Religion Religion's of TS and why one follows the one they do.

[KilroywasNOTHere]

non denominational christian try to follow the bible as was intended in context. I can't say with a straight face I'm successful all the time or even most of the time

 

[JasonSanjo]

Atheist, with strong leanings toward Daoism and Zen, primarily in the more "modern" takes of Dudeism and Discordianism. Basically, I keep my own spiritual backyard clean and leave others to do whatever as long as they don't bother me.

In my younger years I used to debate religious people a lot (primarily Christians, secondarily Muslims) and found that they were, with a few rare exceptions here and there, woefully undereducated about the religion(s) they claimed to follow, more often than not holding beliefs that were pretty much 100% contrary to what their holy texts actually stated... and that they exceedingly rarely had ever taken the time to actually read said texts, instead just hopping onto whatever religious train their parents and/or other family members were on without thinking about it at all. I did manage to get a few people to actually sit down and read, which in most cases lead to them becoming atheist, but these days I rarely bother. You do your thing and I do mine, yeah?

One thing I did find interesting was that almost every single priest I talked to admitted (in private) that they didn't actually believe in the religion they were a priest of, and only picked their occupation because it was the easiest way they found they could help people. No idea how common that is outside my own country, though.

 

[Val the Moofia Boss]

Protestant Evangelical Christian, but I am not dismissive of other denominations. I think that there are flaws with the American Protestantism/evangelical movement, as they have rejected the traditions and hierarchies that bound the Catholic together. The state of Protestantism in America today is a sorry sight to behold.

Why I believe? To me, belief in Christ isn't just "belief"; to me it's rather logical that God is real. The way the Earth has been meticulously placed in the EXACT habitable orbit around the sun - just a few thousand miles closer and we'd be cooking, a few thousand miles further away and we'd be freezing to death. The ludicrously complicated system of the human body couldn't have possibly arisen out of nothing. The beauty of seeing green hills and the blooming flowers and the blue sky, the beauty of sunsets, the beauty of the human form... the very fact I can think. Someone created that. Someone with an unfathomable power and inhuman knowledge. Someone almighty.

As for why Christianity? What differentiates Christianity from other religions? Every other religion appeals to your ego. "You can be a good person by doing X, Y, and Z!". I find that to be rather pretentious. We are human beings. We are sinful creatures. No one has ever managed to be a perfect, wholly good person... except Jesus Christ. There was only one Christ, after all.

Christianity doesn't tell you what you want to hear. Christianity tells you that your screwed, and no "good works" you do will make up for that. But that's okay, because God has taken care of everything. You need only accept his gift.

God created us so that there might be another. Creating new life is a holy thing. God didn't want mindless robots exalting himself though; he gave Man the will to chose whether or not they want to follow Him. Man chose to disobey God and eat of the Forbidden Fruit, and as a result has become damaged and imperfect. But God still loves his creation, loves us, and has redeemed us. Any who choose to accept his gift - accept Jesus Christ as their Lord and savior, and choose to be like him - will be with him. But those who don't, for whatever reason, won't be forced to.


The Bible isn't just "a book of religious principals"; it's the truth. It documents history, miracles, and prophecies that have come to pass. And there are the Gospels, which were written for that people like us might believe. There is the gospel of Luke, a Greek doctor who didn't witness Jesus' ministry, and yet collected eyewitness testimony and came to the conclusion that he was indeed the real thing. The Christians of the Church in the first century were intelligent, educated people, and yet all the evidence seems to indicate that they actually saw something, something they were willing to die for proclaiming to be the truth.

Lastly, I think that even if you cannot find it in yourself to believe that Jesus Christ is real - that maybe this is all stupid - and that there is no hope for an existence after death, I think that you're stuck having to continue propping up Christianity anyways. The teachings of the Bible are the only way to maintain a stable society... and then I start to think "hm... these teachings didn't just come out of nowhere... I'm starting to think someone out there might have actually handed them down to us...", well, there I go again back to the idea that God is inherently logical.

