon. If you check out this web site it will save me a lot of typing.
http://www.adf.org/core/
I am a seeker. One might say I stepped through the gates of hell and despair and was pulled out by a Goddess into the loving arms of not just one God but many. I joined the ADF because it matches my belief system already set in place by my experiences.
Paganism for the most part are religions of experience, we seek our wisdom and guidance from the Earth herself, not from a book. Books only come in to share the experience and learn from each other as equals.
The Earth is my Mother and the Universe my Father, with a lot of science in between.

Blog. Yes I guess my ideas on religion have changed over the years, like my ideas on most things. One thing that has become clear to me is that there is not one right or wrong answer. I do think there are universal truths about how we should live and what relationship we should have with god, but these are found in many faiths and religions. If this was not true, then historically many people would be damned just because they were born in the wrong place, or time, to learn about one version of god. You will notice in most posts i do not capitalise god. He is like a member of my family, not an object just of awe and reverence. I will give you a couple of examples of prayer being answered ( I have talked about some of the direct miracles in my life on other posts but if you like i could PM you them. I don't offer them as a way of converting, or even trying to convince people of a point of view, just as an explanation of some of the experiences which have shaped my life. Here are two ways god has answered a prayer.
I love my wife of 30 years to the point where i think she probably cast a spell over me when we met, but we have many differences and she can make me very frustrated at times. She is not very sociable, and I often call her my little hermit. One day we were walking down the beach shell collecting and I cried out to god " why can't you change J..., make her more sociable" A few moments later i saw washed up on the beach, a little hermit crab, which had come out of its shell and died. I recognised god's reply immediately and consciously, as if he had spoken to me. "I created your wife and the hermit crab as they are, for good reasons. When the hermit crab is taken from its environment it dies. In a way, your wife is the same. To change the part you want me to i would have to change the whole package. The wife you know and love would die" Then a voice in my head said "Accept J.... as she is. I will help you deal with your failure to accept her as she is"

The second answer to prayer took longer, and it took me a while to see it and recognise god's sense of humour and irony. Iam a teacher. I work with words. I am not naturally good with my hands, but my wife wanted to live on a small farm, and for 25 years we did. I learned plumbing, electrical and other repairs, fencing and even shearing. Mostly I hated it, although i learned a lot of skills, and I kept praying i could go and live in the town where I could concentrate on the things I enjoyed. One day a huge bushfire came through and we lost everything we had built up over 25 years, apart from our cat, our car, and the clothes we were wearing. Funnily, more good came out of this than bad, and it was really a positive life experience. About a year later it hit me that i was now living exactly the life I had prayed for for many years. Luckilly, my wife is now at the age where she also appreciates living in a town, but I am now much more conscious and careful in how i phrase my prayers, because god can often give you exactly what you prayed for but not in a way you were ever expecting. This type of reply has happened to me a few times over the years.
I am not sure what would count as a negative event. The one outline above or having a triple by pass at the age of 52 ? God helped me see the positive in both of these. The death of my wife would be traumatic, but we have had so much love and pleasure over the years, and i think god would help me through the grieving process and show me how to live the rest of my life. Possibly such an event might further evolve my religious belief, but I think probably in a positive way.

i find those events very intriging as they follow rules of my own religous teachings of self awearness and discovery of silent knowledge...as refrence to your prayers..i diversify the concept of god with universal law...if i wanted to attain a good in my belief it would have to be somthing of a higher multidimensional entity... its good for me that i read your paragraphs on your prayers as it shows that it works on all levels,to become one with everything...and so forth...very intresting indeed..u can now see hidden and silent meanings which is a way of uniting ur self with your god..

That's a good definition of god (a higher multi dimensional entity), and the bit about hidden and silent meanings is also relevant. In a funny way, god doesn't become real, and therefore you can't communicate effectively with him, until he exists within your heart and soul/mind. Some people might argue that the communication is only within your mind, but when it has physical interactions with the "real" world, one should start to take notice. That's the level at which miracles start to occur/can be recognised as such.

