Welcome to Gaia! ::

In preface, I spent three years on our school's speech and debate team, and most, if not all, of our debaters were agnostic, if not outright aethistic. This led to some interesting late night bus ride conversations and provided an interesting sounding board for my religious rationales.

It also left me with an interesting, if confusing question.

what do you think is overall more important: Faith, spirituality or organized religion?

As an AP history student I see instances time and again where the Catholic Church (my church) exercised their power with cruelty and corruption, yet I find little evidence there to shake my faith.

I spent 10 years as a student in a Catholic school and sometmes I find the God my teachers taught to us, the kind, loving, forgiving father, is not the God invoked by the religious fanatics of today. I am highly spiritual and I work everyday to build and reaffirm my faith, but I've always seen church more as a foundation for its members to fall back on. (something I rarely feel myself in our community.)

So how strongly do you all feel about organized religion, especially in today's rushed society, and what do you hink it's impact on spirituality is?

(I apologise for any typos. Be kind, dear friends.)

Meh, sorry, didn't expalin that very well.

What I meant by the organized religion comment is that, from time to time, I feel so awed just standing outside on an island on in a forest (we have both nearby) as the beautiful intricacy of the world and I can't help but think that, as calming and comforting as church can be, it should be a little more like the awesome feeling of just being.

So really, I was asking how overall important church is to your religios beliefs. I like to go, but I won't like, I don't even come close to making it every Sunday. But I don't feel like that makes other moments any less divine.

I hope that helps.