Religious belief choice

I was asked the same thing, it would not let me post in the forums until I answered it.
 
I'd rather have it as a facultative choice, not as a mandatory one... Everyone as his own sensibility on the subject, I guess
 
Me too and I couldn't access any threads even afterwards. I had to reload the page a couple of times.
 
I have made this profile field compulsory. You will notice that I did not ask about anybody's specific religion (if they have one) but rather their religious category (monotheist, polytheist, etc.), which I believe is more accurate because I've met countless Christians who say they only believed in a creator God and not in the Bible itself, which for me is not Christianity at all, but more like Deism. At least this way people are going to check the definition of each category if they aren't sure where they fit.

This is mostly a forum about genetics, and therefore evolutionary biology. I have explained before that genetics and evolution are not compatible with belief in religion, and more specifically with the concept of an immortal soul, heaven, and a god that created humans "to his image" (whatever that means).

The three main monotheist religions (Judaism, Christianity and Islam) all believe that God created humans in their current form — in blatant denial of evolution or even of admixture between Homo sapiens and Neanderthals. They actually all believe in the same creation myths of Adam and Eve as this first two humans on Earth. This is also very disturbing for geneticists and scientists in general as it would mean that their children had to mate with each other, making incest not only permitted but ordained by God as the only way to create a human society! The third generation of children born of these incestuous relationships would have continued procreating incestuously with their siblings, who were also their cousins. They would have engendered a group of mostly deformed and retarded inbred people, which Jews, Christians and Muslim alike believe are their ancestors (it's written in the Torah, in the Bible and in the Quran).

I think it's only fair to forum members to know what kind of person they are interacting with.

Deism is not incompatible with genetics as it is the belief that a god or supreme being only created the universe (the Big Bang or what was already there before it if it was just one explosion within a much bigger universe or multiverse that we haven't discovered yet) but plays absolutely no role in the life of humans. Deism doesn't say that there are immortal souls and certainly not a heaven. Famous Deists include Voltaire, Thomas Paine, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, and the lesser known Ethan Allen. In fact, plenty of leading thinkers during the 18th-century Enlightenment and the American Revolution were Deists.

Pantheism is the believe that God is the universe and that we are all part of it. IMO this is just a more spiritual way of being an Atheist or Deist, as there is no separate afterlife (heaven, hell or whatever), and all life beings and inert matter are part of God/the Universe/Nature. Pantheism is just a way of renaming reality or everything that exist (Nature, the Universe) and calling it God. The belief itself is pretty much identical to Atheism. Examples of Pantheist people include Giordano Bruno, Baruch Spinoza, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Albert Einstein.

Animism is the belief that objects, places, and creatures all possess a distinct spiritual essence. It is usually found in indigenous cultures, especially among hunter-gatherers. It has been called the 'default' religious belief of humanity before the rise of civilisations. Nowadays it's still found in Africa, Papua New Guinea, Amazon tribes, and minorities across South Asia, Southeast Asia, China (mostly mountain tribes) and Mongolia. The only developed country where a a sizeable part of the population is animist is Japan with Shinto, which has influenced a lot the Japanese anime culture, and still plays an important role in everyday Japanese traditions. However a Pew Research Center survey from 2012 found that only about 3-4% of Japanese people identified Shinto as their religious affiliation (i.e. true believers). There is no religious texts or dogma in Shinto or other animist traditions. There is no concept of god or heaven in animism. All life beings have a spirit, which eventually gets reincarnated after they die. However many spirits tend to linger and need to be appeased (through offerings in shrines) or venerated (as in ancestor worship, in which the spirits of the deceased are believed to remain involved in the lives of the living).
 
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@Maciano

Maybe you made the choices complicated

In Australia as per the 2021 census, any religion which is not part of a religious institution is noted a No Religion .....
Like......... Aboriginal Dreaming religion, Animism, Deism and a few others

the census results where
Religion in Australia
  • Christianity (43.9%)
  • No religion (38.9%)
  • Unanswered (7.2%)
  • Islam (3.2%)
  • Hinduism (2.7%)
  • Buddhism (2.4%)
  • Sikhism (0.8%)
  • Other faiths (0.5%)

Note, the Australia constitution for Religion is noted as Blank, does not exist ..............basically Australian law overrides any religious rules/instructions IF it clashes with the Australian constitution
 
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