I concider myself a fairly open minded person but have always had a problem defining what religion actually is (hence the OP), and what real beleif actually means. Most of my religious study was at school many years ago and the teachings felt forced, so I suppose I never really 'got it'.

Your experiences and views make sense and are obviously quite personal, which I guess is the point in beleif and religion. You have opened my mind on this subject a little more.

As I have said on here before, I was raised in a frothing at the mouth, Bible chucking, lunatic Christian family. This is not something I will ever fall back into.
Therefore, I believe:

• There is a God, but He is nothing like what Christians want you to believe he is.
• The God of the Bible is not 'love'. The Gnostics were on to something thinking that the creator was the evil God. After reading the Old Testament who could think otherwise?
• 'Jesus', as portrayed in the Bible, was more of an Eastern thinker than Western. This is why so much of the Bible has been rewritten, deleted and ignored: eastern religion, I am thinking of Buddhism here, doesn't quite fit into our Western mindset.
• I believe Buddha, Trent Reznor, and the Gnostics were all on to something.
• Marx was largely right. Religion is a way to control the masses. Submitted for evidence: Catholicism and Islam.
• Most religions are newcomers to the world, and therefore invalid. The truth about God is ancient and largely hidden. We can only know God through what our spirit tells us, not through any book ever written.
• Everyone's God is different, but organized religion is always invalid.
• Attending church is largely a form of masturbation; a road to self-gratification.
• I can drink, smoke, curse, gamble, horizontal folkdance, fight and generally just be as much of a heathen as I am. If God created me, He made me this way and must understand.
• If there is a Hell, fundamentalists of all stripes are the first in line to go.
• This has gone on long enough.

NHNirvana - I find it interesting that even though you are for the most part anti-religion (for understandable reasons) that you still chose to beleive in 'a god', albeit one that is undefined to you. Do you think that this stems from inner thought, or would you say that small parts of what your family taught you made sense, or something maybe its something else completely?

The only thing my family taught me about religion that I retain is that human beings have a soul, some small spark of the divine. The more I think and learn, I realize that we do in fact carry with us that spark. Organized religion and ignorance, the two are undeniably linked in my mind, drown the "still, small voice" of that spark out. What one must do to find 'God' -- I use that term for lack of a simpler one -- is quiet the distraction of the noise and dogma of organized religion and follow the voice of that spark.

Well, to put it as succinctly as possible, I believe in a universal god (and that the Christian god and all other gods are one and the same - and that man-made religions get it rather wrong) who is creator of & steward of the soul that is within every human, a mother goddess (a kind of combo between mother nature and sophia (wisdom) - ancient Jewish creator goddess - and the same as other goddesses just as God=all other gods) who is the creator & steward of the spirit that is within every living thing (yup.. trees and plants too). Souls and spirits are universal and our physical bodies just incapsulate a particular bit for a while.

I believe in the guy people called Jesus, most recently, as the son of these two (just as we all are) and specifically sent as a prophet, teacher, during different eras of the world (and thus called by many different names). I believe in reincarnation: God/Goddess are eternal, Jesus, to me, obviously reincarnated. Besides the fact that I have experienced multiple instances of people remembering past lives - most specifically my eldest son. I believe in karma and that the ultimate goal for a soul is to reach a certain level of wisdom & goodliness where human/physical incarnations are no longer necessary. I don't believe in 'sin,' nor asking for forgiveness from anyone but the one you wronged, and perhaps yourself.

I'd agree with the Jesus being an Eastern thinker and that eastern relgion doesnt quite fit into western mindsets, but i would move eastern from India to the Mid East.

Hindu, because in my readings of the Vedic Scriptures, I've come across quite a few parts that indicate ideas very similar to modern scientific thought (from Multiverse theory to Quantum mechanics to evolution, etc.) and as a science major myself, I like that my religious beliefs are supportive of science rather than opposed as I see with many other religions (Christianity, Islam, etc.).