 

[almostinsane]

I am a traditionalist Catholic. I believe in God and salvation through Jesus Christ His Son as told in the Gospels. The Gospels and the Epistles can be traced to the decades proceeding the Death and Resurrection of Christ and check out historically. If they had not made any supernatural claims, they would not be questioned.

I believe in the Holy Spirit Who gives life and guides the Church and her members. The Church itself is the instrument chosen by God to proclaim the Gospel and save souls. However, the hierarchy of the Church has scandalized and brutalized the faithful with failed leadership, flirtation with heresy, and the protection of pedophiles.

I do not reject Vatican II, but I believe it was poorly implemented with the Latin Mass having been shunned for the vernacular Mass, though the Mass of Paul VI was meant to be an Ordinary Mass as well. The clergy has failed to preach and defend the faith, and Pope Francis has not ended the clericalism as many had hoped, but he has protected wrong-doers and flirted with heresy.

Yet, I believe that God will restore the Church as He has done before when the clergy failed in their duties. The Truth handed down by the Apostles can be found nowhere else.

 

[Comrade Sophia]

See, I would love to discuss this more in the religion thread I started as I am very interested. To know more

Alright specifically what do you want to know?

 

[Zachowon]

Alright specifically what do you want to know?

WHat exactly about it brought you to becoming a member of it, as well as what exactly does belief in it stand for?

 

[Comrade Sophia]

WHat exactly about it brought you to becoming a member of it, as well as what exactly does belief in it stand for?

TBF most of my own religious beliefs are self-constructed and self-synthesized. I wouldn't be able to point to any one thing so: A materialist understanding of religion as self-reinforcing behaviors via ritual made me realize religion could be repurposed for more communalistic purposes. As for why specifically this system I was very influenced with early Anarchist interpretations of Genesis via mainly Proudhon and Bakunin. On the other hand I found meaning in it from Jordan B. Peterson's Jungian Archetype of The Dragon of Chaos wherein everything he dislikes is the Dragon of Chaos and everything he dislikes were things I value, I recognized this as a pseudo-Christian representation of Satan. Community and Heterodoxy are two of the things I value most, so a community and Libertarian (In the 19th century sense of the word) Satanism felt like a good way for developing a communal identity for people who are atomized by late-stage capitalism and alienated by their status as part of The Outside.

Later on during the election when I refused to vote for Biden I was called an "Accelerationist". So I started looking into Accelerationist theory to understand why this was, so there were basically two leads either James Mason style Accelerationism or Landian Accelerationism were the only two I was even aware of. I had two different leads for this, a friend of mine who used to be an Iron March/AWD/O9A fangirl or a friend of mine (now my GF) who had friends who had connections with prominent people in the Accelerationist theorysphere. This is my friend who was an O9A Fangirl:

So I did a bit more research and found out the Landian form predated the Siege-heads. So I went with that, which I learned was r/Acc or Right Accelerationism. So I wanted to find out more, learned about Mark Fisher and l/Acc. Read more and learned about Unconditional Accelerationism or u/Acc. Found out that most of */Acc was a development of both Situationalism and Cyberfeminism with Cyberfeminism being a development of Materialist Feminism and in turn Marxist Feminism. So I started learning more, made some friends learned more about the Cyber Occultic origins of Accelerationism and incorporated that into my religious beliefs.

Primarily Lilith is the focus of my worship as a Triple Goddess figure, but I also worship other feminine goddesses through rituals that help me engage in actions I feel I should be doing. Hecate's Deipnon is a ritual whereby every new moon you leave out food typically eggs or some kind of onion as a sacrifice to Hecate, the practical purpose is it was intended as food for travelers and the needy; so every new moon I gather some eggs and wild onions and cook them and put them in a wooden bowl that I take to the homeless shelter. This year I've started a new ritual, whereby first day of bow season I take a buck, butcher it, and donate the meat to the women's shelter.

