100% atheism. Was raised some kind of protestant I forget which one, and derived tremendous spiritual and psychological relief when I realized all of that was absolute nonsense at the age of 9. I knew I was gay at the time and wouldn't come out until I was 18 or so, but my life just got a lot easier when I removed religion completely. I also recall discovering increased moral agency -- as a Christian I had been taught I could simply confess whatever and it would be forgiven (an idea I found laughable), and that the objective basis for making moral judgements comes directly from god (another idea I found laughable). As an atheist I was suddenly responsible for making my own moral judgements and conclusions (I had to decide upon my own objective basis for making moral judgements), and forgiveness was something I had to work towards myself (as in I had to forgive myself for things, which is not easy, but is incredibly rewarding) versus simply getting it for free from some nonexistent deity. All in all, was an incredibly positive change in my life, and I do believe there can be a weird sort of spirituality to 100% atheism that people don't really acknowledge.
> I had been taught I could simply confess whatever and it would be forgiven
I still remember the day at Sunday school when we had to confess. I was a good kid. I had absolutely no idea what to confess. I consulted my Mom who told me to "make something up". And thus my first sin, that I can remember, was lying to the priest.
In hindsight, it was definitely the concept of original sin that got my young mind spinning, not understanding how for example a newborn baby could be innately sinful. All downhill after that.
Personally as an atheist-ish / lapsed Catholic, original sin is just about the only thing I've never actually doubted, Chesterton put it very well:
“Modern masters of science are much impressed with the need of beginning all inquiry with a fact. The ancient masters of religion were quite equally impressed with that necessity. They began with the fact of sin – a fact as practical as potatoes. Whether or no man could be washed in miraculous waters, there was no doubt at any rate that he wanted washing. But certain religious leaders in London, not mere materialists, have begun in our day not to deny the highly disputable water, but to deny the indisputable dirt. Certain new theologians dispute original sin, which is the only part of Christian theology which can really be proved. Some followers of the Reverend R. J. Campbell, in their almost too fastidious spirituality, admit divine sinlessness, which they cannot see even in their dreams. But they essentially deny human sin, which they can see in the street. The strongest saints and the strongest sceptics alike took positive evil as the starting-point of their argument. If it be true (as it certainly is) that a man can feel exquisite happiness in skinning a cat, then the religious philospher can only draw one of two deductions. He must either deny the existence of God, as all atheists do; or must deny the present union between God and man, as all Christians do. The new theologians seem to think it a highly rationalistic solution to deny the cat.”
Yeah, there's your problem right there. At the risk of stating what should be painfully obvious to any sane person, there is no "fact of sin", and you certainly can't use the claim of a "fact of sin" as a justification for the idea of original sin. It's a completely circular argument. Garbage in, garbage out.
> should be painfully obvious to any sane person, there is no "fact of sin"
When Chesterson asserts the fact of sin, he's saying that there in fact exists plainly perceptible offenses against morality [1], e.g. murder, pedophilia, rape to name the more extreme and obvious cases. In other words, evil.
So you deny the existence of offenses against morality or evil?
[1] "But they essentially deny human sin, which they can see in the street"
> So you deny the existence of offenses against morality or evil?
I deny that any human has ever come out of the womb having committed any such offenses, and I deny that infants (and even children) are morally culpable for offenses committed by fully fledged persons with moral agency. You should be ashamed of yourself for even contemplating such a horrible notion.
Also, since you list pedophilia in your trinity of offenses against morality, I will also point out that the biggest coverups of child sexual abuse in history was conducted by the Catholic church. The cases that have come to light recently are probably just the tip of the iceberg. Taking men at the peak of their sexuality, telling them that having sex is a sin, and then putting them in charge of a congregation is like putting someone in charge of a kitchen and telling them that eating is sin.
And finally, as long as you've gone and pulled my trigger, I will also point out that there is a lot of daylight between pedophilia (which is a psychiatric disorder, not a moral offense) and actual child abuse (which is a moral offense because there is a victim). Getting sexually aroused is not a sin. Neither is gratifying that arousal by self-pleasuring, or by any sexual activity between mutually consenting adults irrespective of their gender and marital status. You want a "fact of sin"? Here you go: one of the biggest sins humans commit is telling people they are sinful simply because they experience a normal human emotion. That is so sick and twisted that the word "sin" doesn't even do it justice. If you believe in original sin and you want to see evil, look in the mirror.
> I deny that any human has ever come out of the womb having committed any such offenses...
That doesn't answer my question. Based on your answer, you seem to be interpreting the "fact of sin" to be original sin. I don't believe that is Chesteron's meaning as I showed in my comment. The fact of sin is the assertion that sin exists. Chesteron says it's obvious because one can "see it on the street"
However, in this statement you made:
> there is no "fact of sin", and you certainly can't use the claim of a "fact of sin" as a justification for the idea of original sin
you do differentiate between the fact of sin and original sin.
I'll ask another way. Do you believe murder is an offense against morality and is evil? If so, I don't understand why you would deny the fact of sin.
On child sexual abuse in the Catholic church. My stance on that is that it is shameful and absolutely repugnant. The men involved should be prosecuted to the full extent of the law. And for those who are unrepentant, I highly doubt their faith is genuine. The life of a true Christian is marked by repentance after moral failure.
On your comments on pedophilia. From reading your comment, I realize that I used the wrong wording by including pedophilia in the list of sins. I assumed the term included acting out of the behavior, but it doesn't. So I redact that term from the list and replace it with "sexual abuse of children".
Btw, it might not matter to you too much, but I don't aim to trigger you or anyone else with my comments. I see HN as a place for dispassionate and intellectual discourse on a wide variety of topics. Since the topic at hand is about spiritual things, I offer my comments about Christianity here. There are Christians way smarter than me that have much better writing on this topic than I do. e.g. https://www.bethinking.org/is-christianity-true/the-evidence...
> The fact of sin is the assertion that sin exists.
No, it isn't. Chesterton never says what "the fact of sin" is. All he says is that it is the "fact of sin", as if there were only one. There isn't. There are many facts about sin, one of which is that people don't agree about what is sinful.
BTW, William Lane Craig is a charlatan. If you are really interested in dispassionate and intellectual discourse you need to read Bart Ehrman or Richard Carrier.
> All he says is that it is the "fact of sin", as if there were only one. There isn't. There are many facts about sin...
You really believe that is what Chesterton meant? You think he thought there is only one single fact about the subject of sin? I find your interpretation hard to believe.
> Chesterton never says what "the fact of sin" is
First, if that is true, then how can you so vehemently deny something (the fact of sin) that you claim hasn't even been defined?
Second, Chesterton doesn't define it explicitly, but from a cursory reading of the text, I think it's pretty easy to infer.
> Some followers of the Reverend R. J. Campbell, in their almost too fastidious spirituality, admit divine sinlessness, which they cannot see even in their dreams. But they essentially deny human sin, which they can see in the street
Here Chesterton criticizes followers of Campbell for denying the existence of human sin when it's obvious it exists in front of their eyes. This text is a few sentences after he asserts the "fact of sin". And the sentences in between are all about the existence of sin.
It's pretty obvious that when he says the fact of sin, he means the fact that sin exists.
> BTW, William Lane Craig is a charlatan.
Backing up your claims with evidence would make them more substantive especially with such a serious allegation. And even if he is (which I don't believe since I haven't seen any evidence), there are plenty of other examples on the website I linked to (and other sites). But I suppose you'd think they are all charlatans.
> read Bart Ehrman or Richard Carrier.
Sure. This is the second time I've seen Ehrman referenced on this thread. I'm game to to read up on them.
> You really believe that is what Chesterton meant?
I have no idea what he meant. I do not have ESP, and given that Chesterton is long dead, it probably wouldn't be effective even if I did. All I know is what the text says.
> First, if that is true, then how can you so vehemently deny something (the fact of sin) that you claim hasn't even been defined?
I deny that there exists a single Fact of Sin that is so privileged that it can be coherently referred to as THE fact of sin in a rational argument. The phrase "the fact of sin" is non-sensical, a turn of phrase cunningly designed to make you think it has a referent when in fact it does not. The rhetoric of Christianity is rife with such linguistic ploys. They are necessary to cover up the fact that Christianity is both logically incoherent and inconsistent with the laws of physics. It is the longest of long cons.
> from a cursory reading of the text, I think it's pretty easy to infer.
Yes, I know you think so, but you are wrong. Like I said, "the fact of sin" is a turn of phrase cunningly designed to make you think it has, not only a referent, but a self-evident one. But it doesn't. There is no self-evident "fact of sin", including:
> It's pretty obvious that when he says the fact of sin, he means the fact that sin exists.
That is far from obvious, because from that premise his conclusion does not follow. What does it even mean that "sin exists"? Does it mean that at some point in history some person committed a sin? Does it mean that at any given time there is at least one person committing a sin? Does it mean that humans have within them the potential to commit sins at any time even thought there could be times when they don't act on that potential? Don't bother answering, those are rhetorical questions. The point is that the idea that "sin exists" is another one of those phrases that is cunningly designed to make you think that it means something, and that you understand what it means, when in fact it is utter nonsense (because of its ambiguity).
> Backing up your claims with evidence
LOL. Can you show me any evidence that there is an afterlife?
There is no evidence for Christianity. None. Zero. And many of its claims are absurd on their face. Do you really believe that zombies walked the streets of Jerusalem and not a single person thought it was worthy of note other than the author of Matthew? Or that Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead and not a single person thought this was worthy of note other than the author of John? It's just ridiculous. These are transparent fictions.
A critical examination of the Bible reveals it to be nothing more than human mythology of the sort regularly produced by humans [1]. Christianity just happened to get a boost by being in the right place at the right time when Rome fell and created a power vacuum for the church to step in to.
Read Carrier's "Proving History: Bayes's Theorem and the Quest for the Historical Jesus" and then come back and we can talk.
---
[1] Note: I in no way mean to denigrate or disparage the value of mythology. But it is important not to conflate it with reality.
> I have no idea what he meant. I do not have ESP, and given that Chesterton is long dead, it probably wouldn't be effective even if I did.
An author writes to convey information and meaning. One of the main responsibilities a reader has is to find out what the author meant by his words. [1] I don't think one needs ESP or to interview the author personally to find out the meaning he was trying to convey in his writing.
> All I know is what the text says.
What the text says is what the author says, his meaning.
In this case, you are interpreting "fact of sin" to mean "as if there were only one.". That's quite an uncharitable and illogical interpretation. I don't think Chesterton thought that there exists only one fact about sin. It's common sense that there is more than one fact about such a broad topic as sin.
> the idea that "sin exists" is another one of those phrases that is cunningly designed to make you think that it means something, and that you understand what it means, when in fact it is utter nonsense (because of its ambiguity).
Webster says sin is "an offense against religious or moral law". Since you're not religious, let's go with offense against moral law.
What's moral law? Webster says "a general rule of right living"
So do offenses against rules of right living exist?
A man rapes and murders a person. Was that an offense against right living? I would say so. It was a sin. Rape and murder as well as other sins have been committed throughout history, are currently being committed and will be committed in the future. Sin exists.
> LOL. Can you show me any evidence that there is an afterlife?
I challenged your claim that William Lan Craig is a charlatan and you change the topic?
I don't have time to fully answer your challenges. I'll just leave some references. [2]
> Read Carrier's "Proving History: Bayes's Theorem and the Quest for the Historical Jesus" and then come back and we can talk.
I may just do that. Thanks.
While we're on the subject of evidence, I will leave with these thoughts.
Science is wonderful and is capable of explaining many truths about the universe and has resulted in much good. But it has its limits. It can not speak to questions of morality, the human condition, etc [3]
Obviously, there is a large component of faith involved in Christianity or any religion or spiritual matters. But I always argue that it is the nature of reality that everyone is required to live by faith [4]
[1] Fundamental Factors of Comprehension in Reading (Davis, 1944):
> One of the main responsibilities a reader has is to find out what the author meant by his words.
No, it is the responsibility of the writer, if they are advancing a factual claim (as opposed to, say, providing entertainment), to convey their meaning clearly and unambiguously, which Chesterton did not. A reader has no responsibility to a writer of nonsense beyond calling it out as nonsense.
>So, what do you call me the thing that drives otherwise reasonable humans to hate each other?
Go to Google News and search for the terms 'sectarian violence', 'religious violence' and 'blasphemy'.
There are the Sunni and Shia killing each other in the Middle East, the Christians and Muslims killing each other in Nigeria and Hindu religious leaders calling for the mass killing of Muslims in India. In Pakistan, angry mobs regularly beat people to death and set them on fire for the merest perceived slight against Islam.
There is far too much intolerance, violence, misery and death in the world today caused by people acting on or motivated by their unsubstantiated religious beliefs.
There is far too much intolerance, violence, misery and death in the world today caused by people acting on or motivated by their u̶n̶s̶u̶b̶s̶t̶a̶n̶t̶i̶a̶t̶e̶d̶ ̶r̶e̶l̶i̶g̶i̶o̶u̶s̶ beliefs.
e.g. USSR anti-religious campaign of 1928–1941:
"The campaign began in 1929, with the drafting of new legislation that severely prohibited religious activities and called for an education process on religion in order to further disseminate atheism and materialist philosophy. "
"The main target of the anti-religious campaign in the 1920s and 1930s was the Russian Orthodox Church and Islam, which had the largest number of faithful. Nearly all of its clergy, and many of its believers, were shot or sent to labour camps. Theological schools were closed, and church publications were prohibited.[1] More than 85,000 Orthodox priests were shot in 1937 alone.[2] Only a twelfth of the Russian Orthodox Church's priests were left functioning in their parishes by 1941.[3]"
"Stalin called for an "atheist five year plan" from 1932–1937, led by the LMG, in order to completely eliminate all religious expression in the USSR.[43] It was declared that the concept of God would disappear from the Soviet Union.[43]"
I used your original wording with strikethrough to make my point, but I think this would be a more accurate statement:
There is far too much intolerance, violence, misery and death in the world today caused by violent people acting on or motivated by their beliefs without any restraint.
This applies to any kinds of beliefs be it religious, political, economic, philosophical, moral, etc.
> Anti-religion campaigns are still in effect caused by religion, since they wouldn't be necessary if it weren't for religion. Next!
You seem to have missed my point.
The GP is saying religion is the cause of much violence, etc. I'm refuting that by saying violent people are the cause of much violence and that's orthogonal to religion.
The anti-religion campaign is just one example, not the whole point.
I hope you are not blaming religion for Stalin's campaign. That's akin saying it was the believers' own fault that they were massacred because they believed in religion.
> since they wouldn't be necessary
So anti-religion campaigns like this massacre are necessary because religion exists? I hope that is just you misspeaking and using a poor choice of words. Perhaps you meant wouldn't exist? If not and you meant necessary, that is despicable.
We pretend to seek out reasons, when we're actually just looking for excuses.
"I didn't actually do anything wrong, something outside of me made me do wrong, you can't prove it wasn't chemicals"
"There's no such thing as a shared moral code ,it doesn't exist, unless someone hurts me and then suddenly, they did something horribly wrong"
Our ancestors are fortunately a bit wiser than we are, they know there are things that cannot be excused, swept under the rug of moral relativism. They can only be "forgiven" as C.S Lewis explains in https://www.cslewisinstitute.org/webfm_send/111
Thinking all there is is moral relativism is a tiny baby step in the long journey of deriving your own objective basis for making moral judgements, and C.S. Lewis's works are essentially religious allegories but with better character development, so hardly a reference that carries rhetorical weight here.
- there is no conflict between lower level concepts such as quarks, electrons, atoms, molecules and higher level concepts like reactions, processes, yield and throughput
I think there is no conflict between "Genetics, cultural values, chemicals, hormones, electrical impulses" and sin.
I don't expect any answers, but at least I've tried explain my position.
US Revolutionary War
War of 1812
US Civil War
Spanish American War
WWI
WWII
Korean War
Vietnam War
GWI
GWII
WoT
Nearly all of them really. Wars are fought over resources and pride of leaders. Sometimes religion can be used as a recruiting tool, but the war isn't really about religion.
You can argue that since people who fight in wars have religious beliefs that religion is involved, but you can say the same things about sticks and shoes. I don't think that is a compelling argument.
If you mean the war between the US on one side and al-Qaeda and various other Islamist groups on the other, that’s…a pretty bad exampe of a war that doesn’t involve religion.
> Korean War
> Vietnam War
The US’s global war on Communism, during and as a symbol of which it added religious languge to the pledge of allegiance and replaced its diversity-endorsing de facto model with a religious official motto is, while less of a clearly bad example than the “Global War on Terror”, not a great example of a war not involving religion.
>If you mean the war between the US on one side and al-Qaeda and various other Islamist groups on the other, that’s…a pretty bad example of a war that doesn’t involve religion.
Ya I included that intentionally because it was the only one I could think of that was related to religion in anything I would consider close to meaningful.
It really depends on how loosely you want to define "involve," like I said, wars involve sticks and shoes because everyone uses them. Nearly everything involves language does that means all wars involve language? I guess so in a pedantic sense, but still, so what? Wars don't involve language in any meaningful way other than a means of communication. I would argue because of that, language is far more important than any semblance of religion in all of the wars I listed.
What's the point of your or the OP's argument? Following the definition of "involve," anything involves religion, even an atheist walking down the sidewalk, because the sidewalk was funded by at least one person who happens to be religious. Not overly meaningful.
Here's OBL's "Letter To America," where he states his reasons for his attacks.
In bin Laden's November 2002 "Letter to America",[3][4] he said that al-Qaeda's motives for the attacks included Western support for attacking Muslims in Somalia, supporting Russian atrocities against Muslims in Chechnya, supporting the Indian oppression against Muslims in Kashmir, support for Israel in Lebanon, the presence of US troops in Saudi Arabia,[4][5][6] US support of Israel,[7][8] and sanctions against Iraq.[9]
I mean I guess if you really wanted to make a connection to religion you could, but in the statement he mentions Israel, not Judaism, so it would be a stretch in my mind. The only connection to religion is the term "Muslims," and those citations are always followed by "in" a country. Hell, even the crusades weren't fought over religion, they were fought over resources and power, the church just used religion to get free cannon fodder. Of course Bush, in his infinite wisdom called the WoT a "crusade," which again I guess "involves" religion in that it was mentioned in a speech, but again, not in an overly meaningful way.
What I think the OP was trying to say, perhaps I'm wrong, is that religion is bad and as an example, all wars involve religion. If that's the case, I disagree with the premise.
All wars involve dirt therefore dirt is bad. Prophetic!
The problem is that Catholics treat sin as a static field and any sane person treat it as an instance field.
Why do we need to baptize infants? Because they have original sin. How could they get it if they haven't done anything? Because Adam and Eve sinned and their sin is shared with all of humanity. How are we responsible fot their sin? We aren't but God still had to kill himself to forgive us. Cause reasons.
It gets more stupid the more you try to explain this absurd away, and the mess of a quote by Chesterton showcases that. It conflates the original sin with regular sins of adults.
Which BTW according to Catholic doctrine aren't universal "facts" at all - because some people are saints and have no instance sins, just the static (original) sin shared from Adam and Eve. And Saint Mary had neither for some reason (probably because Christ multiple inherited from Human and God and something would break if he inherited the static field).
I was a very religious Catholic for about 20 years and it never made sense to me. If it makes sense to you you probably never thought about it much.
> Why do we need to baptize infants? Because they have original sin. How could they get it if they haven't done anything?
Because the idea of original sin doesn't, or only superficially, has anything to do with wrongful acts. What the idea of original sin is about that humans, by their very nature and in their being are confronted with evil. Or if you want a secular version call it injustice, or the ethical and the unethical, but certainly I did not need Catholicism to see that humans are, by virtue of simply being human, not 'sinless'. If there was nothing to the idea of humans being sinful, then living a moral life would not be a struggle, we'd be 'divine' by nature and as Chesterton says just walking across the street rids most people of that idea very quickly.
>If it makes sense to you you probably never thought about it much.
Pretty much the other way around. When I was 15 it made less sense to me than it does now exactly because I hadn't thought about it much. Part of having a proper and mature understanding when arguing about religious issues is to learn to take things seriously and not as literally as many people do today.
>> > Why do we need to baptize infants? Because they have original sin. How could they get it if they haven't done anything?
> Because the idea of original sin doesn't, or only superficially, has anything to do with wrongful acts. What the idea of original sin is about that humans, by their very nature and in their being are confronted with evil. Or if you want a secular version call it injustice, or the ethical and the unethical, but certainly I did not need Catholicism to see that humans are, by virtue of simply being human, not 'sinless'. If there was nothing to the idea of humans being sinful, then living a moral life would not be a struggle, we'd be 'divine' by nature and as Chesterton says just walking across the street rids most people of that idea very quickly.
Okay, so...why do we need to baptize infants? I don't really see any answer here. If it were just about human nature, then what does pouring water over the head of a baby achieve? I don't see any problem with it as a general ritual to help remind us of our nature, but that's explicitly _not_ what Catholic doctrine teaches; it claims that it has an important, non-trivial effect cleanses the infant itself. Whatever that effect is, it doesn't seem to do much to the human nature that causes it to sin when it gets older.
> What the idea of original sin is about that humans, by their very nature and in their being are confronted with evil.
This is the kind of poetic language behind which people hide confusion so that they can still believe in this. I did the same. I understand the reflexive "let's not think about this too much in case we stop believing".
What does it actually mean to be "confronted with evil" and why is it a problem requiring Christ to die before people with no personal sins could be admitted to heaven?
> I did not need Catholicism to see that humans are, by virtue of simply being human, not 'sinless'.
Clothes by virtue of being clothes are not "dirtless". Dirt exists in the world. Does it mean that before any clothes can be worn to a ball we need to metaphorically wash the generalized dirtiness out of everything? Or do we wash the clothes that are actually dirty and don't wash the clothes that are actually clean?
This confusion of static and instance fields is the main issue with Catholicism.
Because dirt exists all over the world all clothes are in need of washing at some point (or not worn I suppose). Confronting sin, temptation, immorality whether you want to look at it from a religious perspective or secular, is part of the human condition. No human can live a life and not be confronted with jealousy, anger, greed, pride or if you don't like the Christian undertones fill in whatever you think of as a sin. We all confront the same questions.
And to the first point, as Chesterton says you don't need to accept any religious answer at all. As he says, the theodicy question, how the existence of manifest evil can be reconciled with a benevolent god, has driven countless of people away from faith, not to it. And he says that's fine, but you can't pretend it doesn't exist.
> Because dirt exists all over the world all clothes are in need of washing at some point
Some aren't. And certainly washing one cloth because other is dirty or can get dirty doesn't make sense. So how does it make sense when it comes to sins?
> We all confront the same questions.
Meaningless poetic language again. Some of us don't. And even assuming that we all do - we also confront low temperatures and yet Christ didn't burn on cross to heat us all for eternity. And even if he did burn he would only heat the people near him at the time. How does this future-proof abstract-idea-solving suicide work, exactly? Doesn't seem to work that well if we still "confront evil".
The whole point of original sin in Catholicism isn't that we have to confront evil. It's just an excuse for why we need Jesus and baptism.
> As he says, the theodicy question
This isn't theodicy. I'm not asking why is there evil. I'm asking why do we all need Christ to die for us and why do we need baptism if personal sins aren't guaranteed and the original sin is just the capability to sin or possibility of encountering sin.
I don't wash the idea of clothes because some real clothes can possibly get dirty later.
What the original sin actually is in Catholicism is not some capability - it's an abstract idea that makes it impossible for specific people to get to heaven without Christ dying for them. And it makes no damn sense.
> Because dirt exists all over the world all clothes are in need of washing at some point
Being gay this one made me really laugh. People can hardly agree on what dirt is, and when they do, they often change their mind 100 years later anyway (or wait 500 years to apologize, as was the case with the Church's treatment of Galileo). Society is built on social contracts, compromises we make to optimize our interactions with society as a whole. As an individual you have freedom to ascribe meaning, value, and take stock in whatever moral beliefs you see fit, but it is dangerous to assume that you are "correct" or that there is some ideal set of values that will be correct for all of eternity. Culture evolves, technology evolves, morality has to evolve with it. When morality fails to evolve as fast as culture or technology, we get things like wars, things like apartheid, things like conversion camps, genocide, etc., etc., and there is no greater damper on moral progress than religion.
> When morality fails to evolve as fast as culture or technology
I'm not sure you've understood the position of most moral realists. Why we should (say) support LGBTQ rights in 2021 is not that morality itself has evolved, which implies that it may have been morally permissible not to support such rights in 1921. It's that when society failed to respect such rights it was making a moral error.
To put it another way, is there a culture or level of technology at which it would have been permissible to ostracize and punish gay men and women? To enslave as the spoils of war? To protect molesting priests over the children they victimized?
That's not to say that religion isn't a damper on moral progress, though I don't think it's fair to say that there is "no greater damper". Abolitionism often had a religious component, for example, while barriers to racial progress in the 20th century were maintained irrespective of religion. Or in terms that I've been thinking about recently, famous TERFs are often nonreligious.
> In hindsight, it was definitely the concept of original sin that got my young mind spinning, not understanding how for example a newborn baby could be innately sinful.
I have no qualms believing that. Watching a young child empirically discover the theory of mind, and then progress to deceit without being taught is almost miraculous. Humans are inherently selfish and short-sighted, a huge part of parenting is spent on tempering these instincts.
It's interesting to note that many (or perhaps most, depending on how you count) Protestant denominations in the U.S. do not believe in "original sin" (which is a surprisingly nuanced belief system anyway.)
For example, the Southern Baptist Convention, which the largest Protestant denomination in America, do not believe in original sin, and do not practice infant baptism (or sprinkling).
I was raised in a fully evangelical tongue speaking, bible thumping, political shilling for george bush church, and I distinctly remember in bible school being made to accepet jesus into my heart as my savior over and over.
When I told the teachers I had already accepted him, they would make me do it again. Even at that young age (probably 6-8 years old) I was thinking logically, if accepting jesus as my savior gets me into heaven, why would I have to do it multiple times?
I'd like to make a suggestion. If you aren't sure if you have anything to confess, then pray.
Ask God to reveal any sin to you so you can confess it, pause for a little bit and listen for God. You can also take this time to thank God for things in your life.
>I hope you don't find this too intensitive but if you hear a voice in your head coming from an external individual, you may want to seek help
I genuinely appreciate how HN is a place where strangers can make helpful statements like this. I feel safe enough to take this feedback and not be offended.
That being said, you being up an important point that I should have covered for the benefit of other strangers that saw my comment:
I have NEVER heard the audible voice of God. Never. Not once. I have talked to other religious people that I trust - THEY have never heard the audible voice of God.
When I use the phrase "hear God" or "listen to God", I'm referring to a feeling. It is hard to describe without knowing people personally, but I'll try.
In one situation, I was praying for God to teach me before I read the Bible. My thoughts were consumed with a specific friend and a series of interactions I had with him (I was rude a couple of times). I decided to find him and apologize for being rude. He accepted and we went our separate ways.
I don't know for certain if God wanted me to apologize to him, but I'm mostly certain I was supposed to reach out to him.
>How did you differentiate a god talking to you, and you talking to you? What evidence to you have for that? How can others collaborate your story?
These are good questions, and I've been thinking about how best to respond.
For one, I believe in the God of the Christian Bible. There are various stories of God interacting with people. The most common interaction for me and the people around me is for God's Holy Spirit to influence others.
His Spirit can speak through other believers via wise words or gentle reassurance. I've had (in limited situations) felt emotions that I ascribe to God.
When I differentiate guidance from God vs myself or other humans, I typically look for highly unusual coincidences or specific applications. Here's an example that took place near the beginning of the pandemic.
My wife was praying and asking God who needed to feel His love. She was felt the importance of asking our elderly neighbors if they needed groceries (remember, this was early pandemic, when elderly were highly vulnerable, masks were unavailable, and there were runs on the grocery store). She brought them a handful of groceries and left them.
Several weeks later, the neighbor's adult children came from an Asian country. I was wrestling with an opportunity to serve at our church in a place where I would likely get exposed to the virus - and I was praying for guidance. The neighbor's daughter came by with "thank you gifts", which included KF94 masks (similar to N95). The masks were a reassurance that I could go in public and be safe.
I don't know for certain that God was orchestrating the interactions, but the timing was incredible and the application was specific and helpful.
Ok, but don't you think this argument is circular? You start off by believing in the bible and because it says stuff that you believe is happening to you, you believe what is happening to you is true. What reason do you have to believe what the bible says is true? You likely will say you believe the bible because it's from God? But why do you believe that? Perhaps the answer will be because the bible says so. Again circular.
I would say anyone who is looking to help out other people will definitely find the opportunity and mechanisms to help other people. Good for you that you want to help other people, I applaud you. But i'm sorry to say, but from the outside, your account seems incredibly normal.
I was raised in the Catholic church, and I don't think your take on confession is quite right. The process of confession isn't "sit in this booth and walk out scot-free on all of your wrongdoings". It's meant to be an assisted meditation on what you can do better in your life, and how to do so. The act of confession doesn't help you if it's not done in good faith, and a penance for murder might be a confession to the community.
Think of it as a precursor to modern-day psychotherapy, if that helps. Admittedly, some modern day implementations of confession feel a bit like the spiritual equivalent of a drive through, nor are all priests equally capable of helping.
I'm a practicing Roman Catholic and the process is very nearly "sit in this booth and walk out scot-free on all of your wrongdoings," with a few caveats:
1. You actually have to confess your sins; intentional omission of a mortal sin invalidates the absolution.
2. You must express repentance for your sins (that is a firm intention to not continue sinning); confessing a sin that you fully intend to go out and continue doing invalidates the absolution.
3. You must perform penance for the sins; in modern day penance is usually private, I don't think this is a strict requirement. Note that a public penance does not reveal the specific sin; something like "walk back and forth down Main Street 10 times while carrying a cross" would be a public penance. It may include restitution towards those harmed as well (most commonly returning stolen items) but said restitution may always be anonymous as a priest may not require divulging of the sin outside the confessional as a condition of absolution (though they may suggest it; e.g. they will almost always suggest that addicts seek treatment).
> I was raised in the Catholic church, and I don’t think your take on confession is quite right.
The Protestant churches (the upthread poster said he was raised in some unspecified branch of protestantism) that hold out a role for confession tend to treat it rather differently than Catholics do the Sacrament of Reconciliation. (And, even within the Catholic Church, what reconciliation feels like can vary a lot between different priests administering the sacrament, irrespective of the [at least theoretical] theological consistency within the Catholic Church.)
As far as I know, confession is a route for absolution of “sins”. And for some reason this is a power Christian churches give themselves. If it doesn’t result in a form of leverage (moral or otherwise) over it’s practitioners, I’d be surprised. Even more so for children who have yet to establish their own view of the world.
Forgiveness is from God, but can be through a priest, as long as you are contrite. The Church as a body of Christians obviously benefits from contrite brothers and sisters attempting (and yes often failing miserably, but at least attempting) to live in peaceful communion.
Raised Christian, became an atheist, then evaluated a bunch of religions for myself. Found Christianity to be the most historically and spiritually compelling but still didn’t believe. After feeling hollow and aimless for years I re-evaluated things, read about Jesus love for me. Really meditated on His perfect life, sacrifice on the cross, and resurrection. He died for me, in my place. It became personal. When I realized that it changed my life. I’ve never felt love like that. It transformed me and freed me. I’ve been following Jesus, praying, and reading the Bible, the inspired and sufficient word of God, ever since.
I've never understood what part of the crucifixion was a sacrifice. Jesus is literally a god. He knew he would end up on the cross before he even took on human form. He could have left at any time. He can return any time he wants. And how can his death on the cross be actually considered a death? If he was dead, are we to understand that for those few days there was no god overlooking all of creation?
It seems to me that Jesus allowing himself to be crucified is poetic but ultimately an empty gesture.
Jesus was God in flesh. So God the father is separate but connected. ( I'm a little under qualified to describe the exact nature of the Holy Trinity)
So God the father has always been looking over creation. After Jesus ascended to heaven the Holy Spirit was sent to help the church in place of Jesus her on earth.
Jesus was God in flesh so he purposely limited himself to experience all that we experience, to suffer all that we suffer. There is nothing that He can't empathize with.
There was also the spiritual law that had to be satisfied. The price of sin is death. Under the Mosaic covenant there were sacrificial animals used to pay that price. Jesus payed that price for all who are willing to take up their cross and follow him.
> Jesus was God in flesh so he purposely limited himself to experience all that we experience, to suffer all that we suffer. There is nothing that He can't empathize with.
This implies that God is incapable of fully knowing the experience of humans without becoming human, hence God is not omniscient; since now his omniscience is contingent on becoming contingent.
You don't even need to get that far to reach the conclusion that God is not omniscient. This is Genesis 8-10: 8) Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the Lord God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and they hid from the Lord God among the trees of the garden. 9) But the Lord God called to the man, “Where are you?”. 10) He answered, “I heard you in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid.”.
Adam and Eve hid behind some trees and God didn't know where they were. It makes no sense for an omniscient being to ask anyone "where are you".
While I get your point, that seems to me to be obviously a rhetorical question posed to give Adam and his wife an opportunity to explain what they're up to.
It's not a particularly unarguable idea that the Abrahamic God may not be omniscient (at least, not at all points in time. There is a related idea that God changes over time).
The parent to your comment gave one example because it's the first. But there are many. Here's another one, again from an early point in time, that shows regret.
Genesis 6:5-9
> And GOD saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.
> And it repented the LORD that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him at his heart.
Immediately after this, God first decides to end humanity, but later changes his mind again after focusing his attention selectively on Noah.
> And the LORD said, I will destroy man whom I have created [...] for it repenteth me that I have made them.
> But Noah found grace in the eyes of the LORD.
> These are the generations of Noah: Noah was a just man and perfect in his generations, and Noah walked with God.
---
Truthfully, the bible is full of tensions and contradictions. You can't explain them without developing an opinion/interpreting the book holistically.
The God of the Old Testament is physical, emotional, and generally more demanding and hands-on with humanity; the language clearly implies that he possesses a locus of attention that he directs where he chooses. He interacts physically with humans, and not-infrequently changes his mind.
The God of the New Testament, is more ethereal, transcendent, and more consistent in the emphasis of grace and mercy.
That the debate on subjects like these, even among fellow Christians, has literally been ongoing since Christ's death, is probably evidence that all these ideas cannot be reconciled. They are merely there for us to contemplate and interpret.
"Beyond all doubt" is doubtful since, taking your assertions for granted, he only manifested himself to an infinitesimally small cross-section of humanity.
I'm not sure I follow your argument. So because he only manifested himself to a relatively small number of people, he can't prove that he understands us?
We have his teachings in writing. Do you only believe in knowledge that is personally manifested to you? If so, then you wouldn't believe in any history.
> I'm not sure I follow your argument. So because he only manifested himself to a relatively small number of people, he can't prove that he understands us?
I'm referring to the miracles attributed to him, which are used as the conclusive evidence that he was God in the flesh.
> We have his teachings in writing.
How do you know beyond a shadow of a doubt that you have his teachings? You do not even know the historical identities of the authors of the gospels. Nor do you have his teachings in the original language that he spoke.
"Most historical critics agree that a historical figure named Jesus taught throughout the Galilean countryside c. 30 CE, was believed by his followers to have performed supernatural acts, and was sentenced to death by the Romans, possibly for insurrection.[108]"
> To your point about the miracles attributed to him, again, because he didn't manifest those miracles to everyone ever, they didn't happen?
Recall that I responded to a GP that said all this is "beyond doubt." You're arguing a strawman with me. (On a personal note, I do believe in many of the miracles attested to Jesus, but that isn't evidence to me that he was God in the flesh.)
As for your links, I counter suggest you read the works of Dr. Bart Ehrman.
Your assertion was that GP's statement is not beyond all doubt because Jesus only manifested to a small group of people. [1]
I don't think your reason for your assertion is valid. Jesus only manifesting to a relatively (relative to all of humanity) small group of people doesn't invalidate or cast doubt on anything.
You might have other reasons for doubting His divinity, but I don't think the one you've professed is a good one.
[1] "Beyond all doubt" is doubtful since, taking your assertions for granted, he only manifested himself to an infinitesimally small cross-section of humanity.
You've responded with an ipse dixit and didn't provide any substantiation.
> Jesus only manifesting to a relatively (relative to all of humanity) small group of people doesn't invalidate or cast doubt on anything.
Of course it does. You now rely on the testimony of these small of group of people (who you do not even know the identities of), rather than Jesus himself, or witnessing him directly.
As I clearly indicated in parenthesis, my use of the word small was relative to all of humanity. Jesus appeared to many people, over five hundred after his death and resurrection and we do know the identities of many including of course the original 12 disciples. [1]
> You now rely on the testimony of these small of group of people
So according to you, Jesus would have to manifest to many more people to pass your belief test. How many more would do? More than 500? 1000? Your requirement seems arbitrary to me.
> rather than Jesus himself, or witnessing him directly.
Again, if that's your requirement, then you should discount all of history.
Again... you're still arguing a strawman against me. My response to the GP was that there is still doubt (and major, massive doubt when you read Ehrman's work) in this when you are relying on he said, she said; as opposed to witnessing Jesus directly himself.
This is the third time I will be answering to your point of relying on witness testimony vs first person testimony. If that's your standard to believe something, that it has to first person, then you need to discount most of history recorded in history books. In a court of law, witness testimony is valid evidence (unless proven to be a lie). You seem to discount this kind of testimony. That doesn't seem reasonable to me.
> major, massive doubt when you read Ehrman's work
If I rely on Ehrman's work, aren't I relying on he said/she said?
And you seem to be moving goal posts here. First you said that there is doubt because of the small number of witnesses "only manifested himself to an infinitesimally small cross-section of humanity" Now you're casting doubt based on the type of witness (eye witness vs self witness)
You've brought up the term strawman twice now without explanation. Care to explain exactly how I'm arguing a strawman?
You are arguing a strawman because I replied to the claim that it is beyond doubt that God came in the flesh.
It is NOT beyond doubt. You haven't proven how there is absolutely NO DOUBT to these claims.
> And you seem to be moving goal posts here.
How am I moving goalposts? The two types of witnessing have been there in my reasoning since the beginning. There is doubt since you didn't eyewitness him yourself, and then there is doubt that the hearsay that reached you regarding him is true. One follows the other since you have to rely on the one you have access to.
Again it's a strawman because I never said I discount witness testimony. You're making the case that just because witness testimony can be true, therefore witness testimony in the case of Jesus, must be true. That doesn't follow.
> You haven't proven how there is absolutely NO DOUBT to these claims.
That hasn't been my aim all along though. I would never argue or try to prove there is no doubt to these claims. I fully accept there is a large element of faith to religious claims. And I readily admit as believer, my faith is not perfect and I have doubts. But my ratio of faith to doubt is high enough to get me over the fence to belief. As an aside, I always argue that everyone everywhere live their lives by faith. [1]
My assertion has been your reason for your doubt, namely that Jesus only manifested to a relatively small group of people, is not valid. But I think we can agree to disagree at this point.
