Do they believe in God?

1) You are a sick fuck for reviving a years-old topic just to spew your ravings.

2) Your remarks are so ungrammatical, incoherent and just plain stupid (atheists really believe in god, and all that crap) that I have a hard time believing you are not mentally ill and/or extremely intoxicated.

3) Your remarks about religion are not just bigoted and intolerant, they are also theologically unsound. You don't appear to know much, if anything, about the meaning of religious practices. Just one example: your claims about baptism being a prerequisite for truly believing in Jesus is incredibly unsound - not in the last place because baptism is about purification before god, something that has nothing to do with Jesus, who is said to have required baptism himself.

If you want to go and arrogantly proclaim how your faith is the only one that's right and true, then you should at least make sure that you actually know what your faith entails. You fail all across the board. As do so many reactionary pushers of bastardized Christianity.

If anything, you prove that starry-eyed judgmental religiosity is the domain of the mentally unstable and intellectually challenged.

[QUOTE] [b]jrowe1994 wrote:[/b]

did you know that atheists believe in God as well because in atheism they say they don't believe in God but yet they actually do they just don't want to believe that they believe that that's why atheism is foolish and doesn't make any sense.[/QUOTE]

We’re now enlightened! *That’s* why *atheism* is foolish & doesn’t make any sense... thanks for making me do an actual laugh out loud! xxx

After the slight derailment by a fundamentalist.....

Montserrat Caballe is on printed record as saying Freddie believed in God, but wasn't religious. The quote I think is something like she was raised a Catholic, and they spoke about that, and in that conversation Freddie said he believed in a higher being. I'm *not* sure in what context he said it, and probably never intended for the conversation to be made public. It could even have been an off-the-cuff remark. Jim Hutton did say Freddie said prayers before he went to sleep at night in his last days.

John's youngest son is a staunch Catholic and so is John's wife. Cameron is a Catholic LGBT activist which is not as unusual as it sounds but isn't common. That doesn't speak to John's personal views on religion, but it's interesting nonetheless.

Roger, who knows what he believes in, but he's quoted in Magic Years during One Vision recording session as saying "I don't like religion it tends to fuck people up", and on the Happiness? EPK he says he hates very religious people, - probably meaning he hates it when the very religious try to get on their high horse with him or countries ruled by religion make laws to oppress people, and all of these things that religion is very good at doing. Whether he believes or has believed or even thought of the existence of God as a possibility, who knows.

Brian as far as I know hasn't said he believes in God, but he says he finds it likely that some kind of God exists.

As far as I know not one of them is religious

I must say I've never subscribed to the corpse on a stick theory. Responsible for causing misery and suffering for countless millions through the ages.

Still, not as much as the paedo-worshipping death cult that calls itself Islam.

Which god? Odin? Yahweh? Allah? Zeus? Osiris?

Mentioning someone in a song doesn't mean you worship them and doesn't mean you believe they're real - as far as I'm concerned, whoever penned the lyrics to the 'Pokerap' doesn't believe in Pikachu or Jigglypuff, they just wrote some stuff for imaginary characters and that may very well be what Frederick did on 'Mustapha', 'Great King Rat', 'Mad the Swine', etc.

John's wife is/was a Catholic, which may explain why at least some of their kids are as well. John himself may have been agnostic or atheist or whatever...

Brian, as far as he's said in interviews and stuff, seems to be more of a pantheist or perhaps a deist. By the way, he tends to use expressions such as 'oh, my God' and stuff, but that doesn't mean he actually believes in any personal god (let alone the one worshipped by Jewish and Christian believers), it's a figure of speech - if I say that yesterday was Friday, it doesn't follow that I believe in (or worship) the goddess Frigg, Odin's wife.

Frederick was raised in one faith but that doesn't mean he observed it, his funeral may have been chosen according to his parents' beliefs rather than his own (as it's often the case with funerals - mine may very well be a Catholic mass even though I despite that horrible religion). Whatever Montserrat said could've also been twisted, either deliberately or subconsciously, either by her or by whoever printed the interview, etc. Quote-mining is a common phenomenon: he could've said something like 'if there's some sort of higher power I hope it helps me get through this' (he wouldn't say that, but it's just a hypothetical example) and then Montserrat could've misread it as 'hey, he's a believer!' (also keep in mind her English wasn't flawless, nor was his Spanish/Catalan, therefore loads of stuff could've been lost in translation). I'm not saying Frederick didn't believe in anything supernatural, I'm saying an isolated quote doesn't constitute sound evidence either way.

