How much do you feel your personal religious beliefs have been influenced by your culture? 

I bring this up because I've been hearing lots of people criticize Islam lately, as if all Muslims are out to kill non-believers.  The Western world is predominately Christian, but the majority of aren't fundamentalists- right?  

Also, I've grown up thinking that there's Christianity and then what everybody else believes, and I tried to defy that, but when it comes right down to it, its so etched in my mind that it's all I know.   

Would you or have you seriously explored other religions?  Why or why not? 

"Did they scoff the whole damn Smörgåsbord?" (Audrey) 

"Gimme a donut!" (Coop)

Good question....

I grew up Lutheran and still am.  It's kind of shaped the way I see things but the biggest influence when it comes to religion is the fact that my uncle is Muslim.  Born in Lebanon raised in venuzala.  It opened my eyes because it made me relize early on there is more than Christianity.  It helped me become more tolerant and also made me want to learn more about different religions. 

Sure, smeds.

But have you ever thought that maybe you're religious because your family taught you a religion?I think that's the most influential thing in someone's religion.

I am atheist because I don't believe in God, but anyway I think my family had an influence on this in a sort of way.

"Did they scoff the whole damn Smörgåsbord?" (Audrey) 

"Gimme a donut!" (Coop)

I'm getting outta here. I thought this post was in the Off-topic zone... Dind't see it was a the "Religion" zone. LOL.

"Did they scoff the whole damn Smörgåsbord?" (Audrey) 

"Gimme a donut!" (Coop)

I'm a mutt in the religious sense. I grew up Baptist, then Luteran, then switched to non-demonational after Jordan and I got married. All of my family is Christian, however, Jordan also has an uncle that is Muslim...I want to say from Lebanon as well. Jordan can correct me on this. Anyway, it's interesting to hear the in-laws talk about this part of the family. The aunt who was married to this uncle is Christian, and one of their daughters has decided to marry a Muslim young man. The oldest daughter is marrying a jewish young man.

Jordan probably can shed some more light on this.

Now, I would have to say that most of my religious background  came from my mom. My dad is rather agnostic. He stopped going to church when we left the Baptist faith because of some issues with the choir and my mom. Long story. Anyway, once we went to the Lutheran faith, dad just stopped going and became agnostic. It was rather interesting. I never really realized it until Jordan's dad asked him one evening and he just blurted it out. I was rather surprised.

Anyway, if I hadn't grown up Christian, I'm not sure where I would be right now. It's an interesting question Rainbow. I wonder how my life would be different if I didn't grow up religiously like I did. 

Kelly

How Do You Live Your Dash?

Check out the Kids' blogs:
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It's intersting how my family talks about it too.  My aunt and Abdel (my uncle) ended up getting a divorce.  When they were married, they decided to not have the children become a member of whatever church.  Then after the divorce my aunt made my cousins go through catecism and it had to be kept a secret from Abdel, which I think is wrong.  But needless to say, from my point of veiw, it was a great experience spending time with him and his family. 

Good question, but for a moment I want to change it a bit:

How much do you feel your personal religious beliefs have been influenced by your culture?

Let's take out the word religious for a moment and answer that question. How much of our personal beliefs are influenced by our culture? Wouldn't all of them be? I think an honest answer to that question is yes - at least it is for me. We are influenced every day by the media, by individuals we see and meet, by how our parents brought us up (how much do you feel your personal religious (or not) beliefs have been influenced by your family?), by how our family members treated us as we grew up, etc. Every aspect of culture, whether we like it or not, affects us in some way, in my opinion.

So the only way to answer the original question is the same way I think. All of our religious (or non-religious) beliefs have been influenced by our culture. This is why I think we see a growing group of atheist/agnostic individuals in Europe, and not so in the US. It's not really about "enlightenment" (sorry guys), but rather to fulfill some other need that I don't know of or maybe it's a push-back from a war-torn Europe which has often been at war or fighting because of religion.

Mr. Silenco offers another extremely valid question that goes hand-in-hand with the first - how much of your beliefs are based on what your parents taught you? Very much so - and just like how culture molds you, so do parents - if not moreso - for good and bad.

For example, even though I grew up in a Protestant "evangelical" church, all of my friends with Catholic or Baptist. Yeah, me and the Baptists would get into the "once saved always saved" debates, and me and the Catholics would get into the "you don't have to go to a priest to have your sins forgiven" discussions, but one thing is for sure - I learned really quickly that beliefs are vast and enormous - even among Christians. But having that experience taught me something extremelly important - no one really knows the truth - even atheists and scientists.

I also had to directly confront the differences between my faith and my friends' faiths. And because I loved Science and Space growing up, I had a bigger mountain to climb.