I agree with all of that but none of those verses use the term omniscient.
The idea of omniscience leads to paradoxes like the one above. Can you know what it is to be non omniscient and be omniscient.
I think God can choose to understand and know what He wants to know. If he chooses to forget sin, He can. Meaning the strict definition of omniscience would not apply.
I'm no theologian or philosopher so there is a good chance I'm simply missing something or don't understand these words.
> I agree with all of that but none of those verses use the term omniscient.
If the axis of your response is going to be this, then I suggest we only continue speaking about the Bible on the level of Koine Greek for the New Testament and Hebrew for the Old.
Since you want to be maximally true to the words. As do I.
Warning, I'm not a specialist in this. My only qualifications is that Christianity has made me happy and I have read and listened a lot.
> I've never understood what part of the crucifixion was a sacrifice. Jesus is literally a god. He knew he would end up on the cross before he even took on human form.
All the more agony. (See also below.)
> He could have left at any time.
Yep, but as far as I understand then it wouldn't have been valid. As far as I understand it seems he knew he had one chance.
My best explanation is he went to create a way for us and it wouldn't have been much worth if he did it in "cheat mode"?
> He can return any time he wants.
See above.
> And how can his death on the cross be actually considered a death?
True God and true human. According to the sources we have he suffered badly.
> If he was dead, are we to understand that for those few days there was no god overlooking all of creation?
According to the common translations Jesus prayed to God and speaks of himself as something else than God.
I'm not very knowledgeable in theoretical theology but this isn't controversial at all to most people who consider themselves Christian I think.
There are some that suggest Jesus did A LOT during the 3 days he "was dead".
He went to hell. The phrase "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me" suggests he was spiritually separate from God the father - a fate worse than physical death.
He delivered previously dead Jews to heaven
He poured His blood out on a replica temple in heaven as THE lamb sacrifice for everyone who accepted His sacrifice. This is a LITERAL sacrifice - separate from "being human for 30 years sacrifice". Keep in mind that Jesus is the High Priest, he is THE person to make sacrifice for sins, and he is also THE object that was killed for those sins.
Firstly, if God is the one who exercises judgement in the first place in the form of who goes to heaven and who does not, then (as is written elsewhere in the Bible) what God says is good, is good, and what God says is bad, is bad, for no intrinsic reason other than God says it is so. When I do the good, I want to do it because I have some stock in the moral value or principle being maximized, not because some deity arbitrarily commanded it.
Secondly, if God is the source of all moral judgement, then he could just arbitrarily decree that repentance is now a thing instead of making Jesus suffer for our sins. In the same breath Christians assert that moral values come from God (if God says it is good, it is good, if God says it is bad, it is bad), but that Jesus had to suffer, to what, to make God decide to be more lenient with how he interprets our sins? How is that supposed to be inspiring? Makes God seem sadistic more than anything. But then when God contradicts his own moral values (i.e. murder in some of the old parables) Christians of course once again say no, this isn't immoral because God says it is not. Which is it? Either morality is whatever God says it is, and Jesus dying on the cross served absolutely no purpose, or God is a sinner and cannot/should not contradict his own moral tenants (but does because there is no one there to "judge" him), in which case Jesus dying on the cross makes some sense because morality is some force above and more powerful than god.
> but that Jesus had to suffer, to what, to make God decide to be more lenient with how he interprets our sins?
Justice requires accountability for wrongs committed. When we break God's moral law, justice requires that we be held accountable.
Jesus suffered for us to take the punishment that our sins require. Jesus took the penalty for us. That allows God to be a merciful judge, yet still fulfill all justice.
Put another way, at least how my understanding of Catholic tradition goes, atoning for sin (which was present from the Original Sin of Adam to every little or big sin we commit from time to time) demands sacrifice, and no sacrifice is sufficient to atone for all of it except for a sacrifice of God Himself. Various religions tried grain sacrifices, animals, even the ultimate sacrifice of humans, the one creature made in God's image (which was then discouraged with the story of Abraham and Isaac), but only Jesus, who was both fully God and fully human, could be the perfect sacrifice, which as a re-exercise of everything from the Last Supper through the crucifixion and resurrection, is done as the Eucharistic Rite at Mass. Jesus is seen as the perfection of the imperfect Adam, and his mother Mary (believed to have been conceived without sin, so as to be the mother of Christ) is seen as the perfection of the imperfect Eve.
Right, and the puzzling implication is even God isn't powerful enough to simply write off sin without there being some sort of sacrifice. IMHO this combined with the fact that God regularly violates his own moral codes in the bible tells me that really according to Christian doctrine, God is neither perfect, nor the most powerful being/force in the universe -- instead whatever this abstract force that requires sacrifice to negate sins --- that force is more powerful than God.
All hogwash of course, but just shows you how poorly thought out it all is.
To punish one for the sins of another does not sound like justice to me, not does it hold the sinner accountable. A judge who kills his own son so that he could pardon the people that come before him is clearly insane. Doubly so if the judge is the same one who wrote the laws.
Jesus took the punishment out of His own volition.
A man is convicted of a crime and the penalty is $1 million. Another man steps up and says he will pay the penalty.
In a way, you are right about it not being just. The convict deserves the punishment, but gets mercy instead. This is the nature of mercy and justice. They are opposed. Jesus paying for our penalty intertwines the two.
You obviously don't believe any of this is true or right. I don't make it my aim to convince you or anyone else. I'd be kidding myself if I thought I could do that. Just presenting Christian doctrine as accurately as I can.
That example only works for fines. If the punishment is 1 year in prison, then you can't get someone else to volunteer for you, even if they wanted to. And it would be quite ridiculous if suicidal (or terminally ill) people could volunteer to die so that a murderer (that they perhaps like or admire, for whatever reason) convicted to death would be pardoned.
It's true that I don't believe it all of this, but let's assume for a moment that the following is true (quoting your previous post):
> Justice requires accountability for wrongs committed. When we break God's moral law, justice requires that we be held accountable.
To me another man suddenly showing up paying the penalty is completely contradicting and undermining this accountability.
When making the rules, a god could just say "I forbid these things, and there will be consequences for breaking the rules, but in the end I will forgive, because eternity is a long time and I'm so kind and loving". Instead, the Christian rules demand that somebody (who may or may not be the one who violated the rules) is hurt. So the Christian god orchestrated the killing of either himself or his son (or maybe a bit of both? So it's suicide and/or filicide. The holy trinity is confusing), because he kind of wants to forgive people, but the rules (that he himself made, and presumably could change, being all-powerful) demand that someone is hurt. Oh, and most interpretations hold this god to be omniscient, so in that case it's not like he didn't see this mess coming when he made the rules in the first place.
If you are completely in control of a situation and voluntarily set it up in such a way that in the future you have to hurt yourself (or have you children hurt themselves) to get things to work out, is it really self-sacrifice? Having Jesus die for our sins makes the Christian god seems like a heroic firefighter who is also the arsonist.
I'm not sure I agree with your assertion that faith is inherently irrational, but I will say this:
All people everywhere live by faith.
This is because no one can know the future. You get in your car and drive to work. You are going by faith that you won't get killed in a car crash. Why do I know this? Because if you knew you would be killed, you wouldn't get in the car. You don't know. But you get in your car anyways, hoping by faith (probably subconsciously) you won't get killed.
By faith, I look at the evidence and believe God exists. By faith, someone else looks at the evidence (or lack thereof) and concludes He doesn't.
I can't know for sure if I'm correct. The other person is in the same position.
When we die, we'll know (technically, if the atheist is correct, we won't know anything at all). Good luck!
> He knew he would end up on the cross before he even took on human form. He could have left at any time. He can return any time he wants.
Is any of this actually a part of Christian canon? It's not clear to me that by describing Jesus as "God", we're meant to understand that he's omniscient (is Yahweh/"The Father" God even omniscient in Christian canon?) or omnipotent with respect to his human form.
>He knew he would end up on the cross before he even took on human form. He could have left at any time. He can return any time he wants.
The first Messianic prophy is in Genesis. "Eve's seed (Jesus) would crush the snake (satan)'s head. The snake would crush His heel (Jesus on the cross)"
He could have left at anytime is evidenced when Jesus is in the garden in Gethsemane right before He was arrested - he had a legion of angels at His command.
I'm not sure about "He can return anytime He wants." I'm going to chalk this one up to "He is God of the universe and do what He wants"
> is Yahweh/"The Father" God even omniscient in Christian canon?
I think it is canon in all abrahamic religions, based on the fact that there's a ton of literature around how omniscience relates to free will (Boetius, Aquinas, Calvin etc).
God created Time and does not experience it as we do. There is a school of thought that says that, for God, all times are _now_ -- there is no difference between past, present or future. All are equally "present" to Him.
In this frame, the Crucifixion is happening _now_. Jesus, as a man, is suffering and dying at this very moment. As humans experience time, He always will be.
It seems to me that, for any entity, this eternal experience is a very significant sacrifice.
An entity that experiences all of time at the same time would be pretty used to suffering, as all suffering that has ever and will ever occur is experienced by this entity all the time, so hardly a sacrifice. Jesus's suffering is a small drop in an ocean of suffering experienced at all times by such an entity.
I'm curious; do you believe that your subjective experience of God's love to be objective evidence for the existence of God, and thus you made a scientific observation that God must exist and therefore believe in him? Or is it more that your experience touching the divine had such a positive effect on your life that you simply decided to continue cultivating that experience? Or maybe a bit of both?
Personally I've not met anyone who believes in God because of scientific evidence for Gods existence. However I think Lee Strobale makes a claim of that nature in "The case for Christ".
Alvin Plantinga argues that you can have warranted belief without scientific proof in "warranted christian".
Me personally I believe that God revealed himself through revelation. That is, He convinced me internally to believe in Him. I know most would discount this as a source of truth but it's enough for me.
I think that anyone who believed in Santa Clause as a kid should automatically discredit any “intuition” they have about things. How much more evidence do you need that you’ll just believe in kooky nice sounding things?
Maybe you didn’t believe in The Red Guy, but I did, and in retrospect I must be a complete retard.
I agree that people believe stupid things. I also believe that this is evidence that you can't trust your intuition. I think I believed in Santa but I can't remember. I do remember struggling with my intuition of physics thanks to Hollywood movies.
I can say this feels different to that sort of belief. Not that I expect that would do anything to convince you of it's validity.
How can he die for you before you are even born? Would you truly be ok for the sin of Adam and Eve to be blamed on you from the day of your birth, simply because they were your ancestors, had Jesus not come along?
How is his being put to death a good thing, earning humans salvation all around, when two people eating an apple is bad enough to damn countless generations?
Interesting. I’m curious though, how many of them claimed to be God? How many of them fulfilled over 300 prophesies written hundreds of years before their birth? And how many claimed to have died for the sins of the world?
I'm actually more moved by the sacrifice of a mere mortal who is trying to improve things by sacrificing himself/herself, than by someone who believes his sacrifice will not really be the end; And I have a really hard time to see things the other way around, in fact.
Actually, I never managed to understand this: if one believes souls are eternal and virtue is rewarded in the after-life, then any kind of sacrifice seems cheaper and virtuous behaviors get closer to self-interest. How to reconcile morality with such beliefs?
Atheist here too. The day I stopped believing (around ~18 or so) was the start of my new life. I don't know how or why, but I put more importance on morale than on god's beliefs. I got kinder, more patient, and more of a giver.
"100% atheism" isn't a spiritual practice. It's just the absence of belief in the existence of gods.
A rock is 100% atheist, yet in all likelihood doesn't have spiritual practice.
You can have a spiritual practice under the umbrella of atheism, as long as it doesn't involve any kind of belief in gods. Whatever that practice is, that practice isn't identified with the atheism itself.
This is an important point. Being atheist doesn't say anything about your beliefs in ethics or the nature of the universe. It's just the absence of some set of other beliefs.
It is quite possible to find the negation of belief in God itself be a spiritual/freeing experience, especially if this follows prior subjugation/belief in an organized religion. Relinquishing religion can itself be a "spiritual" experience precisely because of how shitty religions tend to be.
Also, many mathematicians find a spiritual purity in certain equations and proofs. There need not be anything religious about such an experience. Something can be "deep", completely devoid of the paranormal.
Moreover, it is really a word semantic point. If someone says that their spiritualism is atheism, they are just using the word atheism for something other than "non-belief in gods", like "non-belief in gods, in combination with some other kinds of beliefs".
So, I am not tone deaf: I do hear that. Just let's use "atheism" right, too.
But note that someone identifying as an atheist, but with spiritual beliefs, might not be found to actually be an atheist, if their beliefs were examined by hard-line atheists. It is possible that a belief can have the trappings of being free from gods, but when you examine it critically, the entities in that belief can be identified as god-like after all.
Strawman examples:
"I believe everything has a purpose; but there is no such thing as god". Sorry, a purpose requires a being to articulate the purpose and set it into motion. If you mean inherent purpose (rather than a human interpretation which ascribes a non-inherent purpose) you have a god hidden in there.
Or "There is no such thing as god, but the world was clearly created". Oops again. Creation without a creator?
> Or "There is no such thing as god, but the world was clearly created". Oops again. Creation without a creator?
Is it possible to has have a creator but that creator not to be a god? For example, if we are living inside a simulation created by a software engineer, is that engineer our god?
I would say that if you believe that we are living inside a simulation created by a software engineer, then I am not certain whether you are theist or atheist, but leaning toward theist.
You’re missing the point. I don’t believe it one way or the other. It’s a hypothetical question meant to stimulate conversation about your “creator created” comment.
Suppose that without supernatural beings, life has no meaning or value (taking that to be "existential nihilism").
If it is revealed to such a world that there are in fact supernatural beings, how does that create meaning and value?
And how do those supernatural beings derive meaning and value; don't they need another level of meta-supernatural beings?
I want everyone to have meaning; I don't want there to be supernatural beings which are kind of slaves to provide me with meaning by their existence, but are themselves starved of meaning since they have nothing more supernatural than themselves to believe in.
One useful definition of meaning is the evolution of possibilities. A situation of no meaning is one which is a dead end in terms of possibilities.
If the universe dies in a heat death, then at that point there are no future possibilities distinct from the current state, and so there is no more meaning.
There might be no permanent meaning; no value that will endure forever, but people can be content with the temporary meaning, in which they enjoy new experiences and explore new possibilities in any endeavor.
Human lives end come to an end on a time scale vastly shorter than the death of the universe, yet people are able to find meaning.
OP here. I am an atheist with zero spiritual beliefs in the sense you are talking about. When I say "spiritual" I mean "dopamine-inducing", full stop. There is some cool stuff in math, science and in our crude attempts at morality that can be seen as "deep"/"spiritual" in its poetic purity, but this can be appreciated completely devoid of any belief in any kind of higher power. That is what I'm referring to.
The absence of certain beliefs is an objective differential from a other perspectives, and therefore does say something about one's beliefs (both on a relative and absolute scale) about the nature of the universe (as the nature of the universe is such that many agents within it perceive that there is a God involved).
Here's my take. I don't believe in G-d, but I believe there is a circuit in my brain, created by early education, that makes me feel good when I behave. Besides, I realize that such a circuit carries social benefits - if everyone behaves, society as a whole is better off. Looks like closed circuit logic and doesn't require any superstitious beliefs.
I think this doesn't reflect the standard spectrum of usage for the term. For instance, if you look up "atheism" in Merriam-Webster, the second definition is:
"a philosophical or religious position characterized by disbelief in the existence of a god or any gods"
By that definition, a rock is not atheist since it has no philosophical or religious positions (ha, I hope so, at least).
Honestly, I'm a little confused by your very strict understanding of the term, as I think people often (as above) use this second definition; and most people would find your statement "a rock is atheist" a little unusual.
Rather, a definition of atheist which allows rocks to be atheists by the fact that they lack philosophical positions is logically less strict, or weaker than a formulation that additionally requires the ability to hold such a position.
A predicate which adds restrictions is stronger, which can have disadvantages.
The weak definition lets me assign a value of true or false to is_atheist(P) for any P whatsoever. (Other than perhaps some kinds of P that create a some sort of syntactic self-referential paradox.)
> By that definition, a rock is not atheist
atheist is the negation of theist; it means "not theist". If a rock is not a not-theist, it must be a theist. Well, we don't want that, so we need to complicate things with three-valued logic, whereby is_atheist(P) can be "undefined" when P is a rock. Or else be happy with partial functions: P = rock is outside of the domain is_atheist.
The atheist rock is a rhetorical tool that uses the simplest possible definition of atheism and strictly two-valued logic.
Dictionary definitions are not meant to be combined like logical predicates. Rather, they provide a spectrum of possible meanings for a term. By recognizing multiple standard meanings for a word, I’m not tightening the space of entities that can match, but rather broadening it. But usage can still shift under a broader definition.
> atheist is the negation of theist
In one sense of the word, but that’s also the sense of the word in which you say that rocks are atheist, and probably not the (perfectly legitimate)sense of the word in which GP describes himself as “100% atheist.”
———
Taking a step back: is there any value in this line of inquiry other than semantics? I think so. It comes down to whether there is an active and lively philosophy of atheism in a positive sense, one that is chiefly distinguished by rejecting theism and building alternative moral, social, epistemological frameworks, but still fundamentally religious - a set of beliefs and practices and values for guiding one’s life, providing answers for the great questions.
I think this comes up because of the desire from some to make atheism seem essentially the default belief— no more notable than a lack of belief in fairies and elves. But in the world and culture most of us are embedded in, that’s just not accurate. It’s still a minority position, there are many important consequences to building one’s life on atheism vs theism, and there is an ongoing battle in the marketplace of ideas and the popular consciousness for each one. I think it’s galling to some to see atheism described as a philosophy or religion on the same “shelf” as theism, but practically speaking that’s what it amounts to for most people.
It is not the absence of belief in gods, it's the positive belief there is no god who put us here for a higher mystical purpose and plan, from which important ethical conclusions can be derived as listed by GP.
I read quite a bit about Stoicism - an ancient Greek school of philosophy founded at Athens by Zeno of Citium. The school taught that virtue, the highest good, is based on knowledge; the wise live in harmony with the divine Reason (also identified with Fate and Providence) that governs nature, and are indifferent to the vicissitudes of fortune and to pleasure and pain.
The Stoics elaborated a detailed taxonomy of virtue, dividing virtue into four main types: wisdom, justice, courage, and moderation.
Many may not view this as “spiritual” as it does not address “spirits” but rather personal empowerment.
I was raised Christian and very into it (mission trips, Bible study, accountability groups, etc) but abandoned it in my early twenties. I am much more content with life—no more sense of guilt constantly hanging over my head along with an increased sense of control and responsibility. My wife was raised Mormon and also abandoned her faith. Both of our immediate and extended families are still very religions.
I find it interesting that I grew up in a family which was not exactly religious (no church-going, etc), but incredibly moral in some it’s own way (Russian family based in Lithuania, military grandparents). But basically I had to let go of moral-ethical shame (guilt) to make my life easier too.
Not going to go into the depth of what these morals were, but in essence:
In some way I think it could be similar to having strict parents who had spent their whole life trying to make their children successful but it takes a lot of courage for that child to start living the life they way they want and not the life their parents have guilt-tripped them to live.
While I sometimes debate atheists on this or that (such as denial of consciousness or "soul" or afterlife claims or resting on circular reasoning that they prima facie don't exist), their "100% assume nothing" stance is waaaaaay better to debate pretty much anything on vs. pretty much any person who takes seriously their (usually unfounded, at least empirically; I'm putting aside externally-unverifiable personal/subjective experiences here, which I do believe happen) religious beliefs.
It's been excruciating existing as the sole "loves to debate" member of my original nuclear family (who are all fairly hardcore Catholics; I was raised in that but my naturally-questioning naturally-curious nature eventually led me off that path). Sincere religious belief is almost anathema to sincere debate (since some things suddenly become "unquestionable" or "heretical to question"); and it seems that many people feel "lost" unless they have some framework to make sense of things... but even then, people use reasoning that just seems terrible to me (such as thanking God for the survivors of a disaster but not questioning God at all about the non-survivors; at least Mr. Rogers made some sense when he said "look to the rescuers").
"There is no justice in the laws of Nature, Headmaster, no term for fairness in the equations of motion. The universe is neither evil, nor good, it simply does not care. The stars don't care, or the Sun, or the sky. But they don't have to! We care! There is light in the world, and it is us!"
Because compassion/sympathy/empathy are human qualities, and thus one can want to live in ways that (at a minimum) do not harm others, and perhaps to live in ways that help others.
I am Catholic, but the morality of an atheist is no surprise to me.
I'll never understand people who, when given the infinite moral and ontological agency that would be afforded to them by atheism, would rather do something as infantile as saying "fuck it, I should just die then". You can literally pursue the things you find meaningful, and ascribe meaning wherever you like, and decide what is right and what is wrong using reason or logic (or whatever you like). People can try to tell you how to live your life, and if you want to participate in society you generally have to make compromises and optimize for things in an altruistic way, but if you have a better idea you can always ignore them and go do your own thing without feeling bad about it (or better yet, convince them why your idea is better). At the same time, as with most things, there is an obvious notion of doing it "well" and doing it "badly", in that people would tend to agree that just instantly killing oneself isn't an ideal existence, regardless of whether there is any kind of afterlife or some kind of objective morality that transcends time and culture.
If your religious beliefs were somehow proven to be invalid, I guarantee you wouldn't just kill yourself, as you claim. You'd ascribe meaning however you can, and live your best life, as you always have.
If you are gay or otherwise something that was (previously) on the fringe of accepted culture, it becomes super obvious from a young age that people who try to tell you how to live your life are full of crap. I figured this out at the young age of 9. What shocked me then and continues to shock me now, though, is the cowardice and ignorance of people like you who, faced again with infinite moral and ontological agency, are afraid, and would rather die than have to come up with meaning and purpose themselves. What a boring, privileged, and childish take. People like this are either chronically unimaginative or have simply never experienced any adversity of any kind.
Still, some will press on and say, OK, well why is it that organized religions around the world tend to be somewhat similar despite tremendous geographic boundaries throughout history -- isn't it significant that all these different people and cultures came up with very roughly the same set of ideas and moral values? Of course it's significant! The power of the placebo effect is well documented and religion, if you think about it, is the ultimate placebo, and we've had hundreds of thousands of years to evolve the optimal set of religious values that produce the most dopamine while being the best at placating and controlling the general populace with promises of an afterlife and judgement for wrongdoing (where wrongdoing is anything that threatens the status quo). The best part is even if you agree with one particular religion, you have to acknowledge that yes, other religions seem to provide the same existential, spiritual, and psychological relief across the board (hence the millions of practitioners), and seem to organize society in a way that is pliable and easy to be led by a centralized authority (which historically is a good predictor for the success of things like empires, etc). So is it really surprising that after running hundreds of thousands of years of randomized trials to find the most effective religion with the best placebo effect, we've arrived at a select few that placate most people at least until they examine their convictions more closely and are properly educated? Knowing this, you could just as easily ascribe meaning yourself to get similar effects, so why go to the trouble of believing in something you know deep down to be false? You could get all these same effects, minus the cognitive dissonance of doubt, by simply taking charge of your existence and ascribing meaning to things you care about.
On the flip side, how are people so OK with the idea of an afterlife? When surveyed, most people say they would not be OK with living forever, yet we are all supposed to look forward to an afterlife where we do in fact live forever? What if heaven turns out to be not to your liking, and then you are stuck there forever? Wouldn't it then be a sort of hell? Even if you like it at first, eventually we get sick of everything anyway (without the urgency created by having limited time, meaning fades regardless of what you believe), so if heaven existed, it would eventually be hell no matter who you are. To eternal life, or any kind of an afterlife, I say no thank you unless I still have the option to off myself when I feel like being done. What right does some God have to imprison me in some eternal "ideal" afterlife and never allow me to just end, if I want to? What if the people he saves are actually super annoying sycophants and I'm stuck listening to them blather for all of eternity?
But, the religious person will say, "how can you believe things just end!! That's horrifying!!". Again this is such an infantile take. Maybe to an 8 year old this is horrifying, but if you think about it, it's not horrifying at all. Pain is scary, sure, and we don't like to imagine those we care about having to live on without us, but if you're simply afraid of the state of "not existing", full stop, you're being silly -- you wouldn't be there to experience whatever it is you're worried about anyway, because you wouldn't exist, you wouldn't be able to experience, so it couldn't be a negative or a positive experience! Sounds incredibly relaxing to me, knowing that eventually I don't have to exist anymore. If anything, it is much, much scarier to believe that perception or consciousness continues after death in some way, especially if they used ugly drapes and you're stuck with that for eternity.
Most anthiests seem to be nihilists, so they're already (claiming to be) doing that.
I just always find it strange the way that "100% athiests" seem to ignore the logical conundrum of "I don't need a God or theology to live a good life" when our constructed definition of "good" comes from religion.
There is a massive tradition, spanning thousands of years, of people trying to wrestle with morality and the good life with or without a God involved. We broadly call it Ethics in Philosophy, and you can spend an entire lifetime exploring and glimpsing what is at the core of this "being a good human" with or without a God involved.
As a 100% atheist, I disagree strongly with every single one of your statements.
To elaborate,
> Most anthiests seem to be nihilists
Not true
> they're already (claiming to be) doing that
No, they're not
> the logical conundrum of "I don't need a God or theology to live a good life"
There's no conundrum or contradiction here, plenty of us live good lives
> our constructed definition of "good" comes from religion
Sounds like a made-up fact. I don't need an omnipotent third party to validate that taking another person's life, or stealing from them, etc. is not right. Empathy and the idea of "do unto others" are quite easily understandable and relatable outside of the context of religion.
> I just always find it strange the way that “100% athiests” seem to ignore the logical conundrum of “I don’t need a God or theology to live a good life” when our constructed definition of “good” comes from religion.
“The people that came up with <useful idea> also believed <useless idea>” does not imply that “To benefit from or further refine <useful idea>, one must also accept <useless idea>”.
(I don’t see religion as useless, but there is no reason people who do would have any problem adapting and refining moral ideas first developed in a religious context, any more than religious people do for ideas developed in different religious contexts than their own.)
You can define good as you want, no need to have a religion define it for you.
I believe the main characteristic that takes apart atheist from other belief systems is that ultimately without a god that objectively defines what is good, one must define by himself what is good. This one one side is liberating because there is no more pressure between what one thinks is right and what the religion tell them, but at the same time extremely difficult because one exposes themself to all their psychological weaknesses (and to whom can manipulate them).
Nietzsche addresses this best in Beyond Good and Evil, we can cast if the constructed definitions from religion of “Good” and “Evil” and instead subjectively form our own morality based on what we find good or bad. But the constructed version of morality today comes more from culture and media than religion.
That just seems completely incorrect. Most people in my life are atheists and not nihilists, and the few exceptions are all religious rather than nihilists.
I don't believe in an afterlife but I do believe in consciousness and mental health. Just because there's no pit of fire, paradise, or next reincarnation doesn't mean that my actions don't influence both me and those around me either positively or negatively.
If I've hurt someone or done something wrong, I will dwell on it and think about the mistake I've made. Forgiving one's self is the process of figuring out A. how can I fix the wrong I've done and B. How can I let go of that and move on, realizing I can't change the past.
Why should I care about how I treat those around me? Because I, like most humans, am social and care about society in general. I want future generations of humanity to live in a kind world. I don't need religion to threaten me with eternal torture to know that hurting others is bad.
Morality, to me, is both not harming others and helping others that are hurting. This form of morality is superior to bronze age texts which endorsed slavery and genocide.
I could not have said it better than you did. I think that the real power is in your own mind and that most religions or "spiritual practices" are just ways of tricking your mind into solving your problems. You don't need religion once you realize that and then just use your mind.
You can be atheist with a spiritual practice. Meditation is often a non-religious practice ironically. Religious people have meditation-like rituals, but it's less likely to be sitting down clearing your head.
Also I don't believe GP said they were non-spiritual. Finding forgiveness for yourself and reflecting on moral values is a spiritual act.
Totally on your world view here. I was around 10 when I came across the Hubble deep field image as a gif. I proceeded to find it on google sky and I just couldn‘t get the mind boggling size of the visible universe into my brain while all of that supposed to be 2000 years old and only happen on earth. It blew my mind. One needed to scroll so hard only to reach that image which again has so many galaxies. And thats my spiritual practice, everything is in the name of nothing, this nothing is everything until entropy destroys the existence of everything.
Sincere question. How did you make the leap from the vastness of the universe to nothing? I have sensed the nothing but not in this way. How did it happen for you?
People don’t acknowledge ‘a weird sort of spirituality to atheism’ because it’s an absurd concept.
Because spirituality is born from spiritual experiences, not religious theory. Atheism, on the other hand, is a belief system.
It’s like sex - talking about it is quite different from experiencing it.
If Christianity doesn’t help you, that’s alright. There’s a ton of Buddhists, Hindus, Taoists, Zen practitioners who have a radically different approach than ‘The Book’. And there’s also psychedelics for a taste of what’s out there.
I have a computer science degree but I still find it strange that anyone doesn’t find life an unfathomable mystery.
For example - do you know who you are? Ie who is the ‘you’ that experiences the world? Have you ever looked inside?
I’m curious about any practices you may have found to integrate these positive aspects of your atheist view into your life. You mention moral responsibility and forgiveness - is there a way you intentionally cultivate these?
One thing you didn’t mention is awe or wonder, something I often hear religiously-minded people speak of. In contrast to fundamentalist religion, which exchanges awe for constricted thoughts about what is and isn’t real, it seems to me that true awe really is especially available to athiests (or those who align with religion and have moved beyond the belief system aspect and into the contemplative).
This does read a bit like a (albeit smart) 9-year-old's interpretation of spirituality, but I'm afraid I think you might have missed the opportunity to understand your parent's religion.
> 100% atheism. Was raised some kind of protestant I forget which one, and derived tremendous spiritual and psychological relief when I realized all of that was absolute nonsense at the age of 9.
As an armchair Taoist (and psychologist/neuroscientist), I consider this as jumping from the frying pan into the fire, or another frying pan at least. Although, the current popularity of this metaphysical framework is undeniable, as was the historic (and current) popularity of many more traditional metaphysical frameworks (religions).
I would say there are substantial behavioural similarities (thinking styles and patterns, epistemic approaches, etc) that can be reliably observed, and despite their claims that they "have no opinion" on the existence of God, it's pretty easy to get them to slip up if one is debating from an actually neutral position. Also, they tend to have quite strong emotions on the subject for people who have no opinion.
Regardless, any such claim that it is another religion can be quickly debunked by a quick Google of a dictionary definition:
>> religion: the belief in and worship of a superhuman controlling power, especially a personal God or gods
The dictionary entry proves that atheism is nothing at all like religion.
+100% ... well, straight here ... but I was 7 when I realised that religion was not only bullshit but actually dangerous as it represents a way for people to justify reprehensible acts by putting the importance of pandering to the alleged whims of a "supreme" being above any rational standard of decency and morality.
The bad reasoning is what makes me uncomfortable. Most of the time it doesn’t matter, but sometimes it matters a lot.
It’s the “if you have a problem with fundamentalists, maybe there is something wrong with your fundamentals?”
When otherwise smart people go on about god it makes me uncomfortable - a little like talking to a delusional person. When something there is broken anything can be rationalized. The specific religion doesn’t matter, they all share this flaw (along with woo like astrology).
“Some philosophers have been much confused by such scenarios, asking, “Does the claimant really believe there’s a dragon present, or not?” As if the human brain only had enough disk space to represent one belief at a time!
Real minds are more tangled than that. There are different types of belief; not all beliefs are direct anticipations. The claimant clearly does not anticipate seeing anything unusual upon opening the garage door. Otherwise they wouldn’t make advance excuses.
It may also be that the claimant’s pool of propositional beliefs contains the free-floating statement There is a dragon in my garage.
It may seem, to a rationalist, that these two beliefs should collide and conflict even though they are of different types. Yet it is a physical fact that you can write “The sky is green!” next to a picture of a blue sky without the paper bursting into flames.”
as it represents a way for people to justify reprehensible acts
And in that view, it also represents a way for people to "justify" incredible acts of grace, mercy, and kindness to fellow man. At least in the US, the broad majority of charities and social work organizations that care for others' many needs (both internal and external to this country) have some sort of religious background.
Even further, religious freedom was a core basis for creating the US that - for all its faults - is still one of the greatest civilizations to have ever existed. So your one-sided perspective is arguably just that.
My observation is that while religious people are kind and charitable, religious societies tend to be the opposite. An example is that the US is full of charitable organizations, yet in the aggregate, we are relatively uncharitable as a nation, especially towards the poor and weak. And how religious organizations actually spend their money overseas is anybody's guess, when a little bit of money can buy a lot of political power in a poor country.
From my reading of the gospel stories, this doesn't shock me. The religious doctrines have a lot to say about individual behavior, whether you agree with them or not, but nothing to say about how societies and governments treat people. In fact, my impression is that the gospels consider societies and governments to be irredeemable, and offer the "good news" of basically saving the good individuals and incinerating everything else, soon.
With this said, I'm hesitant to make a strong argument of this, because I have a rule that I don't try to interpret anybody else's religious doctrines or holy books. I hope that someone's religion motivates them to build a better society, but I can't prove that such a thing accurately reflects their doctrines.
I'm thinking about quality of life measures such as infant mortality, life expectancy, car crashes (just pulling a few things out of the hat), policy on global warming, etc. Not charitable contributions but actual charity. Also, I was talking about charity towards our own people.
I worked with a pastor in the Philippines doing charity work a number of years ago, he outright said that his good deeds were all to spread and grow the religion, not because doing good deeds is a good thing to do. I did not like that one bit but it’s hard to argue against given these Filipinos really did need food parcels.
The Japanese mafia also give out charity to get people onside. Putin used to drive around rural regions handing out cash too.
In the UK, Jehovas witnesses come round to your house after the death of a loved one and they give you all kinds of nice messages and charity.
Growing a religion (or a movement) through bribery is an ancient practice.
Growing a religion (or a movement) through bribery is an ancient practice.
Of course, and there's always an element of corruption in modern churches that needs to be guarded against. That said, wrt Christianity the early disciples were often broke/homeless, all of them ended up without a dime in their pockets and most were gruesomely executed:
I worked with a pastor in the Philippines doing charity work a number of years ago, he outright said that his good deeds were all to spread and grow the religion, not because doing good deeds is a good thing to do. I did not like that one bit but it’s hard to argue against given these Filipinos really did need food parcels.
The Japanese mafia also give out charity to get people inside. Putin used to drive around rural regions handing out cash too.
I don't think the pastors admission is as bad as it sounds at first blush. A religious man is likely to believe that the best "food" is the knowledge of God. That is, if the spirit is fed, and the mind looks to higher things, then order is restored in the organism. That being will begin to act rightly somewhat more often. It will use the food packets to add to an ordered life, and eventually become a source of food packets or other good things.
Viewed with the worst glasses, this motivation can be viewed as "growing the religion," as if its a pyramid scheme with no other motivation than its own growth (ie, cancer). I'd just like to add that it is possible to regard the growth of the religion as a truly high aim.
I'm not saying any one thing is true, only that it is possible that the pastors aim is high and heartfelt.
>but I was 7 when I realised that religion was not only bullshit but actually dangerous as it represents a way for people to justify reprehensible acts
I have a 7 yo daughter. I wonder if she believes this stuff, too.
I'll agree with the other comment that atheism – almost by definition – is not a spiritual practice. But I'll point out that the transition itself, from dogmatic religion to atheism, is almost always a highly spiritual experience.
Having gone through this process myself years ago I can attest to this, while also I must give my strongest recommendation that you eventually begin looking for a spiritual practice. Organized religion's wild success among humanity is a great testament to it's Darwinian fitness, and it undisputably provides many benefits to believers that you most definitely lose if you simply subtract it from your life.
Many atheists struggle with finding a replacement for those benefits without adopting magical thinking in some other way, and I sympathize with this. But once you have had a few years to distance the pain of religion, I highly recommend looking for a routine source of spiritualism in your life. Sam Harris advocates for meditation which seems to be the most prominent atheistic alternative, but it doesn't come by default with many of the benefits that organized religion does (community and ceremony to just name a couple off the top of my head).
Whatever time and effort your parents and family invested into religion, I recommend taking some portion of that and investing it in your own spiritual well-being. And as a disclaimer to all this: I too am atheist, I don't subscribe to any magical thinking, and I am co-opting the word "spiritualism" significantly here but I can't think of a good alternative. I don't actually believe "spirits" exist.
Just wanted to second Sam Harris. Try his app “Waking Up” for a wealth of resources on different kinds of meditation for beginners and the experienced. It’s really just an audio library of incredibly useful guided meditations and discussions with leaders in meditation.
Meditating without any reference to religion or God is possible and you can change your experience in very meaningful ways.
Good question, hope you don’t mind me jumping in. For me as a teenager or even younger, reading about various faiths and mythologies, I was thinking about which faith was the right one. Obviously I could simply choose the one of my parents and the adults around me followed, but I went to a school with Muslims, Hindu and Buddhist children too. Was I really supposed to try and convert them? None of the Christian teachers did.
It all made no sense. Everybody was just doing and saying what their parents told them to, and actually thinking or talking about it and taking it actually seriously just seemed absurd. Nobody was actually following through on what the scriptures said they aught to be doing, if it really was all true, and if they had that would be even worse.
So it wasn’t so much deciding god doesn’t exist, it was that if god does exist, which version is it and how would I know? From there concluding that religion is an entirely artificial social construct was a pretty small step.
Having said that, I also concluded that spirituality is clearly a ubiquitous human experience. Religion seems to be a response to a universal, or near universal impulse that it’s worth taking seriously.
I agree, but there may be a tipping point of equilibrium to that social construct. Cause at the end of the there should be some logic and reasoning has to there to feed the family. At least in this modern day.
Due to modern education system and scientific thinking clears out most of the dogma imposed on to people by religion. And I can see the current religion leaders embracing them, as it was their own. And we will see how the religion will evolve or devolve in this modern era of logic and reasoning.
We all come by it by different ways but I'll share my story.
I was mormon up until around 30ish. However, researching the history of the mormon religion ultimately led me to completely disbelieve the faith claims of the church.
From there, atheism was just sort of natural. Why, for example, would I suddenly believe that any other religious sect got it's supernatural claims correct when the one I was raised with, got a bunch of the "good feelings" from and was 1000% convinced was true ended up having really major issues?
I certainly could be convinced there is a god, but it cannot be through emotions. My emotions held me in mormonism for far to long. I know emotions can trick, deceive, and are easily played to. The right type of music or a charismatic orator can easily trigger them.
So what does that leave me with? Facts, logic, and evidence. Any religion that can give me solid evidence that the supernatural is real and exists would win me. None have succeeded (and I have had fun looking into a few).
