Where is your God now?

Endless_Serpents

Hi! So, I was raised Christian in that special way northern British people are, which is to say churches are for wedding and funerals only, and everyone knows the Bible is just for the Parables and never for the Old Testament. Through my grandmother and various aunties of dubious relation I came to learn about and participate in a number of pagan rituals—more historic reenactment than religion for the most part, as so much was lost during Europe’s conversion (write shit down people). Of the two modes of faith, wearing antlers on a hill and making a big fire touches me much more than putting God in a building, but it still wasn’t right for me.

I’ve been an atheist for longer than I can remember. I don’t need an Outer Sacred. All these atoms and space are sacred enough. But I’m still drawn to it in a kind of anthropology-ish sense.

Which is why over the past three months I’ve been reading English translations of the Torah, Quran, King James’, the Book of Shadows (for the laugh), parts of the innumerable Hindu texts (for the ape violence), Kojiki and even some PDFs of cult screeds. The similarities and differences are striking; but no matter what they’re all so clearly human, and of a place and time. These books got ethnicity. They’re of dead nations. Very, very long winded snapshots.

This thread is for the discussion of religion, the spiritual, whatever else you think is covered by this thread, and all are welcome.

Quid

I lived on and off with young earth creationists. They do a really good job of making sure people don't stay religious.

reVerse

If I had spiritual leanings, it'd probably be something like the Lifestream (from Final Fantasy 7/14, I don't know if it's based on a real Earth religion): when we die, our souls return to the planet, and from there are reborn as new life.

But I don't. I don't really believe in the concept of "souls". We are what we think and do, and when we no longer cannot, we're gone.

Quetzi

I was raised the sort of agnostic that someone raised by two people who grew up Christian can be. That is to say, I never went to church, but we did do things for Christmas and Easter (and Hanukkah, with the Jewish parts of my family). My grandparents were all varying degrees of still actively Christian, but they never made a thing about it. My parents are either agnostic or atheist, but without a huge amount of specificity in that (and which of those they are might change from time to time, it's not a like, my mother has always been a staunch atheist and my father agnostic, they swap back and forth and hold contradictory beliefs and all of that).

In my teen years I did a curious form of rebellion where I tried to find religion off of that. I went in a bunch of neo-pagan directions, as you might expect given my whole situation, but none of it worked out for me. Part of this I later learned was like... I was raised without religion or major religious culture, so when I tried to learn religion wholesale, I didn't get it. I couldn't understand how you could be a member of a religion and not believe every single word of a holy text verbatim, because that was the only part of religion that made sense to me without that religious background to get the community aspects, the various degrees of belief, all of that.

Now I'm still agnostic, though mostly in a passive way and not a questing way. I like thinking about higher purposes and greater powers, I have a lot of superstitions and supernatural beliefs, but there's very little to organize it outside of myself. I'm also actively uncomfortable around a lot of organized religion, and have white knuckled my way through a couple of weddings and baptisms, just because it's all deeply unfamiliar to me.

Kayura

Yeah, I'm on the same page as reverse. Thinking/consciousness is the action our brains perform, in the same way running/walking is the action our legs perform. So if either of those physical parts cease to be, the action they perform also ceases.

Raijin Quickfoot

Never really had one.

I remaking agnostic though because…I don’t fucking know.

I don’t believe but that doesn’t mean there’s no chance that I’m wrong.

Quetzi

FCD wrote: »

Yeah, I'm on the same page as reverse. Thinking/consciousness is the action our brains perform, in the same way running/walking is the action our legs perform. So if either of those physical parts cease to be, the action they perform also ceases.

See this has me curious - does this necessarily preclude a soul for you?

It precludes an immortal one, I suppose, the modern Christian definition of a soul as a thing that goes to heaven/hell after you die. But is their room in your reckoning still for the idea that a person has a certain je ne sais quoi that could be defined as a soul?

Kayura

It just does not seem to me like a non-physical, undetectable object that one could call a soul actually exists, at least not in the sense as used by Christianity. I mean, everyone has a specific personality that is a product of the action of their consciousness, which you could metaphorically call a soul, but metaphorical meanings are a different matter.

reVerse

Quetzi wrote: »

FCD wrote: »

Yeah, I'm on the same page as reverse. Thinking/consciousness is the action our brains perform, in the same way running/walking is the action our legs perform. So if either of those physical parts cease to be, the action they perform also ceases.

