I guess it's the public part of it that throws me off. I agree one should practice any belief freely. God or no god.
I just don't see where a statement on the www could confirm and complete my spiritual preferences.
Spiritual has always been personal to me. After all, why should I give a fock who knows /agrees/disagrees with my belief. As long as I'm happy with it personally.
IMO there should be no promotion of religion....no evangelists..no missionaries, etc. If folks want to be christians, well, cool. And likewise with the atheist. It has become quite a commercial adventure to say the least.
Just some of my thoughts.

Interesting topic. :thumb:

First, they make no money off of this in any way... I don't see how you could get "commercial" out of it.
Again, the reason it is the way it is, is to form a community, a support system for people who normally feel quite alone. To show that they are not... it feels different on a day to day basis, I can tell you from first-hand experience.
This is simply the most efficient and a free way to do it... the least commercial, actually.
I agree with your scenario, the day religions stop trying to convert others we can have it.

If there were no missionaries or preachers etc, then no one would know about religion/s. Jesus told his followers to share the word of God, so they did. The same with all the other religions. It's a competitive market out there. Preaching began with the origin of religion so therefore forms an integral part of what religion is. If no one ever preached religion, we'd all be going to hell. ;) Or comming back again to get it right next time, or going to the dark place, or having a hot cocoa with the devil, or...or...or...

Nooooooooo.....not Billy Idol!!!!!!

(I really don't care but I wanted to make it dramatic)

Without googling I'm gonna say Kanye West.

I think if there were no missionaries then everyone would have to figure out for themselves what they believe about religion. That'd be a lot better in my opinion than believing something for no other reason than because that's what your family has believed for x number of years.

Well if that were the case, I'd say that unless you had a personal visitation from said God or some miraculous event occured in your life, you'd never believe in any God would you, or me, or anyone? In fact, you wouldn't even have a concept of what a God is.

I'm not sure that's what I meant. If for some reason it's in human nature to need a religion and a set of doctrinal beliefs, they will manifest whether or not there's an organized religion. I think that's how it occurred orignally.

Also, religions such as Buddhism and Taoism are don't even have a god per se. People believe in those religions despite this and in the absence of miraculous events as well.

That's an interesting point ck, although I'd suggest that buddhism isn't really a religion in the strict sense of the word although it does require one to look inwards to find the truth. That being said, there are a lot of wackos in every religion. I've read a series of books by a buddhist monk, one of which he claims was 'written' by his cat.

We needed religion to explain the world, now we have science.

p.s. That in NO WAY implies that science is a religion

Ah you edited before my last post. I still think it'd be for the best. My first example wasn't for religion to not exist at all. It was in accord with the earlier poster's stance on missionaries. There would still be churches, mosques and temples in my community to research, but they wouldn't pressure me into a choice and I'd feel comfortable making that choice.

As far as Buddhism goes, dictionary.com defines:

re·li·gion
–noun
1. a set of beliefs concerning the cause, nature, and purpose of the universe, esp. when considered as the creation of a superhuman agency or agencies, usually involving devotional and ritual observances, and often containing a moral code governing the conduct of human affairs.

Buddhism fits this bill, in my opinion. Reincarnation, karma and nirvana follow this definition.

Reincarnation is not a dogma of Buddhism, it just exists in many areas where people believed in it before it was there. Karma is Hindu.
Nirvana is not dogma, just an idea. There is no dogma for the afterlife, some sects teach it, but they are, again, basing their beliefs on previous religions (Tibet- Bon).
Read the Suttas before you speak... Dictionaries also call atheism a religion, as do governments.
Buddhism has no set dogma other than the diagnosis of pain and the ending of suffering, everything else is up to the individual.
If you want to call that a religion, fine, so is medicine.

We do not need evangelism, that is what bookstores and Internet searches are for.

Forgive me. I'll go back to watching TV and being mediocre at life.

ck...move over. I'll bring the chips.

denouncing something requires that you believed it at one time. Rejecting something lends it substance. (equal and opposite reaction)

Getting together to renounce Christianity seems like an assbackwards way of teaching it. While i've often taken the stance that christians are all fucked up....this seems like the same shit from the opposite direction. why bother?