If there is an all knowing, loving god that cares about me, then that god would know exactly how to present me the evidence I need to believe in it. If that god doesn't care about me, then why should I care about it?
And, if there's a supernatural belief without a god that I should believe in for afterlife rewards... well, there's just no way for me to correctly stumble into it. I need evidence that I'll be reincarnated as a spider if I don't believe in reincarnation, and that seems pretty tough to prove.
> So what does that leave me with? Facts, logic, and evidence. Any religion that can give me solid evidence that the supernatural is real and exists would win me. None have succeeded (and I have had fun looking into a few).
What tools would you use to prove supernatural claims?
Ultimately it depends on the claim, but the basis of it would that you'd have to be able to both test and repeatably reproduce whatever effect is claimed.
For example, let's say the claim is "God will heal you if you pray to him". Ok, let's pray that someone is healed in the hospital. How about another? And another? Do those prayers fail? Why?
The issue that one runs into is that the prayers will often fail and the answer is generally "mysterious ways". Yet, no religion seems to statistically fair better than other religions when it comes to diseases. So either, the prayer isn't working, or god is working extra hard to make sure to hide itself (Why would a divine being do that?)
Some claims I'll just reject outright. If the proof is "feelings" that's manipulation, not proof. Because, as I said, feelings are easily triggered. Pretty much every religion has figured that one out.
> Ultimately it depends on the claim, but the basis of it would that you'd have to be able to both test and repeatably reproduce whatever effect is claimed.
Can you explain further why this would be a good standard, or how it would help? I mean, suppose you were god (with the usual alleged attributes that generate this kind of issue). How would you make yourself repeatable or testable?
Prayer seems like one of the tests that you would propose. This seems to me to be a maybe not great test? Even we respond differently based on the situation. My kids pray to me for ice cream fairly regularly, for example, and sometimes they get it and sometimes they don't. (Sometimes they eat their dinner and haven't had more sweets than are good for them by my judgment; sometimes they're disobedient and annoying; sometimes I'm a first-rate bastard to my kids; and so on.) If god exists, I don't know that I would expect him/her/it to respond repeatably or to be testable, at least in that sense.
> Can you explain further why this would be a good standard, or how it would help?
Without this as a standard what are you left with to verify the divine is the divine and not a con? I think we can both agree that there are a lot of crazy cults and charismatic leaders that claim things they aren't and can use tricks and the slight of hand to prove things that aren't true. Assuming a loving god exists, shouldn't that being give us a way to tell the difference between false beliefs and true beliefs? Or if that doesn't matter to this divine being, then why would it be important to be a believer in the first place? The best way I know how to verify truth is repeatable tests with measurable results. Do you have a better way?
> I mean, suppose you were god (with the usual alleged attributes that generate this kind of issue). How would you make yourself repeatable or testable?
How couldn't you?
Assuming I'm the god of the universe, then the test would be as easy as "Anyone that thinks 'all hail cogman10!' will see a gold star in the periphery of their vision." Heck, I could simply have all my creations be born with the innate knowledge that I exist and these are my rules.
If you are a all knowing, all powerful, ever present being then constructing any sort of "this will always return true" test would be trivial. There are already tests like this in the bible "if you have the faith of a mustard seed you can move a mountain". Wouldn't the act of asking for literally anything demonstrate the minimal amount of faith?
But, assuming there is some law of the universe that I'm bound by (making me not all powerful), then I'd surely know how to communicate specifically with cogman10 to let them know that I exist beyond doubt (and to do that for everyone). If I didn't know that, then I must not be all knowing.
Or, if I didn't care to communicate that and instead I'm fine with my creations being tortured for eternity over an instant of choices... then I'm not particularly good or loving.
I picked prayer because it's a concept I'm most familiar with from my mormon upbringing.
> Assuming a loving god exists, shouldn't that being give us a way to tell the difference between false beliefs and true beliefs?
Oh, sure, I think that makes sense. I mean, supposing god exists and wants us to know he/she/it exists, it makes sense to me that some sort of revelation has to be there. But this god, being per se infinite, has to accommodate finite creatures. That seems like a challenge.
> Assuming I'm the god of the universe, then the test would be as easy as "Anyone that thinks 'all hail cogman10!' will see a gold star in the periphery of their vision." Heck, I could simply have all my creations be born with the innate knowledge that I exist and these are my rules.
I guess I would say that the universe itself seems to be repeatable and testable, at least at the scales we can measure so far. Of course there's a lot we don't understand, but that's kind of expected if your deity of choice is infinite.
I'm not sure what Mormonism teaches, but the Bible at least says that everyone knows that God exists, and that they suppress that knowledge. Maybe that's begging the question, though I doubt such claims are merely axiomatic (i.e., without some kind of reasonable argument). At least the request for something repeatable and testable that expresses the divine in some way would be answered by the universe you inhabit. This doesn't really lead to a Personality, which I think you'd have to arrive at in a different way. But I don't think persons—divine, if they exist, or otherwise—are repeatable that way.
> Wouldn't the act of asking for literally anything demonstrate the minimal amount of faith?
I don't know. Maybe the point of the saying is that no one has faith the size of a mustard seed?
> But, assuming there is some law of the universe that I'm bound by (making me not all powerful), then I'd surely know how to communicate specifically with cogman10 to let them know that I exist beyond doubt (and to do that for everyone). If I didn't know that, then I must not be all knowing.
It seems to me that one of the essential problems that most religious systems have to deal with the challenge of creaturely freedom and divine omnipotence. One possible supposal is that freedom is somehow incompatible with the desire for incontrovertible, watertight evidence, and that the two exist on a continuum. Perhaps the maximal amount of evidence is provided for the maximal amount of creaturely freedom?
Again, I think I understand the objection, but I'm not sure whether it adequately addresses the challenges that come along with it. I appreciate you thinking about the problem and talking about it, though. I have a lot of questions like this, too, and it's helpful to push some electrons into the ether instead of just talking to myself about it.
Look into teachings of Gurdjieff. Having similar background as yours, I was interested due to the fact that there is no need to believe anything from anybody else, and you should test everything you believe by yourself.
Just read the main wiki blurb on him and my main question is "Why should I believe in the existence of the unified consciousness or higher levels of consciousness"?
Wikipedia is not a great starting point to approach spiritual things.
Bohr, the Nobel-winning physicist, had a horse shoe on top of the front door of his country cabin. When he was asked whether he believed it brings him good luck, his reply was "I was told it works regardless I believe in it or not."
There is no need to believe in such things, and belief -- in the sense you are using the word -- does not "help" you. It may even be a hindrance.
More interesting question could be: can I find useful things about myself that I can personally verify that would be difficult or impossible to learn otherwise?
A book called Inner Game of Tennis (not related to Gurdjieff) talks about the inner game that elite athletes need to learn. For example, if you are practicing how to make the perfect tennis forehand hit, you are struggling with a part of yourself that tries to control your movement. However, you need to learn to let go, and let the body to do the movement. The part that wants to control the movement is very poor in doing that. So there are these various parts in myself, and it is essential to learn how they operate.
If you are intrigued, reading "In Search of the Miraculous" by Ouspensky or one book from "Psychological Commentaries" by Nicoll could be a better starting point than Wikipedia.
You don’t have to. It’s a choice. My doubts about it not existing came after I realized it’s not clear where to draw a clear boundaries for an organism. For example, each neuron in our brain can be considered it’s own organism but it’s part of our body and from our perspective we are in control of it. If we apply this to ourselves then maybe we ourselves are just a neuron in a bigger living “brain”.
100% atheism is not incompatible with spiritual experience or practice, at least if you take seriously the claim that sam harris makes which is that what spiritual experiences all have in common is a perception of selflessness, combined with the observation that what we know of physics implies a lack of any distinct self, and what we know of psychology says all the things we think of as "self" don't map at all to our understanding of how the brain actually works.
You started a religious flamewar with this and perpetuated it egregiously below. That's really bad. It's against the site guidelines and definitely not what HN is for. Please don't do it again.
I don't disagree with what you're saying—but more importantly, that's beside the point. The point is that you shouldn't be crossing into calling names, attacking other people, or fulminating—especially when the topic is an emotional and divisive one, like religion.
Incidentally, it's generally a bad idea to identify the community as hostile. That comes from a cognitive bias which we all seem to have: we place greater emphasis on the things we dislike, and are more likely to notice them in the first place. The things that we consider favorable end up getting far less emphasis. This leads to false feelings of generality, and a negative sense of being surrounded by enemies. The people who disagree with you feel the same way, because they have the same bias (like I said, we all do).
>Atheism is not spiritual and to conflate the two is foolish.
Not necessarily, obviously, but there are spiritual atheists, and if OP asks "what are your spiritual practices" then "I have none" is a valid answer.
>It is clear that atheism and consumerism in modern society do not make people happy.
The least happy people I know are religious, and almost all the Atheists I know are pretty happy with their lives. I don't think Atheism makes people happy, but I don't think Theism makes everyone happy too. It works for some, and doesn't work for others.
> You cannot be Spiritual without belief in Spirit
How would you define "Spirit"?
Languages evolve over time and I'd argue the word "spirituality" is morphing into something with a very broad definition of "spirit", one where, for example, an atheistic Buddhist can practice and still be considered "spiritual".
You touched on a number of interesting topics and I'm sure we could go down a rabbit hole of tangents : ) It sounds like you have come to some sort of understanding of how the world and "God" works.
Myself, I find the concept of an omni-powerful "being", "God", force exceptionally far-fetched, without any concrete scientific evidence that I'm aware of. I'm ok with the understanding that humans are simply animals that evolved exceptionally large brains. It was inevitable that we'd use start using those brains to ask, "Why the fuck are we here?" followed by the birth of thousands of various religions and beliefs over the millennia.
Yes, I could be wrong but this general philosophy makes sense to me at this point in my life. I don't believe there is any objective meaning to life aside from creating my own meaning, and so far it's working out well.
Etymologically, spirit originally seems to have meant something like breath or life (hence "aspirated"). The reification of that sense into an otherworldly Being is a later development. So maybe there's some room for an atheist to be "spiritual" in the simple sense that one would contemplate the significance or meaning of being or existing. The only assertion that atheism makes is a negative one--namely, that the theists are wrong. That doesn't necessarily preclude one from having some other idea about the nature of being.
They may contemplate as they wish but their minds can only take them so far.
They will remain closed to the possibility of true spirituality because ultimately they believe only in material things and they take themselves to be the real thing, and the Spirit to be more or less a dream.
Sure they may have some interesting experiences but often they turn away from these experiences and dismiss them as no more real than dreams.
If the belief in the heart is absent so to will It be absent. It is a game of hide and seek but you must have the belief in that which is being sought. Otherwise the whole thing falls apart.
Your argument is with materialism or rationalism, not atheism per se. Atheism is the rejection of theism. There are many varieties of theism but they're pretty well defined (by the theists themselves, even painstakingly so).
One can “believe in nothing” and still have “spiritual” experiences, for example the experience of observing a beautiful sunset… or perhaps the feeling we get when acknowledging that we are made from stars and will one day return to them.
You can argue that this isn’t true spirituality, but I think the way neurons fire during it is the same way a spiritual person’s neurons fire when having their own moments.
Also, being an atheist does not mean you lack any belief in the supernatural. For example, if I believed in ghosts but have no belief in god, I could still have spiritual experiences with my ancestors.
So you believe in little green men instead of little blue ones and that makes you an atheist?
If you see the experience as nothing more than a dream then that’s what it will become.
If you see it as something at least as real as this waking reality then the experience has impact.
Without belief in it, your experiences are meaningless. You will learn very little from them.
They are invitations that you have outwardly rejected in labeling yourself an atheist.
Atheists would take a research paper as truth over their own direct experience. They hold Science as most dear and most important and they label faith and beliefs and spiritual experiences as make believe or pretend fantasy.
An atheist has many definitions but one used very commonly is simply the lack of a belief in any gods. So I can believe in those little men (blue or green) and still be an atheist as long as those men are not divinely powerful gods.
I see how you are trying to define atheism: "Atheists would take a research paper as truth over their own direct experience. They hold Science as most dear and most important and they label faith and beliefs and spiritual experiences as make believe or pretend fantasy."
Again I remind you that atheism is a very broad term. As an atheist I follow the most common definition and have no belief in god as I have not seen any evidence they exist yet. If I have some sort of personal supernatural experience and god reveals themself to me, I see no reason why I wouldn't believe in them. Especially over some flimsy piece of paper.
I can also believe in something without evidence and still be an atheist. For example I believe in the supernatural to some extent because it brings me comfort and because there is so much that we still do not understand.
No, they don't. I understand how you'd like to imagine there are a bunch of atheists out there coveting something you have, but that isn't the case. Reread the root comment and try not to take "spirituality" so literally.
It is of no consequence to me what others think or what they covet. They are allowed to their beliefs as I am to mine.
You are the one who thinks that you own the ‘I’ all to yourself. You see yourself as a separate individual. That is clear.
Spiritualism is spiritual of Spirit. You call yourself an atheist. Do I then say that Atheists believe in God or some form of it? Ridiculous. Come off of it.
We can change the words to make it easier on people and stop wasting time with petty semantics.
Lets call it people who believe in nothing and then there are people who believe in something, a higher intelligence or a soul or spirit.
It was adapted for the situation from No True Scotsman, admittedly partially because I grew up Christian and have heard this sentiment before (a close relative of the pervasive Prosperity Gospel), but mainly because we are discussing spirituality. I am calling you a Christian in this instance no more than I would have been calling you a Scotsman with the traditional wording. Regardless, the fallacy would be there even if I did mistakenly pin you as a Christian.
Suffice it to say, I find it cruel and absurd to believe that someone suffering from depression must not really have a relationship with their god, and I urge you to reconsider your beliefs in this matter.
Sarcasm. Being sarcastic adds nothing to the subject, it is avoidance of engagement.
If you want to discuss there is no need to hide behind a device like sarcasm. I am open to all engagement. I realize I am on a site which is mostly composed of atheists.
Incorrect. Hinduism has had Sankhya Yoga which adopts a “rationalistic” approach and at some points in its existence has questioned the existence of God (Ishvara) [0].
I think Buddhism and Taoism are atheistic as well. This is my assumption though and I will be happy to be corrected.
I am a practicing Hindu. Yes, I’ve heard of all of those and Bhakti is but one school of thought. But Hinduism has always had space for other schools of thought. Sankhya is one of them. It does not have a lot of adherents but it does exist. About many God’s in Hinduism - It’s one God (Brahman or Truth) but its different forms as perceived by humans based on the agency/actions of God.
I don’t practice Sankhya. My ancestral / traditional school is Advaita Vedanta which is actually opposed to Sankhya :). My point being not all atheism is recent or non-sprititual. Most eastern faiths have a rationalistic component / school of thought which is atheistic but continue to rely on methods of meditation and logic to better oneself.
What does atheism have to do with consumerism ? One can believe that there's no god and not want to define their lives by consumption. An idealized version of my life would be defined by creating and learning new things, I don't need to believe in a supernatural being for that
No, you just need the belief that something more is beyond what you normally see and sense. Not a supernatural being. That is all that is required to be spiritual.
Although in reality we are only spiritual. Call it a very good haptic VR system if you will.
Our society is mainly atheists consumers. You wont find God on CNN or Amazon Prime
> 100% atheism. Was raised some kind of protestant
Please don't conflate Christianity with religion or the lack of Christianity with atheism. Many religions are very spiritual, and I remind you that talking about our spiritual practice is the whole point of this thread.
Strong atheism of the sort you profess is religious in my opinion. It may or may not be spiritual, depending on its flavour. You don't sound like a God hating atheist (which is definitely spiritual).
There is, frankly, no such thing as a "god hating atheist". Those two notions are incompatible. Consider, for example, how little you (probably) care about fairies. Are you a fairy hating afairist?
You may find an Atheist that says something like "If god does exist, it's a dick". but that's not really hating god but rather pointing out the silliness of believing in a supernatural all powerful being that is good which allows evil to happen. IE, the problem of evil.
There are God hating atheists. What I refer to are people who were raised within a powerful belief system. Their atheism is powerfully and emotionally reactive against that belief system and it's ultimate symbol. They profess not to believe in that God but much of their own thought system revolves in a negative sense around it.
Edit: Just a note that the specific term "God Hating Atheist" I take from John Gray's book Seven Types of Atheism.
I think it's a reasonable response for atheists that were raised in these systems to have this strong negative reaction to that prior belief system.
This "hate", however, is not directed toward an entity this atheist thinks exists. The type of atheist you describe hates the concept of "god" that their prior belief system constructed.
When one comes out of a system that one feels they were duped by for 20+ years (in my case), sure, I retain a powerful, strong, negative reaction to that system and its concept of god.
It does not mean that my disbelief in this god is equivalent to some kind of "religiousness" and to suggest that I think is incredibly naive
To me, it serves as a warning and a life long lesson. I was formally mormon and didn't get out because the thought of a all powerful man in the sky made me extra special was silly. I got out because I looked into the history of the church and found that the founder and his successors were obvious con-men. Like, so obvious that years of indoctrination ultimately gave way.
Had the founder any moral character and I frankly might still be a mormon today. (though, tbh, it was likely because of his immorality that mormonism has survived. I'd probably not be around as I'm from a large family that likely wouldn't have happened without mormonism).
The lesson I took from that is to challenge my world views, don't take assumed knowledge for granted, and to be extra super wary of anyone trying to tug on emotions to motivate me into action.
The translation of the Golden Plates has always struck me as insane. And that people would take a man at his word on all of the details… even more insane.
> Smith said that he found the plates on September 22, 1823, on a hill near his home in Manchester, New York, after the angel Moroni directed him to a buried stone box. He said that the angel prevented him from taking the plates but instructed him to return to the same location in a year. He returned to that site every year, but it was not until September 1827 that he recovered the plates on his fourth annual attempt to retrieve them. He returned home with a heavy object wrapped in a frock, which he then put in a box. He allowed others to heft the box but said that the angel had forbidden him to show the plates to anyone until they had been translated from their original "reformed Egyptian" language.
Oh and the plates have never been found or seen by anyone else.
Oh yeah. It's really just totally insane. As someone born into the faith you are taught it's just another miracle like Jesus/Peter walking on water or coming back from the dead. Even though those events were recorded (according to most biblical scholars) around 100 years after they supposedly took place.
Quiet literally the same as if I wrote about how George Washington felled a cherry tree with a magic axe that granted him the ability to see through time.
When your parents believe it, and their parents believed it, etc all the way back to the founding of the church when your (rubes) of ancestors fell for a con... yeah, hard to see the lie for what it is. Even if, from the outside, it's beyond obvious.
I'd consider it the difference between answering this question with "I don't have any" and "I have atheism"
"I don't have any" is the one that doesn't care, vs "I am atheist" says you care a whole lot about god. You don't identify as afairist at all. If you do, you're almost certainly a fairy hating afairist
Big difference here is that there aren't multibillion dollar organizations with billions of followers firmly and strongly convinced of the existence of fairies to the point where they want to write laws based on fairy culture and teachings. If I lived in such a culture, I'd probably describe myself as an afairist.
I would not call myself an atheist if it weren't for the fact that theism is thoroughly and deeply ingrained in american culture.
In china, most people are atheists, but they don't really identify as such. It's simply the default. Were I in that circumstance, I certainly would feel exactly the same way.
I am an atheist and definitely care a ton about religion. Because what people believe highly influences their actions. A mind that can believe things without good reason or evidence can believe anything. Often these things are nasty, awful things. People then promote these things in government and society, and because they are couched in 'religion' get some sort of exemption from criticism at large. Is there anything you COULDN'T believe based on faith? If i do not need to provide evidence, is there anything i couldn't deeply hold and promote, that is offensive and problematic to a society? If i don't need to provide evidence, how can you question me when my supreme being has told me that men are better than woman, that people of my religion are better than others, that cis people are better than lgbtq+ people. That white people are better than people of color. It's my supreme being, i don't have to prove him to you. "It's true for me", and you need to respect me for it.
For many formerly religious people God was very "real" as a force they thought existed and had an effect on them, and I think it's quite possible to feel hate towards that God and what he represents, even if you no longer thinks he literally exists.
I strongly disbelieve that I'm a murderer. I have no memory of committing homicide, and I would vigorously defend myself were I to be accused of such. Is that a religious belief, too?
I hear this sentiment quite a bit but I don't understand still. Can you explain a bit why (strongly) not believing in a deity is religious? I can hate God, because for instance I think religious belief has done a lot of harm, but how does that make my stance a religious one?
That’s true of course and maybe is just an artifact of imprecise language. Of course I can’t hate a physical thing that I don’t think exists, but I can hate the concept of it. When people say “God hating atheist” I assume they mean an atheist that hates the concept of god. I still fail to see how that’s religious though.
Because a) it's not as much based around a hatred of anything, more a worldview that refuses to resign the mysterious to the supernatural, b) because when you make the call that you must be atheist, given your world view, you are forced to question your position on morality and where you stand in society, humanity and indeed the universe. Nothing is hand waved away and you are now wholly responsible for your own definitions of these things, and the potential alienation that may result.
I can see how there is overlap between spirituality and atheism, as there's no need for a god or belief in most of the subjects that seem to fall under spirituality. Especially when we exist in a universe, the chances of which even existing are infinitesimally minute, that is so breathtaking that most of us have resorted to filling in the knowledge gaps of how and why with best guesses. It is so wondrous that, god or not, you can feel plenty spiritual just experiencing it.
Whether personal spirituality should be your life's focus when there's so much at play on Earth, however, is another question.
I think the problem of strongly asserting nonexistence is purely a puzzle of logic or language. We lack terminology and language for something that is, informally, in between strict existence and non-existence, such as things that are proposed without evidence but taken seriously. I've been thinking about this since reading about things like faster-than-light travel, and the singularity.
Then the question is whether it's useful to assign a third category, or just to combine it with one of the original two categories. My own feeling is that strong versus weak atheism is not a useful distinction.
There are many kinds of Atheism. I have met people to whom the very idea of God was just a weird thing they heard of once and thought was kind of cute or whatever but a matter of genuine indifference to them. On the other hand we have the parent comment which professes a strong Atheism. A little bit of analysis on it shows I think a strong emotional and philosophical attachment to the importance of their own disbelief as a system of thought and a way of life in opposition to another system.
> 100% atheism. Was raised some kind of protestant I forget which one
He forgets which one? Either he really wasn't raised in it at all or more likely he wants to emphasize his contempt for it by "forgetting" what it even was.
Religion is "absolute nonsense" and "laughable" - twice. He derives "tremendous spiritual and psychological relief" in an alternate way of looking at things.
> As an atheist I was suddenly responsible for making my own moral judgements and conclusions (I had to decide upon my own objective basis for making moral judgements)
He has developed an entirely new personal system of moral values - based on what? It's just an implicit religious system based on our current secular politics.
> forgiveness was something I had to work towards myself (as in I had to forgive myself for things, which is not easy, but is incredibly rewarding) versus simply getting it for free from some nonexistent deity. All in all, was an incredibly positive change in my life, and I do believe
He's worked some pretty uniquely Christian ethics about personal forgiveness into it too. This stuff isn't universal.
> there can be a weird sort of spirituality to 100% atheism that people don't really acknowledge.
Seems like you're overloading the word religious to mean an idea that someone holds either very strongly, has a philosophical component or believes on faith (e.g. insufficient evidence or not thoroughly examined). All of this could be true, but that's not really religion.
As defined, religion is "the belief in and worship of a superhuman controlling power, especially a personal God or gods.". Nothing about a strongly held belief, even one lacking evidence, makes it religious.
Please explain how being a god-hating atheist is spiritual
I think if god-hating atheists do exist it’s an inherent contradiction. Perhaps you are confusing people who practice “satanism” mostly as a way to troll religious people as god-hating.
There are definitely anti-religion atheists but I don’t see how that is spiritual.
No offense, but this seems like more of how a religious person understands atheism than what atheists actually think.
A religious person may perceive an atheist as “god hating” when they are merely “religion hating” or perhaps making fun of your god/the existence of a god.
I don't really understand, seems like there is a very easy answer. In the case of belief I would've thought that's obvious. I can be afraid of zombies without believing zombies exist.
I don't think anyone denies the existence of the concept of god. I'm an atheist, but of course the concept of god exists. People believe in it, it can and has been talked about.
Seems like you're equating the concept of god (i.e. people's beliefs), with the actual entity of God (i.e. the man in the sky that created everything).
> In this case god-hating atheists confirm the existence of god in the form of 'concept' you may say.
C'mon, no atheist is remotely claiming that God doesn't exist even as a concept. You can't possibly think this is what any atheist ever meant?
On the face of it it's almost impossible to claim that something doesn't exist as a concept, since making such a claim creates the concept. Some atheists might claim there are logical inconsistencies in the concept of God, but that's still different from claiming the concept doesn't exist.
Okay, and why exactly existing as a concept is less important for this argument?
Additional question — what religions do you know that explicitly state the existence of god in materialistic sense and not as a non tangible ideal (hence the word idea by the way)?
Please try to answer deeply and not just critisize me for hating atheists, I am not, I just point out very simple but overlooked details that are crucial for such discussions.
> > > The existence of a concept is not the same thing as the existence of the thing the concept refers to.
> Yes it is
No, it's not.
> for most of the average Joe believers the concept of god is the god, since they never faced any other kind of god in their life.
This...requires the assumption that God does not exist (in re, if we must, since you seem to insist on the archaic, Anselm-like insistence that existence in intellectu is a real thing and that material existence is a predicate), but, even ignoring that giant problem with one premise, that's not true. I may have a concept of a robber who robbed my house when no such robbery actually occurred in the material universe, but the existence of they concept doesn't mean that a robber who robbed my house exists even if I have had no experience of a material robber only the concept, it means the concept refers to a thing that does not exist.
Ditto with concepts of God to the extent that God does not exist.
For forgiveness, you need to actually be contrite and willing to amend your life. God loves you and wants you to heal but you need to be open to it. Also he is just, so he doesn’t exactly let you do whatever you want as you imply. There are always consequences to our actions.
Further, I would argue that without living with God, you are actually freed from responsibility in moral judgements, because of the belief that there is no final judge. You believe no one is ultimately holding you accountable to seek forgiveness or to live rightly, and you must try to adhere to wavering conceptions of courtesy and politeness in a culture with ever shifting morals.
I think unless you have been both religious and atheist, it’s hard to compare which results in better morals and values. It’s a common misconception that having a god free life will result in an immoral or amoral existence. It’s simply not true. Leaving religion felt empowering and made me think seriously about which values mattered to me.
Humans have always had the capacity to be good to each other inside them. The idea that religion or god is necessary for that is demonstrably false.
I did not claim that you can’t do good deeds without a belief in God, far from it. I simply stated that if you don’t have a belief in God, you don’t believe in the final and ultimate, judge. This makes it generally harder for us to do good, but not impossible. For instance, you now are focused on values that matter ”to you”, but a belief in God makes it easier to abide by values that matter to everyone else. Again I’m not dealing in absolutes so you may have a specific experience that is hard to reconcile with these generalizations.
> For instance, you now are focused on values that matter ”to you”, but a belief in God makes it easier to abide by values that matter to everyone else.
That right there is the root cause of all the problems with religions. If you don’t believe in what everyone else in the community believes in then you don’t belong to the community and hence you are the enemy. My god is the ultimate judge not 999 other gods out there.
> but a belief in God makes it easier to abide by values that matter to everyone else
What tends to happen if I look around the world is that instead of "everyone else" it's more like "what some religious version of a politician/dictator/tribal-committee/etc thinks is a value".
Take one example most "westeners" would probably agree is a bad version of this: the Taliban. Afghanistan is now ruled by the religious beliefs of an organization made up of people that have very strong beliefs and that - from what news we can get on it - do not hesitate to enforce with violence. I'm sure internally there's the 'regular' power struggles and social dynamics you will find in almost all of the rest of humankind to gain the upper hand. So what about _everyone else_ in Afghanistan that just wanted to live the lives they got accustomed to in the past ~20 years?
The Catholic church nowadays I suppose is more of a political organization but in its past it comes a lot closer to the above. Nevermind the hiding of sexual abuse by priests and shielding them from prosecution. To me it matters that these offenders get behind bars. Now. I think most of _everyone else_ feels the same.
I picked out two examples here but there's a ton of other examples and you can use any major or minor religion for this.
Don't get me wrong, I share a lot of beliefs about what one should or shouldn't do w/ Christianity and some other religions and law makers. I don't need to believe in a deity for that though. I don't mind if someone else does. Feel free, no problem. Just do not try to make me believe in the deity or use the deity as an argument. Or worse, use violence to make me comply with "believing" in it and practicing it.
The only data point I've seen that empirically supports religious prevalence is that very christian countries have a statistically significantly lower level of dishonesty. (see: China for a counterexample)
I don't mean to start a "religion versus atheism" comment battle, but just wanted to discuss the idea of moral responsibility. For context, I grew up in a Christian (Eastern Orthodox) household and attended church for some twenty-five years of my life - that is to say, the perspective of a believer is not lost on me, even though I am now agnostic.
For me, responsibility is irrevocably linked to the idea of care - caring for those other than myself makes me responsible for my actions, inasmuch as they impact those around me. That ranges from those I love (my partner, family, friends) to strangers on the street that I nonetheless "care" for, by recognizing our shared humanity. Care itself comes from the idea of finitude - specifically, the idea of fragility of life in the face of our mortal existence. If I'm being poetic, "living rightly" means a life that is spent caring for others, strengthening the bonds that link us in face of death. The consequences of our actions are felt precisely because of the finitude of our lives - all we've got is each other, and our responsibility is towards one another.
Religious morality of the other hand is best expressed in the story of Abraham being asked to sacrifice his son (it's no wonder the three major religions are called "Abrahamic"). For a deeper dive into the idea, I recommend reading Kierkegaard's retelling of this story in Fear and Trembling - to recap however, God asks Abraham to sacrifice Isaac, they travel to mountain where Abraham binds Isaac and lifts up the knife to kill him. At the last moment, God interrupts Abraham, and a ram is offered as sacrifice instead. This story, perhaps one of the most well-known stories from the Old Testament of the Christian Bible, goes directly against the idea of responsibility in moral judgments - Abraham does not falter, for he fully trusts his Lord, giving up his son in devotion to God's command. The idea of care or responsibility for ones actions is superseded by the belief that the will of God is, in fact, more important than caring for those around you. A true belief in an everlasting life presupposes a detachment from the world (as any cursory reading of writers such as Saint Augustine shows), in a way protecting and insulating the believer from truly coming to terms with the consequence of their actions (in this case, murdering their only son).
To sum it up, I just can't get behind the idea that a final judge is somehow required for having responsibility in moral judgments. In fact, the opposite is true - only through the secular faith that there is no better everlasting world can we form meaningful relationships and take full responsibility for our actions.
Why would you believe in a God whose morality isn't superior to yours? Conversely, if you care for those around you and you knew God's will was ultimately better for them, why would you not obey Him over your own judgements?
I'm not arguing that God's morality is somehow inferior to mine - I'm arguing that by trusting and obeying Him over my own moral judgement (I know murder is wrong, yet God tells me to kill someone), I am shifting responsibility for my own actions onto Him - Abraham's greatness is that he does not doubt the Lord. The ultimate accountability to God is inherently at odds with my responsibility for those around me.
"He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me." Would you look your son in the eye as you lower the knife?
> The ultimate accountability to God is inherently at odds with my responsibility for those around me.
If you believe that God is more loving than you are, it is not at odds at all. In fact, if you want what's best for those around you, you are responsible to obey the Lord first and foremost, as he loves those around you more than you do. He also loves you more than you love yourself.
If, however, you don't trust in God's love, then you're totally right. You'd be obeying someone who you're not sure has your neighbors' best interest at heart, and thus abdicating your duty of care.
God ultimately saved Isaac so I'm not sure why Abraham's sacrifice would be a counter-example to God's love here. We can talk about all the people who actually died, seemingly by God's orders, in the Old Testament, but we don't know what happened to these people ultimately, given redemption and salvation by Christ. Death itself being conquered and eternal happiness being granted makes death a poor example of injustice.
I do believe we are talking about slightly different things here - you put an emphasis on God's love and His care for the world, while I focus on the human (Abraham's, etc) need to renounce the world and (by extension) the ties and moral responsibilities that bind us to it, in order to fully embrace God. Regardless, I'd like to thank you for taking the time to chat - I've had fun trying to work through and structure my thoughts on the topic.
I am a practicing Catholic. I have four kids all under 7. My normal day consists of feeding them, bathing them, calming tantrums, losing my temper, getting bitter at my lack of time for hobbies, and growing resentful of my lack of time for reading the Bible, praying, etc.
But then I remember that this is a true dying to self. Not only a dying to self, but a dying to the world too as each of these sacrifices, failures, and victories occur hidden away from the world. Thus I commend myself to this daily humbling, this emptying, and also trust myself to the daily prayer of the monks, whose prayer and sacrifice are also hidden from the world and whose labors I suspect are also just as arduous, frustrating, and challenging at times.
> For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find i
You might like this poem (from what I can find it is attributed to Bill Britton):
When you are forgotten, or neglected, or purposely set at naught, and you don’t sting and hurt with the insult or the oversight, but your heart is happy, being counted worthy to suffer for Christ.
THAT IS DYING TO SELF
When your good is evil spoken of, when your wishes are crossed, your advice disregarded, your opinions ridiculed, and you refuse to let anger rise in your heart, or even defend yourself, but take it all in patient, loving silence.
THAT IS DYING TO SELF
When you lovingly and patiently bear any disorder, any irregularity, any impunctuality, or any annoyance; when you stand face-to- face with waste, folly, extravagance, spiritual insensibility and endure it as Jesus endured.
THAT IS DYING TO SELF
When you are content with any food, any offering, any climate, any society, any raiment, any interruption by the will of God.
THAT IS DYING TO SELF
When you never care to refer to yourself in conversation, or to record your own good works, or itch after commendations, when you can truly love to be unknown.
THAT IS DYING TO SELF
When you can see your brother prosper and have his needs met and can honestly rejoice with him in spirit and feel no envy, nor question God, while your own needs are far greater and in desperate circumstances.
THAT IS DYING TO SELF
When you can receive correction and reproof from one of less stature than yourself and can humbly submit inwardly as well as outwardly, finding no rebellion or resentment rising up within your heart.
THAT IS DYING TO SELF
Are you dead yet? In these last days, the Spirit would bring us to the cross.
“That I may know Him, and the power of his resurrection, and the fellowship of his sufferings, being made conformable unto his death.” Philippians 3:10
EDIT: I like to keep this poem around as a reminder on how I should act. I find that self is a hard beast to conquer.
It's so odd to me that since the dawn of time, humans find this innate need to live in slave morality. Living a life of moral slavery based on stories and tales previous humans made with their own minds. It's a definition of insanity, from my own perspective.
To contribute to the discussion: I practice nothing, no religion, no meditations. Nothing. I find peace enough knowing that I'm not morally enslaved and that I trust in natural workings of this possibly created planet. It's not that I do not believe there's some God or force out there, potentially, but I fully trust in living a natural life, the way I was born and in a somewhat Stoic fashion. When I die, I just am. I will become nature once more. So be it.
I'm far from a philosopher so I wasn't familiar with master/slave morality before your comment so bear with me. It is odd to me that you say that this is the definition of insanity to find this need to live in slave morality; yet many of the Stoic and Christian teachings are very similar which is easy to see comparing biblical teaching to the Enchiridion. I mention this since you identify somewhat with the Stoics, maybe I misinterpreted the sentence completely though.
While many of the teachings are very similar, the Christian finds ultimate freedom from sin by turning his/her life to God. While you acknowledge there may be a God, Christians proclaim that there is a God that commands men to repent of their sin and follow Him. The apostle Paul's explanation is much better than mine:
Moral slavery as you put it is one of those things that's bad for you but good for everybody else, unless you're bad at getting away with things in which case it's also good for you.
Another kind of slavery is doing whatever you want, because you don't decide what you want. What you want is determined by the often self-contradictory brain circuits that sprouted in your head without your intent or permission. That's something from the bible, by the way.
I recently heard an experienced psychologist claim that in 30+ years of clinical practice he had never seen anyone "get away with" anything. I was surprised by the statement. This would be Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment universally applied. The psychological consequences of actions we take may be so deeply embedded within our DNA that they become almost impossible to escape.
God is nature itself. I am happy toiling in soils, studying plants, etc. I could just as easily 100% drop computers and engineering next week and live on my own farm toiling the soils, raising farm animals and be as happy as I have ever been in my life.
You know, I think you can interpret Nietzsche's slave morality as the process to master morality. For example, the enlightenment was supposed to free society up from faith-thinking and introduce rational thinking, but (and he right criticizes it) it did not. I think the movement instead brought society out of older slave morality institutions into master morality and which are now considered slave morality again.
I am not Nietzsche expert, but from the little reading I have done it appears that in many context resource poor people have "slave morality" and resource rich people have "master morality". For example, in partner dances, people who are not very popular dance partners argue that "everybody should dance with everybody", whereas people who are very popular dance partners argue that "i did not train 10 years to dance with beginners". And you can see this in almost any human endeavour.
It's so odd to me that since the dawn of time, humans
find this innate need to live in slave morality
Is this really true, though?
Or does it simply look that way to us, as we look back through history -- which was of course largely written by those who benefitted from this sort of slave morality?
I'm not GP but as I understand it most religions contain an idea that selflessness is the highest good that a person can attain. Further they often maintain that only by becoming truly selfless can you make your spirit one with God (I don't specifically mean the Christian God here, just the concept of God). Becoming truly self-less literally means eliminating the self and its wants and impulses (really what is meant by this is typically something like the ego). Such an elimination has been called a "dying to self" or a mortification.
I will say that in my experience acting in selfless ways is indeed the most spiritually fulfilling thing you can do, regardless of your specific theology. The paradox is that you have to really be selfless: if you have any expectation of a reward (even a spiritual one) then you are in fact still acting for your self. Consequently the only true source of selflessness is love for others that exceeds love for yourself. Cultivate such love and you can't go wrong.
It’s funny too, since some of those kids may eventually realize that they were brought here without their consent, and that they don’t actually like working and paying bills. You, suffering for them, then suffering for their existence, and a death of your previous self, in which you draw yourself as a type of martyr. No one’s happy on your road to Damascus, and yet you’re faith and community demand your consent to your animalistic urges to reproduce and maintain face within your community. Having children out of guilt and peer pressure from your religious community is no excuse for their suffering.
I think pointing out flaws in other people's reasoning is perfectly valid. You could argue the response was mean-spirited, but I actually enjoyed how well it articulated something I was thinking. Honestly I think we need more posts like the above, not fewer.
> I think pointing out flaws in other people's reasoning is perfectly valid.