See this has me curious - does this necessarily preclude a soul for you?

It precludes an immortal one, I suppose, the modern Christian definition of a soul as a thing that goes to heaven/hell after you die. But is their room in your reckoning still for the idea that a person has a certain je ne sais quoi that could be defined as a soul?

Could it be used as a rhetorical shorthand for the sum total of your thinkingness/doingness? Sure. But I personally don't think it's a real tangible thing that exists. Or, y'know, an intangible etherial-but-still-real thing.

The Lovely Bastard

on the dance floor

Polaritie

The conscious self lacks any concrete physical form (even if you try and argue it's all in the brain, the self would be in the ephemeral state, not the static neurons. The process, not the program. Electrons in motion rather than silicon, etc.). We nonetheless observe our selves to exist. I'm not really sure the question of what the self is is amenable to experiment, either; I know that I (my self) exist, but for everyone else I can only assume. There's no way to actually prove it that anyone's ever come up with, to my knowledge.

Undead Scottsman

I'm not sure if i ever truly believed in god. Like I would plead with invisible powers that cultural osmosis named "God" to me, but I don't recall if I ever thought the existence of god was the truth. I figure if there is some kind of creator force, it likely is so alien and beyond our comprehension that we'd be ameoba's to it, and given the size of the universe, the chance it even knows we specifically exist is slim to none.

Ultimately I'm agnostic: I figure I'll either find out I'm wrong, or I'll no longer exist, so no sense worrying about it now when there's 20 billion things in this life to worry about. I'd rather see Earth become an eternal paradise than hope I'll be given one after I die.

I've definitely avoided praying or pleading with invisible powers, if for no other reason than there are a multitude of atrocities and other terrible things happening every damn day and even if these powers existed, they don't stop those other things from happening so why on Earth would they stop it because I asked?

The finality of death gives me no shortage of anxiety, so I would love for there to be a soul and some kind of afterlife, but if I had to put money down, I'd say there is no god and there is no afterlife.

But I can't know for certain unless I die and that stuff exists, so I'll stick with agnostic.

I do figure out best bet at an afterlife is some future human civilization using a combination of time travel and simulated realities to comb time for every living person and uploading their consciousness to a synthetic life, but even then that'd be a copy and not the "me" me. But if that happens, I hope the second me finds some peace and happiness.

Juggernut

I was raised Republican Baptist and taught to hate most things and people that were different than me. Specifically catholics and socialists. The Jews were tolerated only because they were (for some baffling reason nobody could figure out, they weren't even white) God's chosen people and more importantly, the instrument by which the End Times would commence and all the socialists would be cast into a burning lake of fire.

I dropped the whole kit and kaboodle at around 17 or 18 because I was terrified and miserable constantly. Turns out telling a teenager we were living in the End Times and would be getting rounded up and sent to camps by the Anti Christ (read: black man who was elected president) for being Christians (read: white people) isn't great for their mental health.

That said, I do miss a sort of spirituality but in a way somebody might miss believing in Santa Claus. Not necessarily the wrote dogma of Christianity, however, I don't miss that. I absolutely feel a much stronger desire to chant in the moonlight around a fire to some unknowable spirit than to go sing a G, C, Am, F contemporary Christian diddybop in a modern rec hall church. I think maybe that's because I'm just sick of knowing things. Christianity claims to give you all the answers to everything in life. Everything except the questions about practicality of God himself or the stuff the Bible doesn't explicitly detail. That you better take on Faith or so help me. Straight to hell.

I think that part of my brain just yearns for a simpler experience, where something like the wind or storms or the forest feels so far out of my understanding I just can't help but be in awe of it, and assume that forces beyond my control are at work and I need to commune with them some how. Even science kinda strips you of that in a way. I know the quest for knowledge is it's own reward and all, but you know.

No religion was ever what I would call good, I guess. Even the romanticized paganism would come with it's own baggage, I'm sure.

