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Originally Posted by Gilda
For context, I'm a religious person myself, a Unitarian Christian.
The "Old man in the sky" conception of God is one that's taken from artistic and pop culture representations of the Christian God, and isn't actually a core Christian concept, though many Christians believe this due to being one hour a week worshippers.
Nobody has a monopoly on morality. Regardless of where the idea originates, a person who doesn't steal from others is behaving in a moral way. Whether that comes from a pragmatic analysis of costs and benefits, a belief in the Ten Commandments, or the Confucian code of ethics, it's a moral belief and a moral action.
Christians, theists, deists, non-theists, polytheists, there is no one group that has a monopoly on morals or ethics. There are many paths to arrive at the same place.
What I think of you as a person is going to depend on how you treat me, yourself, and others, on the morality that is demonstrated by your actions and not a whit by the origin of that morality.
No group is inherently superior to any other simply based on status.
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Glad to hear what you have to say.
I have to tell you, growing up in a Christian home and having heated debates with many other Christians regarding who gets into heaven and why (if you don't accpet Jesus, etc., you're not going to make it, regardless).
But my real point goes to the first paragraph I quoted above: I know of no Christians that doesn't believe in in the basic dogma. If you believe different, hats off to you. I did know of a religion prof my wife had when she went back school. He was a baptist minister kicked out of the church for performing gay weddings. He espoused "intelligent faith." That's almost an oxymoron like rap music or military intelligence, but I get what he meant.
I believe in a supreme force, maybe not a being, but not in Christianity any more. We're all connected through some kind of energy, religious, agnostic or atheist. And I certianly think you can believe what you do and that's fine as long as you're a nice person.