Jordan .

".. But having that experience taught me something extremelly important - no one really knows the truth - even atheists and scientists."

If scientists do their job as they're suppose to, they know the truth.
Not an overall theory or something near that even, but a good question with a good and solid answer is what makes science.

What makes 'the truth', which questions needs what answer ?
What started this whole thing (for instance) ? - not known, and so open to any kind of theory.
Theories are not truths.
Big bang or God, both are non-truths.
All we can say is; we don't know.
There is where religions and scientific theories begin.
The truth (as a whole) is fiction …

How much do you feel your personal religious beliefs have been influenced by your culture?

In their entirety. I was raised areligiously -- though this was happenstance more than intention. My spiritual beliefs have come from my reading, and my interest in finding philosophies that resonated.

When I was very young, my best friends were three brothers who were Anglican churchgoers, so I knew religions were something in the world that people found important, but it never occurred to me that my family might be unusual for not having one. My mom sent me to Sunday School once, so I could see if I liked it, and I didn't, so I never went back.

Me too, Jamie. I was raised areligiously, I think my parents thought it best that I decide where my faith was.

After a few half-assed attempts at Christianity (because school friends had convinced me that as I would go to hell if I died, as I'd never been baptized) I became a confirmed aethiest. I should qualify that - an aethiest who read a lot and had an interest in exploring lots of other belief systems and philosophies.

At 25, I found myself in the bizarre situation of being asked to convert to Islam. My girlfriend at the time was Iraqi-born and her parents were strict Shi'ite Muslims - let's just say they were somewhat less than impressed to find out we had been living together for 6 months. After disowning their daughter for nearly 9 months and the various threats, private detectives, and other strange dramas that followed we came to an agreement with the family that I would convert to Islam and we would have an Islamic registry.

One day, I'll write a full explanation of what it involves to convert to Islam from my own personal experiences, but for now lets just say I was a Muslim in name only. I still drank alcohol and all the other 'haram' things you're not supposed to do. The only difference was that we had to clear away wine bottles whenever her parents visited. We also had to maintain a public persona of being good Muslims whilst doing anything involving her family or visiting relatives or attending family events. It was real eye opener in many ways, I also learnt a little Arabic too.

So, the relationship was pretty much a disaster from start to finish and the 'shotgun-style' marriage only lasted three years before it reached an inevitable acrimonious divorce, but during that time I spent a lot of time learning about Islam through my wife's family, and I actually visited quite a few of the London mosques that make the news today. I would say it was definitely a good experience for me. There are some really great aspects to Islam that I never knew about beforehand, also aspects that spill over into the Arab culture itself such as family values, the humour (yes, they have a good sense of humour despite all the evidence to the contrary!) the language, the morality, the community, the spirituality and of course, the whole Ramadan experience. I never went on a Haj (pilgrimage) despite many offers to take me as I felt it hypocritical to go just for the curiosity value. Hearing others' personal experiences of the Haj, was very interesting and exciting all the same. I was very tempted!

So that was... hmm... over 10 years ago now, and the past 6 years I have been living on and off between the UK and Hong Kong. Spiritually these days I read a lot about Taoism and Buddhism. I think its safe to say I have more than just an interest but I'll save that for another semi epic post.

x-ray
if your back's against the wall, turn around and write on it...

I am curious if anyone has children?

I was raised Catholic and went to 12 years of Catholic schools.  I strayed away in my teenage years until mother's day 1998 when I decided to go to church on a regular basis again.  I raise my daughter Catholic which is becoming increasingly difficult as she is a scientist and has questions for me that I can't answer being a believer not a scientist.

She is very devout in her love for Jesus but sometimes gets to questioning me on things I am not prepared for, while my friends' kids ask me strictly religious "history" questions and think I am the queen of the bible or something.

I always say I am not sure if I want her to be Catholic, but she should have some religious background and others criticize me and say that if that was true then I should take her to all sorts of churches and decdie which is best, but then wouldn't she feel like she didn't belong?

Oh...it's so hard

LG - how old is your daughter again?

To me it's real simple - you take her where you feel comfortable, and to a place where she can learn about Christian beliefs. Don't feel like you should have her get a taste of all religions/beliefs because that's not necessary esp depending on her age. Bombarding her with too many beliefs at too young of an age before comprehension and complex concepts take over (around 7th and 8th grade), you'll only confuse her, I believe. She's got her whole life to figure that out and to try things if she wants. Bring her up with a firm belief in God is most important (of course I know lots of people would disagree with that and say kids should find out on their own). But remember, you are her parent and it's your responsibility to do what YOU feel is right (not whatever else thinks - even me). But as a believer, the Bible does say to bring up your children with the knowledge of God, and do not do anything that would hurt their Spiritual Walk (which is often what parents do wrong - esp in this day in age of psychology and feel-good concepts).