Shadowfire

The Lovely Bastard wrote: »

on the dance floor

Cha Cha Cha

Solar

Interesting topic

I'm a 100% convinced atheist on all matters of religion and spirituality. Tbh I also secretly harbour pretty anti-religious views which I try to avoid from expressing outside of being specifically asked

I personally, as someone in a very secular country and increasingly so, look forward to the acceleration of that to hopefully it's complete decline in my lifetime

Anzekay

I’m a non-binary, bisexual, socialist, humanist Christian of a sect/denomination that is pretty small both globally and in my country and even then I am no longer welcome at the congregation I grew up in because the elders there decided to condemn me for dating someone of the same gender as me (before I realised I was N-B).

I don’t really find I fit particularly well into any group that intersects with the above traits, honestly. A lot of queer people are understandably very unhappy with religion. A lot of Christians think I’m an active sinner. And so on.

It could be worse, definitely; I’m fair from persecuted or oppressed in my day to day life. I am Caucasian and live in a first world country.

But damn if I don’t find myself feeling kinda isolated in regards to my faith at times. It’s tough.

DoctorArch

I spent 8 years of my life in a relationship with a doubting Mormon who still wanted to raise our kids (thankfully we never had them) in the Mormon church where they would be told, repeatedly, that their father was a bad person because he drank coffee.

I'm probably agnostic, at best, but my time in the aforementioned trenches has made me rabidly anti-fundamentalist across the board.

Pinfeldorf

I consider myself Christian, but some weird apostatic version that I've forged my own path to follow based on reading the Bible instead of listening to grandstanding bloviators with ulterior motives and agendas. I don't think anyone who calls themself a follower of Christ can look at his actions and words in the Bible and not come out the other side a raving radical leftist. So, that's where I am, mostly alone, but it's okay.

Cruor

I was raised Irish Catholic, so now I spend a lot of time unlearning guilt and shame instilled by that type of upbringing. I'm not religious at all, I don't believe that there is anything higher out there, and if there is, it's something so unknowable and alien that we have no possible chance of understanding what it is, wants, or expects/thinks of us.

And you know what? That sucks! I have a lot of envy for people who can believe in things. I have a deep-seeded sadness around not being able to believe in a higher anything. I tried when I was a child and it didn't work, and now I have an adult brain that is deeply trained and attuned to figuring out how the very minutiae of life work. I can't turn that brain to look upwards and outwards towards the possibility something unknowable. I can only look closer and closer at the fine details I've been trained to look at and try to find something beautiful there, something worth knowing and understanding and living for there. I have to be ok with that.

SniperGuy

I actually got a side gig doing some sound tech work at a church recently. Turns out it's a pretty cool place with the pride flag up in the chapel, gay and transgender members, and the pastor was talking about trying to get a drag storyteller for kids performer hired for the summer party thing they do. Apparently there was an actual schism because one side of the church didn't want to accept LGBTQ+ people so they split away. It's been really surprising seeing a religious place seeming to actually live out the "be kind and do good" kind of stuff that I saw get corrupted pretty frequently in my catholic upbringing.

Who knows if I'll find a terrible thing lurking around the corner but for now it's been pleasant. I'm a little more "I think there's a higher power, I don't know the specifics" sort of thing myself, but the ritual and community is nice.

Paku

Second Generation Recovering-Catholic, current day Agnostic-ish here. Ask me about my Guilt and Shame

Religiously in the present, I sort of think most belief systems have something to say worth listening to, and at its best Faith can be an aspirational thing and make people better, but agree with David Lynch that if there was some fundamental Truth or access to a Higher Being to be found through religion, that "the original keys to unlock these mysteries got lost a long time ago due to how many times it's changed hands and how infallible people are" (I'm heavily heavily paraphrasing, but don't want to go look for Catching the Big Fish right now)

Spiritually, my take is basically the same as that Thor comic

Rhesus Positive

I was Christened (in a font made from the bell of a ship, as is apparently tradition for the child of the Royal Navy), and have performed in various church services as part of Sea Scouts, but I've never believed in anything

I'll achieve immortality through great deeds instead

Endless_Serpents

Awesome posts so far gang. I’ll be trying to reply to some people later this weekend when I’m not getting drunk.