It's simple but it works for myself, my girlfriends, and my friends as we're all women who are alienated by Liberal Feminism which does nothing to meaningful emancipate us. So we go even further:

 

[Fleiur]

TBF most of my own religious beliefs are self-constructed and self-synthesized. I wouldn't be able to point to any one thing so: A materialist understanding of religion as self-reinforcing behaviors via ritual made me realize religion could be repurposed for more communalistic purposes. As for why specifically this system I was very influenced with early Anarchist interpretations of Genesis via mainly Proudhon and Bakunin. On the other hand I found meaning in it from Jordan B. Peterson's Jungian Archetype of The Dragon of Chaos wherein everything he dislikes is the Dragon of Chaos and everything he dislikes were things I value, I recognized this as a pseudo-Christian representation of Satan. Community and Heterodoxy are two of the things I value most, so a community and Libertarian (In the 19th century sense of the word) Satanism felt like a good way for developing a communal identity for people who are atomized by late-stage capitalism and alienated by their status as part of The Outside.

Later on during the election when I refused to vote for Biden I was called an "Accelerationist". So I started looking into Accelerationist theory to understand why this was, so there were basically two leads either James Mason style Accelerationism or Landian Accelerationism were the only two I was even aware of. I had two different leads for this, a friend of mine who used to be an Iron March/AWD/O9A fangirl or a friend of mine (now my GF) who had friends who had connections with prominent people in the Accelerationist theorysphere. This is my friend who was an O9A Fangirl:

So I did a bit more research and found out the Landian form predated the Siege-heads. So I went with that, which I learned was r/Acc or Right Accelerationism. So I wanted to find out more, learned about Mark Fisher and l/Acc. Read more and learned about Unconditional Accelerationism or u/Acc. Found out that most of */Acc was a development of both Situationalism and Cyberfeminism with Cyberfeminism being a development of Materialist Feminism and in turn Marxist Feminism. So I started learning more, made some friends learned more about the Cyber Occultic origins of Accelerationism and incorporated that into my religious beliefs.

Primarily Lilith is the focus of my worship as a Triple Goddess figure, but I also worship other feminine goddesses through rituals that help me engage in actions I feel I should be doing. Hecate's Deipnon is a ritual whereby every new moon you leave out food typically eggs or some kind of onion as a sacrifice to Hecate, the practical purpose is it was intended as food for travelers and the needy; so every new moon I gather some eggs and wild onions and cook them and put them in a wooden bowl that I take to the homeless shelter. This year I've started a new ritual, whereby first day of bow season I take a buck, butcher it, and donate the meat to the women's shelter.

It's simple but it works for myself, my girlfriends, and my friends as we're all women who are alienated by Liberal Feminism which does nothing to meaningful emancipate us. So we go even further:

So, it's not really a belief in the supernatural then. Why not just be an atheist and live up to your standards that way?

 

[Deleted member]

Sure, I'm open to that. I can get nitpicky about these things (I'm a mathematician by training), and I seem utterly unable to make the faith jump, so fair warning, but I do hope you succeed, if that makes any sense.

This thread is sorta for that in general. Discussion of religion in anyway one can. If someone is looking to have their mind change a good way to do it honestly

Let's start with Nietzsche, whose world-view I aim to disprove:

The total nature of the world is... to all eternity chaos, not in the sense that necessity is lacking, but in that order, structure, form, beauty, wisdom, and whatever other human aesthetic notions we may have are lacking... Let us beware of attributing to it heartlessness and unreason or their opposites: it is neither perfect nor beautiful nor noble, and has no desire to become any of these... neither does it know any laws. Let us beware of saying there are laws in nature. There are only necessities. There is no one to command, no one to obey, no one to transgress... Let us beware of saying that death is the opposite of life. The living being is only a species of the dead, and a very rare species.