Frankly my knee-jerk reaction on some of the above comments was to start picking apart their reasoning and thinking of ways to explain why they're wrong. I was gearing up to drop some bombs. I have done this a lot. The internet is full of it. And it sucks.
There's so much of "I'm just pointing out the flaws in other people's reasoning". It's more than just snootiness; it's exhausting for everyone, even the out-pointer and out-pointed. It saps energy and....damn it...I'm doing it right now. The end result is just a cloud of bad feelings.
Wouldn't it be nice if you could write something on the internet and people would just listen....fuuuuu...and maybe some people would agree, and you wouldn't have to have an argument? What a world!
Different people want different things. I hate when people feel that harsh criticism isn't nice. It starts to make everything feel like fluffy bullshit.
I wish HN was way, way harsher with its commentary. I understand your perspective and realize I'm outnumbered here, but basically we fundamentally disagree (and that's okay!).
I'd rather see more arguments about controversial topics from people with differing perspectives who bring data and logic to make their points. I hate that many things feel heavily censored on this site.
The older I get, the more I realize that endless nitpicking just sucks the joy out of life. 25 years online and I forget what life was like before every thought and attitude I or anyone ever had was raked over the coals. Constant peanut gallery. It's a chilling effect that you can't even measure. Endless criticism doesn't make everything better. It just puts everyone on edge, and it's absolutely asymmetric between those who want "fluffy bullshit" or whatever and people who can't for the life of them keep their commentary to themselves. I regret my own arguing more and more; I never feel better afterwards. Hell, I don't even like bringing this up because we gotta discuss it to death.
I hate when people feel that harsh criticism isn't nice
Kind of a bad-faith strawman objection, TBH. I don't see anybody saying the issue is that the post wasn't sufficiently "nice."
I'm extrapolating here, but it sounds like you may often have this misconception w.r.t. metacriticism?
IME the issue people typically have with unnecessarily "harsh" criticism -- at least in engineering circles -- is that such unnecessarily harsh criticism is often counterproductive or at least wildly unproductive. I mean, what was the desired outcome here? Is criticizing some rando's spiritual practice supposed to benefit somebody, somehow?
I'm 1,000% in favor of speaking out or better yet, acting out when folks' religious beliefs interfere with others' freedoms. But I think that pretty clearly is not what was happening here.
The set of "valid" actions is a superset of what's actually "useful" or "good."
I'm an atheist, but for the most part I enjoyed reading others spiritual practices.
It is useful to learn about others; empathy and understanding are incredibly valuable even if one views the world from a strictly Machiavellian lens (though I hope that folks do not).
There is also much that the non-religious can learn from the religious. What I got from many posts here was a sense of the purpose, meaning, and/or serenity that many of these folks derive from their spiritual practices.
Call me crazy, but those are qualities many of us would like to enhance in our lives. I think there is much to learn from them.
It's not really pointing out flaws, it's more of a "your worldview, superimposed on my personal ethical framework, creates inconsistencies", which isn't really an insightful comment.
If we stopped having children because some of them might suffer, then the human race would cease to exist. If that is your aim, then state it plainly, rather than hiding it behind a thinly veiled attack on somebody's religion and personal sacrifices.
Day starts with prayer and studying scripture by myself for awhile, then briefly as a family before everyone goes their way. Part of the personal prayer time includes seeking direction on who I might help that day. Throughout the day I try to take little breaks for a brief prayer, longer if I'm stuck on a programming bug whose solution eludes me and for which I need extra inspiration. Also I try to go on a daily walk to appreciate nature and to recognize blessings in my life. Each meal includes a prayer of thanks. Before bed there's a brief family scripture study and prayer, then a prayer with my wife, then a personal prayer to round out the day where I try to reflect on how things went and what I hope to do better tomorrow.
Great question. Briefly, the goal is to be a disciple of Jesus Christ, in thoughts, words, and deeds. In practice that generally means looking outwards, not being totally self-absorbed (which is my natural tendency), and treating people with kindness and compassion - choosing to see them in the best possible light.
The scripture study and related discussion helps me identify the gap between the ideal version of myself and where I am presently, but in a way that I don't get totally overwhelmed or depressed by the gap, but just see it as a long-term process of slowly developing as a person. The prayer gives me clarity and direction, both for myself but also in knowing who to help and how.
Both prayer and scripture study also really lengthen one's perspective, which in turn dulls the the edge off pretty much every challenge. For example, having an assurance that there is more to my existence than 80ish years really helped me deal with pain from a sudden death in the family. And road rage. :)
Does it include treating yourself with kindness and compassion? I would think that to hold the frequency of kindness you’d need to hold it toward yourself?
How does that work for you - when you are challenged?
Also, when you pray, what direction does your prayer go into? I mean literally - do you pray toward the sky, or in one of the four directions? Or inside, toward the center of your heart, where the feeling of love and tenderness manifest?
Lastly, I grew outside of religion, and I define Christian practice as the commitment to choose love and kindness, in my heart, and speak, think and act from that choice. How does that resonate with someone like you who has an informed and deep practice?
> Does it include treating yourself with kindness and compassion?
Yes, definitely. I feel it's implicit in the 2nd great commandment ("Love thy neighbor as thyself") that we should treat ourselves with kindness, patience, compassion, etc. Humility is a good trait, but I don't think it e.g. means tearing oneself down - God has high expectations but also sees us as a work in progress, so that helps me feel love for myself despite the many flaws.
For praying, there's a lot of variety in my mode of prayer. Many prayers are purely in my heart/mind, while some are vocalized. If circumstances allow (such as during my morning personal prayer), I like to physically kneel down and close my eyes and speak out loud. For those prayers, I often naturally feel like I'm praying "upwards" if that makes sense.
> Lastly, I grew outside of religion, and I define Christian practice as the commitment to choose love and kindness, in my heart, and speak, think and act from that choice. How does that resonate with someone like you
My two cents: I like that emphasis on deliberately choosing goodness, and I believe that learning to choose good - and over time /becoming/ someone who chooses good more naturally - is one of the key reasons God went to all the trouble of giving us this life in the first place. :)
I used to be devout Mormon, and a hardcore one at that. It was woven so deeply in my reality, that everything had spiritual significance for me.
A few years ago, I encountered history, documents, and truths about the religion that were never presented to me. Since then, I've slowly, painfully, removed myself from the religion, and removed the religion from me.
It's extremely painful to go from a space where everything is eternally, deifically, infinitely of value to "nothing actually matters".
I was diagnosed with PTSD this summer from the whole affair, as it was truly traumatic, and there were times that I almost didn't make it in the most literal sense.
But I've pieced together significance slowly and surely over the years. I've learned to slow down, love deeper, participate in the demanding process of finding and acknowledging beauty in this world, and have found spirituality in my own ways.
"The Anthropocene Reviewed" by John Green was a huge influence on my current flavor of spirituality (as it's constantly shifting). I'm sure the book means something different to everyone, but for me, it really broke down the need to work to build a habit of awe, and look for the things that stop you in your tracks. Observation and conscious efforts to find meaning and beauty are how I find my spirituality.
Maybe it’s just a matter if having a time perspective that is appropriate for what we can possibly get a handle on as humans. In the medium term, as opposed to the heat-death-of-the-universe long term, stuff definitely matters.
Also btw that phrase “nothing actually matters” is a little piece of propaganda planted by religion as a false caricature of non-religious thinking. You might consider that by buying into it, you are still allowing that religion to control your thinking.
You're right. And I mean that earnestly. In reality, what I should have said was "I was suddenly responsible for assigning value to all the aspects of my life. They suddenly had no inherent godly value, just the value that I, and those around me assigned it".
But still - ultimately nothing has value. With the sun eventually consuming the earth and the universe either collapsing or going cold, everything that could have value will eventually cease to exist.
Any number, multiplied by any other number, and multiplied an endless list of values, and eventually by zero at least once is still zero. The death of everything that ever has been influenced by anything I do will eventually be multiplied by zero. Therefore, ultimately, every piece of value, regardless of how significant, is ephemeral.
But I do understand the dangers of anti-religious religiousness. The exmormon community is full of people defining their lives as the exact opposite of what they were told, and in doing so are still defined by what they used to be, but are no longer.
When we are yanked (or freely leap, depending on your perspective) from our deeply religious world views it can be terrifying. I remember being incredibly nihilistic and depressed for at a few years.
I highly recommend diving into Philosophy. The questions about human meaning aren't exclusive to individual religions, or even to religiousness. They are universal, and very smart humans have been thinking very hard for a very long time about them.
I found that with enough hard thinking, guided by the hard questions and arguments of brilliant human minds, I have come to terms with the world and learned to love it. Philosophy and the philosophical process has shaped my mind to better understand and find tremendous joy in a "godless" (even the meaning of god changes as you explore deeply) and "meaningless" (even the meaning of meaning changes as you explore deeply) world.
I was raised with religion and then later realized it doesn't make sense, I went through a lot of the same feelings
You could still have subjective value even if there's no "sea level" from which to assign an absolute value. "Value" is a pretty abstract concept and something everyone probably has to define for themselves, but at least depending on your definition _everything_ could have value - maybe not to you, or maybe not right now, but in some sense it still "ultimately" does - and that's pretty cool too
I'd love to hear more on the history, documents, and truths you found. Would you consider emailing me (it is in my profile)? Summary and jumping off points super welcome.
I had a similar experience to OP. But the catalyst for me was the Mountain Meadows Massacre[1] which I was completely oblivious to until my mid-20s. It was quite a shock to learn that the church (which I thought was "God's perfect organization") had such an ugly past. The most disturbing part was how much effort the church put to hide and scrub events like this from its members and the rest of the world.
That's very sad, for sure... but churches are only a bunch of people, trying to get closer to God. No matter how well any of them do so, they all ultimately will be failing at things all the time - anger, frustration, hate, etc.
Churches are not full of perfect people - it's the exact opposite. It's people who know they're not perfect, and understanding that, are still trying to understand life, and God.
All I'm saying is don't write off God - religion, sure.... Go for it, but God is not religion.
If you've already decided that you want to leave the church and need something tangible to point to as your reason for leaving, CES letter is well suited for that.
But if you are honestly and earnestly evaluating church history and are using CES letter as a primary source... I would make sure to give some of the more popular rebuttals (such as [0]) a read as well as they rightly call out some serious problems with the letter.
I don't think that the motive, or authenticity of the author of the CES letter should matter too much, if you do due diligence and actually research the topics, which I have. However, to your point I'll add a few more decent sources.
My personal favorite is the "Letter to My wife"[0] - similar to the CES letter but a little softer and more historically based and less fueled by emotion.
There's also a good document[1] featuring many times where the church has lied on the record with at least 152 cases.
There's also the podcast: MormonStories[2].
One of the best episodes being where they interview Tom Phillips a Stake President who has been friends and associated with general authorities. [3]
> [Excerpt from synopsis]: Many LDS Church members are unaware that a secret LDS temple ordinance called the “Second Anointing” is regularly being administered by LDS Church apostles to elite friends, family, and leaders (mostly stake presidents, temple presidents, mission presidents, and LDS general authorities, along with their wives). In this ordinance (according to reports) an apostle washes the feet of the couple in the temple, anoints them on the head with oil such that their “calling and election is made sure” (guaranteeing them a place in the Celestial Kingdom), and then invites the couple to retreat to a room in the temple, wherein the wife washes her husband’s feet, and then lays her hands on his head to give him a special priesthood blessing.
> In June of 2012 I interviewed Tom Phillips, former LDS church stake president in London, England U.K. In this interview he discusses the following:
- His early experiences as a bishop and stake president in the LDS church, along with his friendship with LDS apostle Jeffrey R. Holland.
- His experience receiving a secret/sacred LDS church ordinance called the “Second Anointing,” wherein he > - was anointed by the hands of Elder M. Russel Ballard, and assured exaltation in there hereafter.
- His subsequent loss of faith over historical and scientific issues with the church.
- His direct correspondence with then friend, LDS apostle Jeffrey R. Holland, over these troubling issues.
- The pain, suffering, and ultimate divorce that he and his family experienced as a result of his faith crisis.
- Additional details about Tom’s story can be found here [http://mormonthink.com/tomphillips.htm].
For anyone who's ready to do the final act of leaving the church and completely remove your membership there's a free and easy online service that helps with that.[4]
- https://reddit.com/r/exmormon
- https://protectldschildren.org/read-the-stories-2/ - Stories of bishops abusing their power and asking sexuality based questions in interviews alone with children as young as 11. Many times this has in fact led to 'grooming' behavior in Bishops with pedophilia tendencies.
> I encountered history, documents, and truths about the religion that were never presented to me
I encountered something like this but wasn't able to find it since; I think it was called something like the "blue document" or the "blue papers"; basically a very intelligent Mormon came up with a document with all of his very reasonable but quite heretical questions, and it caused quite a stir. Would love to track it down again and bookmark it this time.
> "nothing actually matters"
Well... It does, IMHO, you just don't need religion to have that.
Disclaimer: I've donated to https://footstepsorg.org/ and one or more ex-mormon support orgs because I think the more extreme the beliefs, the more cult-like and harmful they are. My family's Catholic but I'm the "black sheep" and have been exploring maybe joining a unitarian church, just for the "community of free-thinkers" aspect
I am so sorry for your pain. My journey paralleled yours, just easier. Figuring out who/what I was after leaving the mormon church was internal chaos for years. I'm glad to hear you're at a better place now.
You sound exactly like me... it definitely was rough, though I wasn't as active in the end (got tired of right-wing viewpoints from the pulpit, so started staying home more and more)...
In many ways my shelf-breaking liberated me, in others it crushed pieces of me. In the end I'm probably more spiritual, if agnostic (though I do believe the universe could have some sort of universal consciousness, or be a simulation, or something along those lines and an afterlife is possible -- we are energy after all and perhaps whatever consciousness is - gets another purpose after it leaves...but none of the requires a deity, and I'm pretty sure all deities worshipped are man made, and even if there really were a GOD we're too insignificant to matter much to him, we're one tiny planet in a universe with billions of galaxies, probably billions of civilizations spanning eons, etc...
)
I'm often inspired by the beauty in the universe, or the things my children do, etc... or just humanity. Not having church context surrounding those things has made them even more enjoyable.
Not long ago in my new apartment after breaking up with a long time girlfriend I had an amazing experience while meditating. The odd thing was I never really meditated back then. Something just told me to do it. I was led on an internal journey that showed me some things about my self. One, don't turn away from uncomfortable thoughts and feelings. Two, don't judge yourself. Three, the ego or this idea of myself is an illusion. It ended with my sense of self expanding out into infinity. I was not a body; I was infinite and an awesome wave of (I assume) serotonin like a big dose of E.
Since then I meditate often and just try to be completely open to my entire experience. I'm an indifferent witness as often as I can. "Bad" feelings have lost their edge. When I sat with the feeling I discovered there is nothing "bad" about it. It's just a different feeling in my experience. With this I have become lighter, freer, happier and more at peace with the experience just as it is, right here, right now.
I recommend you try observing yourself as if you are a third person. What do you think about, how do those thought make you feel, what do you do in reaction to uncomfortable or "bad" feelings? I think you will start to notice that it's all just thoughts, often silly, ridiculous thoughts about a future that will not happen. Memory too are just thoughts. They are not happening now and even if they were the judgments of them are just ideas that come from social conditioning. Good and bad, right and wrong are just opinions and they change over time and from person to person. Don't take them seriously. Its like trying to hold on to vapor as if it's something solid.
I have since learned from watching Rupert Spira videos on youtube that this is kinda like Atmananda Krishna Menon's Direct Path.
A lot of us here are science and engineer types. Think of this as like hacking your human experience or rooting your brain. Why be satisfied with little doses of happiness and satisfaction gotten by jumping thru social or cultural hoops. Happiness, peace and contentment are within us. Go get it for yourself.
> "Bad" feelings have lost their edge. When I sat with the feeling I discovered there is nothing "bad" about it. [...] With this I have become lighter, freer, happier and more at peace with the experience just as it is, right here, right now.
I'd like to give a heads up that this can and may come crashing down[1]. The 'Dark Night of the Soul' is a very real phenomena, and it can happen out of nowhere -- just a normal meditation session.
I'd suggest giving a search to 'mindfulness' and 'mental distress' or some such, if you continue on with this. It is really helpful to find a framework -- like Buddhism or Raja Yoga (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R%C4%81ja_yoga#Comparison_with...) -- before diving too deep, to give you something to fall back on when it happens, otherwise it can result in quite unpleasant, hard to overcome and understand situations. Edit to add: The specific framework doesn't matter as much as having one at all (Christianity/Islam/Buddhism/Yoga/etc.).
Yeah, it's important to point out the difficulties that can arise. Though I'd say that the framework could also cause problems if your experience falls outside of it.
I had an experience along these lines when I was 22 and meditating daily, which ended up turning into anxiety and somewhat frequent panic attacks. I ended up giving up my daily practice for about 10 years because of it. My frame of reference was the very common Theravada practices you encounter in the west, but my experiences didn't make sense to me until I began reading Mahayana teachings and found my way to Vajrayana practice.
So I'd say the framework is important, but to be flexible with it as you encounter things that aren't maybe a part of the core teaching. In my case it was the teachings on emptiness that opened things, which is something the Theravada doesn't emphasize (although it's there).
Great advice! I think I may have been a little too flippant in saying 'use whatever framework' because perspective is incredibly important. I'd say it's a continual process and engagement; if your philosophy or religion or sect doesn't answer it, and you don't feel good about it, it's okay to expand your horizons.
I think what I wanted to emphasise is having nothing at all can leave you in a bad position. Hitting these dreary spiritual states without any philosophic or religious framework that can provide perspective is like being lost out in the sea without even a life preserver, much less a boat.
Yes, absolutely! I'm constantly frustrated by the trend of selling meditation as some sort of productivity hack. It's at best misguided and at worst dangerous.
This is really important. GP's experience is beautiful. Yet, I recently read an article[] describing how there's very little help available to people who perhaps meditate too much and end up in spiritual crisis; meditation is sold as this panacea in our western world.
> hackingthelema
Love the user name. Would also love if you read my top-level comment on this thread.
Thanks for raising this issue. I had to back from meditation entirely due to disassociation and energetic unwellness. Heavy physical exercise helped get me back in the body.
Great point. I have forgotten about this.
There were at least 2, one heavy, one less so, periods early on of pretty profound depression. The first lasted maybe 2 or 3 days. It was a dark hole of just a profound sense of loss. I was taken back at first and questioned what I was getting into and stopped meditating for a few days but I got through it.
I wish I could edit my comment to add this warning.
Thank you for bringing this up.
What you are describing is an experience sought after by those practicing "nondual" meditation. Tibetan buddhism, Advaita Vedanta, and Taoism are the major traditions in the east that practice this, though zen could also potentially be considered nondualist. I'm currently in a class taught by Michael Taft that takes a syncretic approach to teaching nondual meditation [1]. One of the best books on the subject is "Nonduality" by David Loy [2].
Michael mentioned that some people can achieve it right away with a single meditation and others take years. Sounds like you are in the former category. Unfortunately I'm in the latter.
Try googling 45 Days to Awakening course, a new and improved version of the Finder’s Course. Their data shows something like 65% of people reach that state after 45 days, up to 85% after a second course for total of 90 days. It sounds way too good to be true and I didn’t believe it myself until I did it and it worked for me, and then for several friends I convinced to take it. It took me over 90 days to get there (had to keep practicing the meditation styles that worked best for me) but then stabilized. One of my friends transitioned literally on her first meditation on day one. Good luck on your journey!
I suppose many of us have had such experience one way or the other. My exploration on such path had different phases. One important milestone I felt was, when our angels and demons calm and come to an agreement on some terms the inner spirit or I call the human takes charge. After which I feel free to observe the emotions and carry on with the same things but in a better and a conscious manner. Emotions of sympathy/attachment, anger, greed, envy and pride will all be still there but can be better managed and learnt that it's only necessary in this practical world.
It's been about 3 years and counting since I've had such experience and since then every morning I'm trying to balance my mind like an audio equalizer :)
A good construct I found along the way was to substitute envy with competition, pride with work, greed with giving, attachment/indifference with love. Neither of them too much that it'll consume me nor too little to keep me empty. If none of this works then find something else like a child. Anger is a beast of its own that I someday I intend to figure out.
Yes! Your experience is closest to mine. I tried Sam Harris's meditation, Joseph Goldstein's insight meditation, and came across "The Headless Path". This led to multiple moments where my consciousness expanded to fill it's container, in this case my old apartment, or a bar where I was playing music, or a shore next to a lake. It's almost like I became a 3D VR panorama of what I could sense, my center fell away and I fully absorbed the hundreds of sensations as one giant sphere.
In this style, douglas Hardings Headless Path, you're attempting to realize that in some sense, "you" are not in your head. That's where we "feel" like we're centered, mostly because our eyes, ears, nose, and mouth are there. But even in reality, we can look for evidence of our head and find we don't have one. All we see is a dark void behind our nose. And behind that, we can feel what, our headache or sinuses, or the back of our head. But how are these "behind" our eyes? Aren't they just in a big cloud of sensation, too? And if we open our eyes, and let our gaze stretch and expand very widely, we might literally become absorbed into our surroundings, we'll feel like the world, not just a head.
Really amazing feelings. I encourage folks try insight, mindfulness, and headless path meditation.
While I'm not necessarily a Sam Harris fan in general, I am a huge fan of his Waking Up app. It's approachable, serene, sacred (but also no-nonsense), and really just beautiful. And useful! I can't say enough good things about it.
I sometimes have a similar feeling to you with my sense of self but rather than an expansion into infinity, it was a shrinking of my "soul" or a shrinking of me the viewer and letting my body do the outside world experiencing. It's like I retreat into a tiny control room in my brain where nobody can see me or hurt me and I let my body do the work of experiencing things as I watch. It's kind of similar in that my body becomes one with everything and my self shrinks so much that it's nothing.
Nice, similar exp. Check Bernardo Kastrup. Good friend of Spira, computer scientist who worked at CERN, now pushing idealism which is essentially western Advaita Vedanta.
I think he shines best either in his books (the first, "Rationalist Spirituality" is very short and gives a good intro to his thought) or in YT interviews. The one with John Vervaeke or Curt Jaimungal are good picks. The blog is interesting but tend to also be an outlet for personal tantrums :) I've started a telegram channel to chit-chat about this topic.
Anyway I guess the only relevant thing I want to share is that there are at least 2 paths to build for ourselves a consistent, integral worldview (one where meaning can be found, as meaning can only be found where there is structure): Propositional to Participative, or Participative to Propositional. That is, satisfy the brain, and open up the space to the transcendental, or go all the way into direct experience and then let the brain catch up. BK is path #1, Spira is path #2, and they have been very helpful to me.
Had something like that reading Herman Hesse as teenager. I learnt that I don't need to be or feel "good", necessarily. What you describe fits a lot what I experienced then. I don't give much importance to that but I think that plays a big role on what I have become. I point at the truth (as good as I can) and people think I am judgemental but I am absolutely not because I don't care about good or bad, generally.
Then I heard Jordan Peterson, I think, pointing out that all emotions are useful. They are there because they have an evolutive advantage. For example the feeling of winning makes you play more, and losing makes you step back at some point and observe what happened (you cannot take it out of your head easily).
For those that want the same experience without meditating :)
Great! I think you may get a lot out of it, and I wish you well on your journey. It's without question the most-loved Zen-related book in the English language, and there are many them. It has greatly enriched many people's Buddhist practice, including mine.
Muslim here. Ritual prayer is the core exercise. Before sunrise, after sunset, and 3 other times during the day. But as important or more so is constant remembrance of God. If that's not institutionalized in one's day-to-day psychology, one will lose spiritual momentum, if we can use such terminology. "Worship" in Arabic عبادة actually means something like "conformity to God's order", as far as I understand. So even eating an apple becomes a spiritual exercise when done with knowledge of why and doing so for God's sake, even as its sole beneficiary seems to be oneself.
I think it's a normal thing in Hinduism. There's a rituals where you offer the cooked meal to God first, then you eat. The offering is accompanied by a bell.
in Islam it's not an offering to God, and there are no rituals involved. It's attaching the goal of getting to heaven to any action. "I'm eating this food because it will help me worship God" so giving purpose to mindless tasks
"Ritual prayer is the core exercise." - well, you also work your legs and glutes when you stand up, and there is a good back stretch in there.
Develops a good sense of direction too.
Fasting for a month from sun up to sun down kind of kills gains though, and isn't enough time to go into ketosis, so I am not sure what that's all about (well, I know what's it's about from the book perspective, just not from the gains perspective).
Quran 2.177: Piety does not lie in turning your face to East or West: Piety lies in believing in God, the Last Day and the angels, the Scriptures and the prophets, and disbursing your wealth out of love for God among your kin and the orphans, the wayfarers and mendicants, freeing the slaves, observing your devotional obligations, and in paying the zakat and fulfilling a pledge you have given, and being patient in hardship, adversity, and times of peril. These are the men who affirm the truth, and they are those who follow the straight path.
When I make the intention, I'm not sending it in any direction, since I don't believe God is in a direction. Rather, since He is All Hearing and All Seeing, it is sufficient for me to make the intention for Him to know it.
Muslims pray towards the Kaaba (the house of God, built for him by Ibrahim (Abraham)) which is in Mecca, Saudi Arabia. So people across the world face different directions.
When I get into a good Tetris routine, my mind will continue to play even when I'm not in front of the screen. There's just this constant background game playing in my head. This might sound distracting, but somehow it's enlightening. It provides rhythm. It provides structure. It keeps my thoughts in constant reorganization, constant renewal.
Overall, I believe Tetris gets my mind into a place and practice where I can more easily answer the following question.
What fits?
What fits into my life, and how? How do I fit into the world?
* My kids are important to me. How do I best fit them into my life? What's too much? What's too little? What do I need? What do they need? How can we best enjoy our time together?
* That friend is not a good influence anymore. The current fit is strained. How much of him is too much?
* This thing I'm doing at work is fun and I love it, but it's not advancing my goals. What fits, what can I keep? What should I discard?
* How will my actions fit into the interests of my family, friends, community?
In the past, in those dark pre-Tetris days, I tended to hang onto bad habits and bad ideas. Inertia is very strong with me. I credit Tetris-brain with helping me break through that inertia on a daily basis.
Soulful Tetris also has the advantage of being absurd enough that I never take it too seriously. Hubris is my biggest problem with organized religion. Tetris is kinda like a form of meditation for the 21st century, nothing more.
Also, it's just a really great game. And I like metaphysical excuses to play it.
I'm scrolling and scrolling and scrolling. So many debates about atheism, Catholicism, Mormons. Deep theological discussions. Discussions on "how to answer the original question". And then I see
>Tetris. Twice per day.
I applaud you in answering the question in a completely unexpected way. Never before in the history of theology has anyone introduced Teris AND kept it thematically appropriate.
What implementation do you use?
I use tetris in emacs, but it is scanning keyboad too infrequently, so at my game speed the level of control is insufficient.
When I posted the question I made sure to not mention religion because my curiosity was more about meditation/alignment with what’s important/practice in term of making sense of the bigger life questions.
I'm a religious Jew, in a bit of a crisis of faith. I still pray three times a day, I still make shabbat and observe holidays, I even still learn Torah even though I don't really believe in it anymore, because I find being well read useful when I have to explain the times I do break the cultural norms to people. Orthodox Judaism in general has a lot of laws everywhere: what you wear, what you eat, what you put in your house, and a lot of prayer and blessings.
Modern orthodox communities of Jews are very weirdly selective about the things they're ok with modernizing and the things they still hold importance with: listening to secular music is fine, wearing modern clothing is fine, but if you play instruments on the sabbath you're shunned. There's something inherently disgustingly coercive about a society that will treat you like a stranger and disown you if you don't get married, let alone if you have a relationship with someone of the same sex. Every day it gets harder to accept myself living a life where I can't openly love the people I love, but there is also a structure and community that secular society doesn't really have. Part of the draws of acceptance is that the sense of community in religious spaces is built not just out of inclusivity (we have the same religion and values) but also exclusivity (we aren't like them) and this means that sometimes you're excluded.
I read this coming from a very different background (secular), but I've seen a lot of these issues around me too. Especially among people raised MO (the chasidish and litvish have similar problems, but frame them differently).
for what it's worth, 18forty has done several discussions on these themes, and they resonated with me: 18forty.org/rational (in particular, with Shmuel Phillips. Their discussions of OTD and mysticism are also very relevant.)
It's a lot easier to leave when you have another community to go to. That's why there's nothing wrong with "sneaking around" or living a separate private life while you build up relationships and friendships.
That's for sure true, and I'm also not sure if everything I want from a community is present elsewhere, at least all in one place. Anyway, it's hard to find a new community to live in when I'm still in college and don't yet have full time employment.
> a society that will treat you like a stranger and disown you if you don't get married, let alone if you have a relationship with someone of the same sex
How do you reconcile these within yourself?
My curiosity is about true spiritual practice - the alchemy inside your being.
Is your practice to humble yourself to the rules for example?
Or to follow them while knowing in your heart that they are limiting and possibly outdated?
Externally you could be taking the same actions. Internally it’s not the same.
I don't know how to reconcile them, and it's something I've been struggling to do for quite a while. Even when I was younger I didn't really believe, so going through the motions of spiritual practices I don't find particularly fulfilling to appease others is a familiar state of being. I sometimes find a nice feeling of belonging when I do these things, but that feeling is hard to maintain when my community hates my existence and would cast me out in a heartbeat if I was public about who I am.
I have given it some thought, but I don't really know of any communities of reform Jews, my impression is that reform Jews are less community oriented than modern orthodox communities. Which isn't necessarily bad, it's just different.
I’m a Protestant in the reformed tradition that would fall inline with the London baptist confession and Heidelberg catechism.
I make it my goal to read the Bible every morning. I typically spend about 30m-1h studying 1-2 verses in a given chapter. Right now I’m in the book of James.
I pray for the assistance of the Holy Spirit to illuminate my understanding, read the verse, give thanks and praise where appropriate, and journal about the verse and how it relates to similar teachings, how the meaning applies to me by either encouragement, exhortation or conviction. (Those are the typical themes).
After this, if I have time, I’ll move through my prayer list for people I’ve told that I would pray for. I pray for my wife, my children, my family and myself.
All of this is pretty dependent on me waking up early and my kids not waking up as I do this :).
I recently started reading about druidism after spending the majority of my life an atheist. I found myself missing the spirituality side: rituals and a connection for meditation/introspection, which druidism provides (all revolving around nature, earth, moon, and sun). Additionally, druidism has a lot of neat math/science roots that I find pleasing, such as the eight holidays and the wheel of the year.
Druidism has a really loose belief system and offers a couple of options for you to choose from: mono, poly, and pantheism. I reject most "god-like" things, but I think I could become something of a pantheist (the universe is God).
I don't believe any religion knows what happens after you die, and frankly I don't really care. We aren't supposed to know, it's the great mystery, and instead we should focus on ensuring everyone lives their best life. Druidism has a theory about the after life and how you go through various lives until you become a good person, but it's not something I spend time thinking about. As an aside, Iris DeMent's song Let The Mystery Be perfectly describes my thoughts on this: https://youtu.be/0gQVS2fCsek
For learning, I started out reading the book The Druidry Handbook by John Michael Greer and /r/druidism. From there I explored various parts of Druidism and some paganism that interested me--elements (not science elements, spirtual/symbolic ones like air/wind/fire/earth), tarot, and living with nature.
For rituals, you can choose how far you're willing to stretch your imagination: a contemplative walk in the woods, or trying to commune with trees. I started doing tarot cards as well, which for me is less divination and more perspective. It hacks your minds pattern matching and forces you to think about situations from a different angle. It can also be fun or intimate with other people. My family celebrates the wheel of the year which gives you tons of opportunities for fun festivals/connecting with each other and nature. All of the holidays fall outside of traditional Christian holidays, so it's really easy to celebrate them without upsetting your extended family as well.
I recommend having an open mind, I'm highly skeptical in general and definitely had to sift through stuff to figure out what makes sense to me. Which is OK with druidism, it's kind of like a Linux distro/DIY spirituality framework.
First, gratitude, expressing my thanks for all that I have to be grateful for, all the gifts and blessings I've received.
Second, asking for forgiveness for regrettable actions, which, if I look closely, I can always find, small or large.
Third, I ask for help. I generally don't ask for specific things, but talk about general areas or people I want to help. I try make sure that my intentions and asks are well-intentioned and generally working towards increasing overall levels joy in the world.
The other crucial piece of this, where meditation practice really helps, is to pay close attention and listen for response and guidance.
Along with breathing/mindfulness meditation, I do this throughout the day, and I also find time to sit down and do a dedicated prayer and meditation for 30 minutes each.
I started meditating throughout the day, sometimes in given triggering situations, a few years ago. I started this prayer practice about a year ago and have been working on it.
I recommend trying out this practice to anyone who's curious about our reality and how it works.
Morning routing is to spend about an hour reading texts and scholarly commentary while drinking my coffee. Then I journal, my morning journal entries are discussions with my inner daemon about how to handle the days events. Preparing myself and remembering what is and isn't in my control. Throughout the day I have reminders set to step back and examine what I am doing at that moment. This is usually coupled with one or more mental exercises to keep perspective.
In the evening before going to bed I sit back down with my journal and go over any major events from the day and examine them against my philosophical beliefs. Did I approach it correctly? What did I get wrong about it. When its all written down I close my journal and forgive myself for any missteps I might have made.
> Throughout the day I have reminders set to step back and examine what I am doing at that moment.
How does it work? Does an alarm sound and you've resolved to stop whatever you're doing and reasses? What is a success story? Has it caught you browsing youtube and put you back to work?
> This is usually coupled with one or more mental exercises to keep perspective.
What are the exercises?
> In the evening before going to bed I sit back down with my journal and go over any major events from the day and examine them against my philosophical beliefs.
Is this a written or electronic journal? How long have you been able to consistently do this? I've had many 2-week streaks but none better.
Do you recommend any other resources? I've read Meditations, Pigliucci's book, and pick up Farnsworth's book every few days, but so far it's mostly quotes instead of a description of practices like the title promises.
The reminders are a combination of the Pomodoro Technique and vibration alerts on my watch or phone. Just enough to remind me to step back at periodic intervals. As far as success stories I can say that it has cut stress down considerably because I keep perspective and avoid tunnel vision.
The exercises I talk about are usually mental imagery techniques, "the view from above" and recollections of the "dichotomy of control".
My journal is hand written since it is not for anyone else. I try to write at least a half page or more per day. To other people it is probably completely illegible.
Resource wise I can suggest this book https://www.amazon.com/s?k=9781549877735&crid=TQ4VA5BUEQI9&s... for general exercises. It was written by a r/stoic redditor and is very plain language and contains lots of easy to understand mental exercises. For a good introduction to Stoicism look more to Sellars Stoicism Book. It is a little academic but a good read.
Every morning I read a section of the Bible's Old Testament, Psalm, Proverb and New Testament.
I then use the Lord's Prayer as a framework to pray. Having done this for many years I have observed we begin 'Our Father' and focus on God. My own inclination would be to start with 'Forgive me' and focus on me.
I then spend my day trying to honour Jesus's teachings. The highs and lows of the previous day are discussed the next morning.
I love your observation about the Lord's Prayer. I often end up using it as a framework too, partly because it does feel so complete (also because of course Jesus literally told us to pray like that). I feel you a lot in the urge to otherwise start with "forgive me" part, and I myself still do that a lot. I realize I need to work on practicing gratitude towards Him more often too, which is important to escaping the trap of self-pity I'm so prone to falling in.
Do you ever struggle with the parts of the bible that feel outdated in the modern context? I never read the bible by myself, but I went to Sunday school for 9 years and I remember struggling as a child to conciliate what I was being taught at school and at chruch, and specially ignoring the hipocrisy of the people lecturing the bible stuff not practicing any of that. I don't remember specific examples, as this was 15 years ago and I've since become atheist.
> Do you ever struggle with the parts of the bible that feel outdated in the modern context? I never read the bible by myself
I used to, but it becomes more practical and timeless the more I read my Bible. I read a version with cross-references in the center-line so reading slower and checking these makes it make a lot more sense. The way I'd recommend reading is Mark, Luke, John, Matthew, Acts and Romans (all in the New Testament) while periodically reading the cross-references as you go. This covers basic beliefs and how Jesus taught following the spirit of the Law, why Gentile Christians don't follow the full Jewish Law (Acts 15) and how those before Jesus aren't condemned (Romans). Then I'd recommend Genesis and Exodus to understand the Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob family line, and the establishment of the Law. Follow with 1st/2nd Samuel and 1st/2nd Kings for most of the rest of the historical side of context. Psalms and Proverbs can be read a little at a time, at any time.
> read a section of the Bible's Old Testament, Psalm, Proverbs and New Testament.
This is also the way I read, and it's super helpful. Old/New Testament for spiritual growth, Psalms for worship, and Proverbs for ordinary day-to-day advice (there's also 31 Proverbs so its easy to pickup whatever day it is).
> I went to Sunday school for 9 years and I remember struggling as a child to conciliate what I was being taught at school and at chruch, and specially ignoring the hipocrisy of the people lecturing
A lot of Sunday school is way too boiled down. There's hypocrisy everywhere and the church is no exception. People try to justify their own sin and resultant problems by ranking it against others--part of the reasons Christians are told not to judge others (especially outside the church), but instead help others in the church with their problems and be open to correction. It's supposed to be handled internally, but occasionally isn't, and I've moved to a different church when I've found it's entrenched and not fixable.
> Do you ever struggle with the parts of the bible that feel outdated in the modern context?
Just to add to the excellent comment above. More days than not I am amazed at the relevance of the ancient scriptures. My daughter was caught out last week telling a fib. It made me smile that the next day my bible reading was a 3000 year old proverb about the importance of not telling lies.
Others days, yes, I find it hard reading from a very different age. I sometimes have to delve into my study bible's commentary to get some historical context.
Absolutely I still struggle to read the Bible and find the relevance. But then I felt a tug and wound up at a more modern church that applies it to today. Podcasts on leadership and entrepreneurship. Dinner parties on people’s rooftops overlooking NYC (precovid). Volunteering together delivering meals to those in need. This I could understand.
Also Christians aren’t perfect. My hope is that you don’t let us ruin what could be the best thing that can happen to you.
I went to Sunday school as a child as well, and was later annoyed by the hypocrisy.
But there is lot of ageless wisdom in the Bible. I would concentrate on that. For example check the Matthew effect ("rich get richer"), and how it relates to modern technology, Google PageRank is based on it.
I'm a Non-denominational Christian. During my best of times I would wake up and read the bible first thing in the morning before doing any major activities. I would normally say two prayers in the morning. The first prayer would be asking for the wisdom and understanding to grasp what I'm reading and internalize the lessons. Thanking God that I have seen another day. Which depending on my spots in life has been harder or easier. The second prayer would be asking God to help me remember what I have read and for me to be able to use the lessons I have learned practically throughout my day. I would then pray thanking God about things I'm grateful for, asking for help in things I feel weak in, and praying for my prayer list towards the end. We have service on Sunday for 2 hours, bible talk once a month and a middle of the week service once a month.