I'm going to say something that I don't mean to be insulting to Catholics here - but I grew up in a Catholic community, and I learned really quickly that Catechism and the Catholic Church really doesn't provide the type of teaching many kids need. There's absolutely nothing wrong with being a Catholic, but my friends always ended up asking me about religion because they either didn't understand or wheren't taught certain things in CCD. Maybe it was just my community and other churches are better at it, but that was my experience.

What I would suggest is finding a church (probably will have to be Protestant) that has lots of Kid's activities (unless you feel very strongly about the Catholic Church). Our church has plenty of Teen and Children stuff going on - including weekly concerts during teh Summer at a make-shift coffeehouse.  She needs to be brought up with other kids in church - Catholic or not. Some Protestant Churches are figuring out how to reach out to kids (and adults) using things that traditional churches don't often do. You might be able to find a Catholic Church that does this but I've never seen one yet.

Get her into a good church program, and many of her qustions can be answered in those situations.  

Jordan .

Then you know exactly what I meant above about CCD. :)

And honestly, sometimes you don't learn a lot in a Protestant's Sunday School either. I think kids learn more in a Children's Church format which I think is what I was really trying to get at above.

Jordan .

To answer this question, well, I'm not 100 % sure, but I'll give it a shot!

I don't think me being a wiccan has in any way been a huge factor in my upbringing, (sorry, meant to type that the other way round if you get me!) because I am the only one in my family.

 To go through my religious history, well, I was baptised and brought up as a methodist, regularly going to Sunday school and Church when I was a child with my family and most of my friends.  However I also had (and still do have) both friends who are Catholic and friends who went/go to the Church of England and I think are protestant.

 Anywway, I was brought up as a methodist and my mum was a methodist too, as were the rest of my family.  The main person that, looking back I suppose may have influenced me in breaking away was probably my dad.  He NEVER went to church that I remember .(not that he was there a great deal anyway, because he worked on the oil rigs in Saudi and so I hardly ever saw him a lot of the time.)  When he did come home, he understandably just wanted to catch up with his family and rest, but that's one thing I've never really known about, is what his beliefs were and I would like to have.  I can remember my mum trying to get him to go to church with us but he just seemed uninterested.  I am sure that he also, like me, used to go when he was younger. Due to the fact that he was married in a church and his funeral was in a church too, I do wonder if he had some sort of belief, however small, or jsut "did this" because it was the norm, as many people in my area tend to do, which I think is wrong.

The area where I live actually has one of the highest Catholic numbers in the country, meaning more Catholics than any other religion here, though we also do have a lot of others.

When I got to be about 18 or so, I realised that, even though I was still being "good" and going to Sunday School and Church, I didn't understand a lot of my religion or what I was worshipping it for.  I began to feel afraid of a lot of it, like all the "wrath of God" type stuff and the more I read of the bible, the less I understood, especially what seemed like unbeleivable sexism to me. 

Woman often seemed to come across as the weaker of the sexes and the whole theory of Eve being made from the rib of Adam and being made to suffer and have periods and babies and every women suffering because of him made me furious and I especially could never understand the "you will obey man and fear God" that kept coming up and especially the "sin" and "heaven and hell" of everything.  It just NEVER made sense to me, and I really did try to make it, but if something doesn't make sense to me I can't pretend to make it.

Anyway, I was left feeling very disillusioned with Christianity, not just due to that, but also other reasons and then went through a period in my early twenties of not being sure what I was and being spiritual rather than religious.  I then started believing I was an agnostic or an athiest (not sure which - basically I had once believed in God and then just stopped believing maybe someone can clarify?) and then belived that science could explain everything we thought of as religon and there just was no way it was all down to God.  This was around the same time I first joined the Gazette and I remember having some unfortunate rather heated discussions with Jordan, kind of like the "prove to me there is a God type" he mentioned in the rules at that time that are rather embarrassing to think about now (hehe!) but anyway..

I then took a year off from basically everything and decided one of my priorities apart from figuring what I wanted out of life was to also figure out what my feelings and beliefs about spirituality and religion were as I knew I had been unsure of, and conradicting myself for a long time.  After doing a lot of thinking, researching, studying and soul-searching, I realised mid 2003 that I was a wiccan.  Everywhere I went, The Craft just seemed to find me.  I wanted to know about it, but it just seemed to find me rather than ME finding IT and it just all made so much more sense to me than Christianity ever had.  I realsied that Christians weren't wrong, they just had an entirely different belief system to me!  Most of all I was so relieved that here was a faith where the woman was being recognised and worshipped as a Goddess and best of all she could and did have just as much power (if not more so) than a man but just in a gentler, more subtle way, but it just was so much more understandable to me. 