Now, to quote from Ms. Trent's commentary on Nietzsche in The Feminine Universe, "the Quotation above states the modern view of the universe, shared by almost everyone alive today."

She then continues, at length, with:

Certainly it is expressed more frankly--more brutally--than most people would care to put it. But this cold, void, chaotic vision of the ultimate nature of things is the underlying image of the modern world-picture. It is the foundation-stone upon which the twentieth century constructed its view of the universe; and it explains many things about the way people in current Western societies feel and behave.

For the way we see the universe is not separate from the way we see ourselves. If our cosmos is chaotic and meaningless, how can we be harmonious and our lives have true purpose? If our cosmos is cold and empty, how can we be otherwise?

Every traditional people has seen humanity and the cosmos as being radically interlinked, and maid herself a microcosm or 'little cosmos'--and conversely the cosmos itself as ultimately akin to ourselves. Our very word 'world' (wer ald) means originally 'the great man', and, of course, in the earliest times, the Cosmic Maid was conceived as feminine. We and the cosmos are related in traditional thought; are of the same Essence and the same substance. We are both intelligible and we both mean the same things.

Conversely, according to the modern view, we are but an accident in the vastness of the cosmos; we might not have been, or we might have been quite otherwise. Within the infinite galaxies we are but an insignificant speck, and within the endless vistas of cosmic time, our whole history, past, present, and future, is but a moment; and a moment of no special significance. Above all, we have nothing in common with the cosmos; it is alien to us, knows nothing of our values or aspirations--knows nothing at all, indeed, for it is but insensate matter, and as accidental and meaningless as ourselves.

When maid loses her significance in the cosmos, and the cosmos loses its significance around her, many other things are also lost. Until very recently maid walked in the knowledge that she was a little universe, and every move she made, every word she spoke, the clothes she wore and the things with which she surrounded herself all reflected this.

Picture the maid of the present moment, in loose and baggy clothes, striving always for the odd and the grotesque, or else for the casual and the careless. Does she not represent her picture of the universe? Aimless, accidental, chaotic, ultimately meaningless? Perhaps her shirt spells out some vulgar joke or advertises a commercial product. Why not? For what dignity can she aspire to: an accidental fleck floating for a brief moment in a world of random dust?

Her clothes are the clothes of self-mockery and demoralization. Her life, cut off from all sources of meaning and harmony, becomes an aimless wandering, spiced only by the endless artificial wants stimulated by the commercial system; and by those desires we share with dogs and cats, raised to the status of gods and stimulated by every means available to mass-communication.

And as our universe disintegrates from a unified, meaningful whole into a congeries of unrelated objects separated by unfathomable distances of cold black space, so our social fabric is unwoven, the ties of loyalty and love, of tradition and trust unloose, leaving each individual increasingly an isolated unit fending for herself in a cold and alien world.

Many other consequences spring from this new vision of the world as meaningless and empty--not least a loss of our old sense of responsibility toward the world. For if we are nothing to the world and the world is nothing to us; if maid is not a little world, nor the world a great maid, why should we treat her with respect? Why should we not plunder and destroy her? Once the bonds of meaning and loyalty and the dance of eternal harmony are gone, even common self-preservation, it seems, will not suffice to stop us sawing off the branch on which we sit.

We may think of ourselves as animals, and of animals as mere machines programmed for survival: but when this animal survival is all, when what have always been our specifically human beliefs and motivations have been stripped away from us, it transpires that we are not even very good at being animals, and do not greatly care about survival itself.

In this moment, we have experienced an inner revolution which placed us adrift from our psychic moorings, of an intelligent, intelligible Cosmos. This is the "Scientism" of the modern world. My contention, following that of the wiser maids of my tradition, is that Scientism merely enables a set of horrible consequences of an incorrect metaphysical revolution, a stepping away from the truth, or as Nietzsche put it:

Who gave us a sponge to wipe away the entire horizon? What did we do when we unchained this earth from its sun? Whither is it moving now? Whither are we moving now? Away from all suns... Are we not straying as through an infinite nothing? Do we not feel the breath of empty space? Has it not become colder? Is more and more night not coming on all the time?