God = Truth
If anything is worth anything than it will never fall before scientific discoveries and ever unveiling truth. Our compacity to learn more truth is our capcity to learn more about God.

God = Love
The whole meaning of life is to love and be loved. Love is the foundation upon which all equality is built and from which all compassion springs.

I'm a christian, got christened, went to Catholic and C of E school for 6 years.
Got to the church every xmas.


I believe that God is out there, not as a person but as a powerful force of nature, the most powerful there can ever be.

"Do unto other as others do unto you" or hoever it went.

Basically saying "love others to be loved by those other" is what I'm guessing

I guess i am a Christian but i don't live it like i Bleave i'm responsible too i probly got a big problem with self disoplin and getting discoraged .Real Christianity in my Opinion is Hard to live in this Modern World it takes some work . And some denying the pulls of the Flesh .

But i have very Different Beleafs then most people calling themself christian almost the opposite in alot of cases.

The biggest way i probly differ is i Don't think God is trying to save the world now . I beleave he only picks and choses a few now to judge and recieve salvation . He calls them from the world . most could not find God in this life even if they tried .

The very few that God calls in my opinion are the future kings and priest of earth if they make it too over come . Alot of real christians don't over come and lose their eternal life in this life, they lose by getting discoraged and giving up .and living a life of not repenting of their sins . maybe as many as half the church fall away in these times . The church is only the future Kings and priest that rule with Christ thats why most are not called and left in a decieved state .

Decieved people cant be lost they get judged far in the future in the great white throne judgement where they are undecieved and the book of life is still open . most modern christian beleafs are based on pagan beleafs and not the bible in my opinion.

Satans best trick on this Planet is to Make 100s of beleafs to surround the truth , modern christianity is mostly satanicaly inspired even though their is alot of sincere people . Satan built a haystack around the needle to hide it . All the earths religions are satanically inspired ,its normal to be decieved . Its not evil to Be decieved , your only evil when you know you are decieved . Or will lie to decieve .

The real church is very small at this time and hard to find you find it when God calls you it could just fall in front of you if its Gods will .

A real christian is a man or Woman that truely has Gods Spirit , they could actually quinch the spirit or not listen to its silent voice and return to the world or they could follow it to become a king or priest for eternity .

One of the biggest problems on earth is this place is full of spirits and they lie and lie and lie . Their favorite trick is to pretend they are Christ Spirit or a holy Spirit . If you go to a Church and its Not Gods Church what have you done ? Could you open up yourself to Lieing evil Spirits? If its not a Holy Spirit that so called Minister is Selling what is It? If a church is not Gods church its probly a Den of Lieing evil Spirits that could actually make one more evil then they would be if they left it alone .


I guess you got to find the Real Christ in all this Mess . How?

He gave us some clues , he is the same yesterday ,today and forever if your Christ been Changeing his faith its Not Him . If hes starting new traditions its not him .


Also no Lie is from the Truth , no not any lie . If your church is selling a few Lies its not the real thing . You can very easy throw out most Churches if you look them over Good .
NO LIE means no Lie .

For instance is Christmas Christ Birth Day ? Study it you will quickly find its a Lie . No lie is from the Truth , Walk away from the Lies you soon will find the Truth ,if its meant for you to find it . Remember the truth is Great responsibility Count the Cost Before you Go for it . As you can't stop once you set out to Plow the Field .

How Bad do you want to be a king ? How bad do you want to help fix all this worlds wrongs /

To make it in Real Christianity you got to look into the future to thy kingdom come . you got to know this life might soon become full of trouble and sufferings and trials if you are on the right road . If you are on the Right Path you are a target of the evil of this world it will be a bumpy ride . one that will take self dissoplin ,but with a prise waiting if you make it that your mind can't even imagine . A King For Eternity !!!!


Yes the Real Church is Out there but Count The Cost .

If you don't beleave live it up as tomorow you will die just do the best for your neibours and avoid these evil spirits that are being sold around our land .

In the words of Ziggy Marley.

Love Is My Religion.

THAT WAS BEAUTIFUL!!!!!

Thanks.