Some of these are habits I do even as a Christian-turned-atheist. I've read that gratitude is good for you, and I always want to be a better person, and prayer has been a good way of thinking about these things habitually, even if I'm not praying towards anyone/anything in particular.
So a lot of what I do is observe my thoughts and intentions and direct my attention/emotion/passion/sexual energy towards the most beautiful and joyful subset of those.
When I'm particularly certain of a desired outcome I will "cast" for it, occasionally doing a bit of sorcery: drawing funny pictures and generally doing wizardly stuff.
I also do "continuous divination" AKA leaning heavily into apophenia and just generally not assuming that mysterious forces aren't at work around me. Sometimes I'll also do "acute divination" -- my favorite method is fortune cookies, not even kidding.
Visualizing and praying to various god/esse/s is important. In particular I pray to Ganesh to help me let go of negative things I'm holding onto (this was a beautiful outcome of therapy mingling with my spiritual life); I also love Inanna, and Sun meditations. I'd also be lying if I denied that Christ shows up in my most anxious moments--especially since He appeared in a dream to tell me "you don't need to be a Christian to talk to me".
Finally, there are also public rituals that I attend on a regular (sans covid) basis where we meditate on natural/spiritual forces and socialize our spirituality.
This is one of the most important bits of it all, as it 1) is a huge source of magical energy, 2) reinforces the practices I'm doing 3) inspires/goads me into deepening those practices, and 4) exposes me to more ideas and possibilities in this zone, even if I've been negligent to study the mysteries (and I have been negligent, since focusing on my career the last few years).
I'm very into Occult topics. I grew up Christian and have come to believe a bit of everything.
I believe that everything is both true and false at the same time and it is important to experience different viewpoints in your world. Currently I believe that we are all essentially God, or facets of God, separated by the concept of ego. The entire purpose to life is, therefore, to have a unique experience. I try to incorporate this by embracing chaos and choosing to do random or spontaneous activities outside of my comfort zone.
I resonate with this belief the most out of those that I have tried, but I love hearing what others believe in or practice. I'd be interested in hearing more about the public rituals that you attend, or any groups that you are aware of.
> I'd be interested in hearing more about the public rituals that you attend, or any groups that you are aware of.
Thelema's ecclesiastical arm is called Ecclesia Gnostica Catholica, and its main purpose is the public performance of The Gnostic Mass (AKA Liber XV) by Aleister Crowley: https://sabazius.oto-usa.org/gnostic-mass/ It is a public ritual Eucharist intended to communicate the principles of Thelema to all:
> I believe in one secret and ineffable LORD; and in one Star in the Company of Stars of whose fire we are created, and to which we shall return; and in one Father of Life, Mystery of Mystery, in His name CHAOS, the sole viceregent of the Sun upon the Earth; and in one Air the nourisher of all that breathes.
> And I believe in one Earth, the Mother of us all, and in one Womb wherein all men are begotten, and wherein they shall rest, Mystery of Mystery, in Her name BABALON.
And so on.
You could look up a local OTO chapter and see if they know of any performances planned -- http://www.oto.org/
Local Wiccan or Pagan groups might be willing to allow you to attend one of their celebrations of the times, like the recent Yule or upcoming Imbolc. I'm not up-and-up on how they find local chapters -- my Wicca and Pagan knowledge are stuck in the times of Witchvox!
Fortune cookies are one of my favourites, too. I tend to use coin flips a lot. Occasionally I'll draw a rune or a tarot card, but I find I don't always understand what they're trying to say until after it's happened.
> In particular I pray to Ganesh to help me let go of negative things I'm holding onto (this was a beautiful outcome of therapy mingling with my spiritual life);
I always find it fascinating which gods magicians end up on. One person looks to Ganesh and Inanna; another to Odin and Hecate; another to Lilith and Satan; another to Jesus Christ alone; and they're all linked in their quest for occult knowledge and experiences. I suppose it depends on their own divine pattern and current 'balance' needs.
Was it 'Low Magick' that Lon Milo DuQuette mentions his work with Ganesh? I remember he had a Ganesh-focused, light-hearted invocation and banishing in one of his books. Was it, 'Pop goes Ganesh', to the tune of 'Pop goes the weasel'?
I just checked, it is 'Low Magick' by Lon Milo DuQuette. The entirety of Chapter 11 is on 'Pop Goes Ganesha'. It might sound a little irreverent, but here is a snippet from the book --
> I first created it to be a whimsical meditation that I could quickly perform mentally to begin and end my morning routine, but it soon became for me something more. In fact, within the context of its goofy simplicity, I have found not only a powerful banishing ceremony, but also a profound and breathtakingly effective technique of invocation.
DuQuette is a great author (Chicken Qabalah, Magick of Aleister Crowley, especially) with a good sense of both humour and the serious, and I'd highly recommend checking him out.
> fortune cookies may actually be personal messages from the universe.
Try this next time you get one:
Take a few seconds and hold the fortune cookie in your hand. Deeply consider for a moment the comedic possibility that this fortune cookie contains a message from a higher power. Suspend your disbelief, just like you do when engrossed in a work of fiction.
Now, the key: ask a question.
Questions in the form of "Tell me about...", or "How should I approach..." etc are most suitable for the form of divination at hand.
Close your eyes and ask the question to the higher power in the cookie.
Now, have a predetermined method for opening and reading the fortune. I crack in half, eat one half, read, and then eat the other half (or don't, if I am being a brat / don't like the fortune). This part is about making a clean ritual of it.
My hit rate for meaningful messages skyrocketed since applying the above approach.
> My hit rate for meaningful messages skyrocketed since applying the above approach.
As a skeptic and non-believer of all things spiritual, whenever I have one of those "meaningful messages" moments (we get them too), my reaction is to debunk that feeling by thinking about how others might have interpreted the same event, or how the fortune cookie supply chain actually works.
It's funny that some people lean into that feeling and assign it great cosmic meaning while others rationalize it away.
In the morning, I think while drinking coffee. Then I really think in the shower. As a result I take long showers. Sometimes during the day, I'll sit back and think. While going to bed, I'll think some more.
Usually I think about problems to solve, reflect on my life so far, course adjustments, things to self improve.
One day I'll pick up a religion, but it seems like they all would require a lot of mental gymnastics to keep consistent with my mental explorations. Ultimately I think religions are useful as a tutorial on how to live a good life, but like tutorials, they don't always apply super well to your own particulars. So my parallel track is to think hard about the stuff I'm missing that a religion would provide. E.g meditative time, family matters, behaviours, habits.
But science moves so fast that a lot if religious habits are really out of date, so I have little hope to find a religion in the future. I wish there was a "Debian Sid" religion: not quite Gentoo uptodate but not too CentOS outofdate.
> One day I'll pick up a religion, but it seems like they all would require a lot of mental gymnastics to keep consistent with my mental explorations.
> I wish there was a "Debian Sid" religion
Convert to Discordianism! We make mental gymnastics an Olympic sport! You are not only allowed to, but expected, nay, mandated to believe everything and nothing you want. You can compile your beliefs against any platform, arch, Goddess, God, Dog, Amphibian, or cat manufacturer.
You might want to look at some of the more modern / postmodern branches of Christianity.
Some people who practice it sincerely don't think of the Bible as a literally true document that has no mistakes or inaccuracies, nor a rulebook that must be followed in every particular, but rather a series of subjective recountings of different people's encounters with God over the course of many centuries, strongly colored by their cultural context and identity.
I think most such practitioners still believe there's a historical core somewhere in the Gospels, particularly around Jesus' death and resurrection.
That's the impression I get from a near distance. I haven't super-closely at those versions myself (though it's on my todo list).
One site presenting something like this perspective is here:
> You might want to look at some of the more modern / postmodern branches of Christianity
> Some people who practice it sincerely don't think of the Bible as a literally true document that has no mistakes or inaccuracies,
That's not “modern and postmodern” Christianity, that's just OG Christianity. The view that, as doctrine, the Bible is entirely literal and without error in any sense (rather than often nonliteral and only without error in the doctrine it intends to teach) is a relatively novel view within Christianity predominantly held within a subset of Evangelical and Fundamentalist Protestantism.
> Name and cite a single Christian source from before 1600 which believes the Bible is a flawed text which contains errors.
As I said before, the traditional view is that the Bible is free of error, but that this refers to its intended moral message, not historical or scientific truth or any other alternative purpose one might apply to it.
Given that, you must be asking for not someone who sees it as containing error but instead factual inaccuracy, and for that, well, a good place to start is Origen of Alexandria (c. AD 184 – c. AD 253), who succinctly lays out both the traditional view of the purpose of scripture and the manner in which it encompasses and is unshaken by (and is even be served by) the presence of factual error in the Commentary on the Gospel of John, Book 10, Chapter 4, which opens:
“In the case I have supposed where the historians desire to teach us by an image what they have seen in their mind, their meaning would be found, if the four were wise, to exhibit no disagreement; and we must understand that with the four Evangelists it is not otherwise. They made full use for their purpose of things done by Jesus in the exercise of His wonderful and extraordinary power; they use in the same way His sayings, and in some places they tack on to their writing, with language apparently implying things of sense, things made manifest to them in a purely intellectual way. I do not condemn them if they even sometimes dealt freely with things which to the eye of history happened differently, and changed them so as to subserve the mystical aims they had in view; so as to speak of a thing which happened in a certain place, as if it had happened in another, or of what took place at a certain time, as if it had taken place at another time, and to introduce into what was spoken in a certain way some changes of their own. They proposed to speak the truth where it was possible both materially and spiritually, and where this was not possible it was their intention to prefer the spiritual to the material. The spiritual truth was often preserved, as one might say, in the material falsehood.”
Is “before the First Nicene Council” enough “before 1600” for you?
You can find a reasonably extensive set of passages from the pre-400AD famous Christians about how the genesis story is supposed to be interpreted allegorically and not literally on wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allegorical_interpretations_of...
Of course, they would not consider the allegory an "error" in the same way that modern fundamentalists would.
It is not a fringe belief/conspiracy theory that biblical literalism is a relatively new Christian tradition, but rather well accepted fact among religious historians.
My catholic school system taught the Bible was inspired by God and not to be taken necessarily literally. More of a series of parables to understand life better.
Similar here, you can also look into philosophy instead of religion.
I am quite fond of stoicism. Not that I follow it religiously or would even call myself a stoic, but I think it is one of the best 'tutorials how to live a good life' out there.
Not sure if it counts as spiritual, but for 10 years I've consistently done subconscious, mind+body healing exercises. It's been profoundly transformative.
Prior to that (and for quite a while after) I had a huge amount of drama and chaos in my life, and after searching far and wide for answers (starting with the usual stuff - mainstream therapy, meditation, etc) I learned about these healing practices, which address the physiological reactions that happens when we experience triggering events.
Over time, my practice has developed into this: try to live a normal, well-functioning life, do my best at whatever I do. When things happen that trigger reactions - anger, resentment, arrogance, jealousy, contempt, shame, etc, or anything that makes me feel a jolt or even very mild visceral reaction, undertake the practice, which enables me to find where in my past the reaction comes from, then do a brief breathing exercise to let it go. Rinse and repeat. Over time, the reactions weaken, my overall stress burden diminishes (along with physiological issues like inflammation, chronic pain, etc), and bit by bit life gets simpler and important indicators like relationships and career steadily imrove.
It's hard to recommend stuff here (I've been trying for years to work out how to reply to this answer FWIW), as a lot of the popular books about it are too close to law-of-attraction, Tony Robbins, Think and Grow Rich kind of stuff, or linked to the chiropractic field, which is a turnoff for a lot of for most people here, for reasons I understand, as I don't subscribe to much of that myself.
I also don't want to recommend particular practices here, lest I be seen as making health recommendations, which I'm not qualified to do.
I've written a lot of content about my own journey, which can help people to know what different practices are available and enable people to decide for themselves what practices are worth trying. Anyone is welcome to email me (address in bio) if they want to read what I've written. I also have a Discord group for people who want to discuss this stuff with other folks who are interested (pretty much everyone in the group is from HN).
But if you just want publicly available info and modalities, try these:
Authors: Gabor Maté, Peter Levine, Bruce Lipton, Bradley Nelson, Stan & Christina Grof.
Modalities: NET, Psych-K, Somatic Experiencing, Holotropic Breathwork, EFT/Tapping, Family Constellations, Ericksonian Hypnotherapy (but not NLP, in my opinion).
Bessel van der Kolk's book The Body Keeps the Score is a brilliant and enlightening study of how trauma and all kinds of negative experiences are literally stored in the body as tension, which, when chronic, can become debilitating inflammation and pain.
Van der Kolk noted in his decades of practice that trauma victims, and those who are chronically angry, anxious, wary, etc. are deeply out of touch with their bodies. They were often clumsy and visibly tense, though when asked how their bodies felt, they either couldn't say, or they were just "normal."
He had to first get patients to recognize how their bodies felt, then taught them to relax and change those feelings through various exercises, meditations and practices. When the body started to loosen up, the mind and emotions followed.
Edit Eger, a holocaust survivor turned therapist, found the same things in her decades of practice. Both books spend a lot of time describing the symptoms and problems, and the address healing practices toward the end.
For the last few years (and especially since the pandemic began), my most regular practice has been the Liturgy of the Hours, particularly Lauds and Vespers, which are the morning and evening prayers of the Roman Catholic Church. Each one is two psalms and a canticle, followed by a short reading, another canticle (the Benedictus in the morning and the Magnificat in the evening), intercessions, an Our Father, and a concluding prayer. I have been trying to pray Matins more regularly as well (also called the Office of Readings), which is three psalms followed by a longer reading from the Bible and reading from one of the Church Fathers.
I have found praying the rosary beneficial as well since it is more meditative than the Liturgy of the Hours, but I haven't yet been able to regularly work into my schedule.
Same here. Lauds before work, Vespers in the evening. I'm currently praying what I think is a Franciscan Secular Order variant. I also pray a short prayer at 15:00 (Our Father and Glory Be) which is purportedly the time when Jesus died on the Cross for us, which is also very beneficial. Sundays I read Scripture, following what is really a daily Coming Home Network schedule [1] - a couple of chapters from the Old Testament in order, a Psalm or a a short excerpt from one of the books of wisdom, a chapter from the New Testament
I meditate, usually an hour of sitting practice, and then through the day.
Practicing more felt really urgent after a couple of big psychedelic trips, and I've found getting into contact with a source of fundamental unconditional love hugely helpful. I feel very in touch with the sacred, despite being agnostic at best.
I'm not a huge fan of the mainstream concentration work stuff; I've been influenced by Rob Burbea's jazzy, improvisational approach.
Also, currently I'm working on the jhanas, which are a lot of fun, and I'm excited to work on them at a 10-day retreat starting in a week. Leigh Brasington's Right Concentration is the best intro, or for a thread see https://twitter.com/nickcammarata/status/1471300341232668679
I'm a secular Satanist. I believe Christianity and Abrahamic religions are inherently unethical. I have very strong utilitarian principles that run even deeper, which is ultimately what pushed me to Satanism. I'm a member of the Satanic temple, but in some ways it's more of a political organization than religious. I'm open to the possible existence of the paranormal, but I do not trust it at all and would question the intentions of such entities.
> I'm open to the possible existence of the paranormal, but I do not trust it at all and would question the intentions of such entities.
I think you're already making a mistake in thinking about it as 'entities' and 'paranormal'. Liber O vel Manus et Sagittae sub figura VI has a great bit about this:
> 2. In this book it is spoken of the Sephiroth and the Paths; of Spirits and Conjurations; of Gods, Spheres, Planes, and many other things which may or may not exist. It is immaterial whether these exist or not. By doing certain things certain results will follow; students are most earnestly warned against attributing objective reality or philosophic validity to any of them.
Which combined with the Mathers/Crowley Goetia gives more insight into a different perspective:
> The spirits of the Goetia are portions of the human brain.
Would you question the intentions of parts of your own brain? :) Maybe! But this gives a pretty different perspective on them than external 'entities' influencing you. In the end, all that matters is that note from Liber O -- by doing certain things, certain results will occur. Whether it is external entities or parts of your own brain is kinda irrelevant to causing results.
Atheist here and I've been pretty impressed with the work of the Satanic Temple over the last few years.
What's membership actually look like?
I'd consider joining in a secular/political sense, but I have no interest in hanging out with people who believe in and actually praise a "Satan" deity.
I'm not too active in the Temple because of work, but you will only generally find atheists, agnostics, or at worst "woo lords" in TST. Such irrational thought is frowned upon by TST, so it is discouraged. TST does lean a bit left, but as the old offensive saying goes, "reality has a liberal bias". They do not, however, typically look kindly upon SJWs. Someone tried that once and was fired by TST itself.
You will hear people say "Hail Satan!" a lot, but it's meant more in the sense of what Satan stands for from the Satanic viewpoint, which is, among many other things, primarily freedom and knowledge.
I do believe in their tenets myself, I think they're remarkably well distilled principles. I think the first and fourth tenets are especially important for the current times.
I think what you'll find a lot of Satanists believe is "an it harm none, do what ye will", and you'll find that they take that principle more seriously than others who espouse that, such as Wicca.
The Church of Satan was on the right track in some areas (such as viewing Abrahamic God as evil and nonexistent), but in others it is clear that it is an incoherent "first attempt" with lots of contradictory statements, such as the belief in magic yet the disbelief in Satan, and its hatred of abortion despite its otherwise Social Darwinist leanings. More damning (no pun intended) is how the Satanic Bible (LaVey's work) simultaneously condemns the authority of "God" yet says that dictators are good Satanists. It was very much the views of a single man, Anton LaVey, which while not entirely without merit and LaVey not being necessarily a completely terrible person, are far off course in my view in many ways.
Anton loved Ayn Rand. Many TST members are appalled at Rand's ethical ideology, or lack thereof, myself especially included.
You'll find that in many areas, The Satanic Temple is diametrically opposed, and represents a much more coherent, logical, refined ideology, and wholly rejects social darwinism as mostly discredited, advocating instead for empathy and compassion, recognizing their evolutionary benefit.
What both organizations have in common is the demand for rationalist thinking, the belief in the immorality of God, the belief in personal freedom, and deriving their ideologies partly from the sciences of their respective time periods.
Sorry I'm so late in my reply. I largely agree with you. After reading the "manifesto" of TST I find that it's much more to my taste (although keeping "Satan" in the name is a bit much of an "inside joke" for me- the evangelicals in my family can't get past it.
I am an Orthodox Christian. My day begins with prayer, as soon as possible after I wake up. Prayer consists of reading (or reciting) prayers from a prayer book, followed by 100-200 Jesus Prayers ("Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me!"), followed by 12-25 prostrations.
I then read the daily scripture readings indicated by the liturgical calendar.
At noon, I usually read a Psalm in front of my icons (I work from home) and do 12 prostrations.
After dinner, we pray together as a family, then read several chapters from the Bible together and discuss whatever comes up in the text we are reading that day. We're currently in the middle of reading the Bible in a year.
Before bed, I repeat my morning routine, but saying evening prayers instead of morning prayers. I usually fall asleep while saying the Jesus Prayer. I also say the Jesus Prayer throughout the day as I am doing things that don't require strong focus.
We go to Vespers (evening prayers) on Saturday night, and we go to church on Sunday morning.
Growing into this routine has changed my life, healed my family, and brought immense peace and joy (and struggle!) into my life. Glory to God!
EDIT: I should add that prayers are typically said while standing in front of an icon corner, usually with a candle lit and incense burning. Obviously, when I am saying the Jesus Prayer throughout the day or falling asleep, I'm not following those guidelines, but my morning and evening prayers are said while standing, usually with my eyes open.
Great to see other Orthodox Christians at HN! Already posted quite similar reply to this thread.
Especially the "healed my family" -part is something I can really relate to. We've been part of the church for 11 years now but were again quite "deep in the world" before I did a pilgrimage to mt. Athos at 2019. That trip really changed everything for us. It was there that I realized that what Church teaches is the Truth and reality, not just some beautiful and consolating stories, but something to live and die for. After that we've been tied tight to the Church and have been blessed with a good spiritual father who has helped us set our path straight again.
Glory to God! I agree with you about the reality of Christianity. It took a long time (and I'm still working on it) for me to see the broken nature of my materialist viewpoints. By "broken" I mean there were SO many facets of my life as a human that I could not account for materialistically without invoking magic words like "emergence". Reading the Life of Moses by St. Gregory of Nyssa is what really started helping me understand the traditional worldview, and thereby understand scripture as well.
I would like to go to Mt Athos soon, but international travel is getting more and more tricky.
A fellow orthodox christian here. I have been trying to cultivate the habit of Jesus prayer. But the journey is a struggle.
However, even in the fallen attempts to walk the orthodox way of life I occasionally sense the joy and warmth described in the spiritual texts about Jesus Prayer. Thus motivating me to continue the path.
At first I used an app on my phone to send myself random reminders to say the Jesus Prayer throughout the day. That really helped spur the habit along. Now, I am almost always saying it while I'm driving, or if I'm doing chores around the house, or if I'm walking around somewhere. At first, it felt a little odd, but now I find it much more rewarding than just letting my brain wander around in a forest of nonsense and ego-focused self-reflection.
How much time do you spend on social media (including youtube and HN)? How much time do you spend watching tv? How much time do you spend watching sports? I have shifted my attention to what is most important, doing these spiritual practice things first, and letting those other activities slot in around the time. Our lives are basically determined by what we put our attention on, so why not give the prime real estate to what is most important? We are all going to die. It's best to confront that reality each day and make peace with it in a ritualistic way that also brings meaning to each day.
I didn't start doing all of that overnight, by the way. I worked with my spiritual father on a pathway that started very simply, and this is my current level of participation, but I am sure it will continue to grow and change over time.
Not that much. I especially hate youtube and will read over watch a video any time of the day, I do not have instagram, I do not own cable tv, I do not watch sports.
But to give more insight into what motivates me in life, I have been blessed with the love of nature and animals especially, own pets, taking care of which is a daily time and money sink, but also without fail gets me outside each day of the year and in a good mood and shape, and allows me some peaceful moments where I do not think about anything else than the present moment and some kind of nature "communion" of sorts, around pets and nature.
And I sincerely think it is a blessing, as I think I have a rather simple and happy life, and haven't been distraught durably for years. I feel for all the stressed people out there that do not have such an easy way to relax.
I agree that communion with nature is really important. Noticing beauty in nature is especially helpful. I am happy you are finding the joy in simplicity. I'm still cultivating that virtue.
I didn't address the time component. The morning prayers/scriptures takes about 20-30 minutes. Lunch time Psalms is 5-10 minutes at most. Family prayers after dinner are about 10-15 minutes. Bible reading after that is about 15-25 minutes, depending on how much we discuss what we read. Evening prayers on my own are another 15-20 minutes daily.
Vespers on Saturday night is about an hour (and my wife and I go to dinner afterwards usually, as our weekly date). Church on Sunday is about two hours, and we usually spend time afterwards drinking coffee and chatting for another 30-60 minutes with other members of our parish, but not always.
Wow! As someone who at some point in life was intensely meditating (nowadays less so) your routine reminds me of my habits, ie. falling asleep meditating vs praying etc, meditating upon waking up etc. Interesting how we can be so different yet similar!
How did this practice heal your life? And how does it influence who you are / your state of being outside of the time you’re actively praying or performing a specific ritual - the rest of the day?
Also, do you feel that the actions you describe change the quality of your thinking or perception of yourself and reality? How?
You're asking some big questions, and they're good questions, and I'll assume you're asking in good faith and do my best to answer.
Before I became an Orthodox Christian, the best way to describe my worldview and mindset was "scattered and easily distracted". I have always pursued whatever I thought was interesting, but never had a cohesive worldview. I would jump and flit from topic to topic without having any way of incorporating what I learned into a daily practice and worldview. I swore constantly, was careless in my relationships, and frequently offended people around me, including my loved ones.
I was a consumer and was very alienated from the world around me and from my loved ones. I lived a very atomized life where I was convinced that my actions didn't affect anyone but me. Very much an individualist.
Since becoming Christian and realizing there is an objective reality, that my actions affect others, and their actions affect me, and that I will die sooner or later, my life has come into sharper focus. I understand much more clearly now that if you want to change the world and help with the healing process, the best place to start is in your own home, with how you treat your loved ones, and how you take care of your home.
Also, another important perspective from Orthodox Christianity, and one of the main reasons we wear a cross, is to remember to crucify our self, our ego, in the service of others each day. Christ said "No greater love hath a man than this, he is willing to lay his life down for his friends." We believe that is why males and females were created. So they could get married and martyr themselves in the service of another. We believe that is what it means to truly be a human being. Monks also take on this same responsibility, but in the service of God, the church, and their monastic community. (Monasteries are not a refuge from the world, but instead, the bleeding front lines of a spiritual battle.)
Praying for my loved ones (living and dead) daily, praying for my perceived enemies, and praying for God's mercy for the world, has dramatically changed how I see other people, and how I try to live up to role in serving others. I no longer obsess over whether my spouse is filling my chalice of invented "needs". Instead, I try to look for ways to make her life easier, more comfortable. And I'm still working on this part, but I try not to call attention to my efforts or to even call attention to what I've done. God sees my efforts and what is done in secret will be rewarded openly.
We also end each day together as a family by praying, and after prayer, we ask each other for forgiveness if we have done anything to hurt them or offend them today. This has ENORMOUS consequences that are hard to put into words.
My daughter used to be terrified of the dark. She used to have nightmares and insomnia, because my wife and I used to argue and fight in front of her. Our home was filled with trauma and despair. My wife and I were nihilists who were just following our passions (I mean that in the traditional way) and doing whatever we wanted to do/thought was right, and we were in constant conflict.
Now, we pray together, read the Bible together, share our daily frustrations with each other, encourage each other, eat together, listen to each other. We don't watch tv. We rarely go to movies. Last night I read out of the Bible while my wife and daughter worked on a puzzle, and after I read, I joined them and we were just talking and joking with each other and listening to music. This is what I mean by how my life has been healed.
Prayer is my personal way of participating in my relationship with God. Each day includes a review of my day, where I reflect on my sins and shortcomings, pray for forgiveness, and pray for strength in overcoming my weaknesses. I pray for guidance in how I can overcome my old patterns, and I read the scriptures with the intention of finding useful patterns of behavior that I can model in my own life.
Because of my daily prayer habit, I'm much more careful about what I say, and how I treat other people, because I know in the back of my mind that I will be standing before God, my Father and Creator of the universe, that evening in prayer, and I will be answering for how I treat others. I want to burn away the parts of myself that are interfering with my relationship with God and with those around me, and prayer helps serve as that reminder, that connection.
As for your last question, I can only say this: Jordan Peterson's lectures on the Bible series opened my mind and heart to the idea that there's a LOT more going on in the Bible than my old materialist, scientist brain was understanding. I began to study medieval philosophy, and the work of Jonathan Pageau has truly opened my eyes to how reality works, and how I fit into that cosmology, and what my role is in reality. I have also realized just how much effect being with other people in a community in person has on me, and how I only barely understand the power of standing in church together (Orthodox Christians typically stand during the Divine Liturgy service as a form of respect and worship) all worshipping together by standing together, looking in the same direction, hearing hymns and prayers, surrounded by icons, with the smell of incense in the air. There are some things you can only know through experience. Reading a book about Orthodox Christianity is basically like reading a book about martial arts. It won't get you very far in a fight.
Anyway, I pray that my answer has been helpful. Please forgive me if I didn't answer your questions adequately or if I misunderstood what you were asking. God bless you.
That's amazing that you mention St. George. He's my patron saint! I have many icons of him in my home and in my office at work. I even have one of him in my car. Here's a great account of his martyrdom, where they tried many times to kill him, finally decapitating him: https://www.goarch.org/-/feast-of-the-holy-great-martyr-geor...
As for the dragon, it represents Satan, and also monsters who are tyrannical, hybrids that are not easily categorized that live in the forest or wilderness, and the foreign or the strange. It also represents time. I also like your friend's answer. Notice how the serpent's tail is wrapped up in the horse's feet, trying to trip the horse up.
The life of St. George has many interesting elements, and also has bleed-over into Islamic tradition as well.
The way I started learning about the language and symbolism of iconography was through watching videos on symbolism by Jonathan Pageau on youtube. He's an Orthodox iconographer and he uses fairy tales and movie symbolism to talk about symbolism in general and to introduce it to modern audiences, and he also does videos about the symbolism in specific icons.
If you have any other questions, feel free to ask here. I don't think HN has a direct message system, unfortunately. If they do and I'm just too boomer to figure it out, feel free to hit me up in DM as well.
We've banned this account. You can't attack others like that here (and you've unfortunately don't it before, though this level of aggression is...noteworthy).
If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future. They're here: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
I am not religious at all and I've thought of myself as tolerant of religion (they all have some very good teachings, after all).
But lately organised religion has been bothering me a lot. It is just so obviously a form of controlling people: you have to believe this and that and also hand over some cash and vote for such and such.
I can't get around the fact that this still goes on so blatantly in this day and age.
Recently I was attending several catholic weddings and I was taken aback by the level of religious fervor and literal interpretation of the bible there. I was expecting the preaching to be more focused on how to live a good life and be a valuable member of society, but instead it was more about how I will burn eternally for not believing.
> Recently I was attending several catholic weddings and I was taken aback by the level of religious fervor and literal interpretation of the bible there. I was expecting the preaching to be more focused on how to live a good life and be a valuable member of society, but instead it was more about how I will burn eternally for not believing.
Literalism isn’t a big thing in Catholicism, but you can run into it and, what sounds to be more the issue here, there are definitely some (IME, a small minority, but they are quite noticeable) Catholic priests who love to use events where they are likely to get non-regular churchgoers in the congregaton as an opportunity to try to deploy a fear hammer to get people back to Church.
These attitudes come in cycles in the Roman church. There was a 50 year period of liberal thinking. The current has era has swung back to the conservative. When an organization has a 1600 year life span you can expect things like this. Just wait a while...
It could also be regional. My experience in Catholic churches in Texas was a lot different than the upper Midwest. Also, the attitudes of the clergy don't necessarily mirror those of the laity, and there are divisions within the laity as well. The people in the pews get their ideas from a lot of different places, ranging from liberal to evangelical. This was many years ago, haven't been involved for a long time.
> The current has era has swung back to the conservative.
In the American particular Church more than in the Universal Church that seems correct. (Up through the papacy of Benedict XVI, I would have responded differently.)
The guilt is definitely pushed strongly in Catholicism and probably the worst part of it. But I don't think Catholics are too literal in their interpretation of the bible - in fact I think they are generally more rational than most other denominations. For instance, Catholics generally accept scientific explanations for evolution and the origin of the universe unlike many (most?) protestants.
Lifelong Catholic here -- I've never felt that the guilt was pushed too strongly. What I do feel is that the Catholic Church is very willing to say that certain beliefs and practices are proscribed, that sin is real and should be avoided. What people are calling guilt is their own attachment to sin, and their reluctance to abandoning it.
(That being said, God's capacity for love is beyond human conception and no person can ever be beyond redemption.)
> you have to believe this and that and also hand over some cash and vote for such and such.
My feeling is this is an Americanism. Here in the UK I've been to church events in the past - usually stuff linked to school events (harvest, nativity etc), or weddings/funerals, and been in a few old cathedrals which have a donation box, but the stuff I see on US TV shows like the Simpsons -- collection plate passing, advertising, televangelism, etc all seems very different and far more obviously "con artistry"
There is some cult that does some low-key advertising in the UK (occasional posters on bus stops in London) over the last decade or so, the alpha church or something, which is mildly concerning, but the general course of religion, from what I can tell it's just a place some people go and have a chat and a sing-song, no different to the pub really.
The way this was explained to me is that you have the Church of England, which is technically an established church run by the state.
The government<->church connection makes it easier to be distrustful of the church when you're distrustful of the government, which detracts from the divine nature of faith and creates a more secular nation.
Compare that to the US (The Simpsons depiction is largely accurate), where the US Government and the church are completely separate. That means your church can be right and your government can be wrong, which creates all sorts of problematic dynamics in the states.
Currently, the "my church is right, government is wrong" crowd has essentially adopted the Trump family as their new church. I don't think you guys could have that happen across the pond. That's why we're about to do a fascism.
>It is just so obviously a form of controlling people: you have to believe this and that and also hand over some cash and vote for such and such.
could be generalized to any mainstream ideology, enforcement is the same with anybody going against the ideology being cast out of the group. Human nature hasn't changed, you could get rid of all organized religion and the same thing would happen. I think politics has become more heated because it has replaced religion for so many people, same anger vented using a new outlet
As a religious person (By western standards) I can't stand any sort of Religious authority. I believe they are what made religions Today incredible superficial. Critical thinking is prohibited in favor of blind belief, and the clergy only recite what they memorized.
To me, my Holy Book is the only religious authority, and it's my job to understand it and think about it, however such injection of the mind into religion is downright heretical where I come from.
This leads to conflicts with those around me as my interpretations of the book is incredibly liberal, compared to the fossilized understandings of the clergy.
As long as it's “transparent to transcendence,” that's fine. Absolutely everything is this world can be used in this manner. It's all a great mystery anyway.
> But lately organised religion has been bothering me a lot. It is just so obviously a form of controlling people: you have to believe this and that and also hand over some cash and vote for such and such.
You can find organized religions that don’t feature any of those that bother you (quite a lot are really mostly concerned with only the first, and there are some where even that is not all that much of a concern; I personally would suggest avoiding the ones that drop the first but retain either of the other two.)
Not religious and not really spiritual at all to be honest.
The closest thing to "spiritual" that I do is walking slowly. Years ago one day I noticed I had the habit of walking very quickly everywhere I went and that this was pointless. I walk much more slowly now, looking around, watching things, people, anything. I make a point of always leaving earlier than I need so that I never have to hurry.
Kind of like the reverse to the chorus in "Nowhere fast".
I love this practice. Not so long ago I had a nice, slow stroll through my neighborhood, looking at each house and every sidewalk tree. I saw so many pretty things that I'd never noticed before, like nicely painted trim on some homes, or fairy door (which are pretty popular here), or funny bumper stickers. I felt like a part of such a rich and interesting community.
This. And as much as I love listening to music, going without any headphones and just hearing whatever it is you are in the middle of can be centering.
I'm agnostic, but I choose to believe that there's a chance the universe was created, either directly or as a side-effect of some act of will. Given what I know about how complicated projects generally get delivered, I assume that instead of some benevolent, perfect creator, the universe was created in a rush, by some stressed low-level figure. They are probably unhappy with how it turned out, and they had to implement a bunch of performance hacks (the speed of light and quantum mechanics among them) to get it working properly. They may not understand its internal state, or know we exist, but I hope they have at least some grudging affection for their creation, even if it's been superseded by other universes at this point. I call them Colin. I occasionally ask for Colin's help, and in return I try to keep my part of the universe interesting. You are free to join me in Colinism.
Interesting. I liked your angle on this. Just to add more on it: it is a high chance that we are some sort of a fish in an aquarium. its a vast universe for us but we might not be more than a family of bacterias on a random rock in a tank thats filled with void.
I had the thought that our relationship to this “colin” could be like a fat cell to a human. If the human is fat, we are happy and we actually have influence. If the human is a body builder, we’re in trouble.
I'm an atheist, and don't believe in anything spiritual.
But I do think there are things that inspire me, make me feel connected to the world around me, and make me think. I love philosophy and history and I am constantly reading new things, but I especially like the wisdom of the stoics. I try to go for a walk daily, and I live where I can go hiking in the forest, along rivers, and around rugged coastlines. But mostly I just contemplate and see where my mind takes me.
Atheism. downright non-believer. Grew up by a deist family. they were not really religious. I do remember hearing praying every now and then from my childhood but it was not something that's reflected to me as important part of life. Later on met lots of religious people but did not find them interesting. After learning more about science and technology, the unresolved facts started to disturb me while I was still young. Later in life started being interested in philosophy and learned that i need to learn more about the things that i disagree. hence end up reading most of the holy books, found them close to reading LOTR. My thoughts on spiritual practice? Religion is required for most of the people because it is a meditation and a safe bay for the minds that are unable to bear the hard facts in this universe. I find it very stupid and inefficient for humanity to spend so much resources on it but I do not disrespect the religious community except the extremists and the people who's life's meaning is religion. I also believe that the majority of people are belong to a religion because they don't want to be seen as an outsider or due to their social state or job etc. Or probably because it's been an important part of their family. because it is very hard to unsee the cruel world and fool yourself with religion. "Science is the most reliable guide for civilization, for life, for success in the world. Searching a guide other than the science is meaning carelessness, ignorance and heresy."
How do you define science? Most attempts at formal definitions involve some sequence of hypothesis/experiment/observation (e.g. wikipedia [1]). With such definitions, however, it's not clear that the employment of some respectable modes of learning like mathematics or the historical method amount to doing science.
> it is very hard to unsee the cruel world and fool yourself with religion
I'm Christian and it is seeing this cruel world that confirms for me the existence of human sin and the need for a solution.
Science is wonderful and explains a lot of things and has resulted in a lot of good, but so far for me, it doesn't not explain adequately why this world is so cruel and what to do about. And it doesn't speak to morality either. Morality I'd argue is pretty important for a happy and functioning society.
You may believe that relative morality is orthogonal to religion, but by definition, absolute morality is not possible without a point of reference outside of us, i.e. religion.
And I would say relative morality is no morality at all. Pedophilia, murder, rape, etc is absolutely wrong. I don't care what you compare it to.
And I would assert morality is orthogonal to science.
I am Muslim and pray 5x a day. Prayer is the remembrance of God (Allah) and expression of gratitude and love.
Every morning I spend some of my wealth in charity. The Quran puts great emphasis on helping others and on being a good human being. My father used to say it's not the amount, but consistency that matters. I try to keep to that.
Apart from that, I read / listen to the Quran. This is what makes me the happiest spiritually.
I was raised religious (catholic), and kind of believed in it. And then when I was 18-20 I spent a lot of time and effort to rid myself of religion, and have been living happy and free ever since. I still enjoy the occasional mass (once or twice a year), mainly because I like to sing.
I have not taught my kids any kind of religion or spirituality, and they don't seem to miss it. I wanted to spare them the effort of getting out of it later. What I hadn't anticipated is that as a result, they are pretty ignorant of most things, they have little idea who Jesus or Mary are, etc. (We tell them about it sometimes, of course, but it's very different than going to Sunday School for 10 years).
Have you thought of introducing them to multiple religious beliefs as beliefs people have?
My experience was along these lines and although I am not an expert on the details, it helped me see multiple viewpoints, spot universal patterns, gain respect for all.
Being ignorant of most religious things is socially not that big of a problem in my experience, you eventually miss some references in pop culture though.