He is of course referring to the moral night--of mass death, madness, chaos, moral despair, civilisational collapse. And we are indeed in the midst of it.

So, I'm going to start with a simple statement about how we can prove that God is real:

The Earth is at the centre of the universe.

 

[Hlaalu Agent]

So, it's not really a belief in the supernatural then. Why not just be an atheist and live up to your standards that way?

Probably, because atheism is not edgy enough for them. It is rather lackluster in that regard. And more charitably, atheism is lacking in adornment, it is always best to have supplementary belief systems. This is certainly the reason why I am considering Stoicism.

So it is either that it is not edgy enough, or is not sufficient- it is philosophically unadorned, or perhaps both. I would wager both, because that would be sufficiently chartable to her, and sufficiently track with my own understanding. You should always treat people with charity, even those you dislike.

 

[Abhorsen]

The Earth is at the centre of the universe.

I'm not sure I can buy this, But for sake of discussion, say that I do. I do want you to clarify what you mean by this though. Do you mean the physical universe, or something else?

Also, I am very stuck on the leaving of Scientism, as you call it. The issue is that I don't know that I can leave it in good faith. I do find (religious) belief systems appealing, but what I miss is anyway to honestly get from Scientism to something else. For example, a number of the arguments in the Trent Quote you provided rang at least somewhat true, in that the lack of meaning from a Nietzsche POV, but that doesn't mean it is necessarily wrong though.

Also, I'm not sure if I accept Nietzsche that just because humankind is an accident, we then owe each other nothing. I'd put forward that Kant made a good argument that by dint of our rationality, we owe each other respect of some sort, and you can build from there.

 

[Comrade Sophia]

So, it's not really a belief in the supernatural then. Why not just be an atheist and live up to your standards that way?

I believe in Magick in the Thelemic sense of "the Science and Art of causing Change to occur in conformity with Will", but if you're asking if I think Apollo is going to strike me down with his arrows, then no. But I don't really see the difference, merely I can explain how I manipulate reality and others would prefer to claim inexplicable occurrences.

Probably, because atheism is not edgy enough for them. It is rather lackluster in that regard. And more charitably, atheism is lacking in adornment, it is always best to have supplementary belief systems. This is certainly the reason why I am considering Stoicism.

So it is either that it is not edgy enough, or is not sufficient- it is philosophically unadorned, or perhaps both. I would wager both, because that would be sufficiently chartable to her, and sufficiently track with my own understanding. You should always treat people with charity, even those you dislike.

Largely accurate, most Atheists I know, in a Christian country, merely recreate a Christian moralism through the lens of Liberal Humanism. I'm a bit of an anti-Humanist and so this doesn't appeal to me.

 

[Fleiur]

I believe in Magick in the Thelemic sense of "the Science and Art of causing Change to occur in conformity with Will", but if you're asking if I think Apollo is going to strike me down with his arrows, then no. But I don't really see the difference, merely I can explain how I manipulate reality and others would prefer to claim inexplicable occurrences.

How can you affect reality with your will? Athens and Sparta both willed themselves victory, but only Sparta won. My husband wills it to be warm, but it's still winter.
I'm just curious about your reasoning there.

 

[Zachowon]

TBF most of my own religious beliefs are self-constructed and self-synthesized. I wouldn't be able to point to any one thing so: A materialist understanding of religion as self-reinforcing behaviors via ritual made me realize religion could be repurposed for more communalistic purposes. As for why specifically this system I was very influenced with early Anarchist interpretations of Genesis via mainly Proudhon and Bakunin. On the other hand I found meaning in it from Jordan B. Peterson's Jungian Archetype of The Dragon of Chaos wherein everything he dislikes is the Dragon of Chaos and everything he dislikes were things I value, I recognized this as a pseudo-Christian representation of Satan. Community and Heterodoxy are two of the things I value most, so a community and Libertarian (In the 19th century sense of the word) Satanism felt like a good way for developing a communal identity for people who are atomized by late-stage capitalism and alienated by their status as part of The Outside.