Jedoc

I was raised Catholic in a family where my mom converted from an extremely conservative sect of rural Methodism. I was very afraid of hell, even though I started having arguments with my mom about evolution starting around the first grade. I read Too Many Books, which is a terrible burden for a young one-denomination theist. I struggled with theological contradictions and wore Jesus Freak dog tags and listened to WoW compilations and had quiet panic attacks in the middle of the night about the very concept of existing for eternity, eternity for fuck's sake and went into high school with the dull feeling that God would be a nice idea but probably didn't exist. I went to Toronto with my youth group to see the Pope and it was a neat vacation but not a spiritual awakening.

Then my older sister and I both got full-ride scholarships to Abilene Christian University thanks to a family friend's connection to a weird Canadian foundation, and I ended up among evangelical Church of Christers who, upon learning of my Catholicism, earnestly asked if it was true that we worshipped statues. I got better at choral singing, took four years of required theology classes which I felt free to disagree with, became the primary source of material for my sister's bootleg Catholic apologia meeting series at the local coffee shop, and realized that I was not going to marry the young woman I was dating after a mutually unsatisfying argument about the speed of light as it pertains to Young Earth Creationism.

These days, I'm pretty sure I'm a shambling meatbag of evolutionary accidents that got the job done, that I'm some combination of electric jello and squirting chemicals we might not be smart enough to ever figure out, and that my sister is dead in a box in New Mexico and in the future I will be too. Life is wild and beautiful and we should all live it the best that we can, because when we die we just stop, and I don't see any reasonable way around that.

There's a church I drive by called the Church of the Open Arms that is blatantly LGBTQ+ friendly, and I see some Methodist churches with rainbow flags on them these days. I don't think these folks are actually talking to a God out there, but I'm happy for them. They go to church and don't tell other people they shouldn't exist, I drink and don't drive, we both get through life how we can without hurting other people. I go to the occasional Christmas mass with the family and it's a nice place to visit. I know all the songs and the wine and the wafer remind me of some good times with old friends.

ChicoBlue

I like the bit in Mark where after the long stretch of parables about sowing seeds and selling everything to buy a pearl/heaven and mustard seeds growing into trees

Mark 4:33-34 wrote:

33 And with many such parables spake he the word unto them, as they were able to hear it.

34 But without a parable spake he not unto them: and when they were alone, he expounded all things to his disciples.

Mark, the editor. You know Jesus, he really goes on and on. You don't need to know everything the Lord God taught and expounded upon.

MegaMan001

I do not believe in God or the afterlife, but the idea that The Good Place settles on in its final season would be a nice option.

Jedoc

A spiritual moment I will always treasure is from a going-away party for one of my most cherished minions who was moving to direct a library in Oregon.

We went out on the steps to get some fresh air from the small and very warm house, and they very seriously asked if they could read my tarot. I had never had a single indication in our whole mutual career that they were into tarot, but in retrospect of course they fuckin' were.

It was one of the most meaningful and thoughtful and sincere gestures I have ever been gifted and I didn't believe a single fuckin' thing that was coming out of their mouth. They cared about me and wanted to leave me with something, and it would have been cruel and churlish of me to not try and read some meaning into the cards.

I don't remember a damn thing about what my future was supposed to be, but I still smile when I think about the cards turning over on the concrete steps.

DrZiplock

"does anyone know where the love of God goes when the waves turn the minutes to hours..."

Only semi-relevant to the conversation, but even as an atheist I really love this line.

Kayura

mrpaku wrote: »

Second Generation Recovering-Catholic, current day Agnostic-ish here. Ask me about my Guilt and Shame

Religiously in the present, I sort of think most belief systems have something to say worth listening to, and at its best Faith can be an aspirational thing and make people better, but agree with David Lynch that if there was some fundamental Truth or access to a Higher Being to be found through religion, that "the original keys to unlock these mysteries got lost a long time ago due to how many times it's changed hands and how infallible people are" (I'm heavily heavily paraphrasing, but don't want to go look for Catching the Big Fish right now)

Spiritually, my take is basically the same as that Thor comic

I love this so much. Beta Ray Bill is awesome.

A Dabble Of Thelonius

I was raised Jehovah's Witness (hurray cults) and escaped at 18.

Firmly atheist now. Don't begrudge people their faith unless it's hateful or prosperity gospel.

