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Post by nucleusofswarm on Apr 27, 2018 23:48:35 GMT
This is not a thread on the merits of organized religion. Instead, this is a quesiton of what your faith, if you believe in something, really means for you and why it's special. Even if you're not religious, it could be faith in your family, your community, anything.
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Post by Timelord007 on Apr 28, 2018 6:59:53 GMT
My faith comes from my nan who made me a better person, as a bipolar/manic depressive my moods can change rapidly & I'm not always the easiest person to live with, my nans love & faith in me stops me crossing over the line when a big part of me wants to.
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Post by theotherjosh on May 1, 2018 12:42:19 GMT
I was raised a Christian, but I was already moving away from the faith by the time I got married. As the old joke goes, what’s the difference between an atheist and an agnostic? An agnostic still gets invited to parties.
I started calling myself an atheist on my first day as a married man. I had a Darwin-fish bumper sticker on my car at the time. Not because of any political statement, but because my Dungeons & Dragons character at the time was named Darwin, and a friend bought it for me on a lark. My wife mentioned to me that one of the bridesmaids had seen the bumper sticker and remarked that she had seen another bumper sticker where a Darwin fish was being eaten by a much larger fish named “Truth”.
I was gobsmacked. I really didn’t know that there was a sizable contingent of people who didn’t accept evolution. It was as if someone told me they thought the sun spun around the earth. People just knew better these days. And since I was already an atheist in all but name, I figured I might as well embrace the title.
That’s my roundabout way of saying that I haven’t had any kind of religious faith in years. When I think of faith, I think of people. I think of the Doctor’s faith in The Curse of Fenric, how his faith in his friends is the talisman that drives the monsters away. “Susan, Barbara, Ian…”
I think the reason that Doctor Who, and in particular the era of the Seventh Doctor and Ace, holds such enduring appeal for me is that it lines up with my ideals. I have faith in the belief that the strong have to stand up for the weak until they can stand up for themselves. Beneath everything else, that’s how I see Ace and Seven’s relationship, and that’s what I believe in.
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Post by iainmclaughlin on May 3, 2018 15:04:10 GMT
Faith... it's an interesting thing. I was raised as a Catholic, had rules laid down, was told that I was nothing, that I should fear god, fear priests... because I was born in 1967 and in the 70s, the church still had enormous power. I went to a Catholic primary school where I was belted (corporal punishment with a leather strap for those of you born in more enlightened times) for asking where god came from. Apparently that was an impertinent question. I'm 51 now and I've still never heard a good answer to that question, by the way. The priest would tour the school every Monday, terrifying the various classes. He'd interrogate us to find if we had been to mass or if we had been paying attention. One Monday I wasn't able to tell him what colour his vestments had been. So I got the belt, and then got the belt for trying to explain why I couldn't explain. And when I eventually blurted out that it was because we'd moved house and I went to a different church, I got the belt again for not having told them - though they'd given me the belt when I tried to tell them. When we got a new headmistress the year after, the priest's Monday visits ended and we loved her for that. Why am I mentioning this? Because all of that gave me a jaded attitude to religion by my early teens, and ultimately, after a few false starts, I walked away for good. The moment of revelation for me was a Christmas Day in church, surrounded by people I knew well and liked a good deal, and I realised that I didn't believe a word of it. So, I was now an atheist with no faith in religion, but I was going through some interesting times - dealing with my father's death, my mother's illness, a broken relationship... and what I discovered was that I had faith in humanity and in the basic decency and kindness of people. That is my faith - kindness, decency, love and that I find those things in my fellow man. The majority of people anyway. It boils down to 'be kind and help each other'. If we do that we create a better world.
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lidar2
Castellan
You know, now that you mention it, I actually do rather like Attack of the Cybermen ...
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Post by lidar2 on May 3, 2018 15:59:38 GMT
What is faith to me?
I used to think it was an intellectual assent to the propositions of religion and religion was about keeping the rules or, at the very least, trying your best and hoping it was enough. That never particularly appealed. Then I attended a lecture on the Reformation (as part of an undergraduate degree in Modern History) and heard, for the first time ever, the notion that salvation is by faith alone. This threw me and I realised that my conception of faith - intellectual assent - was not what the Bible meant by faith. So I started digging deeper.
I ended up reading a lot on Calvinism and predestination, which I really struggled with. In the end this is as good a definition of faith as I could find:
Ephesians 2:8-9 "For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast."
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Post by tardybox on May 8, 2018 14:32:34 GMT
What is faith to me? I used to think it was an intellectual assent to the propositions of religion and religion was about keeping the rules or, at the very least, trying your best and hoping it was enough. That never particularly appealed. Then I attended a lecture on the Reformation (as part of an undergraduate degree in Modern History) and heard, for the first time ever, the notion that salvation is by faith alone. This threw me and I realised that my conception of faith - intellectual assent - was not what the Bible meant by faith. So I started digging deeper. I ended up reading a lot on Calvinism and predestination, which I really struggled with. In the end this is as good a definition of faith as I could find: Ephesians 2:8-9 "For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast." Ironically, that's very similar to my own journey. I grew up Christian, but always kind of felt that faith was something that I had simply by virtue of my belonging to a Christian family and (paradoxically) something that I had to rely on myself and my own 'good deeds' to keep up. Realizing that the Bible teaches faith as a gift and not something one earns completely upended my view of faith and really made it my own.
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Deleted
Deleted Member
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Post by Deleted on May 8, 2018 18:10:54 GMT
I only have faith in myself. Nothing or no one else can I depend on but myself.
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