Later on during the election when I refused to vote for Biden I was called an "Accelerationist". So I started looking into Accelerationist theory to understand why this was, so there were basically two leads either James Mason style Accelerationism or Landian Accelerationism were the only two I was even aware of. I had two different leads for this, a friend of mine who used to be an Iron March/AWD/O9A fangirl or a friend of mine (now my GF) who had friends who had connections with prominent people in the Accelerationist theorysphere. This is my friend who was an O9A Fangirl:

So I did a bit more research and found out the Landian form predated the Siege-heads. So I went with that, which I learned was r/Acc or Right Accelerationism. So I wanted to find out more, learned about Mark Fisher and l/Acc. Read more and learned about Unconditional Accelerationism or u/Acc. Found out that most of */Acc was a development of both Situationalism and Cyberfeminism with Cyberfeminism being a development of Materialist Feminism and in turn Marxist Feminism. So I started learning more, made some friends learned more about the Cyber Occultic origins of Accelerationism and incorporated that into my religious beliefs.

Primarily Lilith is the focus of my worship as a Triple Goddess figure, but I also worship other feminine goddesses through rituals that help me engage in actions I feel I should be doing. Hecate's Deipnon is a ritual whereby every new moon you leave out food typically eggs or some kind of onion as a sacrifice to Hecate, the practical purpose is it was intended as food for travelers and the needy; so every new moon I gather some eggs and wild onions and cook them and put them in a wooden bowl that I take to the homeless shelter. This year I've started a new ritual, whereby first day of bow season I take a buck, butcher it, and donate the meat to the women's shelter.

It's simple but it works for myself, my girlfriends, and my friends as we're all women who are alienated by Liberal Feminism which does nothing to meaningful emancipate us. So we go even further:

I am a follower of ancient Roman. Religio Romana. I mainly follow Bellona, Mars, and Minerva. Why, for being a soldier I try to bring as much fortune to myself and others through the rituals I could.

I have friends who are more traditional Satanists, I also have more traditional Wiccan friends. You seem to be a in-between tjem all in a sense.

I really liked hearing this and would love to discuss more.
Why did you choose Hecate and one of her rituals?

My rituals generally revolve around bettering my self in my job and the protection for those I am with and swore to protect. I am in intel, and so Minerva is perfect for that, but as someone who craves for war, I follow Bellona. To toe them and keep them together in a whole package Mars equals out and is for the core values I see in the military.

My only issue is it is not easy for me to follow my religion easily here because of being in Korea currently.

 

[Comrade Sophia]

How can you affect reality with your will? Athens and Sparta both willed themselves victory, but only Sparta won. My husband wills it to be warm, but it's still winter.
I'm just curious about your reasoning there.

The idea is that the actions we will ourselves to do through our beliefs and through ritual which can be as simple as training count as a manipulation of reality. My veneration of Artemis Orthia helps me maintain hunting, archery, and marksmanship skills I've developed all my life. Artemis Orthia makes me a successful huntress because I uphold rituals to venerate her which translates into training skills that ensure I am a successful huntress.

I am a follower of ancient Roman. Religio Romana. I mainly follow Bellona, Mars, and Minerva. Why, for being a soldier I try to bring as much fortune to myself and others through the rituals I could.

I have friends who are more traditional Satanists, I also have more traditional Wiccan friends. You seem to be a in-between tjem all in a sense.

I really liked hearing this and would love to discuss more.
Why did you choose Hecate and one of her rituals?

