Poll: What is your religion?

In recent decades, people (for whatever reason) decided to try and restart paganism--if you meet a "pagan" today, they're actually following one of these reconstituted religions.

I personally have trouble taking neopaganism seriously, largely because I've never known any serious neopagans, only disaffected suburban teenage girls who wanted some excuse, however flimsy, to be nonconformists. I've known people who took religion seriously, and I've known neopagans, but I've never met anyone in the intersection set. So my perception of neopaganism is quite dismissive.

If you ask him how he's doing he's always doing great. If you ask him how you're doing he always say you're doing great. I've asked him this immediately after doing something I knew was pretty stupid and God seemed unconcerned even though I asking him hoping to get corrected and some guidance on the issue. He told me that he wasn't too worried about it.

The actual sensation is pretty weird. I'm not the most gifted person at hearing from God but if you ask him to he'll talk to you and say some pretty cool things. I freely admit that I could be a crazy person talking to myself of course. The reason I believe otherwise is that I'm not the crazy person type and I hear weird things from God. I'm always expecting him to be mad at me or disappointed but he never is. The story of God's people is that they always expect one thing and he's working another way. It's the Wire when Marlo says "You want it to be one way-but it's the other way."

I want it to be religious way (i.e. doing things to make God happy or at least less angry) but God has things setup another way. If you have a kid you can sort of understand but it seems like God sees us like we see our own children. I'm happy watching my daughter do just about anything and I think God is happy seeing me do just about anything too. Yesterday my two year old daughter comforted two crying boys and cheered one of them up pretty well. She really cares how people are doing and wants to make them feel better. I think God reacts the same way I did when I saw her do something good-he couldn't be happier just like I couldn't have been happier. She didn't earn my love there but she made me very proud of her.

Hope that helps a little :)

- It would be great if this were true (Yay afterlife/alternate worlds!)

- No one can provide any convincing evidence for existence.

- It is impossible to prove nonexistence.

- The truth of this matter has absolutely no influence on my life. i.e. focus on other things should take priority before focus on this, although it is always fun to read about and debate existence.

To use a source I'm sure you know, in I Corinthians 13 there is an apparent contradiction: even if you act piously, you act in vain if if you don't feel love. The religious experience is emotional and visceral, not logical. It comes before codes and rules. From this perspective, Pascal's Wager is irrelevant: if you don't follow a moral code because you believe in it, then you won't fool anyone, much less an omniscient God.

But I'm always amused at how religious people always drop back to arguing the existence of God. The existence of God by itself is a useless metaphysical claim. There's the physical universe. I get that. We can use science to figure out the physical universe. I get that. If you attach a caption to the universe saying "by the way, an all-powerful deity made this", how exactly does that matter?

Religion gets the real work done when it says, "the all-powerful deity doesn't want you buggering other men or eating shellfish." OK, you started with an unproven metaphysical claim, and then used it to try and convince me to change my dietary and sexual habits. You've gone from vacuous to inventing unproven reasons not to bugger other men or eat shellfish! That's the thing about religion I question the most! It doesn't matter whether God exists. Once you start making actionable claims that rest on the idea of the Almighty approving or disapproving of my behavior, that's where I actually start to disagree with you.