In terms of beliefs, I think there’s a tonne of massive, unanswered questions about the universe, and it’s certainly possible that there are forces out there that resemble spiritual concepts. Something vaguely resembling a soul, or an intelligent life that created the universe, that sort of thing. Or not - I have no real opinion on this other than “nobody knows”.
I do think that all popular religions on earth were created by people, though. Likely started similar to cults, and evolved into something much more loosely controlled. I don’t think they’re entirely negative, religion can be a powerful positive force for a lot of people, but I do think they’re just stories made by humans, for humans.
Gnostic means you know, agnostic means you don't. Theist means you believe, atheist means you don't. A gnostic atheist "knows" there's no god and an agnostic theist thinks there's a god. In this case, GP is an agnostic atheist.
That depends on the formalism and the objective. If we accept agnostic priors then the most rational belief implied by those priors is atheism, via the same formalisms that give us Ockham's Razor. That belief is conditional but it is a very strong condition such that you would not expect someone that held agnostic priors to not also be operationally atheist for all practical purposes.
Similarly, most atheists seem to hold agnostic priors but fully realize the implications of that by calling themselves "atheists".
> In terms of beliefs, I think there’s a tonne of massive, unanswered questions about the universe, and it’s certainly possible that there are forces out there that resemble spiritual concepts. Something vaguely resembling a soul, or an intelligent life that created the universe, that sort of thing. Or not - I have no real opinion on this other than “nobody knows”.
I'd tend to agree that nobody knows for certainty all truths of the universe, but there are well-documented processes like insight meditation that lead to certain altered states of consciousness (jhanas/dhyana & samadhi), that some people call knowledge/experience of the Soul or God. While you might disagree with the interpretation of these experiences as the 'Soul' 'God', the experiences are concrete enough to light up the brain in a brain scan.
> I do think that all popular religions on earth were created by people, though.
They were, but they were based on people who had real experiences of god or the spirit or what have you. Swami Vivekananda said it better than I can in Raja Yoga (1896):
> Religion, as it is generally taught all over the world, is said to be based upon faith and belief, and, in most cases, consists only of different sets of theories, and that is the reason why we find all religions quarrelling with one another. These theories, again, are based upon belief. One man says there is a great Being sitting above the clouds and governing the whole universe, and he asks me to believe that solely on the authority of his assertion. In the same way, I may have my own ideas, which I am asking others to believe, and if they ask a reason, I cannot give them any. This is why religion and metaphysical philosophy have a bad name nowadays. Every educated man seems to say, "Oh, these religions are only bundles of theories without any standard to judge them by, each man preaching his own pet ideas." Nevertheless, there is a basis of universal belief in religion, governing all the different theories and all the varying ideas of different sects in different countries. Going to their basis we find that they also are based upon universal experiences. [...]
> The teachers of the science of Yoga, therefore, declare that religion is not only based upon the experience of ancient times, but that no man can be religious until he has the same perceptions himself. Yoga is the science which teaches us how to get these perceptions. It is not much use to talk about religion until one has felt it. Why is there so much disturbance, so much fighting and quarrelling in the name of God? There has been more bloodshed in the name of God than for any other cause, because people never went to the fountain-head; they were content only to give a mental assent to the customs of their forefathers, and wanted others to do the same. What right has a man to say he has a soul if he does not feel it, or that there is a God if he does not see Him? If there is a God we must see Him, if there is a soul we must perceive it; otherwise it is better not to believe. It is better to be an outspoken atheist than a hypocrite. The modern idea, on the one hand, with the "learned" is that religion and metaphysics and all search after a Supreme Being are futile; on the other hand, with the semi-educated, the idea seems to be that these things really have no basis; their only value consists in the fact that they furnish strong motive powers for doing good to the world. If men believe in a God, they may become good, and moral, and so make good citizens. We cannot blame them for holding such ideas, seeing that all the teaching these men get is simply to believe in an eternal rigmarole of words, without any substance behind them.
I try to be a disciple of Jesus Christ. I am a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. I like to seek out and fold in examples and teachings of other religious leaders as well as long as I can resolve differences in some creative way. I am particular keen of various Asian ideas of late.
I read scriptures and other inspiring works when impressed to (I think that Dr Seuss, The Life of Pi, and maybe Laura Ingalls Wilder should be canonized—chuckle).
I serve weekly in the temple as a Latter Day Saint. There is a regularity and and a sense of the cosmic to it that lifts me and grounds me at the same time. Over the years I’ve volunteered/served in a number of different capacities, often with youth/scouts/seminary. I have found that this practice of contributing my efforts to help others has been uplifting for me. I have learned that if my own creativity/agency is removed from that service, then it turns from uplifting to toxic.
I am probably considered somewhat progressive by many of my LDS peers; I am very comfortable abstracting over much of what we “believe.” tue theological details are just not that important to me; I am more interested in what we do from moment to moment, than whether I’m tapping my ruby slippers together fervently enough. Or put another way, as a bi-weekly Sunday school teacher, I’m more interested in encouraging the class how we apply the ideas in our lives than trying to weave some sort of canonical soundness.
Our "leader"[1] have told us more than once to go elsewhere if we aren't interested.
At times it can come of as a trick, but twenty years later and seeing the way he treats people that leaves our church, i.e. friendly and with all respect I've come to realize he just doesn't want anyone to stay around just because they feel they must.
Still I'd find it hard to leave luckily to a large degree because it has meant a lot to me and they are my dear friends.
[1]: the one who most often starts our meetings as we don't have any schools or certifications to become a preacher, priest or anything
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Edit: looking at what I wrote above I feel a bit silly trying to elevate "us".
Sorry for that. Deadline for rewriting (2 hours) approaches quickly and I don't have a good idea about how to rewrite it, so please feel free to do so mentally.
My point is: I appreciate the liberty I get to approach other churches, to see if anyone teaches the same things we learn in the same or a better way or even to say that I only want to become a regular churchgoer. I appreciate the approch that our kids, even if they choose something different as adults should still look back at their childhood with joy.
I'm fairly certain this liberty isn't given to everyone else around, but I have no idea about how this is practiced elsewhere.
Well, I do have an idea, but I have realized lately that does ideas was planted by the same medias who plant lies about my friends, so I am very wary about what I think even about JW, a group that I think I deeply disagree with in theological questions.
From the folks who have left the LDS church that I've talked to, "friendly and with all respect" is profoundly not the experience that most have.
And my personal experience: it was a great shame on my family, and all the church wanted to know was (and this is the weirdest part) who had offended me??
I'm sad to hear what you experienced and I hope more Christians would follow the example of Jesus (calling Judas a friend) and Paul in treating people friendly and/or at least with respect as long as possible and leaving judgement to God ("for Demas, because he loved this world, he has deserted me and has gone to Thessalonica.", "Alexander the coppersmith did me great harm; the Lord will repay him according to his deeds.").
Sometimes we are forced to stand up for ourselves and to speak out loud and clear. I don't think someone admitting that they don't believe and leaving peacefully is such an instance as long as they don't try to lurk around to pry out or take advantage of others.
I was raised atheist by atheist parents. My mother was raised in one of the weirder Christian sects and got out of it before they married. I have always been an atheist despite growing up in a small town with a church on every block, including one whacky church that actually did things like book burnings and burning Michael Jackson in effigy for corrupting the youth. Most of my friends were catholic, growing up, and that led me online for friends on days when they had CCC. 300 baud hayes for the win and online atheist communities, etc.
That said, as I've gotten older, I think I've concluded that many people - maybe even most - have a sort of need for religion that I somehow never appreciated. Without religion, I think we end up with the modern world, and by that I mean the weird secular religions (on all parts of the political spectrum) that keep springing up in the absence of a formal church, complete with weird notions of sin, apocalyptic thinking, etc. As an outsider, and as someone fascinated by cults and moral panics, it's interesting how similar the structures and language are between these movements and (new) religions are.
So 100% atheist.. but a suspicion that the world would be better off, Chesterton's fence-style, with a dominant religion secretly run by atheists.
No, I'm still an atheist. There's no reason to believe in god nor any evidence that we define reality through our beliefs and experiences (and a lot of evidence that this has zero impact at all, a la the entire pool of continuously disappointed "The Secret" devotees).
I'm just saying that I think there is a sort of need in most people, probably an accident of evolution, even one that has some positive fitness value due to second order effects, to have something religion shaped. Atheists like me basically helped create the mess we were in by helping to destroy the more mainstream religions thereby creating an opportunity for straight up crazypants stuff to emerge with properties that are harder to deal with (nothing is written down, nothing is consistent - Q) by pointing out the flaws and obvious falseness. We acted as a selection function for an even more terrible set of ideas.
In a lot of ways the current situation is very similar to the second great awakening in the early 19th century which spawned a number of cult-like sects of Christianity.
I’m Muslim… on a day to day basis I pray, ideally five times a day. The prayer timings are tied to the location of the sun in the sky, which helps me be more aware of natural rhythms. I’ve observed that the periods of my life where I am praying regularly are associated with lower levels depression, higher levels of satisfaction and purpose.
I'm kind of a pagan/panpsychist/discordian/chaos magician. I try to sidestep all that "is the supernatural 'real'?" baggage by treating it all as an abstraction layer - do my practices get what I want? Maybe it's Yahweh, the Force, universal consciousness, flying spaghetti monster, or just good ol' confirmation bias, I don't particularly care most of the time. Sometimes I straight up pretend I'm in a video game or the Matrix. It's fun. I try to lean into "Nothing is true; everything is permitted" when it comes to unfalsifiable stuff.
This is pretty much the only way I've been able to balance the super rational science heavy side of my mind with a deeper need to feel a spiritual connection.
I don't currently have a day to day practice, though I used to meditate daily. I really should get back into that though.
As a religious Jew, I (am obligated by my religion to) pray three times a day, morning, noon and evening. The longest is the morning prayer, 45 minutes approximately.
The prayers are a mix of gratitude, humility and supplication.
I'm a Discordian. To me, that means a sort of pandeistic existentialist absurdism.
A (somewhat tongue-in-cheek) argument:
God is the greatest possible being.
The universe is, by definition, everything that exists.
Everything is greater than any subset of everything.
Therefore God is must be the entirety of existence.
God seems to have numerous mostly disconnected consciousnesses, but is mostly Hydrogen.
There's no inherent meaning given by a bunch of Hydrogen. Therefore we tiny conscious bits of the universe have to make our own meaning.
Assigning a singular consciousness to God would be utterly arbitrary and quite silly.
Silly things are fun.
Therefore God is also a woman, her name is Eris, nonsense is the source of salvation, and God is the universe and isn't any singular being.
I also quite like the ontological argument for atheism:
God is the greatest possible being.
Completing a task with a bigger handicap is greater (more impressive) than completing it without that handicap.
Not existing is the greatest possible handicap.
Therefore God must be a being capable of creating the universe despite not existing.
Faith, to me, is a joke. It's a deliberate choice to believe in things one has no evidence for (at best) or knows are false (at worst). So why not treat religion as a joke, and humor as sacred? It makes as much sense as any other choice in the matter.
I consider stargazing to be a spiritual practice. Looking for stars and planets and finding them exactly where science says they are supposed to be confirms by belief that we live in a world governed by laws, that these laws are knowable, and that we in fact do know them to a pretty reasonable degree of certainty and approximation. That makes me feel connected to the cosmos in a very deep way. I feel privileged to exist at a time and place where this is possible. I think it's pretty fucking awesome.
Daily mass. It does not feel spiritual every single day but most days the mind is focused, and I feel calm and a sense that I’m part of something greater than the immediate world of work, family and daily concerns.
Meditation while giving myself over to daily chores. Just being at peace with them, being mindful of why I'm doing them, weathering the thoughts and emotions that rebel against them.
And the same with everything else positive in my life. Living and not following the impulse to constantly stop and reassess. I have my life pretty well figured out, but something in my brain always wants to stop doing, analyze, rethink, second-guess every action every day until the actual doing is crowded out, in my head and in reality, too, if it gets its way. So my practice is to give myself over to the things that make my life and the lives of the people around me better.
Zen buddhism. I started going to a local zendo about 7-8 years ago to do a weekly 1h30 hour meditation (in fact, 3 short bursts of 25min). This also became a (much shorter) daily habit, and over the year I attend various retreats (from 1 to 5 days). The zendo itself is 'managed' by a monastic.
I started because I wanted to have a crazy experience that would modify my epistemiological understanding of the world. Over the years, I discovered how past emotional events subcounsciously influenced my decision making, how much parental roles shaped my romantic views and how much of my personality was invested in my mind and not my body. I could go on and on.
I cannot prove this scientifically, but somehow I think that my effort toward zen practice made all of this possible, and the only thing I know is that the next change will be weirder than the last one.
I would also like to mention that, even if meditation is ''not christian'', I now feel that my understanding of it is better now than 8 years ago.
I'm part of a church where we take ayahuasca a couple times a month while performing our rituals. Day to day is the usual self-awareness plus christian deal: meditation + attempting to do good, try not to be a dick to others etc.
Is there not physical damage to doing it that often ?
Ive done it twice in a row 3 years ago and it was fine but i was wondering that b.c. in the community i did that they were literally giving it to children starting 3 y.o.
I have been taking it for the past 7 years, sometimes a couple times a month, sometimes more, and have zero physical damage from it. It's pretty common in indigenous communities or other ayahuasca centers to give it to children, yeah. No records of anything bad happening to them. In the church I attend, there's people who have been taking it for the past 28 years with no issues at all.
This post should have an asterisk. It is not risk free, a primary concern being drug-to-drug interactions. That said, a lethal dose is 10-20x what is typically administered.
> Adverse health effects may occur from casual use of
ayahuasca, particularly when serotonergic substances are used in conjunction. [1]
The heightened sense of internal reality for DMT users is mostly due to its interaction with the visual cortex.
Adverse health effects happen with every substance if you take it while taking other, incompatible substances.
My comment meant if you take it as it is recommended and follow the instructions, it should do you no harm. Following its instructions means not taking it while on specific types of antidepressants & anxiolytics and from the pov of most churches/centers, not taking it recreatively and/or without guidance or anything outside a controlled, ceremonial setting.
Of course, if you take clonazepan with alcohol you may get high, but it's dangerous for you and in no way supported or incentivized by their respective companies. Just the same with ayahuasca. No need for no asterisk since the comment does not attempt to proselytize people into taking it, nor does it try to hide the infinite possible combinations of other substances with dmt/aya.
EDIT: There are some other (obvious) recommendations, which apply for hallucinogenic drugs too: don't take it if you're schizoid, for example.
The retreat I worked at drinks 4 times a week, every week all year. Often the shamans drink more. I don't believe it causes any damage (quite the opposite), however the diet that comes along with it (traditionally fish and plantains, and skipping dinner on ceremony nights) can be very depleting. Breaks with normal food (salt, oil, vitamins) are great especially for the long-term (e.g. apprentice) drinkers.
You need to be careful with Ayahuasca to not have MAOI in your diet or medicine. Things like fermented cheese, fish, wine for example can each be dangerous.
Disclaimer: I used Ayahuasca once. If you must use psychedelics, stick to LSD or amanita muscaria / psilos, they are much safer. Its ridiculous Ayahuasca is legally obtainable in The Netherlands, while LSD and psilos are not with the former easy to standardize and the latter being banned for safety reasons (17 y.o. French student committed suicide in Amsterdam after usage).
Twice, legally bought standardized in powdered form from an online smartshop. I found it less severe than psilos, more mellow, not very visual (but I had difficulty with getting visual hallucinations anyway). At one point I fell asleep and it reached the level of a waking dream. Woke up all sweaty. Back when I did it (around 2005-7), the smartshop had an OK website, and there was Erowid.
It's called Santo Daime, a syncretism between original indigenous beliefs with catholic christianity; though our views of being a Christian are very different from catholics or protestants though. From catholicism, mostly the non-vilification (praise in a non-idolatrous way) of the Virgin Mary and saints. There's also a mix of african religions which spread throughout Brazil and a bit of esoterism.
I'm an atheist, and don't believe in the supernatural per se. To me, the supernatural is best described by Harold Abelson in Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs:
> We are about to study the idea of a computational process. Computational processes are abstract beings that inhabit computers. As they evolve, processes manipulate other abstract things called data. The evolution of a process is directed by a pattern of rules called a program. People create programs to direct processes. In effect, we conjure the spirits of the computer with our spells.
> A computational process is indeed much like a sorcerer's idea of a spirit. It cannot be seen or touched. It is not composed of matter at all. However, it is very real. It can perform intellectual work. It can answer questions. It can affect the world by disbursing money at a bank or by controlling a robot arm in a factory. The programs we use to conjure processes are like a sorcerer's spells. They are carefully composed from symbolic expressions in arcane and esoteric programming languages that prescribe the tasks we want our processes to perform.
> A computational process, in a correctly working computer, executes programs precisely and accurately. Thus, like the sorcerer's apprentice, novice programmers must learn to understand and to anticipate the consequences of their conjuring. Even small errors (usually called bugs or glitches) in programs can have complex and unanticipated consequences.
I do think the supernatural exists but simply as perceived emergent properties of natual systems. For example, most of us have experienced love and might describe it as a supernatural experience. That is a real experience to most of us. Yet we know that in reality, the experience we had emerged from a complex set of natual systems (hormones, brainwaves, etc) that are far beyond our understanding.
So to answer your question, my spirital practices are things that increase my wellbeing and bring about these supernatural experiences.
Regularly: breath-focused meditation, time in nature, swimming laps, sex, burning incense, journaling/reflection.
That, also considering things like Gödel Incompleteness, Halting problem, P vs NP being so difficult, Emergence, divergences and intrinsically probabilistic theories in Physics: that already feels sufficiently counterintuitive and supernatural to me. At least there is a vast area of things not yet understood
> At least there is a vast area of things not yet understood
They key is to accept that there are phenomena we don't know enough about yet. There's no supernatural, just stuff that needs a couple more hundred years of research :)
If you don't understand it, how do you know it's natural?
Not saying it has to be supernatural, just that if you think it's not yet understood, being sure it's not supernatural seems like unfounded confidence.
That question is a pandora's box that can't be given the nuance it deserves in an HN comment so I'll leave you with the Plato encyclopedia entry on naturalism [1] which was a philosophical debate which wrestled with this very topic in the first half of the 20th century. The vast majority of scientists and philosophers default to the definition from physicalism [2]
I think you've got it backwards. The default assumption is that only the natural world exists. If something is not understood, the assumption should be that it has natural causes. A supernatural cause would imply the existence of something outside of natural causes, and to assert that that something exists without being able to demonstrate it is where the unfounded confidence lies.
My point is not that the default assumption should be either the supernatural or the natural, but that perhaps actual agnosticism is the humble stance.
Is this not false? Maybe not at the level we can see with our human eyes, but any computer process does exist as matter, in the bits of code stored on the disk and the electrical circuits that execute it
I think the point is that compuational processes are an emergent property of matter, but not matter. It's like how when I look at the plant on my desk, I see a green thing. The "experience of greenness" isn't composed of matter; it emerges as a result of the interaction of matter and energy in particular ways, but is not itself matter.
As an Atheist, I recently started reading religious texts of all Abrahamic religions(Judaism , Islam and Christianity) as well as Dharmic ones such as Buddhism. Why? Because I have always been curious about religion yet always discarded it as "bronze age superstition" as Christopher Hitchens would describe it..
Thanks to this journey, I ended up meeting a lot of great people in the community. Without exception, everyone welcomed me as an outsider and politely answered all my questions. I have been to mosques, synagogues and churches during hours of prayers and other events to observe and learn and so my network has grown by a decent size which I'm grateful of.
I think overall the result has been a net positive in my life and has broadened my understanding of history, philosophy and art. I haven't necessarily "settled" in a particular camp but I no longer brush off the idea of worshiping a God. I think one can make the distinction between _radical_ religious dogma and having a holy house of worship.
Having done lots of introspection over the past year, I don't think subscribing to Atheism is healthy because in your happiest moments or your darkest moments of despair, you have no spiritual basis to fall back on, you have no way structure way of burying the dead or celebrating the joining of a couple in a ceremonial way. Further, all Atheists still celebrate Christmas, or Easter , all of which are religious holidays and are completely meaningless to them which is ironic..
As an Atheist you also have to make up your "subjective" morality (and who is to say one's sense of moral is superior to another? there are no basis for this) which is again ironically borrowed from religious teachings. Finally Atheism fails to answer the deepest questions we have which is Why is there something instead or nothing and why are we here?
Thus considering the above, I can confidently say that my views on spiritually and religion has shifted significantly.
I have to say, this is a beautiful conversation. Mine is mostly built around music. For instance, listening to A Love Supreme by John Coltrane, or Supper's Ready by Genesis.
I describe myself as "culturally Catholic", which is my way of saying that my cultural heritage includes plenty of Catholic elements and I am fine with that. I love popular traditions and ancient buildings, for example, even if I don't care much about faith.
For me, the fact that religion is a human creation makes the good parts about it more worthwhile, not less. It is a shared story that has been told and shaped over the centuries, and it has ended up shaping the people who told it in return.
I'm a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.
I read scriptures every day (Book of Mormon, Bible, Doctrine and Covenants) for 10-30 minutes. I turned 40 this year and have a goal to read all of those scriptures cover to cover before my next birthday.
I pray every day as well, at least at night, often when I wake up, and almost always before meals (unless I'm at a restaurant or something).
Weekly I go to church, and go help with the youth activities. I also go visit families and widows regularly — or at least I try to.
I try to worship at the temple (different than the regular weekly church) about monthly.
And I pay 10% of my income as a tithing and give some each month as a "fast offering" to help the needy.
Back to the day to day stuff, I try not to swear, try to be kind, honest, and all the other things Christ was and would be.
Out of curiosity, are you a recent convert? I would imagine anyone who's as religious as yourself would have easily read all the scriptures by now, rather than aiming to do it by the age of 41?
I've read them multiple times over my life, but slowly (like a chapter or two a day). This year I'm trying to read them all within the year, which has me reading a lot more than in the past.
Seems like individual verses hit harder when reading slow, but the larger narrative hits harder when plowing through the books quickly.
I've been practicing kriya yoga and hatha yoga every day for the past half year. I usually do it as soon as I wake up, and it takes about an hour.
It's quite intense work, but I'm glad I've kept it up, as the benefits have been immense. I've some drama in my life, some of that is now starting to ease off, and life is becoming more intelligent and filled with ease.
My ritual pre-pandemic was a cup of coffee and a small silent prayer of thanks for the new day while on the train before and after sips.
It was my mental oasis of calm, and something I realize is missing in the pandemic.
When I was much younger and trying to forge a connection, however, I spent an hour or more daily trying to “hear”; by reading versus, letting-go of mental burdens, and straining for something.
At one point I experienced what has been described as the “still small voice”, warning me that someone I knew had designs on me.
It was not audible, it was brief, yet it was extremely specific. There was no confusion in the message.
What actually shocked me was when weeks
later, the events were unfolding as I was warned about; I was basically too shocked to act on what would have been a very bad decision.
I’m thankful for the openness and respectfulness of this discussion.
Prior to my conversion I’d identify myself largely with new age spirituality and stoicism. They were pragmatic in that they seemingly satiated the need for the divine and encouraged behaviors that were productive from a societal perspective.
I was saved in January of 2019. The early days of walking with Christ were beautiful. I sold my most ostentatious worldly possessions, bought a motorcycle, and would ride into the mountains to find a patch of grass and read the Bible to learn more about God.
God is gracious. The more I earnestly sought Him, the more He revealed Himself.
Nowadays, I start my day with prayer and usually a brief study in the Bible. I like to focus on what the passage conveys about God’s character. Afterwards I pray for His guidance as to the tasks to carry out for the day.
I try to pray throughout the day but I’m most deliberate about praying during transitions (ie: from hands on work to taking a meeting)
I end the day with a prayer for wisdom as I open the scriptures again, then finally a prayer of thanksgiving before bed.
I’ve found that Jesus is less about religious tradition and more about understanding who God is and what He has done, what His Will is, and doing it. In the heart of one who truly believes in Christ, this order increases our love and joy in God.
Everything else — church, serving people, acting morally - is downstream from loving God and our neighbor as ourself.
> I’ve found that Jesus is less about religious tradition and more about understanding who God is and what He has done, what His Will is, and doing it. In the heart of one who truly believes in Christ, this order increases our love and joy in God.
It's very difficult to understand it alone. And that's the reason why Jesus created the Apostolic Church and all of its tradition. To save people from this World and lead them to God. That's the goal number one for the Church and Christians as well.
My goal: predispose myself to be receptive to the gift of inner transformation. I have four words that resonate these days: wise, thoughtful, mature, sane. As a Catholic Christian, I see a good deal of unwise, unthoughtful, immature, and insane Christianity, and also, albeit less vocally, a good deal of wise, thoughtful, mature, and sane Christianity. I have personally spent a disconcertingly large amount of time in the first of those places. I do see moments, perhaps even a bit more frequently theses days, of being in the second of those places. Best I can tell, Sturgeon's Law applies to religion just as it applies to everything else: "ninety percent of everything is crap." That being said, I am convinced that the other 10% of religion is rich, sublime, beautiful, and worthy. The first ultimately amounts to nothing, and the second everything. For my daily practice, I read the day's scripture passages from the Catholic Missal, and then do 20 minutes of centering prayer. The Trappist monk Thomas Keating's work is my main guide, along with Thomas Merton, James Finley, Richard Rohr, and Cynthia Bourgeault. Centering prayer is a simple practice of wordless receptive awareness of being in God's presence, and an openness to God's ongoing work within and without.
Not religious at all. I don't believe in the supernatural and I don't think it would even be possible for us to detect it even if it does exist.
I'm not superstitious (after all, it's unlucky to be superstitious) and I'm not even sure what spiritual means as I've never heard a coherent definition.
I get my sense of awe, wonder and beauty from the natural world, whether that's star gazing or studying and appreciating nature.
I'm probably an outlier but just wanted to add my voice to the conversation.
I am in your camp. I began life in a high demand religion, spent two years as a missionary and a decade in local congregation leadership positions.
When I saw how the community was treating marginalized people, because I got to know several, I looked in the mirror and realized I couldn't support it anymore. Leaving was hard, as the community would not allow you to leave with your dignity intact, but worth it.
I fluttered between different communities for a few months before realizing I was just solidly apatheist (deist or atheist, just don't really care one way or another) and an existentialist. We have fantastic opportunities at our disposal and they are what we make of them.
I'm 100% with you on the "not even sure what spiritual means as I've never heard a coherent definition". If anyone is interested, this position is known as theological non-cognitivism, ignosticism, or igtheism
> Theological noncognitivism is the non-theist position that religious language, particularly theological terminology such as "God", is not intelligible or meaningful, and thus sentences like "God exists" are cognitively meaningless.
> Ignosticism or igtheism is the idea that the question of the existence of God is meaningless because the word "God" has no coherent and unambiguous definition.
Fellow outlier here, perhaps we should begin to meet regularly to discuss our shared beliefs and how to proliferate them?
I wouldn’t expect us to be outliers here to be honest but it’s always interesting to see what other replies there are in this crowd.
Nature is king. I don’t think it’s just because I’m more into it but there really does seem to be a growing trend of recognising the importance of being in nature
When possible, I try to see myself as part of nature. For example, making it clear to me and others that I'm an animal. I think this help me respect my surroundings more, puts me on the ground of reality. In comparison to the idea of "humans are above everything".
Used to not be religious, too RCIA at Harvard and became Catholic. Love contemplating free will, since by most definitions it is supernatural.
Religious practice adds so much color to my life, especially in terms of contemplating gratitude. The central worship of Catholics is the Eucharist which translates into giving thanks.
If life has no meaning, nothing is lost, because it has certainly improved my life.
I'll take a stab at defining "spiritual", at least the way I understand it. I think of it as a "recipe" or pattern for something in reality. A little bit related to Plato's "forms" but not exactly. "Recipe" is a better way to think of it. In traditional cosmology, they used the word "heaven" to refer to "patterns" or "recipes" or "seeds". A seed is another good way to think of it. A seed is tiny and contains the recipe or pattern for the thing it will grow into.
In traditional cosmology, if you have "heaven", you also have "earth", which means potential, or chaos, or unorganized matter. Or if we want to keep the "recipe" metaphor, this would be the "ingredients".
So we have a recipe (the spiritual pattern) and we have the ingredients (matter), and we combine the ingredients using the recipe (we are co-creating with God) a new substance. We transform the ingredients into a new object (bread, in our case) which gets a new name, because it is related to the ingredients, but is now unified by being transformed as we co-create a new object with God. Each new object is slightly different (a "particular"), but it's following a pattern or recipe, so we still recognize it as a particular example of a pattern we call "bread".
This same pattern of "heaven" and "earth" applies to seeds and soil, or an idea and a project, or a film script and a film. This is what is meant when traditional cultures and books speak of "heaven" and "earth".
So to live a "spiritual" life would mean to seek out and learn to identify "patterns" and to manifest them bodily by acting them out or by transforming matter to make a new object. Which is what all humans do all day every day, but our materialist minds have been blinded to how essential and common this is to the human experience, because we get caught up trying to "scientifically" understand what "heaven" is, but heaven is an ontological category, not a scientific place.
I too fulfill my needs for awe and wonder from studying nature and its wonderful complexity.
I also consider that the supernatural is unknowable and that if it somehow exist it is undetectable. It's not exactly like your direct lack of belief in it but the implications are identical.
Finally, here is my definition of spiritual: beliefs and practices that stems from an answer to that question: why existence instead nothingness.
Follow Dvaita Vedanta (Tattvavada). Part of Sanatan Dharma/Hinduism and one of the schools of Vedanta. The process of learning though spans the entire lifetime. It is not a simple set of scriptures that you read and understand. It has multiple layers and takes decades to get a grasp of. Sometimes even more. The works of Shri Madhvacharya have influenced and changed my perception of Universe (Jagat/Srushti), Life (Aatma) and my relationship with God (Brahman). I don't find anything else that satisfactorily explains the Srushti, Aatma and Brahman as well as Tattvavada does. I am a seeker so I am always learning. The more you travel down this path, the more you learn/discover. It is a never-ending process.
I'll try to summarize it. It is not possible to combine it in couple of sentences so please excuse if I add some more.
"Dvaita Vedanta espouses 5 fold eternal differences between Brahman (God), Aatma (Soul/Self) and Jada (Non-living matter). Brahman is the only Independent entity - Omnipotent, Omniscient, Omnipresent, All Pervading, Eternal. Aatma is also Eternal but is always dependent on Brahman. Creation/Jada is real but temporary and will get destroyed and remade by Brahman forever[1]. All 3 are different from each other making the Prapancha (5 eternal differences). Moksha/Enlightenment/Liberation is attainment of maximum potential of Aatma resulting in permanent bliss with zero suffering (complete self-expression, self-manifestation and self-realization). All Aatmas have gradation/positions based on their Karma and go through Karmic cycle of birth and death of the bodies they inhabit. Few great Aatmas are eligible for Moksha ending their Karmic cycle of birth and death in material Creation."
I tried to fit the entire philosophy in as simple/brief words as possible. If you have more questions I will happily provide in depth answers.
[1] It is called Mahapralaya or the Great Dissolution and happens every 311.04 trillion years (or 100 Brahma Years) where everything goes back into singularity and gets recreated again through the Hiranyagarbha/Golden Womb/Big Bang.
I am, unironically, a Dudeist. Think Buddhism, minus the mystical components. I believe balance is crucial: Walter without The Dude is too active. The Dude without Walter is too passive.
I meditate regularly, too. Imagine you had the ability to spawn a watchdog thread that could monitor your emotional state and notice when it gets out of whack, and then you could shift focus to that thread. "Huh, I'm experiencing a lot of fear right now. Why is that? This isn't an objectively fearful situation, like a wild dog chasing me. So what is it about this that's making my heart rate increase?" It's amazing how often simply noticing and asking those questions can defuse a stressful moment.
I'm a somewhat newly converted protestant, no specific label except born-again. I pray in the morning and before bed, and try to read the Bible for 15-30 minutes a day. I normally pray silently on my knees, but I learned the Lord's Prayer in koine greek and like to say that out loud. I also attend a Sunday service. I'm friendly with some local evangelists and will sometimes hang out with them if I see them, just to fellowship with them and hand out new testaments. When I have time I try to read books by Christian thinkers, but only have a few read so far, mostly by CS Lewis and Tozer. John Wesley's sermons (available for free online) are also really spiritually valuable to me.
I study how science and spirituality meet. There's tremendous overlap between how machines work, how physics work, and how our own psychology works. Finding these overlaps where 10 different things in 10 different areas are shown to be one thing is my way of trying to grow spiritually and intellectually.
Most recently I discovered a link between the Wheeler-Dewitt equation describing time as a subjective phenomenon of entangling in an otherwise static universe, and how the corresponding models of OOP and FP work. FP is unchanging, it has no time component, but also therefore can't enact "change" (side-effects) without having some mechanism that taps into impurity (like the IO monad in Haskell).
So essentially the absolute being is immutable, but it still needs to conjure up impure beings to whom nothing is absolute and all is relative (and yes I mean also as in General Relativity where one's space is another's time and vice versa), but to those impure beings, as they explore the vast universe of all possibilities, they change. I.e. they are coupled to their own change, which we perceive as time.
I strongly believe at this point that entanglement of macroscopic objects is part of reality. We live in a multiverse, where our own actions are soon reflected in the rest of the world we experience. It's the very mechanism through which "karma" works. Karma is not simply the balance of good and evil, as those categories are subjective. It's rather the balance of all balances. What you do will come back at you at some point. And then you have the chance to judge it from the other side and decide if you were good or bad, and learn.
So it is completely symmetric with respect to time. If you don't do any side effects, then the_world "cancels out". How you decide to partition the container and the rest of the world determines how it behaves, state/time/IO/side effects. But there is no a priori notion of time.
Contrast with OOP or structured imperative programming, where every object/field/register has state, and that state implicitly is a variable through time. The time is "baked in".
To that end I practice mindfulness / emptiness of the body in the Tibetan tradition — https://pointingoutthegreatway.com/. I also practice with Medicine Buddha mantras and Tara mantras.
I would also say that being kind and loving is part of my practice as is going to psychotherapy and connecting with others on the spiritual path.
None, really. At least not in the sense of what people usually mean by "spiritual". That is, I don't pray to (or believe in) any gods or deities of any sort, or even believe in any actual thing called a "spirit". So that doesn't leave much room for spirituality.
The closest I come to any of this is something I like to do now and then which I suppose is a little bit like meditation. I'll put on some nice pleasant, non-distracting music which doesn't tend to make me think of anything in particular, close my eyes, and just try not to think about anything for a while, and immerse myself in just the sensation I'm feeling. But really, this is just away to kinda "clear my mind" and relax, I'm not sure I'd describe the experience as spiritual at all.
Beyond that, I do get something out of reading Zen Buddhist literature at times. But Zen, to me, is more of a philosophy and a way of thinking, than a religion. And I wouldn't say I'm an adherent or practitioner of Zen, it's just something I enjoy reading / thinking about sometimes.
I realize it barely counts, but I try to get up and get some exercise every morning before doing anything else. Well, drink some coffee first, whose main effect may simply be hydration.
Not super strenuous: I ride my bike to work. Especially during the winter, there's a psychological component to outdoor survival when the temps drop below 0 F, and maybe it's a bit of an antidote to the winter blues.
Orthodox Christian here. I pray before our icons in the mornings and evenings and use prayer rope through out the day to read Jesus-prayer [1] (perfect in boring Teams-meetings :)) I try to attend Liturgy every sunday and mostly read books by saints and Church Fathers nowadays. The depth of the teachings of the Church and beauty of out services still astounish me after 11 years of being member of the Church. It’s sad when people judge christians but don’t know anything about the original christianity which differs quite a lot from typical protestantism.
Biggest difference between eastern and western christianity is how we view sin and salvation. In the west they view those from legalistic pov, but we think sin as a disease which can be healed in the Church. That’s why usually orthodox christians aren’t judgmental to others but instead focus on their own struggle.
I am not religious, but do feel spiritual in that I believe there is something bigger than us, and that we are part of a bigger, yet-unexplained whole that we reconnect with at some point. It is more of a "It's a comforting thought for me" thing rather than a set, unwavering surety. I don't really have any sort of practice of this, though. Lately I finally started meditating more - multiple times per week. I feel it helps to get me out of my head and closer to this sense of greater connection and wellbeing.
I like Shikantaza, although I can't claim to actually do it daily. It translates to "just sitting" and is a form of meditation consisting of, well, just that. It is mostly based on a single text telling you how to sit and how to balance not-falling-asleep and not-actively-thinking. That's all. There is no extensive literature translated to death and no startup trying to sell you something, but yet you are right there with the core weirdness of meditation and paradoxes like thinking non-thinking. Love it.
Nothing. I am ignostic. An interesting benefit of this position is that when the religious folks in my extended family ask about my religion and I tell them I'm ignostic, they 100% of the time misinterpret that as 'agnostic'. For some reason they can totally accept this position, maybe they just figure I'll eventually come around.
I do not disabuse them of this interpretation, because I avoid conflict. And religion, much like politics, seems to result in conflict most of the time.
Ignosticism is the ultimate "I've had enough of this shit". I too take advantage of the hard of hearing to get on with my life both in peace and a sense of superiority.
This is the first time I've come across the term, and I'm a bit baffled by it.
It could be that my quick web search just turned up poor definitions, but if so, I'm hoping you'll correct me from your own understanding.
It sounds like it's saying the word "god" has no referent, that it's conceptually vacant. But it seems obvious to me that there are literally hundreds of concepts people do mean when they use the term, some of which cannot be vacant by definition (i.e., "that than which nothing greater can be conceived," because it's a definition that depends on being just within the vacant limits of understanding).
It looks like much of the web has been edited and gutted so many times to be useless and conflated with theological-noncognitivism. I do have some older books somewhere that go into more detail, but tbh it looks like the argument over sources will apply there.
The word god has referents. In fact it has many, very different, referents.
An ignostic has no issue with the (varied) concepts of gods. An ignostic says "I am ignorant of a (consistently/well defined) god which is both worth and deserving of worship".
This does not mean any or many of the various gods do not exist.
A typical example would be that the Christian god is ill defined (testament collisions being the most blaring), but if I in good faith take the 'good' Christian god of many street Christians I am left with a god that I do not need to worship (as I am a good person). If I take a more vengeful god definition (everything from you must worship me or go to hell to worship me or be struck by the pox) then I'm left with one that isn't worth my worship.
Many definitions do not require anything from me or describe an inconsequential god, true or not, so can be ignored.
In these ways an ignostic is not denying the concepts, is not even claiming to not believe a god exists, yet has rejected the religions they do know about. To engage with a ignostic you would need to lay out a consostent definition, then show the value of the active belief vs the life they currently live (or an adjustment to that).
