<p>I have faith, but I am not religious.</p>
<p>It is interesting the diametrically opposed positions of these two posts:
For me, it is stupendously unlikely that a complete universe with all of its marvelous complexities could come from nowhere. Even if one subscribes to the notion of the Big Bang and resulting evolution, there is no scientific explanation for the origins of the Big Bang. In fact, the components of the Big Bang contradict the laws of science.</p>
<p>This is a really interesting thread, I think-- so many insightful posts. Epiphany-- have particularly enjoyed reading each of yours. </p>
<p>Ucsducladad’s post #36 makes a good point. And the almost bully-like influence of some people, forcing god/religion/dogma into American politics and policy in recent years, has become alarming. </p>
<p>The other tangential debate, assuming belief, would be god as “only” a creator vs. a god of involvement and/or judgement. </p>
<p>I guess I envy people who have certainty either way. I doubt I ever will. The presence of the universe- it’s creation, the concept of anything before it (or not), infinity, etc. is just so much to fathom.</p>
<p>On another topic-- do any skeptics (not neccessarily firm non-believers) still take part in organized religion nonetheless? Often habit and family traditions and are tied in, especiallly when there are children involved. How do other people handle this?</p>
<p>I saw an interesting comment on atheism recently. The question was asked: “what god is it do that you don’t believe in?” One person said they didn’t believe in the old white guy in the Sistine chapel; another said they didn’t believe in an amorphous blob of thought. The question than was: if you have a conception of a god that you don’t believe in, do you really not believe the whole idea?</p>
<p>I found the concept fascinating–it was in an article about the biology of belief and how the brain works–and asked numerous people to describe their “personal non-god.” Pretty much everyone has a concept of what god is, even if they then describe themselves as atheists.</p>
<p>Me, I don’t believe in the old white guy. Although I love to tell the joke that ends “well, for one thing, God? well, she’s black.”</p>
<p>I kind of don’t get why everyone needs to insults eachother on this topic. I don’t feel at all moved to convince anyone that I am right. Everyone can believe what they like.</p>
<p>(The basis for epiphany’s screen name is finally revealed! Now if I could only figure out “mini”… :D)</p>
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I have standards. It boils down to a version of the golden rule. Treat people so as to bring out the best in them and thereby in yourself.</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.aeu.org/8commit.html[/url]”>http://www.aeu.org/8commit.html</a></p>
<p>I think it takes as much faith to be a confirmed atheist as a believer in God. :)</p>
<p>I consider myself more ignostic than agnostic however.</p>
<p>I believe in a high power or lifeforce. I call that God. It is not so much a “believe in” really, but a feeling, a presence, maybe an experience. It’s a soul thing, more visceral and not so much a brain thing. So its hard to put into words. It’s not something that one can easily intellectualize.</p>
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<p>I agree. Alumother. I was very surprised how few posts it took to get there.</p>
<p>Hmmm. Guess I don’t see intellectual debate as insult. I find the opposing ones just as interesting in their own ways as the affirming ones. </p>
<p>Btw, the charge about childish viewpoints is laid at the feet of those who teach that. So let’s be clear that God is not responsible for bad theology. (People often limit God to the bad theology they were raised with.) Nor are believers responsible for bad theology that they may not concur with and may not have created or teach.</p>
<p>I like the comment someone made about the equal faith needed to be an atheist. Indeed. All part of the ultimate unknown. :)</p>
<p>epiphany,</p>
<p>It is no wonder that many subscribe to the “childish” (your words) viewpoint of God. Many of us were forced to recite the Lord’s Prayer over and over as children ("Our FATHER, who art in Heaven…give us this day our daily bread, deliver us from evil…) The father-like figure of God who feeds us and protects us has been ingrained from our youth.</p>
<p>I recently attended a church wedding, all the attendees of which were adults, and the priest had us all recite that “poem” again.</p>
<p>If we can’t get the “truth” about God from our own church, its a little difficult to find the source for the “proper” view of what God is.</p>
<p>farawayplaces: I enjoyed the flyingspaghettimonster website…very funny and someone has a great sense of humor…God has a sense of humor too. :)</p>
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<p>Bay,</p>
<p>Your point is well taken, but this is a truth of childhood not at all exclusive to religion. Hopefully, addition and subtraction in a child will lead to geometry and calculus in an adult, but there are no guarantees.</p>
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Like the pledge of allegiance recited before baseball games and sessions of congress–no harm done. </p>
<p>SharonD,
that was very graceful of you. Well done.</p>
<p>^Thank you, Sharon.</p>
<p>I enjoy the idea of God having a sense of humor.</p>
<p>I am happy for those who have an experience of faith/God/a superior force. </p>
<p>I just don’t feel that. I like how one of my good friends–a Methodist minister–acts. Though I’ve done a lot with her over several years, and shared that I am a nonbeliever, it is not a problem. I enjoy who she is, and how her religion “informs” her life to make her a better person. Most importantly, she <em>respects</em> my non-religion, and never mentions God, never blesses me, never suggests she harbors some superior truth.</p>
<p>If only, as suggested by another poster, everyone could accept there are many paths to a meaningful and fulfilled life!</p>
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<p>Here, I have yet to see any bigotry expressed by those that, for very complex reasons, either experience god in their life or find god in the transcendence of art/philosophy/nature/romance. The resentment lies in the cynicism of those who, for specific reasons, do not recognize god or the spirit in their own lives. C’est la vie.</p>
<p>This ridicule is engendered in those that, in my opinion, are very agitated by their own skepticism over transcendence—their own doubts in love and in the spirit of living. I believe we all have them. I do. As one of the posters above said:
