Originally Posted by: Tonja_ReneeIt is stated in the posting guidelines of this forum that Political and Religious discussions are not allowed.

Tread very lightly as warnings and/or banning could be possible for participating in a thread like this.

Hm, I wonder why... And that is not sarcasm.

As long as people are respectable and remain civil, wheres the problem? They can simply ban the ones that get out of line, easy enough I would think.

Anyway, I don't have a religious affiliation. In society I would be considered an atheist.

Which automatically brings me to an immediate point, why does there have to be a name or word for a group of people for something in which you are not?

Is there a word for somebody who in not a guitarist/musician? Is there a word for somebody who doesn't have blond hair? Is there a term for not being a mechanic? No there isnt, why does there have to be a word or a name for not believing that there is the big guy upstairs?

Over all these years, the atheist term has became something that has such a negative connotation among society. Such as if one who would be considered an atheist must be immoral, or somebody who uses drugs, or he must be a criminal etc. I don't like saying I am an atheist because I know some people automatically stick me in one of those groups, outrageous!

I have been studying Objectivism for awhile. It was a philosophy that best suited me, because everything I read on the philosophy was how I was raised to begin with. But once I started studying it, it solidified what I already believed, it gave me essentially a foundation, an answer to why I believed what I always have.

One thing it teaches is that you don't need a religion to have morality. Man needs to be moral to simply work with other humans in order to progress in this world. That's a very simplistic way of putting it when it comes to the philosophy. Trust me, there's a lot more to it than that :p