> I had been taught I could simply confess whatever and it would be forgiven
I personally agree that this is nonsense but there are kernels of good ideas in religious ideologies even if they are warped beyond recognition and usefulness.
For example, the concept of confessing sins is practical actually. Not for the purpose of "being forgiven", but one has to acknowledge and admit that one did something bad before it is possible to try to change that behavior for good. Without admitting or seeing an act was bad, there is no hope in fixing it.
So yeah, if we could undo all the "warping" of concepts, regardless of where they came from, "religion" wouldn't be so bad but it seems beyond fixing at this point. It's wrapped up in emotions like guilt and fear, and that makes it hard to separate the manipulators from those who are truly trying to help.
Recent convert to Anglicanism here. It’s a lot more formal than the Baptist tradition that I grew up in.
There are a lot of rote prayers for every occasion - morning, night, etc. When I was younger I would have found this inauthentic, forced, and fake. But now I find that it sort of fills a gap. It provides some of the ritual and meditation that I had admired/envied in Eastern traditions like Buddhism.
I’m still sort of easing my way in to all this. So far I’ve been enjoying listening to morning prayer on The Daily Office Podcast [1] with my morning coffee. It’s a great way to start the day.
I haven't really found a practice or routine, yet, but I've always seeked out a higher power and it is something I am still interesting in. I quit drinking alcohol ~60 days ago which drove me to attend some AA meetings. An elderly gentleman while explaining his view of a "higher power" said that he just starts by saying his "please"(s) in the morning (eg. 'please help me through this speech,' etc) and his "thank you"(s) at night - even though he doesn't try to identify who he's speaking to.
Although I hope to eventually have an experience that allows me to have complete faith and belief in something more specific, I thought that was a good place to start. I haven't gotten into the routine myself, but I thought I would share.
I'm not at all religious, so I have no "higher power" to guide me, instead I just put on one of my favourite albums and close my eyes for an hour. The albums I like are very progressive and trance-like so it's kinda like my own personal form of meditation. I don't really use the time to reflect or focus on anything, but having the time for myself is nice for my brain
My entire spiritual practice, if you must call it that, is just living life.
I think of the afterlife as the life of people (and other sentient creatures) that will live (or live on) after me, and every day I try to do what I can to make my life AND that afterlife better.
I won’t be there for that afterlife, because I will be very dead, but I believe it is real :-).
Thinking about things this way makes life meaningful and fun.
I am a practicing Agnostic. I slide towards nihilism ever so often, but see its pit of despair and pull myself out of it. Going back to being an agnostic; Hopefully there's something out there. Hopefully.
You know what I wish school hadn't spent the first 9 years of my curriculum teaching protestant christianity, or any religion for that matter. I cannot even imagine the power of teaching kids motivational and spiritual improvement classes instead of wasting my time on religion. Well that never happened, and I've picked up spiritual improvement and motivational stuff later in life. There's still time to make corrections on the trajectory. But when is apogee?
It's very subjective but would like to know if some of you are sharing this feeling around you:
In the modern occidental society, Christianity, which was the spiritual tradition, was abandoned and rejected by almost all the teenagers and young adults at the end of the '60s and by the following generations.
All the next generations until now, in its majority, were declaring to be atheist and rejecting all spiritual side of life.
I don't know if all the Covid related situation changed something but, around me (25-30 years old), a non-negligible part of them started to gain an interest in spirituality (mainly Catholicism here).
> In the modern occidental society, Christianity, which was the spiritual tradition, was abandoned and rejected by almost all the teenagers and young adults at the end of the '60s and by the following generations.
>All the next generations until now, in its majority, were declaring to be atheist and rejecting all spiritual side of life.
This is contrary to pretty much all data (for the US). Easiest one is to try and see how far you get running for US President being a non Christian.
That aligns with my experience. I currently live in South Florida, and fall almost in your bracket. Since 2019-2020 i started to read the bible and go to church (catholic), and now I’m workin g on my confirmation. In 2021 i went to a retreat where there were almost 100 people around the 18-35 bracket. I would say around half of them were going through a similar conversion as me.
Finding time to just be and breathe. Some traditions call it prayer, others mediation. Breath is life itself. Adding in awe helps with the significance, whether from stars or wind or crème brûlée or sleeping in a cozy bed. Just breathe. My four year old said: “Enjoy the wow that’s happening now”. Decent summary for a basic spirituality with each breath and without the theological complications of “good” and “evil”. Our breath is a simple outlet for our humanity and the neural pathways from the lungs slows the heart.
Atheist christian, I guess. Grew up in a denominational "peace church," Church of The Brethren, where quiet, non-self-aggrandizing service to others was emphasized over theistic dogma and attention-grabbing displays of piety. One hymn I remember had the refrain, "they will know we are Christians by our love," and not by "us" proclaiming it so.
I opted not to be baptized because I didn't agree with everything I had to say to be baptized, mostly around divinity and existence of supernatural beings, and that statement of mine was met with kind acceptance.
A lot of my behavior towards other people was shaped by that church and that attitude, and I try to think about what it means to also give someone your shirt when they are asking for a coat. Also, about "what you do to the least of your brethren you do to me," not because Jesus, but because we live together on this speck of dirt for a very short, and sometimes, very rough amount of time, and I believe we make it better for everyone by treating those with less or nothing with dignity and respect.
I'm an atheist insofar as I don't believe in gods or demons or afterlife beyond chemical decomposition, but I have difficulty identifying with those who proclaim their atheism loudly, much as I look askance on anyone who makes a big deal about their peculiar beliefs about the unknowable. I'm quite horrified by religious extremism, but I'm not going to begrudge anyone their spiritual or communal sanctuary.
I'm atheist, but grew up in and around a few religions and new-age spirituality. In my teenage years, I believed in the spiritual existence as fully as I can imagine anyone believing in anything.
As I reached my 20s I realized these were all dead-ends, but never lost the good feelings I associated with the practice.
For a few years, I tried to pin down what it means to be atheist while still embodying the spiritual experience. One morning I was driving to work when my boss called to say the office would be closed and I could take the day off. Suddenly, it was like all the neurons in my brain lit up at once. The sky looked brighter, the air smelled sweeter, and I felt a wave of energy flood my body.
I loved my job, this wasn't a feeling of relief of escaping something I dreaded. Rather, it was just the sudden openness of my day, and a feeling of unbounded possibilities. I realized in that moment that that is what it feels like to be both atheist and "spiritual".
So, my spiritual practice is two things: first, to make those moments happen. Second, to collect the various ideas, mental models, and frameworks that I believe are the evolutionary successors to spirituality.
The core of these ideas center around: focused vs diffuse thinking, the exploitation/exploration tradeoff, computational irreducibility, information theory, systems thinking, and generally allowing some things which don't exist yet, but could theoretically exist, to exist in my mind as if they are already real.
To be completely honest, I've never been able to figure out what "spiritual" actually means. Every use of it in the wild appears to be directly reducible to some other mundane meaning minus the rituals, which always led me to believe that rituals were the purpose. My father was a well-educated preacher and he could not explain it either when I was growing up, saying it existed mostly as a suitcase word that had no distinct constructive meaning, while also asserting it was nonetheless important to the nature of religion. He acknowledged this was an objectively poor answer that raised questions about why anyone should care but couldn't offer anything better. Yet there is this weird expectation that everyone should be "spiritual" in some way, and this expectation can be perfectly satisfied via trivial performance in practice.
So when people ask me if I am spiritual in some way, my response is always "I have no idea". When they try to explain it, it always ends up being equivalent to the reductionist meanings I've inferred by default. (Human languages have many suitcase words, many without any connection to religion, that encapsulate incoherent concept spaces. The idea of spirituality appears to be just one of many.)
I was raised Hindu and Christian (both Protestant and Catholic). I was also taught Islam to widen my world view.
As a child, the exposure to multiple religions made me a staunch atheist. I think I've been an atheist since I can remember, at least since I was five or six.
The teachings aren't compatible. There's too many times that you'd be taught that you need religion to be moral, or that there's one true God (mostly from the monotheistic ones) or that there's too many subjective interpretations. Worse, I grew up seeing the immorality of many religious people from huckster gurus, to pastors taking donations and not accounting for where it went and the news at the time was of the Catholic churches coverup of pedophilia. As a young child, it all just seemed so deeply wrong.
Anyway atheism makes sense to me. Morality is logic combined with cultural context. Not having religion let me be more open to more cultures, and I find studying the cultural aspects of other religions more fascinating than when I was taught that there should only be one.
My spiritual practice therefore is trying to learn more about different cultures and people. Understanding different perspectives helps give me clarity to my own, without the burden of trying to fit it into an existing religious framework
Zen. I do the "shikantaza" version of it every day in a 40 min session (20 min sitting, 20 min walking - yeah I know shikantaza means "to sit" or something related). It's a very intense type of zazen meant to gain a very clear perception of your body and surroundings. When I first learned about it, the example was that the engagement is not unlike engagement you would have if you engaged into a swords battle to death. That you cannot slip and need to be super duper alert. There are many elements that come into it actually and it's all well described in a book "3 Pillars of Zen".
I have noticed that the intense focus does me much better than calmer types of zazen like counting breaths. I'm only intense during formal practice, but in daily activities I just try to relax and focus on the task at hand - nevertheless, if it was not for the daily practice of the intense version, I would not be nowhere near as alert when I'm more relaxed.
The combination of formal practice (40 min of shikantaza) and the right attitude (to engage well into every task, no matter how menial) did wonders to my wellbeing and quality of life. It is a powerful tool for change and a great way to practice spirituality.
I was a staunch atheist until very recently, when I asked myself the question: isn’t atheism about being -sure- that there is no higher power? How can anyone be sure? Isn’t it arrogant to think that?
So I’d say I’m now agnostic — I simply don’t know.
I don't consider myself religious. Like many folks here (I assume) I've had a strong physicalist lean for much of my life. I've found great joy in the study of math, physics and of course computers.
The pull towards a more spiritual understanding of my condition has been heavily motivated by the mystery of my own consciousness. By consciousness I refer only to pure awareness. This moment in time with this collection of protons and electrons and complex field fluctuations is being experienced. And I find that so incredibly truly strange an inexplicable by any physical description. To carry out this dance of wave function evolution it does not seem that experience would be required at all. Yet it's there. Furthermore, when I'm quiet and my mind settles I can become acutely in touch with this pureness of experience and it appears to transcend mental processing, thoughts, memories and all of the things that are typically used to describe "I".
My story for what the universe is, is something along the lines of a Maxwell Tegmark level 4 multiverse populated with all possible mathematical structures and infused with a panpsychism quality of fundamental experience. Yes, I suspect that even electrons are experienced and I know that's weird lol. In the end though I know this description is just a story that my ego mind needs to make sense of all this stuff and I try not to place too much stock in it.
Practices that I find helpful and meaningful:
-Meditation (I usually aim for about 30 minutes a day)
Sudarshan kriya - essentially breathing exercises taught by the Art of Living (AoL). It's simple and has a good effect on keeping the mind stable. Further, I also practise meditation taught by the same AoL foundation. Just closing my eyes and being there and observing my breath and surroundings. I go tho the temple (I'm raised as a Jain) for the peaceful environment it offers.
I am missing whatever the brain circuit is that makes you understand and believe in religions.
I can't even call myself atheist or agnostic, as that would require assuming that the statement "Is there a god?" is both coherent, meaningful, and answerable.
Imagine asking someone with aphantasia to visualize Donald Duck, and then asking them if Donald is wearing pants. What would you expect them to answer?
I can certainly understand religion in an external, objective sense much as you can understand the various interconnected storylines in something like the Marvel comics/movies, but as soon as you ask me "...but do you _believe_ it?", my brain just fails its saving throw versus comprehension and I can't give an answer based on what I "feel" is correct, because on that particular question I am unable to "feel" anything at all.
What's a god? How can I meaningfully ascribe any qualities whatsoever to a non-corporeal, non-perceptible entity? What does it even mean to ask if things that are outside of our universe "exist"?
Etcetera etcetera. You can't even get past the superficial layers of "Is there a god?" without hitting questions that are ill-formed.
That's fair. FWIW, many people (including myself) believe that God is both corporeal as well as perceptible, though the latter is on His terms (because, I suspect, He wants it to happen for each person individually).
I was raised as a preachers' kid in the ultra-conservative Church of Christ Christian denomination, and I thought we were the only ones that had the truth and everyone else was going to hell. But I wondered why God doesn't show himself. Fast-forward to 2 decades of searching later, and I now hold a panentheistic - we are living in God, we are all part of God, and we are all tuning into the truth. I see God everywhere I look, and I hear God speak (both by positive and negative contrast) everywhere and in everything. I lean towards the idea that "all is as it should be, but not as it should stay". Perfection is not a static destination - we are tuning into God like the Fibonacci sequence tunes into the Golden Ratio. Christ is the Universe/Art/Word, the Father is the Artist/Speaker, and the Spirit is the Artistic reason. I think we're all going to heaven, and it bothers me when people say Daddy is going to throw a bunch of people in an eternal torture chamber - that's not my Dad.
Playing a lot of computer games, reading internet, especially comments and chatting. It allows my spirit to get away from my mortal, aging shell into the virtual worlds of imagination, speech, ideas and relations.
Christianity started out for me as a fear-based "obey the rules or die" approach to life but over the last few years it has been moving towards a "I love God & love what is good" theme. These days everyone labels emotions like fear/shame/guilt as "toxic", but I think they have their uses, in the same way fear keeps us from simply walking off a cliff.
Spiritual practice is best when dynamic over disciplined like any relationship, but find that Bible reading / reflection before bed seems to let things marinate over night, and also talking w/ God and simply telling him what I need throughout the day (peace, self-control, etc) is a fruitful practice.
Even if I wasn't a Christian I would still hold an unshakeable belief that this universe has a Creator. It's just far too wonderful of an engineering marvel to say that there isn't a Grand Engineer behind it all. I think that's part of the joy of living, we get to discover the Creator through his creation.
I’m a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. I pray multiple times a day—either to express gratitude or ask for strength to weather whatever struggles I’m facing. I also pray to ask for help and insight so I can do well at school and work. I exercise and try to eat healthily, because I believe my body is a gift from God. I cherish the time that I have with my family, because it is in my family that I feel the purest expression of God‘s love.
In my local congregation, I teach a biweekly class on family history. I love learning more about my ancestors! If you are ever curious to learn more about your heritage, I highly recommend checking out familysearch.org— it is an amazing program, and you do not have to be a member of the church to use it. I know several people who are not members of the Church of Jesus Christ who still like using familysearch.org because it is free and works very well.
Catholic-Sedevacantist. Day-to-day: pray the 15 decade rosary and fast a couple times a week. Sedevacantist means someone who rejects Vatican II, its leaders and reforms as breaking from tradition. https://endtimes.video/ to learn more.
Complex times to be a Catholic. It’s sad to see our church divided with so many shades of gray, even in the traditional side. God bless you and Merry Christmas
It’s great to see all these responses. I enjoyed looking through these.
My core view is some flavor of monism, and I see no (ultimate) contradictions among monotheistic, polytheistic, pantheistic, even atheistic or apatheistic views. I have had visionary experiences with and without psychedelics. There are some things I don’t need a belief for, having experienced enough.
I spend a lot of time doing healing work on myself, and that bleeds into work on people around me and people I encounter. In the past two years, this work has also bleed into the land as I study and put into practice permaculture design principles.
I used to do mindfulness practices and japa yoga regularly in the mornings. These days, I am practicing neigong with the aim of refining the vessel (the body) to materialize spirit. Or at least, as I can, with helping my wife with our one-year-old child.
Traditional Catholic here. I go to the "Mass of all time" every Sunday. I pray and read the daily texts of the mass. From time to time, I recite the Holy Rosary (which I find a wonderful contemplation method). I examine my conscience and confess my sins regularly. I also like to listen to recordings about the Saints of the Catholic Church - unbelievable people.
I appreciate a lot the traditional Catholic doctrine. It's wonderful to see its resurrection and many young priests motivated to preach it in the opposition to the old protestantized Church leaders.
I have been considering myself just as deist until I've learned how amazing is a Catholic philosophy. Did you know, for example, that Saint Thomas Aquinas found a way to determine if the creation have soul (like humans) or not (like animals)? Including extraterrestrial life!
I'm generally apatheistic, but live as if a more playful zen buddhism is "spiritually correct". Closer to church of Dudism if you've ever seen that parody religion.
I barely meditate anymore, but think a few minutes of it is a handy daily practice. At least to have in your back pocket
My wife and I are members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. It's far more important to her than it is to me though.
For me a large part of believing in something greater in myself is the hope that I simply won't cease to exist when I experience brain death. I pray hoping someone is on the other end at least listening to me, I rationalize life on our planet as some sort of orchestrated miracle, I look to the vastness of space to realize that I am insignificant beyond imagination and that our planet and solar system are also insignificant beyond imagination.
I think of my friends and family that have died, and hope that I get to interact with them at some point and try and approximate that right now with things like writing the annual letter to my father and telling him what has been going on in my life since he died 12 days before my 13th birthday which I place on my blog here https://www.ryanmercer.com/ryansthoughts/category/dad
I think of the incredible age of the universe and the tiny blip that is a human's lifespan and hope that I am not some sort of chemical accident. That I'm not a bunch of electrical/chemical reactions that believes it is self aware by some fluke.
On any given day I'm 50%+ (sometimes 100%) of the opinion that we likely exist in a simulation which, at least to me, explains why we have such rapid tech advancements, why we have not detected any other sentient species in the universe, why we haven't seen any evidence of Kardashev 2+ level building in our galactic back yard, why so many things have be invented/discovered within weeks or years of each other by human beings with no contact with one another. I also like this thought because, like in the book series Magic 2.0 by Scott Meyer, there might be some hope that I can exploit some conditions of the simulation to directly benefit myself by either altering my character database or a database of something around me. Silly, but sometimes it keeps me going.
I'm an exmormon (thanks to the CES Letter and A letter to my Wife)...
This led me to become agnostic mostly, Still have some hope for life after death of some sorts, but without deity as a requirement... i.e. our energy source lives on...
However in April last year, I witnessed a Mandela Effect w/ my wife, I was reading about the movie Apollo 13 with Tom Hanks and how he said in the movie: "Houston we've had a problem". I was literally reading about a "flip-flop"... where to the person writing the thread on reddit it flipped back and forth from "we have" to "we've had" like twice for them...the current state from the thread being: "we've had"...
Now I hadn't seen the movie in over a decade, but I remembered "we have", but I thought that could easily just be because it's a pretty popular saying in pop-culture.
Anyhow this was a Friday night, and we watched it on youtube. Sure enough Tom Hanks says... "Uh, Houston we've had a problem".
Fast forward, I'm reading a list of common mandela effects in the format: Current => Previous, and it says Houston We Have a Problem => Previously: Houston we've had a problem.
My first thought: Well, that's obviously a typo,but just to be sure I go check.
The scene is completely changed. In fact the entire cadence is changed. It's now "Houston we have a problem" but also Tom Hanks is a lot more "frantic" and intense, when he was a little more laid back in the other version.
It's the fact that I honestly believe reality "changed" that I have to agree with you on simulation theory being a possibility that or many worlds...and somehow we're traveling through them, or maybe we do when we die and I died of sleep apnea or something...
Simulation to me seems most likely though, as it would explain the double slit quantum eraser experiment pretty handily. It could be then that reality's "truths" or "facts" then become some sort of consensus mechanism where if 51% of people remember "Houston we've had a problem" it changes back to that...
Like you I also thought maybe I could interact w/ the "matrix" and tried researching occult, magick, etc... and really never figured much out in that regards.. though /r/castaneda was probably the most interesting rabbit hole I found... darkroom gazing was very interesting indeed and trippy.
I was a bit manic/hyperfocused on this for like 3 months ...almost in a bad way. When you doubt reality it's easy - esp. if depressed to think about if reality is fake then quitting reality doesn't even matter.
For my own sanity, I gave up on the endeavor of finding out what's going on and how to control it, but go back to just appreciating the beauty of what we do see, and admire the complexities - though I do still read any threads I can find on new discoveries in consciousness-related neuroscience, quantum mechanics, etc...
It's just an easily misremembered movie quote. When everybody remembered "Play it again, Sam," being a line from Casablanca, instead of the less pithy actual line, nobody posited that the world had changed around them. It's always struck me as an extremely self-focused view of the world to prefer the explanation that the entire universe has been changed, rather than to believe that you made the same easy-to-make mistake that millions of other people did too.
I am a practicing Markoist. I don't have any children, mostly living my life in solitude. Every morning I wake up, I feel different. Sometimes I think about killing myself because this shit doesn't make sense. Sometimes I hop out of bed feeling excited about everything, and I go out and do exciting shit. I believe in myself. I believe in finding the answers within myself. That's why I'm a Markoist, a religion named by the name my parents gave me. I think it's no different than any other religion I have encountered; this is just one I can own. I have a lot of extraordinary rituals I came up with. I do them daily.
I respect others, and all I want in return is the respect back.
I practice my religion, believe in god, and pray for some minutes during the evening.
Believing in spirituality without religion leads to a cognitive dissonance.
My philosophy is that there are too many things that we simply cannot observe due to the limitations of our senses and thought/imagination, so to dismiss god is not truly rational.
Spirituality is removed from any material success, so to go into any spiritual practice for an "edge" is not right.
If you want an edge in the material world then persuasion psychology and probability theory are your friends.
Also we tend to forget that science is a philosophy that does not say this is how the world is, but says this is how we understand the world. It's important to keep that distinction in mind.
I'd almost think that believing in a particular religion would lead to cognitive dissonance rather than the other way around. Could you expand on that a bit?
Let's say you do not practice any religion but believe in a higher power.
What is the goal of spirituality? Self knowledge. And self knowledge is also the knowledge about how you are related to said higher power and the people around you.
If you believe in spirituality but not religion it can be almost impossible to know what your relationship with the higher power is and how you stand in the community. Yes you can have your assumptions but they are unverified.
Religion gives you a framework where spirituality exists. Without that framework the idea of spirituality enters a domain where it has an extremely vague definition which, from a utilitarian perspective, is not useful.
So if the idea of spirituality loses its specificity to the point where it doesn't signify any particular idea which is grounded in some manner it creates a dissonance. You end up believing, say, the idea of crops without roots.
It's okay to revise particular beliefs with the times, but the central philosophies and practices of any religion (Eg. Fasting for a set number of days/abstaining from certain foods or activities for a set number of days) are essential.
Muslim, but not particularly practicing or religious (though I am aiming to be moreso and my knowledge of the religion's history, development, and jurisprudence is certainly above that of most practicing Muslims I have met).
On an actual daily basis: meditation and journaling. I have also incorporated, on most days, listening to Islamic stuff on YouTube in the mornings, and reading the Quran in translation at night before bed.
There was a time period where I was praying 1 or 2 out of 5 of the daily Islamic prayers per day and I would say that this correlated with higher levels of contentment and also secular/temporal success, so I would like to get in the regular habit of that again.
I practice mysticism and magick. Essentially it breaks down to Raja Yoga-style mysticism and Western tradition occultism (i.e. in the style of the Goetia and Book of Abramelin). I tend to view things through a Thelemic lens:
'Every man and every woman is a star.' - AL. I. 3
'Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.' - AL. I. 40
'The word of Sin is Restriction.' - AL. I. 41
'Thou hast no right but to do thy will. Do that, and no other shall say nay.' - AL. I. 42-43
'Love is the law, love under will.' - AL. I. 57.
'Remember all ye that existence is pure joy; that all the sorrows are but as shadows; they pass & are done; but there is that which remains.' - AL. II. 9.
I'm an atheist but I think that religion and religious values are a positive force for society.
The most spiritual experience I have is when I'm out in nature alone and I see something beautiful like a sunset over the sea. These moments make me feel connected to nature and to the past. I can imagine my ancestors seeing similar things since hundreds of thousands of years. It's comforting to know that some things don't change much.
Spirituality is the struggle to find something that's both meaningful and eternal. Nature's time scales aren't eternal but they're pretty large and easy for my simple atheist mind to conceptualize.
Imho - the only good explanation of why anything exists is that whatever 'is' has always been, is all there is, and is nothing of itself at all. Contemplating that infinite & eternal nature of our existence reconnects me with the magic & mystery of life. It awakens in me a gratitude, an awe, a wonder, a not knowing..
On a practical level - chi qong, yoga, pranayama, sauna/cold plunge, shaking, running, love making, meditating, reading the diamond sutras, beach cleanups, gardening.. whatever calls in the moment and makes me feel more alive, more connection, love, joy, appreciation, etc
Eliminate expectations. It seems like 100% of my negative feelings stem from having expectations of people around me. I would say this single practice has the most impact in reducing my negative feelings in the past 2 years.
I took the long, long road to end up back where I started: Mere Christianity.
I've felt the presence of God in the world my whole life, but the way the right wing media lied to me about global warming and other things had me re-evaluate what else I could be misinformed about, so I kept and open mind and studied a ton of religions including: Islam, Judaism, Hinduism, Daoism, Sikhism, Buddhism, and some light reading on Shintoism and other minor Asian religious practices. For a while I entertained Pantheism, but I couldn't square the problem of evil.
So I dove into philosophy for a while and the person that seemed to make the most rational sense once you got to the existence of a mind that could know a truth seemed to be Schopenhauer but Russel seemed the most practical. But I could get to the knowability of truth without bootstrapping off of something else. So the choice (or was it?) was radical scepticism or faith. Since I always felt the presence of God in the world, I decided faith in God was the only answer. I rationally knew it could be a delusion, but when trying to run all the logic sine Deo, I came back to the same point anyway: I need to take something by faith.
But knowing that you need to take something by faith isn't the same as feeling that you have the right religion. So I kept an open mind until the truth of it all overwhelmed me all at once.
It took a while for me to get back to stock Christianity, exploring interfaith, Orthodox Christianity, Christian universalism, etc. And I don't know all the answers on the hot button issues, but I believe and I pray and I trust that there are sensible answers for the harder questions, even if I don't have them yet.
Anyway, if anyone out there wants to chat about any of this I'm always open to a random email from a friendly HNer :)
Raised Catholic, but never seriously and after high school the only churches i attended were for weddings and funerals. But at some point in my twenties i lost a close friend, had some weird experiences of suffering and bliss and acceptance. Then started reading all over the place to try understand my experiences. I found the tao to be very helpful, and thomas mertons writing also very helpful. I often come back to his writing on desert mystics to start the day. And I always allow myself the time to watch the sunlight glinting off the leaves of the trees outside my window.
Roman Catholic. Try to say a rosary every morning. Read that day's mass readings and a blurb or two from Lives of the Saints. Attend mass weekly. Go to confession once or twice a year.
I converted to the Baha'i Faith from Christianity about 15 years ago, after investigating Islam and Buddhism. Very happy to see this topic trending on HN. Our daily practice consists of reading the Holy writings every morning and evening, daily prayer and meditation, and service. There's a prayer from our tradition that says may "this American democracy become glorious in spiritual degrees even as it has aspired to material degrees ... ." I cherish this hope for this nation and all humanity.
Usually not too long after waking up I listen to a podcast that brings up topics that I feel are relevant to me as a Christian.
During the day depending on how you look at it
- nothing much happens (I go to work, come home, do chores, try to get a little bit extra work done)
- or, this is where most of it happens: I go to work trying to be the person I'm supposed to be, taking note if I fail or if I'm uneasy to improve it.
When I put my kids to bed I pray like I was taught: the Lords prayer or a free prayer, making sure to both include their points as well as some broader points: as written I pray for the government and the ones I am supposed to respect (English is not my first language and this is a rough translation).
On Sundays I go to "church" although it isn't always a church house, the important part is meeting.
Whenever I get the chance I do work for my local church, from writing software and sysadmin work to cleaning and pure fundraising.
Edit: I find this thread extremely interesting, including comments by people from other religions as well as non-religious people. Thanks for keeping it civil!
Edit 2: when I was younger I read much in the Bible and it keeps popping up in my head as welcome advice, telling me to work hard, be respectful and good to those who need it, not become bitter etc in addition of course to the 10 commandments, but those have been second nature for half my life (and I enjoy the benefits that they give me :)
I believe there is something bigger than physical existence, and I find the fact that many don't worrying, because much of what's good about humans clearly come from somewhere else from what I can see.
My own accumulated experience from meditation, psychedelics & life/death situations says that whatever I am, I'm definitely not my body.
The challenge I've set before me is to be the best version of myself that I'm capable of, whatever that is at the moment.
Not sure if this counts, but I truly believe that very few people are actually evil. It’s something that is always in the back of my mind when dealing with troublesome individuals. People aren’t bad or trying to get you, they just have different world views, different perspective or just on a different path. It helps prevent conflict and helps me meet others with the kindness they deserve.
Except that one developer working for a former client… DUDE, what hell’s your problem! Your a liar and a conman.
Since the past year Christian, while having been atheist the rest of my life.
It's a long path and has required a lot of study, since I cannot internalize something without fully understanding the rationale and any pertaining evidence. Past the popular reductionist views of religion, there is a lot of ambiguity and depth, so it takes time. There are also many relevant philosophical/scientific questions worth researching (e.g. morality, the origin of "things", etc.).
I’ve practiced meditation daily for several years. I find this indispensable for my internal sense of well-being, as well as for my relationships (gives me the space and perspective for more empathy) and work (better, focus, less catastrophizing).
A big boost to my practice this past year has been Integral Life Practice (https://www.integral-life-practice.com). This isn’t something different from the meditation practice I already had, but it’s more a framework for integrating spiritual practice across the various aspects of life (body, mind, spirit, shadow, etc). It’s adaptable to whatever religious/spiritual practice one might have, and has helped me uncover areas in my life where I’m not paying enough attention (for me, body and shadow). I print off a grid each week of the specific practices I want to focus on, and a particularly satisfying way to end my day is to check off the activities I’ve done for the day. Here’s an example to give an idea of what this might look like https://youtu.be/TIrnv4Hlpw0
Wake up. Immediately start the hot water kettle. Put on warm clothes and use the bathroom. Go back to kitchen and make English Breakfast Tea. Sit down at my desk for 45 minutes.
At that point, I will either read from Meditations, or write in my journal, or plan out my day/week, or possibly "practice" computer science (overall, its a blend of spirituality and meta-productivity).
The content varies, but the ritual of it is a treasured part of my day.
"Before we discuss the technique of meditation, let us point out the merit and sanity and wakefulness you are going to get out of just simply being willing to sit like a piece of rock.
It’s fantastically powerful. It overrides the atomic bomb. It’s extraordinarily powerful that we decide just to sit, not hang out or perch, but just sit.
Such a brave attitude, such a wonderful commitment, is magnificent.
It is very sane, extraordinarily sane."
The Path Is the Goal: A Basic Handbook of Buddhist Meditation. Chogyam Trungpa
Some kinda non-conformist witchcraft I suppose. I quickly bucked the religion that got forced on me as a child, an easy journey - I'd like to think because abrahamic cosmology is plainly nonsensical, but more realistically I likely fell off because it was quite authoritarian and being told what to do makes me bristle in any context. I would have mostly self-described as an atheist for most of my childhood, and still am from a pure epistemic/cosmological standpoint, but I both started to balk at the hidebound tendency of many people and groups who use that label to trust and privilege established institutional implementations of empirical epistemology more than I think they deserve (And being in academia and following the big cross-disciplinary replication crisis in 2014 contributed in a big way to shifting my thinking more in that direction), and felt a lack of fulfillment in what I think is a pretty close to universal human need for ritual and a diminished vocabulary for explaining intuitions from those circles, so I've become interested in various practices many would consider "magical" or "spiritual" or "pagan" or dismiss as "woo" depending on who they are. I wouldn't call myself religious, I don't really go in for attempts to organize this kind of practice under stuff like "wicca" or "heathenry", but I do rituals for my own psychological purposes that friends in "atheist" circles would probably roll their eyes at, and am more comfortable offering explanations for phenomena (especially related to psychology, metacognition, interpersonal matters, information/decision/game theory, computer science, and linux system administration) that sound/signal/codeswitch more "witchy" than "scientific" than I was previously
Going to Church and not necessarily paying attention to anything.
Or any other kind of 'Temple Service' for that matter.
Sneaking a peak at the men in the Mosque from the doorway, without knowing much about Islam, I was moved.
I've often visited Catholic Churches in Europe (I'm not Catholic), to take a set and contemplate a bit.
Much like the current comments about the Swiss photographer who sees Japan in a different light than they might, it sort of made me reflect on my on rather limited Church-going experience and mini-experiences of witnessing bits of ceremony of other religions.
I find intellectual people may be over analyzing a lot of issues, our egos lead us down one rabbit hole after the next and I feel we are missing the point.
'Going through the motions' can be a potent thing to help transcend that, because it doesn't involve focusing on the language or intellectual rhetoric directly.
In Buddhism they certainly have a lot of focus on 'transcending thought' which I think could equally apply to Abrahamic faith, but we get caught up a lot in the language and the 'applied rules' and it trips us up.
Just go into the Cathedral when there's no service and sit for a while.
Every day, I meditate.. usually for 10 minutes, sometimes 20. I've stopped using a timer, so it depends on me. Once a week I'll do a longer guided meditation from Insight Timer.
I read a lesson from the ACIM Workbook, and then usually a selection from a few "daily" Buddhist texts I've collected and liked.
I also run and workout pretty much every day. Feels like part of the plan, moreso if I'm doing them alone.
Not day-to-day in this case, more week to week: I practice sabbath and I've been doing this for a couple of years now. I sabbath on Sundays. I don't work, try not to think about working and avoid engaging in economic activity. As I understand it, the original Jewish conception of sabbath (I'm not Jewish) was that it was resistance against empire and oppressive economic systems. It's like declaring that I am a human being and I have intrinsic worth that cannot be measured in money or things - kind of like going on strike for a day every week. I find it very restful (duh) and it actually helps me have a better attitude towards work the rest of the week (though I'm trying not to have a utilitarian reason to sabbath as that would be counter the spirit of sabbath, I think).
I think one of my misconceptions about sabbath before was that it was a passive thing. As I experience it, it's a very active thing, a different way of being one day per week. It's active opposition to the culture of 24/7 work that's becoming expected in many sectors.
Every morning I wake up with attention on my dreaming process. I write down my dreams that I remember in my phone and later transfer them to my dream journal app on my laptop. I review my dreams periodically, typically once a week at night before bed, considering their symbols and dynamics as relates to my life.
I also meditate for 10-20 minutes every few days, which I want to turn into a daily practice
A bit of slight tangent. I’m an atheist, but sometimes I envy the communities religious groups build (e.g. church). One big advantage I’ve seen is some of my Christian friends can move cities and almost instantly have a community via the local church. They make friends, have a place to go on a regular basis and has a support network.
Anyone aware of anything similar but not based on religion?
I like to think myself as urban, meaning anti-sectarian. Every sect is based on dogma, if we let those lead our lives again we're gonna be in for another thousand years of dark ages. I don't want to let this happen, now is my watch, it's my duty to prevent it.
My tools are logic and patience. Jupiter help me - ha!
But in all seriousness, everything we have is fragile. It could all be gone in an instant if we are not careful, if we don't strive to keep it, and grow it. Everything we have has brought us to this moment. We have almost all the tools to see into the universe and yet waste our time with petty fights, misunderstandings and shell ourselves in a cocoon of illusions and lies. We can do better. We have to do better. We exists, and yet we don't know the purpose of existence. We should focus on that, it's the common denominator of literally everything, it's not a hard sell once past the lies.
I got a little shrine with little nick nacks that mean stuff to me. Stuff that represents members of my family, money to bring money, a compass and a few books. I light a candle there every now and again.
I'm no longer Christian, but the Lord's Prayer is so thoroughly burned into my brain it helps me tune out and sleep sometimes.
I usually start out by reading the "Just for Today" meditation at [1] which changes daily. Then I read [2] and spend a couple minutes contemplating how the 12 JFTs apply to the day I'm going to have. Then I usually spend a few minutes planning my day.
I am an atheist bus as a recovering alcoholic I've found that having a spiritual routine to be very beneficial. It helps me stay honest with myself and identify thoughts and feelings that I would otherwise have no visibility into.
I read The Kingdom of God Is Within You by Tolstoy (who became very spiritual himself and wrote a bunch of religious texts later in his life) and the Bhagavad Gita (two of his Gandhi's biggest inspirations).
It's part why-has-no-one-picked-up-this-thread when two greats like Tolstoy and Gandhi were exploring this together historical interest and part spiritual exploration for me and has been supremely fulfilling so far.
I haven't grounded it all yet but the abolishment of violence of any kind (including things like revenge and self-defense) seems like the most pure moral code I can find + baking that in to the divinity of the Gita (stripping down who you are in it's purest form and seeing the relation of that you + the cosmos).
Im 100 % atheist, but i found the jewish faith pretty fascinating. Its one of the few religions, that besides indoctrination - encourage a hacker mentality. One is praised for studying the books and finding "workaround" that allow to "hack" the religious framework without repercussions by the comunity.
It has also managed to thrive, timelessly in alot of hostile circumstances.
In my mind, while all religion might be nonsense, this model applied to science is a winning team. If its a hacker mentality though, then i guess this site will have to do as a spiritual practice. It spins fertilizer from thin air and sun, it has electrically charged stones from the dessert reciting prayers and preventing a world with billions from collapse.
As soon as I get up, put in airpods and listen to Roman Catholic Liturgy of the Hours: Morning Prayer and Office of Readings (Scripture-based prayers on a 4-week cycle, Scripture and spiritual reading on a 1-year cycle). That continues while I stretch/move/do a tiny workout, pause for shower, turn it back on while shaving and making coffee.
Then, ideally, I spend 30-60 minutes in personal prayer, usually in the form of journaling, and sometimes study of scripture and/or spiritual books. I have given this short/no shrift most days the last couple weeks and I’m missing the intimacy with God that I have when I do it more consistently. It’s like when my wife and I get over-busy with work: we still see each other, exchange enough words to coordinate schedules and household matters, still love each other of course, but we’re not as close and I miss her. Same with Jesus right now. He’s still caring for me and I’m still trying to follow him, but I’m missing out on that warm connection.
Five minutes before the hour every waking hour, a notification pops up on my watch with a prayer to draw closer and dedicate the next hour to God. I change the text of it periodically to reflect what God is teaching me currently and to keep it from becoming too routine for me.
Whenever I’m stuck or frustrated or sad, I try to (1) notice it and (2) talk about it with Jesus. There’s not a scheduled time for this, but it probably comes up at least daily.
Wherever I am, whomever I’m with, the closer I am with God, the more automatically I notice how beautiful the sky is, or how lovely it is that people have developed the craft of making a beautiful tabletop like the one I’m typing on, or how happy it is that other people are happy. E.g., I find noise very unpleasant, but the other day a very loud car with temporary tags drove by, and I gladly shifted from annoyance to being happy that the driver was able to afford transportation (if the engine noise was incidental) or that the driver got to enjoy their very impressively loud engine (if the noise was something they had sought on purpose). Then the noticing and the joy bring me back to gratitude to God, which draws me closer to God and reinforces the joy, etc..