My rituals generally revolve around bettering my self in my job and the protection for those I am with and swore to protect. I am in intel, and so Minerva is perfect for that, but as someone who craves for war, I follow Bellona. To toe them and keep them together in a whole package Mars equals out and is for the core values I see in the military.

My only issue is it is not easy for me to follow my religion easily here because of being in Korea currently.

Hecate is a very common triple goddess, especially appropriate for my purposes as a goddess of crossroads and doorways she's a good representative of liminality, which being transgender and an */Acc adjacent individual is appealing.

I'm a literally militant Feminist so Bellona has a place in my rituals as well. I uphold the dies sanguinis, but as nature did not see fit to have me bleed on a monthly cycle I do so myself every 24th day of the month (I'm into hematolagnia as well so the tools I use for that serve this purpose as well), these are typically the days I set aside to do tactical drills and maintenance tests on all my arms.

My beliefs and rituals are my own and each goddess I venerate is chosen specifically because I feel they represent my ideal of a dark and militant femininity which will not be controlled or tamed, who will not ask for her freedom, she will take it from her oppressor when she tears their jugular out with tooth and nail if she has to.

 

[Zachowon]

The idea is that the actions we will ourselves to do through our beliefs and through ritual which can be as simple as training count as a manipulation of reality. My veneration of Artemis Orthia helps me maintain hunting, archery, and marksmanship skills I've developed all my life. Artemis Orthia makes me a successful huntress because I uphold rituals to venerate her which translates into training skills that ensure I am a successful huntress.

Hecate is a very common triple goddess, especially appropriate for my purposes as a goddess of crossroads and doorways she's a good representative of liminality, which being transgender and an */Acc adjacent individual is appealing.

I'm a literally militant Feminist so Bellona has a place in my rituals as well. I uphold the dies sanguinis, but as nature did not see fit to have me bleed on a monthly cycle I do so myself every 24th day of the month (I'm into hematolagnia as well so the tools I use for that serve this purpose as well), these are typically the days I set aside to do tactical drills and maintenance tests on all my arms.

My beliefs and rituals are my own and each goddess I venerate is chosen specifically because I feel they represent my ideal of a dark and militant femininity which will not be controlled or tamed, who will not ask for her freedom, she will take it from her oppressor when she tears their jugular out with tooth and nail if she has to.

All good to know. I can understand the choices.
The person who got me into it, she is a Wiccan and has Demeter and Hecate as her goddess. I cant remember the God she chose.

She did a lot more stuff then I did. But she also had been into it A lot longer then me.

For me, Minerva and Mars are the ones I have rituals and prayers to the most. While Bellona is once a month to every other month. Mainlt when I am doing Army things. Mars is for normal life for the kist part, and Minerva is for my daily job.
I break them down to when I am able to do things of course. My life is run by the Army after all.

For me, they all stand for my life as a Soldier and how I will go to any length to defend my brothers and sisters on arms, as well as those back home. Be it through my blood or others. All three are deities of war in some way and are the reason I go for them over others.

I also favor the Romans in war over the Greeks.

 

[Nikkolas]

If I am anything, it's Buddhist, specifically Pure Land Japanese Shin Buddhism. I'm probably too agnostic and temperamental to really count, though. All religions require an element of Faith - there is no proving rebirth is a thing and there is no proving a Christian soul exists. These are matters of faith and you either have it or you don't. But I do try, to the extent I am able, to put my faith in the Gautama Buddha, Quan Yin and Amitabha.

Buddhist metaphysics and underlying ideas also make sense to me, although I am interested in other theories like Schopenhauer's.

 

[Jormungandr]

Atheist here.

If there is a deity of some type out there, or many deities, they're nothing like how we humans believe them to be. I'm not saying "Eldritch", but definitely not what current religions believe them to be. Hell, they're probably Orange and Green-in-mentality abominations that can't be perceived by us without our brains dribbling out of all our orifices (including our rectums).

As for religions themselves? All bunk, to me.