Weaver

I've had a couple of moments in life where I've been alone in a forest or on a shore, just these places, and in a brief moment felt at peace and safe, connected to the wind, the trees, soil, the sea, clouds, sunset, time, everything, like my existence was ready to drift away and experience the totality of the universe and see it all at once.

And of course I snap back and take that next step on the trail or check my phone or go "huh" but goddamn talk about chasing a high.

Shadowfire

I was raised early as a southern Baptist (in New York, weird) and moved to Methodist pretty early on. I was baptized the same day as my confirmation at around 11 I think, which was weird for the congregation because usually it's babies! But here I was, a kid standing up and getting baptized. Kinda silly.

Anyway, I was also studying and doing my God & Country shield for Boy Scouts around that time. I didn't know anyone else who did the badge in any of the troops I was in or met with. Apparently it's kinda rare, at least in the northeast. It was a really interesting experience, I spent time talking with and doing research with the pastor at my church and it was honestly a thing that I still appreciate to this day.

When we moved to Vermont I got very involved with the Methodist Church there. They needed a Sunday school teacher so my mom took up that mantle for the high schoolers, and we both sang in the choir. We would get there at 8, sing in the first service, do our Sunday school, then sing the second service. Sometimes we would sit out the school part and actually take part in the service, and I did the sermon every few months.

Yeah, long ago I wanted to go into seminary.

During my senior year the congregation started getting kinda shitty towards the youth. People complained about kids being in the church service, parents didn't want to drop kids off for Sunday school and have to hang around for service, just a lot of "this is very inconvenient/annoying" without ever asking the kids what they wanted. So my Sunday school group got together (without my mom's knowledge) with some of the younger kids and invaded the committee meeting they were having to hash this out. We all looked at these grown ass adults and said "none of you asked us what we thought, what we wanted. You just tried to make this decision without us, and tried to take the church service away from us, and frankly, from my mom and other teachers." We fought back and we won.

And when I and my fellows graduated, the assholes knew we were gone and just went ahead and did it anyway.

That was my big first crack in my belief. I thought "you know, these fucks didn't care about us, they just wanted quiet. What God is ok with that?" It's a pretty minor thing, all told, but it started sliding a lot of other stuff into place. I think Jesus was probably a real dude, and if any of the writings about him were real, he was probably a bit of a cult leader, but also was preaching for things that are actually pretty cool. Treat others like family, love your neighbor, feed the needy, clothe those in need, and whip bankers sounds like a rad ethos.

Over the years I've gone to basically atheist? I think? I don't believe in God or some other higher power, I don't think. But I do believe in thanking nature, or being grateful to the sun, if that makes sense? It's tough for me to sus out where I stand now because I think some level of spirituality is probably healthy for most people. It's good to keep in mind that we're not the hottest shit in the galaxy (aside from Tom Cardy reminding us of it), to remember that there's always a stronger person, a smarter dude, a more powerful energy. Maybe that's just keeping humble, I dunno.

And I also have nothing against others who do believe. You do you, so long as you're not preaching hate. Again, spirituality is probably a good thing in moderation.

Maddoc

I was raised in an ostensibly religious family but like, the side of the family that wasn't really very interested in observing.

Which meant I ended up in church a handful of times a year and I sporadically went to Sunday school.

And then like, I'd end up at my cousins first communions and confirmations and what have you and have largely no idea what was going on.

I think the actual result is mostly that I'm less hostile to it now than my cousins, funnily enough.

Paku

mrpaku wrote: »

Religiously in the present, I sort of think most belief systems have something to say worth listening to, and at its best Faith can be an aspirational thing and make people better, but agree with David Lynch that if there was some fundamental Truth or access to a Higher Being to be found through religion, that "the original keys to unlock these mysteries got lost a long time ago due to how many times it's changed hands and how infallible people are" (I'm heavily heavily paraphrasing, but don't want to go look for Catching the Big Fish right now)

Jars

I find responses as to why an all loving god would let people burn in hell for all eternity unconvincing, so I don't believe in that god.

I don't think religion in our society is to blame, though. I think people use it to justify their pre-existing prejudices.

Sterica

In Hershey’s new Gods & Cream

Mysst

I was raised so evangelical I'll often swear in tongues

initiatefailure

A Dabble Of Thelonius wrote: »

I was raised Jehovah's Witness (hurray cults) and escaped at 18.