As for Roger... again, hard to tell. You can easily hate religion but still believe in a higher power (which could make him a deist, although not necessarily), and you can easily use expressions such as 'Good Lord!' without necessarily believing in any specific 'Lord' (just as you can say 'oh, shit' without necessarily referring to any specific shit). He could be deist, pantheist, atheist, apatheist, anti-theist... only he (and those who know him personally) would know for sure and it may have changed throughout his life.

Sebastian, your remarks about deism are uncharacteristically offhand and inaccurate. Deism specifically refers to the concept of a creator-god who is responsible for setting in motion all the mechanics of the universe, but does not have any involvement with the universe after the moment of creation. Many forms of believing in a higher power of some sort exist that cannot accurately be referred to as either deism or theistic religion, for example animism.

Also, anti-theism and atheism are functionally identical - anti-theism literally meaning "the movement against god" and atheism "the movement of no god". The trouble arises when atheists seek to shift the definition in order to claim that agnostics are really atheists, which is not just arrogant and disrespectful, but above all bad semantics.

Oh, and while we're at it with semantics - Allah = Elohim = Jahweh. All Abrahamic religions share the same deity, which is also the reason that Jews and Christians are not considered godless by Islamic standards (as opposed to, for instance, Hindus), and that Islam and Judaism were not usually regarded as equally 'barbaric' as other religions by Europeans throughout medieval and modern history.

If you want to get really deep down and into it, the use of the term "Elohim" in the Old Testament, and especially the context in which it is used, makes it very difficult to call Judaism, and by consequence Christianity and Islam, strictly monotheistic, as it would be translated as something like "the kin of El", with El being a well-documented pre-Judaic Semite deity, and occurs in a number of passages that clearly imply a plural number of gods (Genesis 6:1 speaks of "The Sons of the Gods" who beget children with the daughters of man. Later theologians changed it to "the Sons of God", but aside from being grammatically wrong, it doesn't fix the problem. So much for believing that Jesus was God's only son and maintaining scriptural literalism and inerrancy at the same time, protestants...

Stick to facts, names, numbers, memory and other autistic abilities of yours, Sebastian. Leave reasoning and intuition to the less gifted general population.
It's literally painful to watch you thinking on abstract notions.

[QUOTE] [b]thomasquinn 32989 wrote:[/b]

Sebastian, your remarks about deism are uncharacteristically offhand and inaccurate.[/QUOTE]

I mentioned deism three times:

- 'Brian, as far as he's said in interviews and stuff, seems to be more of a pantheist or perhaps a deist.': There I'm not defining or trying to define 'deism' in any way, nor am I contradicting what you mention. I'm just saying he *perhaps* may be a deist (the use of that word, 'perhaps', implies that he could also very well be something else).

- 'You can easily hate religion but still believe in a higher power (which would make him a deist)': I concede that it wouldn't necessarily make him a deist, so I could've (should've) been more precise there. A deist doesn't necessarily hate religion and not everyone who hates religion but still believes in a higher power is a deist. It's one of the possibilities and, again, he (or anybody else) could be a deist without necessarily hating religion, etc.

- 'He could be deist, pantheist, atheist, apatheist, anti-theist...': I'm not trying to define any of those, just listing the possibilities. The ellipsis implies there are, as you correctly point out, other labels which could be used and which don't necessarily correspond to those.

[QUOTE] [b]thomasquinn 32989 wrote:[/b]

All Abrahamic religions share the same deity[/QUOTE]

It could be argued that they share the same title for that deity (with some translations here and there) but it's not the same. To some, it's an all-loving creator who hates gays and non-baptised; to others, it's an all-loving creator who drowns everyone; to others, it's an all-loving creator who's alright with child rape as long as it's without a condom; to others, it's an all-loving creator whose words have been twisted; to others, it's an all-loving almighty creator who couldn't foresee Adam's betrayal; and so on.

[QUOTE] [b]aristide1 wrote:[/b]

Stick to facts, names, numbers, memory[/QUOTE]

Why should I do what you say?