At times and to degrees, I believe we all do, and here there are no handles to steady oneself as the knees go weak.</p>
<p>That we exist at all is almost incomprehensible, let alone that anything that exists could also think and feel and care, as we do; and it is this that begs the question that bedevils us all. For the most part we leave this anxiety alone, but religion reminds us of our anxiety just as funerals remind us of death. Worse, they are all connected.</p>
<p>The struggle with faith, experienced in many ways, begins with the struggle of and over love when isolated in a world of plenty; it is in fact the struggle over transcendence and the singular possibility of a love-realized in a material world of brute forces. The sublime struggle that leads from love to transcendent acts like art, charity, romance. Finding ourselves in the world and of the world. A connection that reaches out. That perceives unity in existence. Put another way, of unity in God. The spiritual equivalent of Donne’s ‘no man is an island.’</p>
<p>Whether it be the Buddhist non-existence through unity (nirvana); or the Christian existence in Christ, or the Word, through spiritual poverty; or the Muslim annihilation and existence in fana and baqa; or the romantic and subversive transcendence of existence in the romantic love of Tristan and Isolde: All point to a graceful way out of a materialist quagmire, a Sisyphean gambit; and all feel it to different degrees, and experience it in different ways. It is the only way anyone gets outta here (alive?): transcendence.</p>
<p>Love is also said to be irrational. Perhaps to extend the metaphor being bandied about here, the transcendence of love is a form of auto-brainwashing, but I think not. As I do not believe that the totality of the experience of the transcendent in art, philosophy, romance that is commonly and historically united in a fervent union in ‘god’ is some sinister brainwashing that’s been carried out through the eons. </p>
<p>Transcendence/love/god escapes such vulgar analysis as the fundamentalist-materialist (as well as the fundamentalist-theocrat) is prone to—it flies where the materialist plods (to my mind, fundamentalist Christians, etc are the real-world result of the over application of materialism in theology…it leads to despotic literalism and chokes out the spirit of transcendence and love—not a lot of great art or romance associated with fundamentalism). </p>
<p>To have no experience of god is one thing; to insist that others cannot have it, because you do not, is solipsistic; to demean the love of others (even in god) is knuckleheaded bigotry. </p>
<p>To wit:
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<p>What an interesting thread! I’m so surprised that so many of you either doubt or do not believe in god. I do not. I was raised Catholic, and for my first 10 years, I believed totally. The next few years brought doubt, partially brought to a head when I was about 14 and one of my sisters said something in the confessional that the priest didn’t like and he threw her out of the church. I never went again after that. But my atheism solidified in my Catholic (oh, the irony!) high school, where an intelligent and well-intentioned nun turned us on to existentialism. (boy oh boy, if she only knew!) As I got older I was very vocal about it. Now that I’m 54, I see the whole issue differently. I keep my opinion to myself, as I have found that it makes some people uncomfortable. I don’t mock those who believe. I envy those who can believe in god. It must be such a comfort. I even kinda admire when people do crazy things in ‘his’ name. Jeez, if I really believed that there was a supreme being, I’d be on my knees 24/7. How could you not? I see god as our species’ attempt at self-regulation, very much akin to a mother’s counting to 3…we never get to 3, but a vague threat is implied. The concept has shaped culture to allow us to survive until now, just as any pack of animals has it’s own internal rules of behavior. I guess now that we’ve come past the dark ages and most superstitions, the god question is getting looked at a little more closely. For me, I just can’t believe in things that can’t be proved or disproved. You can’t tell me that something exists, and that I just have to have faith that it’s there even though there is no evidence. I just can’t do it.</p>
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<p>But, yet to deny that there is a God, one would have to have faith that our incredible universe just happened on its own - where there was once nothing, suddenly the makings for the complete universe just appeared. That, to me, takes far more faith in something that can not be proven or even hypothesized.</p>
<p>“The father-like figure of God who feeds us and protects us has been ingrained from our youth.”</p>
<p>The “from” should be an “in.”</p>
<p>Childhood is for children, as well as the intellectual concepts therein. While many religions support the idea of being spiritually “children,” I wouldn’t trust any religion that really promoted an adult to remain psychologically a child. (And what loving human father would, let alone a divine “father”?)</p>
<p>The “father” is not necessarily identical to the view of the young child looking up to Daddy, although the term “abba” in the Christian Bible can be taken as an intimate salutation, rather than the formal “father.”
(My point being, Bay, that the concepts inherent in the Our Father are often taught poorly, as well.)</p>
<p>When I was little, I thought that the sun “rose” and “set” on a static horizon like a window-shade : nature’s pop-up window. I similarly believed charming things about the moon. If no science teacher ever went beyond these primitive concepts, and taught about the rotation of planets, phases of the moon, etc., should I declare – once coming of age – that I “don’t believe in astronomy”? (Because of the fantasy astronomy others let me believe as a young child, given my stage of development then?)</p>
<p>And btw, no one should ever feel forced to engage in religious rituals or join prayers that he is uncomfortable with or cannot subscribe to, even at an event like a wedding, funeral, Bar Mitzvah, and so on.</p>
<p>“…no one should ever feel forced to engage in religious rituals or join prayers that he is uncomfortable with …”</p>
<p>No, but as members of society, we are forced to follow many of the ideals of the religious. Some are simple - like Sunday blue laws. Some are more pervasive - like bans on stem cell research. Some are really scary - like a President who has many powers including the power to wage war and thinks his god speaks to him directly.</p>