Firmly atheist now. Don't begrudge people their faith unless it's hateful or prosperity gospel.

I think it’s come up before but I was half raised. My parents got me baptized and christened in the Catholic Church that refused to allow them to be members because my dad had been married before my mom. So my dad fucked off from religion forever, and my mom got sucked into the cult at a low point.

So I grew up in a weird state of always being pushed to commit by the old weird men of the church, but my mom had the (biblically supported) stance that we also did things my dad wanted, so I’d play a sport for a year that I enjoyed or my dad wanted me to try, spend the whole season being gaslit at church about how it was taking time away from my spiritual growth, eventually get exasperated and quit, and me and my dad would find it harder to relate to each other each time.

I finally told my mom I didn’t believe any of it a few months before I graduated, so I missed out on some graduation gift money I guess.

SethTheHuman

My story's a bit weird. I was raised Catholic by my parents, who weren't themselves believers. I think they generally believed in SOMETHING, but they were doing the Catholic thing to make the rest of the family happy, I think. We started a bit late, though, not having gone to weekly services until we moved around the time I was eight. We even did the CCD program (the Catholic version of Sunday School,) and I started a couple of years behind before "advancing" to the regular classes for my age.

Like I said, my parents weren't believers, but I had a ... let's say a more "structured" mind (guess what I'm currently being tested for?) and tended to accept what adults told me as true. So I basically considered myself Catholic at the time. Even so, there were some parts that bothered me. The concept of Hell as eternal punishment, for one, as well as faith-based salvation. And the generally shitty treatment of gay people (that was about as far as I got with my understanding of that concept by high school.) It didn't help that some of the CCD teachers were practically a guide on how to lose faith. The teacher who didn't bother to teach a rowdy class. The incredibly nice teacher that was going through a Job-like year of problems. And the archetypal old lady who wanted everything to be like the 1950's. There was also the time I threw up in communion class. And an even grosser story that I'll spoil for people who were already uncomfortable with the last vomit story.

There was a time in church when I had a bit of a cold, and I coughed up the communion wafer after putting it in my mouth. The poor priest had to pick it up off the ground, re-bless it, and eat it himself. Eugh.

It wasn't until college that I finally lost my faith. It was the classic "dead grandparent" cliche that finally did it in, along with a generally miserable freshman year. This was nonetheless terrible timing since I went to a Catholic university. It was a Jesuit University, so they were comparatively cool, but still. At first, I was less an unbeliever, more the "angry at God," type, but I basically came out of college identifying as an agnostic. In my early adulthood, I would go to a UU church every other week or so, and I might have still kept up the habit, but a few moves made the trip to long. Plus, as you get older, getting out of the house on Sunday mornings get trickier. I'm not against going to a UU church again someday. I even promised that if the election turned out differently, I would go the weekend after it. You know how that turned out.

These days, I still think of myself as an agnostic, but I've gotten some more complicated views. My general belief is that if there is no God and no afterlife, a sufficiently advanced, sufficiently moral civilization would be obligated to invent them. So that's where I am now. Even if got isn't/wasn't real, maybe there is or will exist some technology to make the Trans Temporal Machine God real. Either way, I'm hoping for something if I die. If not that, then maybe reincarnation. I certainly hope this isn't the only chance I have to live, because I feel like I squandered it so far.

Pinfeldorf

Jars wrote: »

I find responses as to why an all loving god would let people burn in hell for all eternity unconvincing, so I don't believe in that god.

I don't think religion in our society is to blame, though. I think people use it to justify their pre-existing prejudices.

That doesn't really show up in the bible at all. There's some allusion to it, but the bulk is...what's the word, apocryphal? Maccibbian maybe?

Bandumb

I was raised Christian, but in the same way most people are. Go to church out of necessity, make sure we hit the holidays, and we're good. My faith, however, got reintroduced when I joined AA. Not capital G god, but just a faith in something greater than myself. I was literally told "if you don't believe in god, that's fine, just find a way to ask for something bigger than you to help." That's more or less where I sit, I'm not the end all be all of anything, and there are things I don't understand, so just be good regardless of what you believe.