Every religion, like the world's language families, can be traced back to another religion, and/or elements of it traced back to something else that was frankly stolen by opportunistic invaders or through cultural assimilation.

For example, the current various splinters of Christianity scattered about the world? Came from one source and stole a shit ton of things from other religions (such a European paganism and Norse traditions/religions): said "One Source" (the Christianity variant/origin practiced in Roman times) in itself came from Judaism, which also spawned Islam, in itself came from ancient Canaanite religions (Yahweh was one god among many): Canaanite religions influenced or spawned other ancient religions, including Egyptian and Greek (and the latter eventually Roman, which further spread and mixed with pagan faiths, and also mixed with Egyptian deities).

Hell, Aphrodite was originally a form of Ishtar that hopped across from islands from the Fertile Crescent, mutating as she did. Artemis was originally a mountain spring goddess in Eastern Europe/North-East Greece before being folded into the current Greek pantheon (who then became Diana to the Romans) as Apollo's twin.

Hell, Chaos and the Primordials, the very origin story of Greece-Roman mythology, were lifted straight from Fertile Crescent faiths' pantheons!

That being said, while I do think Christianity and other religions are crocks of shit, I do understand, agree with, and support the good social bonds it creates (family, friendship, support, et cetera), the role it has in Western society (even if I think a lot of the restrictions are archaic and outdated), and the morals that stories in books like the Bible try to impart are valid ones (e.g. don't be a dick to your neighbors, work hard, vengeance can backfire badly, et cetera), even though they're just fables to me.

 

[Zachowon]

Atheist here.

If there is a deity of some type out there, or many deities, they're nothing like how we humans believe them to be. I'm not saying "Eldritch", but definitely not what current religions believe them to be. Hell, they're probably Orange and Green-in-mentality abominations that can't be perceived by us without our brains dribbling out of all our orifices (including our rectums).

As for religions themselves? All bunk, to me.

Every religion, like the world's language families, can be traced back to another religion, and/or elements of it traced back to something else that was frankly stolen by opportunistic invaders or through cultural assimilation.

For example, the current various splinters of Christianity scattered about the world? Came from one source and stole a shit ton of things from other religions (such a European paganism and Norse traditions/religions): said "One Source" (the Christianity variant/origin practiced in Roman times) in itself came from Judaism, which also spawned Islam, in itself came from ancient Canaanite religions (Yahweh was one god among many): Canaanite religions influenced or spawned other ancient religions, including Egyptian and Greek (and the latter eventually Roman, which further spread and mixed with pagan faiths, and also mixed with Egyptian deities).

Hell, Aphrodite was originally a form of Ishtar that hopped across from islands from the Fertile Crescent, mutating as she did. Artemis was originally a mountain spring goddess in Eastern Europe/North-East Greece before being folded into the current Greek pantheon (who then became Diana to the Romans) as Apollo's twin.

Hell, Chaos and the Primordials, the very origin story of Greece-Roman mythology, were lifted straight from Fertile Crescent faiths' pantheons!

That being said, while I do think Christianity and other religions are crocks of shit, I do understand, agree with, and support the good social bonds it creates (family, friendship, support, et cetera), the role it has in Western society (even if I think a lot of the restrictions are archaic and outdated), and the morals that stories in books like the Bible try to impart are valid ones (e.g. don't be a dick to your neighbors, work hard, vengeance can backfire badly, et cetera), even though they're just fables to me.

Which is actually why I follow greco-roman religion as well as Christianity as they are all based off of that back then.

 

[Guncannon]

Every religion, like the world's language families, can be traced back to another religion, and/or elements of it traced back to something else that was frankly stolen by opportunistic invaders or through cultural assimilation.

For example, the current various splinters of Christianity scattered about the world? Came from one source and stole a shit ton of things from other religions (such a European paganism and Norse traditions/religions)

Yuletide > Christmas, change my view 😁