When I learned about the original wife of Adam and inhabitor of Eden, not Eve, but Lilith, who cursed Adam and sent him to live in the Red Sea and give birth to babies (or something similar-sorry if it's not exact!) I loved that version. Lilith was to us a Goddess, but I later found out early Christians had been afraid of her power which is why she was cut from the bible and replaced with Eve. 

Anyway, that's enough for now.  I think this thread is a really nice idea though, us all learning about each other's religious backgrounds like this!  I mean I hope it brings us all closer together and I never would have guessed X-Ray was a Muslim!  I didn't even realise we had any Muslims on the board!

"watch out for my cousin.."

Very thought provoking, every one. I had one of those more or less Protestant families who thought church taught a moral way of living and encouraged me to find my own spiritual path, but their church was definitely the Point A which I used as the standard of judgement.

Last year I decided I was a Satanist, until I realized I could go by the philosophies LaVey used in his mock-religion without being bitter about the existence of Christianity. (Being a non-denominational heretic can offend so many more people at once, right? Just kidding.)

Jordan .

To both answers, for most of us it seems to be a cultural imperative to have faith of some kind or the other. (On my former bitterness, I don't like being told the Way Things Are without justification. As a kid, I wasn't and I think the older generations who thought it out for themselves take advantage of a child's impressionability, whether or not they intend to. For the record, I doubt science, too, as a pragmatist.).

I have found that unless you rebel from the norm, or meet someone (a family member, a bf/gf) who exposes you to something else, you basically stick with that norm. It's hard to escape, or at least examine objectively. The religion I was originally taught has been both The Best religion and The Worst religion to me at different points at my life, because of this cultural imperative.

What about if you travel, or move to a different country and experience a different culture? Is this still a form of rebellion against your early life conditioning?

Also, those who become born-again, or have mid-life changes of faith, how much is that to do with cultural bias or life experience?  

x-ray
if your back's against the wall, turn around and write on it...

rainbow - I personally think the worst answer anyone can give to a child (or adult for that matter) when asking a question about X is "Because God says so." To me that's never been an answer. YEah, it works fine from a parent/child relationship, but it doesn't work as well as we grow old between God/Religion and man.

Sometimes the answers to those question is simple "To be different" or "To stand out." Jews did circumcision because God said so. But if you look at the deeper reasoning, it was simply to be different from the norm at the time. Jews didn't eat anything unclean. There might've been health reasons for this at the time (pork isn't the best type of meat to eat for example) but the other reason is to seperate oneself from the norm. I think sometimes we forget that Judaism and Christianity wasn't always the "norm" as it often is now (maybe I shouldn't add Judaism to that). Many reasons for doing some of the stuff they do is simply to stand and to be different.

Ray - you raise a question in my head, and maybe this is what you are asking also - How many people have rejected Christiantiy (or any religion) simply because you were brought up that atmosphere? I often see many people reject religion as an adult because they had bad experience with religion as a child. So I wonder - is rejection of a religion or all religions maybe, just maybe, more of a rebellion against one's parents? Is it just a way to rebel, and yet people have rationalized it out to be something other than maybe what it is? Just a small question to throw out there. Might have to duck after that one.

Your second question is interesting. Mid-life conversions. Honestly, I think midlife conversions are often caused by life experience. You hit that 40-50 year range and you start looking back at your life, you realize in some cases that you still don't feel fulfilled and that something might be missing. You buy a sports car, still nothing. You have a fling, still nothing.  Nothing seems to fill that gap except maybe a realization that life just isn't quite right. Granted, doesn't happen to everyone, I'm sure, but mid-life conversions I would say are more about life experiences than really culture - even though culture may influence what you turn to to find that thing to fill teh hole.

Jordan .

Some interesting points there Jordan, I'm going to have a think and respond more fully later.

A couple of other questions to throw into the mix:

What about the people who rebel against God?

Also, I've heard many stories from friends who've rejected God because of something that has happened in their lives or through a larger global event or perhaps after a period of deep reflection...

One example that springs to mind is the father of a friend, who told me he became an Atheist whilst travelling through India and seeing first hand the poverty, disease and deprivation that was endemic on the streets of Calcutta, whilst 2 mins away there was the most magnificent Church, furnished with beautiful gold ornaments and lavish decorations. He said at that moment he literally felt his faith in God slip away.

x-ray
if your back's against the wall, turn around and write on it...