[QUOTE] [b]aristide1 wrote:[/b]

and other autistic abilities of yours, Sebastian.[/QUOTE]

I'm not autistic (as far as I know), but the fact you're trying to use that as an insult reveals (yet again) what an imbecile you are.

[QUOTE] [b]aristide1 wrote:[/b]

Leave reasoning and intuition to the less gifted general population.[/QUOTE]

Anybody is entitled to use reasoning and intuition. Even imbeciles (e.g. you).

[QUOTE] [b]aristide1 wrote:[/b]

It's literally painful to watch you thinking on abstract notions.[/QUOTE]

You didn't watch me thinking, you watched what I wrote after/while thinking and you characteristically resorted to idiotic claims, again.

[QUOTE] [b]Sebastian wrote:[/b]

... he tends to use expressions such as 'oh, my God' and stuff, but that doesn't mean he actually believes in any personal god (let alone the one worshipped by Jewish and Christian believers), it's a figure of speech - if I say that yesterday was Friday, it doesn't follow that I believe in (or worship) the goddess Frigg, Odin's wife.

... you can easily use expressions such as 'Good Lord!' without necessarily believing in any specific 'Lord' (just as you can say 'oh, shit' without necessarily referring to any specific shit). .[/QUOTE]
Only someone with a slight mental retard could insist on extensively explaining that 'Good Lord!' and 'Oh, my God!' are not the expression of believing.
Or someone who thinks the others are mentally retarded.

'Extensively'? The fragments you quoted add up to 92 words. That's less than a minute and a half of my time, which is 2.5% of an hour, 0.10% of a day, 0.014% of a week, 0.0034% of a 30-day month, 0.00028538812% of a non-leap year. Not extensive by any means.

Wow, not really the greatest exchange of words ever, was it?

Thanks for the info, Thomasquinn. While I'm not fond of religious texts, thank you for pointing out more inconsistencies with modern translations, and piquing my interest in such things again. (If only for knowledge to defend myself against groups professing to be "this" or "that" flock and not adhering to said tenets) I figure people ought to invoke such things as a basis for "righting" the wrong about said tenets. If only there was some way we could use the brains of Spock and Captain Kirk to foil the ignorance of the Red State USA with regards to laws, religion, environment etc that invoked the bible.. since they disgustingly wave that thing around all the time.


As for whether the band believe in any higher power, who knows?

I feel like the two still performing "want to believe" and do so so much that it becomes a quality of their work. Not simply Brian's phrase "Adam's a gift from God" (which he capitalizes) but in references to (us), "We're all God's people". (it's been used in social media not relating to the song specifically). Also Brian's insistence upon and admiration of studying the cosmos. I feel he's smart enough to know that we may not entirely comprehend things as they are, nor a nexus point. Yet his admiration of creatures great and small, phenomena, and consideration for animals and somewhat for the environment (Exactly how much time CAN someone devote to numerous causes while being 72 and touring?) shows a man concerned either with the well being of "humanity" (i.e. people with compassion) as opposed to the lot of the rest. However much of this is debatable to nature vs nurture environmental causes, who's to say (i.e. a broke ass person in another country who repeatedly kills endangered animals for $, while their country also plunders the tax coffers for its own elected bodies... who knows) - who's to say whether his decision to be a good person is geared in his surroundings and good success and wishing the world to reflect that.. .or whether its geared toward selfless goals.

Anyways.. I found this looking for the GOING SLIGHTLY MAD parody.... this was an interesting thread.

Sorry for reviving a six week old revival. It's a fair topic though


Bizarre that that jrowe fellow thought there was "only one God" who was essentially Jesus Christ and that no one could believe in any other as any professed idea. Or else they didn't believe in any God.
personally one of my earliest hurdles was... wait wait wait. .."what about the other family members before (an "oath ") or what about my heritage of people from before white dudes came around here across the sea?

U mean they all went to hell?


Ah but. ..u know, just those foolish ideas you have when you're 6 after saying prayers sharing a room with ur older brother.

Observation: You can't judge a song mentioning 'god' or religion as signifying the views of the writer. It's merely plot a device. Shorthand.

Fear not! I cometh to tell you the truth.

„Dear God, all the people that you made in your image, see them fighting in the street, cause they can't make opinions meet about God.“

(Andy Partridge/XTC)

He also wrote Helicopter about fancying a lady in a Lego helicopter so I rest my case.