So the joy God has in creation becomes, in tiny part, my joy, and the love of Jesus begins to become love I have for others. I’ve been a practicing Christian my whole life, and generally tried to do what I thought I ought to, but this growing intimacy with God is a new development for me since August this year. I find myself approaching interactions with others not to get them over as quickly as possible or say the appropriate things or to demonstrate my cleverness but with love for the person, gladness that they exist, and curiosity how I might be able to bring them some bit of love/happiness/blessing in the conversation.
I remember this. I lost it ... No, I put it away in a thousand small abandonments. Reading this woke me up to the sheer extent of what I've lost. I was once a kinder, happier man.
This is a beautiful response to the question and has given me some new layers to add to my own practice. I, like you, have found that focusing on seeing beautiful things, recognizing their beauty, and saying prayers of gratitude for being able to see beauty has really opened up some new doors in my relationship with God.
Thank you for your thoughtful and beautiful response to the original question.
Mostly karma yoga: I'm working towards various big goals which largely benefit other people or manage crises. When I was younger, lots of meditation in the Nath tradition (sort of Hindu dzog chen - Nepalese, so there was a lot of cross talk with Tibet, Mahasiddha stuff).
I talk to God throughout the day and focus on listening. This includes some light Bible reading and expecting answers. Transparent, concise, empathic, respectful prayers seem to be answered with great enthusiasm. God is dad, but dad is also God. It is both odd and fantastic.
Many responses here don't address OP's question about day-to-day practices.
My spiritual practice: meditation, journaling, breathwork. Occasionally, psychedelics with close friends in nature, which often starts out with a prompt regarding with we want to get out of the experience
Most mornings begin with exercise and cool down. Then scripture and prayer.
This morning, I read Hebrews chapter 12 from the New Testament in the Bible. Afterwards, I prayed about some of the things that stuck out to me. I prayed for my family, and the members of my dev team.
I find this tends to center me on the things that (I believe) are important... thinking more of others than myself. I pray for things I know about and things I don't know about. When relationships at work are stressed, I pray that I could see things from the perspective of others. I pray for humbleness. I pray that I'd be helpful to those around me. For those I'm mentoring, I pray that I'd teach them useful things that will foster growth.
I practice a non-denominational version of Christianity that embraces a dispensational viewpoint. I regularly read from pretty much all parts of the Bible. However, the core of my reading involves reading 3 chapters a day: one from Romans-Galatians, one from Ephesians-Colossians, and one from Thessalonians on a constant loop. This is the foundation upon which I add readings from other parts of the Bible. I’ve been bringing in Genesis as of late. Most days, my wife and I do this together out loud. This practice is very grounding. I notice that it helps with my ADHD. I find it easier to organize my thoughts. I also find that I’m more patient with people in general.
Don't let anyone tell you what it means. No church, priest, or pastor has a monopoly on these teachings. It's your journey.
If you don't feel comfortable going to a church, don't feel pressured to. If you ever sit down with even just one person to discuss your feelings on the Bible, then that is a church.
People who read the bible without any religious context, as if it was just a book, will almost certainly see only a disjointed and contradictory collection of ancient stories and writings. Without any religious context that is all the bible is. Oral traditions still matter and that is why Jews and Christians have such wildly different understandings of the Hebrew texts.
I practice Seon Buddhism but don't consider myself a religious person. To me, the essence of Buddhism is seeing the world with clarity. And when you see the world with clarity, you realize there's no reason to live life of greed, hatred, and suffering. I view that this is what Jesus preached as well.
I believe an increasing number of people in developed parts of the world are turning away from religious institutions because many of these institutions have stopped helping people live happily. I sincerely hope to see more people trying to re-discover the old teachings. For me, Buddhism was immensely eye-opening and it definitely gives me tons of inspirations.
It is a bit unusual and outright advocated against by almost all gurus, but I have sometimes done a spiritual practice aimed at developing unusual abilities.
In some cases this has involved overlaying my avatar in the physical world with a different image and taking on some characteristics such as charm, increased observation, better functional flexibility, etc.
Lately I got one which is outright ego-dystonic, not like me at all, often intrusive (sometimes it seems it visualizes me and not the other way around) and even a bit rude (to me), yet the challenge it is helping me with is longstanding and severe enough that I'm willing to put up with quite a lot.
There's not much point in spiritual practices if you don't believe in some truth behind them. Instead of focusing on practices, focus on finding truth (I believe it can be found about God). Truth will lead to practices.
In many religious traditions it is in the practices that you experience the divine.
In many religious traditions it is what you do, not what you believe that matters.
These concepts are very foreign if you come from a reform era Christian tradition where Paul's ideas have precedence.
I put the wide range of religion understanding in my "God has a sense of humour" folder.
(I infer from that, that we should too) :)
Mindfulness, gratitude, and empathy (with others when I'm managing well, with myself when I fail my expectations for myself). I also try to listen to the messages from the world... sometimes, your angels are trying to protect you from a mistake, and if you choose to stop and listen to them, things go better.
I raise my children in a Christian church because that's what worked for me to learn/grow/nuture my own spiritual practice. As they mature and increasingly question religion, I will become more explicit with them explaining the importance of a personal understanding of spirituality.
as someone who doesn't subscribe to any major belief system (including atheism which I am aware isn't technically a "belief system"), this made me think when I feel "spiritual"
probably whatever makes me feel some sense of "ego death", where I feel more apart of others than myself. I think this usually happens when I am with good friends or in moments of self reflection - usually while running or journaling
I think these elements are what underlie many of the habits people in this thread describe, rather than anything attributable to any specific faith. that's just my two cents
I am over 40 and ever since I was 10 or so it has been my opinion that spiritual belief, though giving rise to some positive social activities, is a childish delusion of adults and mental abuse of their children.
After a psychedelic experience, I have come to have a weird combination of philosophical Vedanta Hinduism, Daoism and Buddhism, with some more animist ideas sprinkled in. My spiritual practice is to make myself aware of the world as a system and framework, but ultimately the meaninglessness it has, through meditation several times during the day, but usually at least in the morning after rising and at night before bed. I do wear cheap prayer beads (which were given to me as a gift and which I assign no further religious meaning to) as a reminder to meditae more.
I have been participating in a group for over ten years that studies the ideas of Gurdjieff.
It can be said to be spiritual, kind of a meta-religion. It is compatible with religions, and most participats practice something else as well.
From Gurdjieff my most important daily practice is "self-observation". I take on various aims to facilitate it. One example of such an aim could be "when walking, walk faster than normal". I try to meditate daily as well, but I am not so successful in that.
If you are interested, "In Search of the Miraculous" by Ouspensky is a good starting point.
Sikh here. I mutter Waheguru 2-3 times a day. In a year, recite Japji Sahib maybe 10-15 times. In a year, god on my lips is for barely an hour. I do seva (community service) a lot and that provides me peace.
My dad grew up with that religion too, I'm not sure how it effected him in the long run but he seems like a nice enough guy these days. I'm just glad he's still with us, I guess.
Hi, I would not call myself a full on nihilist because I've never read any nihilist literature. All I know is the most basic definition, and from discussions with friends who are more knowledgeable on the subject, but I do feel like this aligns with my way of thinking.
100% agnostic. I argue like an atheist thou, meh is really not an interesting position to take. Also, I really like upsetting the expectation of religious people that they have ownership of virtue.
Philosophical ideas set forth in "Hinduism" (a umbrella term for a whole host of thoughts/ideas/beliefs/worldviews from a particular geographical area), Buddhism and Ancient "Hellenistic" Greece are the ones worth studying because they provide a "rational" approach to "Living" your Life. Interpreting and Adapting them in the light of "Modern Science" is where the challenge lies.
I read Bible sometimes and pray sometimes.
I realised I become a very bad person (not thinking of others, being unfair), when I'm away from Christianity.
I suppose I can say I practice these: throughout every day I deliberately consider whether I am closer to truth in all matters; reaching for truth scientifically on all the grand questions (what is life, why anything exists, etc). Being a non-believer helped a lot while I was undergoing chemotherapy a few years ago. I felt peace in the knowledge that cancer was nothing personal (where there is life, there is cancer).
Going outside and observing the hyperobject of all the other living things, imagining it as well, and looking up at the sky in hopes of seeing other suns.
I do take comfort in believing there is some kind of God somewhere. It really does not matter if it exists, or what is it, and it does not rule over my life. It just fills what is missing spiritually
As most people don't really follow any regular religious ritual on lack of time. My girlfriend does take our child to the local mini-church activity which is fun and entertaining
I'm a religious Jew. My day starts at 6 with a half-hour of Talmud study, then I have prayers for 40 minutes, followed by 10 minutes of reciting Psalms and another 30 minutes of Talmud study.
In the middle of my day, I pray for 15 minutes, and at night, I pray for another 15 minutes. I also try to end my day with a few more minutes of Jewish study
When I wake up I do a short gratitude prayer, then a short meditation.
I meditate for short periods at random times during the day - no real schedule.
I am about 2/3 through the Self Realization Fellowship meditation lessons. I have been meditating for about 45 years on my own, but I find with the SRF lessons my meditation is more efficient and satisfying.
Why do people have to comment here to say 'I have none' ? Why not just find a more interesting thread?
I'm a follower of Yahweh and his Son Yeshuah, I don't consider myself Catholic or Protestant and believe both of those faiths (while honoring God in their own way, are full of the traditions of man). I left Institutional Christianity some years ago and with other like-minded saints gather wherever we feel like it to worship, pray, eat a meal together and share communion. We try to share our lives with each other as much as the western world allows (planning laws make creating real communities hard in Australia).
My wife and I pray daily together, we read the scriptures and talk about what they mean. We ask the Spirit of Yahweh for guidance and we follow what He tells us to do. We actively try to help people in the community who are struggling, through food or white goods or whatever is needed. Every Wednesday night we open our house to anyone who would like to come and cook a meal together, some times this can be 1-2 people, sometimes 50+.
I guess I'd say yes if you asked if I were a Christian however the term is so confused nowadays that it's not very useful, I prefer to say 'I am a follower of The Way'.
"None" can be a legitimate response and can elicit discussion, given that the OP seems interested in what people are doing and necessarily taking advice.
Growing up our family were followers of Shirdi Sai Baba. Nowadays, I follow the basic tenants without a particular attachment to any saint. I meditate daily with personal mantras, prayers, and basic affirmations to be a good and moral person.
It's pretty simple but helps me stay grounded and reminds me of what's important in life.
i was raised in the church of jesus christ of latter day saints (aka the mormon church) at some point in my adult life, the stress and anxiety of being a “practicing” member of the church led to the point where i couldn’t attend sacrament meetings without a panic attack. i have stopped participating and have found that my quality of life has improved.
i’m not sure what my belief system is, but i think about death a lot… and in an odd way it helps me appreciate life right now. the thought of an afterlife freaks me out. i want to believe that death is the end. the scarcity of time reminds me how valuable my friends and family are, reminds me to be generous to others, and helps me to live in the moment.
i believe in karma and have found that when i help others in their time of need that it circles back around when i am in need.
in my experience, organized religion overcomplicates things.
Also exmormon (agnostic but somewhat spiritual) here...
I like the concept that maybe we're just the universe dreaming of itself. Like when we die...it's like rain drops returning to the ocean.
If you haven't seen Midnight Mass, I can't recommend it enough great Netflix series, but as one character is dying, there's a brilliant monologue (depending on who you ask, some hated it but I loved it!) that touches on this idea.
I like to believe that there could be something else ..but that regardless it doesn't require a deity, and everyone's invited, and that I should live as if there isn't because I can't possibly know if there is, and everything in life is valuable.
I don't think a god of something exists. If it does, I don't care. It might, though.
What's more important to me: life emerged from chaos, entropy will get us all, let's give this opportunity all we've got. If we don't, it's fine too - there is no game plan I am aware of so we can make our own.
I occasionally take a moment to pause, reflect, and appreciate the luck that I have to exist, and the beauty of the universe. I try to use the pragmatic aspects of buddhism (the Eightfold Path is a very useful guidebook for a good life), although I'm not ideologically a full-blown buddhist.
Its kinds of like collecting, I go out to find moments and capture them for perpetuity. Its the most expensive hobby I have where I don't expect any kind of monetary return on my investment. But after getting some amazing shots, there's something really fulfilling about it.
Zen meditation (as I practice) is one of the deeper ways of practice, and helps one to reflect and dig deeper into one's emotions and being.
As a person who read early, and immediately started to tinker with computers and electronics, I was the different kid who bullied a lot, and it deformed me in a lot of ways. I was short tempered, introverted, scared and scarred without any self-esteem and self-worth. My brain was always noisy, and had concentration problems. This affected my friendships and relationships. Having a couple of bad girlfriends made everything worse. Much worse.
When I started to practice, I started to balance and heal myself. I understood myself better, my brain silenced, I became much more patient and kind (I wasn't rude either, but Zen made me softer). I had some career-defining moments in my life, and was able to navigate them with help of Zen.
All in all it made me rooted, balanced and helped me grow to an healthy and better adult. I probably have some crinkles and dents here and there, but at least I know who I am. It allows me to reflect better and understand what's happening.
It's a never ending way, and I'm not looking for a destination to be honest, however it's not a silent walk in the park all the time. Sometimes you encounter your inner demons. These encounters are what transforms you.
Not exactly an answer but I think I've definitely been in a kind of spiritual crisis for a lot of my late-twenties, maybe longer, ever since I stopped being Christian, and am struggling to find some kind of spiritual anchor.
To the extent I've developed any kind of spiritual mantra so far, it's something like: "focus on what you owe society". I think a lot of especially the West has become obsessed with seeking comfort and focusing on what society owes them, to the extent that we've erased or completely compartmentalized any sense of what our responsibilities to society are, and thus what our role is.
Man's Search for Meaning was a bit of a source of focus for something like this. Why Honor Matters was also an interesting read (authored by the co-host of my favorite podcast) along these lines. I wouldn't describe myself as a huge Jordan Peterson fan (haven't really read much of his work myself, when speaking I find he can be kinda incoherent/ramble-y), but I think he's a more well-known modern "prophet" of this "religion".
Anyway, all still very disorganized thoughts at this point, but I think starting to congeal to something over the past two years.
(Day-to-day I do meditate but I don't, at least yet, really view this as a spiritual thing as much as a helpful psychological tool/practice.)
The philosophy of Alan Watts was to me completely life changing. Simple, powerful concepts, explained in a fun way. Concepts that give you a strong foundation for reality and your place in it, while allowing you to go about your daily life and find meaning.
I am Thelemic. I recite an affirmation to manifest my will in this world. I believe that every day reveals my self-realization. I perform self-aware meditation to force myself to be honest.
It's not too different from many other forms of introspective study.
I'm a Catholic - I go to Mass most mornings, pray a daily Rosary, and have been getting more in the habit of Scripture reading and meditation. I also pray little prayers and make the sign of the Cross throughout the day when I need help.
I wake up, go downstairs, feed the dog, make some breakfast, listen to a podcast about philosophy or science, login to work, write some code, do some meetings, have lunch, play some video games, walk the dog, have dinner, and go to sleep.
Every morning after shower and just before the work starts or I go to work. I sit before the small temple (bookcase) in my home. Light a lamp and an incense; and a short prayer - sit in a mindfulness state - asking for blessings for all.
I do a 25 minute meditation sit every day. The framework I practice in is "The Mind Illuminated" which is ancient Buddhist meditation texts (mostly Asanga) retold for us contemporaries.
I would like to found some kind of cult with myself as the Dear Leader that everyone adores and sends lots of cash to, but I don't seem to have rolled that high a number in terms of charisma.
I am a recent convert to Nondualism. I start my day with 1 hour of Yoga Asana's and 30 minutes meditation and end the day with 1 hour of discourses and 30 minutes meditation.
wake up: offer my day to God, thank him for as many things as I can
morning: read the Bible
noon: pray a Rosary and offer the prayers for peace (generally) and healing (for specific people)
throughout the day: thank him, praise him, tell him my anxieties, ask him for help
evening: pray to saints, ask them to pray for me, praise God
night: examine my day, thank God, see where I faltered and wronged Him or my neighbor (anger, lust, sloth, etc.). Pray with my wife for people in our lives and in thanksgiving. Ask for restful sleep.
Raised Christian, then become Atheist. For the past two years I have been looking into Buddhism. I find it helpful to deal with the eb and flows of life.
What I do spiritually: Meditation - it's proven to have health benefits, even in purely non-spiritual setting. Besides that: trying to be good in general, etc. Experience love and gratefulness.
What I think it's there: My main point of inspiration are "near death experiences". There is solid evidence they are not just hallucinations of dying brain. The primary argument that they are not hallucinations is obtaining independently verifiable information observed during "leaving the body" during near death experiences. Ed Kelly (professor at UVA DOPS) said that he collected over 100 cases, when the person leaving the body during the NDE observed information that couldn't be physically observed, known prior to NDE, guessed or hallucinated using known information and credibility of verifying professional wasn't questioned. Many of the reports included information obtained minutes after the cardiac arrest. Many of the reports included reports from different locations (e.g. Wife traveling to meet dying husband with 4 people, earlier than planned). People blind from birth describing independently verified visual information.
Some examples and links to investigate (copy doi to scihub if you don't have access):
Besides NDEs, check research at UVA DOPS https://med.virginia.edu/perceptual-studies/ . Check irreducible mind book - there is surprisingly vast amount of scientific evidence that something spiritual is real, just that majority of scientific community refuses to even consider it.
None. Maybe humanism and secularism combined can be called a spiritual system? I mean I like to think of a higher purpose in being a good human, and your influence can live on down through generations by the works you do as a good human. Most of us won't ever be great humans, but we can all be good humans. I think modern takes on “spiritualism” are bogus and likely no better than what has come before considering the overwhelming failure of organized religions to better the human condition.
I appreciate all of the conversation below, although the dynamic in the majority of comments seems to be Christianity vs atheism/greek philosophy largely stoicism.
There is so much more out there and often has endured for longer periods of time. Other religions, hinduism in particular but also buddhism, allow for an incredibly large number of permutations of practice and adherence while still assuming association. Worth considering.
I defined myself as an atheist in the sixth grade. I do not believe in a or many gods that concern themselves with human appeals or behavior or the institutions that proffer the word of god. As Kazanstakis would say: Without hope, without fear, I am free.
Still, IMO our actions remain internally debated because we have a collectivist spirit at our core. Those without the core, the ability to relate and take on concern for another are considered psychopathic.
A self defined morality is something I've chosen. My spiritual practice is very animist as a result. Hiking in the woods, submerged in the ocean, looking to find a calm or balance and identifying the fears, questions, goals that motivate me like other living beings on the planet. Appealing to the reality that these forces are in many ways, beyond my comprehension and much stronger than my will and capability.
Daily existential crisis due to my own mortality. Curiously, the sensation of ever present dread keeps me grounded. Coming to terms with the fact that i'm in a losing battle against entropy itself really puts things in perspective.
I'm mostly atheistic and, in my understanding of the world, once my consciousness ceases to be functional within my body, i'll be forever gone. So that's what i center my contemplation of life around. There will be a day which will be the last for me, a thought that i'll have, which will be followed by eternal non existence. No matter how good or bad the things that will come after will be, i won't be able to experience them, even my awareness will no longer be here in any form, the concept of time breaking down because i won't observe it. In short, i have an expiration date, so it would be nice to do what i can to put it off for a bit longer. Furthermore, it's nice to make the days leading up to it meaningful, if i can and feel like doing so.
Framing things like that really makes most things seem rather meaningless and thus absolves me of worrying about the daily minutea too much, or getting too emotionally invested in any of it. For example, right now i'm stuck in the middle of conflicting value systems in my country and social circles. Not necessarily nihilism or even anti-natalism either, just the realization that i have a finite amount of emotion to feel towards the world around me and care to put in it.
DISCLAIMER: the following is highly polarizing and one example of things that i've seen consume people's time, identities and lives. Things that are better to avoid in my eyes, offered as an example. Skip to the end of italics if you'd like to skip this part.
On one side, there is a large part of my current culture that's oftentimes mean, xenophobic, homophobic, transphobic, racist and so on, which would have me act a certain way and uphold both their traditions and stereotypes in some sisyphean pursuit of a conformative national identity, in a world that's becoming more and more globalized and where many of these concepts of old aren't always relevant.
Then there's a different part, which perhaps leans too much in the opposite direction, not realizing how dangerous expressing themselves freely can be in a society where the former group is not viewed as a credible threat, a disconnect between what should be and what actually is, and sometimes just want to react to things purely based on emotion and not explore the finer points and nuance (e.g. how RMS was "cancelled" some time ago, despite possibly not being neurotypical and lacking compassion where some could have been useful), sometimes desiring to break down systems for no good reason.
Then there are the corporate interests which view me and others as expendable resources and members of society that should be freed from their financial burden of having disposable income, and who'll go to great lengths to achieve that, anything from intruisive ads to trying to convince me that i need things which i don't, the greater systems at play essentially ensuring that i'll receive only a small percentile of the income that i actually generate with my work, even home ownership currently being out of reach, as is financial independence of any sort.
I guess i could also throw in organized religion or other groups that exploit people's need for belonging, from social media, to multi level marketing - oftentimes spouting their own values and beliefs as fact, typically with certain non-publicly expressed goals in mind. Groups that would be quick to indoctrinate me in their midst and make me lead my life in better alignment with their values.
On a grander scale, one can even talk about things like environmentalism here. On one side, you have outright denial of what's going on with the planet and a desire not to change anything from how it was, to go far beyond the "business as usual" scenario for the economic and environmental outcomes. On the other, you sometimes have crafty entrepreneurs, whose promises are detached for reality, or activism to the degree where the individual action is far beyond what any human being would reasonably do.
From every side, there are groups of people and ideologies that try to get me to align with what they want me to align with and believe what they say, yet none of those really matter. I'll just tell each group what they want to hear so they don't end my existence or make it worse, and apart from that i'll just continue my life one day at a time. Why? Because after the aforementioned contemplation, there's no reason for me to throw my life away while attempting to follow any of their teachings, nor is there a reason for me to try to oppose them and ruin my life that way.
Instead, i should care about myself first and foremost. Get enough sleep. Eat reasonably healthily. Get some fresh air every day. Do some light exercise. Learn a skill, ideally something both mental and also something else that can be done with my hands. Play with my pets to feel better. Read what i want and entertain myself however i please. Learn something new to put myself in a better position in the future. Build relationships with the people who can make me enjoy a friendship with them. Avoid or cut out those who won't be healthy for me in the long term. Be nice to others so i can feel good about myself, or count on them to do the same. Just generally make existing more pleasant. Don't buy too much into what anyone says, but instead occasionally pause and take apart their arguments and reasoning to see how mine aligns or conflicts with theirs.
My life is too short for me to stress about those things, or to get too invested in social constructs. It is also probably too short for me to reap the benefits from life extension tech or viable cryogenics. Alas, i'm probably born to die. So why not make my life and myself better until then?
So, in short: a form of mindfulness/contemplation that's born out of needing to cope with various stressors in life.
> Daily existential crisis due to my own mortality
I had this for a long time. The thing that cured it was that I remind myself every day how many days I should expect to live, how many of those days will be healthy enough to do anything, and what % of my remaining life and healthspan this year is.
Even though it would seem this makes things worse, my experience is that it is the opposite. It is like tossing some eggshells in coffee - the bitterness goes down and things get a hell of a lot clearer. A few months after I started doing this, I stopped waffling on decisions and decision paralysis went away.
Yep, of course, if worries like that prevent a person from actually living their life and being a functional member of society (in whatever capacity they wish to be one), then it's probably helpful to seek counseling or additional help with that. However, if things aren't so dire, being aware of the approximate time that you have left might actually motivate you to focus on what you want to achieve etc. The first time i saw a "life calendar", it felt a bit macabre, but upon further consideration, that's just one form of practicing mindfulness.
At the very least, it seems to be working out nicely for some rather productive people out there, like Randall Thomas (you can see one such calendar in the background in some of his videos about programming his own game engine): https://www.youtube.com/c/RandallThomas/videos
Personally, that awareness helped me deal with worrying about what my peers would think of me and so on. I mean, come on, we're all hurtling through space on an impeccable piece of rock with our entire existence being a splendid display of maths, physics and chemistry, yet even so it's just a blip on the overall time scale of the universe. Why should i worry in the slightest about what my clothes look like, or the stupid thing that i said 4 years ago, that no one even cares about?
I'd still call what i'm experiencing a "crisis" since the underlying problem of being mortal isn't really solved and might not be in my life span, but it can definitely be interpreted as something not wholly negative.
That said, i bet one can write a lot of amazing fiction after pondering the eventual point in time where it could reasonably be solved. At first, imagine our elderly being able to live out their days in peak physical shape, without being forced to witness their bodies breaking down with age. Then, imagine those few who'd actually want that sort of thing, being able to live for thousands if not tens or hundreds of thousands of years. Oh, how much one could learn. Oh, how much you'd start caring about the long term impacts of your actions, then. Truly an interesting topic!
Some people struggle with meditation. I did too, especially connecting to my bodily sensations without getting caught up in thoughts.
I found that slow movements like Qi Gong can help you with calming down and connecting to your body. When Covid began, I replaced my commute with a daily Qi Gong session in the morning sun. After that I find it much easier to watch my breath, also in sitting meditation.
They have been my gateway to spirituality, whatever than means. I approach them the same way a Christian would approach Easter or Christmas or any other ritual. They are indeed a ritual which "happened to happen" to me. They are sacred under the only definition of sacred that I'm 100% comfortable with: that which keeps on giving regardless of how many times you have interfaced with it.
The great value we ought to set on Spiritual Things
"I wished," says the Wise Man, "and there was given me sense; I asked it of God, and there came upon me the spirit of wisdom; and I preferred her before thrones and royal sceptres; and I made no account of riches in comparison therewith, nor of precious stones; for all gold in comparison with her is as a little sand, and silver shall be counted as clay before her." (Wisdom 7:7-9). The true wisdom on which we ought to set our eyes is perfection, which consists in union with God by love, according to the saying of the Apostle St. Paul: "Above all I commend to you charity, which is the bond of perfection" (Colossians 3:14), and joins and unites us with God. Now the esteem which Solomon says here he had of wisdom, we ought to have of perfection and of all that makes thereto. In comparison with that, all should appear to us as a little sand, a little clay and ordure, as the same apostle said: "I count all things as ordure and refuse in view of gaining Christ." (Philippians 3:8). This is a main means for gaining perfection: at the rate in which that esteem grows in our hearts, at the same rate will our perfection grow... The reason is, because such as is the value that we set upon a thing, such is the desire that we have of obtaining it: for the will is a blind power and follows what the understanding dictates and proposes to it; and according to the esteem and value that the understanding sets on a thing, so also is the will and desire to obtain it. And as the will is queen, and commands all the other powers and energies of the soul, as well interior as exterior, it follows that according to the will and desire that we have of a thing, will be our contriving and taking means thereto, and our efforts to obtain it. Thus it is very important to have a great esteem and appreciation of spiritual things and of what appertains to our spiritual progress, that so the will and desire of them may be great, and great also our effort to procure and gain them, for in all these things like goes with like.
A dealer in precious stones has need to know and form a right estimate of their value, under pain of being deceived, for in default of such knowledge and such estimate he will exchange and sell a stone of great value for a thing of very little worth. Our trade is in precious stones and pearls. "The kingdom of heaven is like unto a merchant seeking precious stones." (cf. Matthew 13:45). We are merchants of the kingdom of heaven: we must know and form a right estimate of the price and value of the merchandise in which we deal, that we be not deceived, changing gold for clay, and heaven for earth, which would be a huge mistake. And so says the prophet Jeremy: "Let not the wise man glory in his wisdom, nor the strong man in his strength, nor the rich man in his riches; but let him that glorieth glory in this, in knowing and understanding me." (cf. Jeremiah 9:23-24). This is the greatest of all treasures, knowing and loving and serving God, and this is the greatest business we can have on hand, or rather, we have no other business than this, for this we were created... this is our end, our terminus and our glory.
– Fr. Rodriguez, Practice of Perfection and Christian Virtues, First Treatise, Chapter 1 (1609; Rickaby's translation 1929)
I've had two separate experiences from this meditation that I'd like to talk about, and I want to preface this by saying that I'm a very rational person (because some of my descriptions, as subjective as they were to me, may be off-putting to some). Generally speaking I find it very relaxing most of the time, so at minimum it gives me that. But about 1/4 of the time (and it would probably be more if I did it more consistently, I noticed that it happened more when I was doing it more consistently), I experience something subtle but definitely unique that I'd call a "thrumming" throughout my body, almost like an electrical sensation but more subtle and definitely not something I've sensed in any other context. I have no idea if it has a name due to other people experiencing it; the meditation itself tells you to look for a "rhythm that isn't your heartbeat" but this felt much higher-frequency than that would indicate. You know how when a limb "falls asleep" and then it gets flush with blood again and it feels tingly? Kind of like that, but more subtle, and in my whole body.
And yeah, I know how crazy that probably already just sounds. But one time it went way beyond that.
One time, something completely unique happened. I came out of the meditation and sensed immediately that something was different but I couldn't immediately identify what. So I did kind of an introspective inventory of my own psyche, and suddenly realized with some shock that all of my fear of death had vanished. And the thing I want to convey is this, because the words can't really describe this part: I realized that we ALL have an ever-present fear of death, even right this minute while you're reading this you do, it's just sitting there like background radiation and you don't notice it literally because it's always there. And I have to emphasize that even that was taken away from me (temporarily, for I'd say about 2-3 days), which is how I realized it even existed in the first place! And it wasn't like, you know, "ok, so it's cool if I suicided now", but if death "had to" happen to me, I wouldn't be afraid. At all.
This last experience was so jarring, honestly, that I've been a bit afraid (ironically!!) to repeat the meditation as consistently as I intended to. (And yet, so few people have a "real" experience like this, from meditation, to the best of my knowledge!)
Of course, speaking as a rational person, it FIGURES that it was entirely subjective and that I can't point to anything to show you that this was completely real to me. But it has certainly made me value people's claims of their subjective experiences more (albeit always with a grain of salt!)
It's a completely fair answer to OP's question and does not bother me. It contributes to the discussion because it reminds us that some people don't feel the need for a ritualistic form of spirituality.
It might be fair but it's uninteresting and shows lack of self examination. The range of understanding of "spirituality" is so broad and personal nearly anything can theoretically fit into it.
You have people in here talking about their coffee and music habits, but in a way that is interesting and engaging with the question rather than dismissing it.
The fact that someone is so sure that they can't find anything like this in their relationship to the world might be interesting in some contexts but doesn't take the conversation anywhere new.
If you interpret "spirituality" this broadly then the word is useless. This is why you'll receive some dismissive answers.
I drink espresso every morning. I challenge you to find a way to link that to this thread that isn't as useless as defining a synonym for the word "habit", or "preference", or similar.
Reality doesn't have to be interesting, nor do the results of self-examination. As best I can tell I'm a biological entity with a false sense of self and free will on a rock in the middle of an unfathomably large universe, the existence of which I will never understand. That's it. That's actually already quite interesting. Why do so many feel the need to try and force the elevation of the everyday and the mundane into that same plane? And worse yet, to speak condescendingly of others as you do so.
I don't personally interpret it that broadly, but I've been surprised and delighted by the range expressed in other comments today! So at least to me I can't really consider that broad definition useless, at least across a group of people.
Hey this is a great question, I would love to add my day to day practice, I am currently a missionary in New Zealand (from the USA):
Preface: I was raised a Christian and even continued to go to church long after doubting and even reversing my beliefs in God. I then, later on in life, realized I had made a grievous error and my current life is a result of a path through Stoicism, Humanism and ultimately Hedonism. My story on how I came out of darkness into light is another one and feel free to email/message me if you want (www.titusblair.com)...
Now for the day-to-day bit:
After Waking Up:
I normally wake up in the morning and I am tempted to read email, read the web etc. My goal is always to read or listen to the Bible, particularly the Gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke + Acts, John) and when I am successful at this my day tends to be better, more focused, less stress.
Before Breakfast:
A few years ago I took to hear Jesus words that He is the bread of life and decided to never eat until I read the Gospels with my family. I have found this to be a great time with family discussing topics of morality, nature of evil, heaven, hell, and most importantly the reason we are here on this planet.
After Breakfast:
My wife home schools our children and this is when I set out to go share the Good News of Jesus. Granted it's not an exact science since God is always working in my life and I never know who I will meet or what will happen but I have a mindset of "What will God have me do today?" and this is quite exciting for me.
I believe my core purpose as a missionary is to share the Good News of Jesus Christ to the world and do this through the LOVE demonstrated by God. I focus on the fact that Jesus was a real person and ultimately the issue boils down to did He rise from the dead or not, and this is where I try to focus my attention, on his death and resurrection and also his teachings and life.
So recently I have ran some Facebook ads to find those who are struggling or have needs or have friends who have needs. I have been able to go and help them through God's providence for me and my family and demonstrate God's love for them.
I do not require anything from the, for example attend a church, give money, give a commitment, etc. I simply extend to them the opportunity to learn about Jesus if they are interested.
My ultimate goal as missionary here in New Zealand is to share the love of God with everyone and that love is Jesus Christ, his life, his teaching, his death and ultimately his resurrection and eternal life and purpose for living on this planet.
I have a small home church where we focus on the model of the early church in Acts 2:42-47
"And they continued stedfastly in the apostles' doctrine and fellowship, and in breaking of bread, and in prayers.
And fear came upon every soul: and many wonders and signs were done by the apostles.
And all that believed were together, and had all things common;
And sold their possessions and goods, and parted them to all men, as every man had need.
And they, continuing daily with one accord in the temple, and breaking bread from house to house, did eat their meat with gladness and singleness of heart,
Praising God, and having favour with all the people. And the Lord added to the church daily such as should be saved."
The focus is to love others the way Jesus loved us, He gave everything so that we could be right with God in how we live and love, and He lived it out himself.
A part of "church" is after we finish we go out and show God's love to the local community. Whether thats through encouraging cards we hand out, gift cards to those working hard to take care of themselves and others or praying and singing and bringing joy and light to those around us. I have found this to be the most fulfilling thing I have ever done! I have had successful startups, mobile apps, etc. but nothing has been as amazing as focusing on the souls of people.
After going out and talking to people, serving people I will go back home and spend time with family as they finish home schooling. I will always feel like there is more I can do and more I can love others and this drives me for the next day. I consider my mission to extend a hand of love in those who are drowning in depression, darkness, and despair because I used to be there myself! Only when I looked to Jesus, grabbed His hand and He pulled me out then told me to go and do the same to others did I truly become whole and at peace.
At the end of the day I will try (many times without success lol) to listen to or watch the Gospels to be reminded of how amazing God is and I will also pray.
I hope this helps explain a bit about my day-to-day but I have found with God there is not exact day to day, only a struggle to love others more, to love and live like Jesus and when I do this I find it to be amazing, because then I find I walk closer to God and that is a journey I would hope everyone will take.
For those who have made comments about the "religion" of Christianity I would encourage you to take another look at Jesus. I find most I talk to have an issue with the "church/religion of Christianity" but few have issues with the life, teachings and sacrifice of Jesus. When people say they fell away from church/religion I simply ask "but why did you stop following Jesus" and I discover they never truly knew who Jesus was...
I want to conclude with telling you that from my own experience that God loves you, He showed you how to LIVE and LOVE in His Son Jesus Christ all you have to do is follow Jesus.
1 John 1:7 "But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin..."
God Bless You!
If you have any questions please feel free to email me at hello@titusblair.com
This thread is surprising to me. Not just as a topic on HN, seems it will be a downvote upvote war lol.
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This response was going to be in reply to ex-Mormon with PTSD but I broadened it to a new thread since this got long.
To answer OP, I do not have a religious or spiritual practice. Unless you call doing things I enjoy and trying to appreciate the moment spiritual.
To respond to the threads, I'm surprised by the number of comments saying religion, and in particular incorporating their children, is a regular routine for their family.
Though most not to the extreme of experience of the ex mormon HN er.
To me adults can believe and do whatever they want. If it makes them happy great. Makes them a better person even better.
So long as it doesn't encroach on others' autonomy and freedom. Especially children.
That often leads to children not having safe spaces or potentially being outright kicked out of their home.
The opposite of what a lot of religions preach.
Encroaching on freedom and autonomy of adults is increasingly happening too.
Potentially the most damaging is having multiple SCOTUS justices openly evangelizing their religious institutions and actively ruling to reshape our country based on their faith.
Damaging to women & gender especially.
Amy Coney Barrett to me is shocking in that she belonged to a super odd fringe group where she served as a literal handmaid (their term, to be fair though it's more like a leadership role).
An otherwise probably intelligent women leading an org preaching that “Women were homemakers; they were there to support their husbands,” one former member said in an interview. “My dad was the head of the household and the decision-maker.” wapo: https://archive.is/S1NSh
Does her husband decision-make her legal rulings?
BTW these strict and forced gender roles are also being forced and hurting with trans treatment bans and other gender identity discrimination.
Scalia is another example. So too was Barr. Oddly all catholics even though evangelicals hold more power and %.
I suggest reading Barr's speech to Notre Dame it was crazy to me. [2]
He specifically said he made decisions based on his interpretation of Catholicism. A bunch of the OG Trump pushers like Bannon are part of this weird Catholic group (example oddness: they built a militaristic monastery compound for 'gladiators' in italy)
They are open about their campaign to reshape the US into what they view as its origins, specifically governed Christianity (also implied white but that's another thread)
Barr said that this decreasing religious participation - specifically christianity - is the demise of rule of law, ethics, & what he considers the breaking up of families (divorce, or what I consider the autonomy not to be in relationships you don't want to be in, or are in danger with). Maybe allowing states to ban divorce is on the chopping block next.
That's scary to me. The people in charge of enforcing and shaping the law will tell you in a speech that they are making decisions guided by their religion, no matter what they tell the Senate that religion has nothing to do with it or that somehow they've never had an opinion on Roe...
Other examples abound in SCOTUS, look to religious schools. Ruling it's 'discrimination' & forcing state funding of religious schools which do actually discriminate in their written rules against for instance LGBTQ students and faculty (actively writing that they refuse them education, which goes against 70 years of SCOTUS rulings). Not to mention not having to actual teach things like you know, science.
Spending time reminding myself that there is no soul, god, afterlife or anything likewise as a reminder that we’re just animals and our consciousness’ need to be anything more is ego getting in the way of being truly empathetic and reverent of the time we have here.
I agree with you, and I don't think that's the assertion that Harari makes in his book. He first widens the definition of religion to include other belief systems such as money, commercial organisations, economic systems, and polytheistic religions, and acknowledges that many of these aren't directly bound to any sense of morality (which isn't to say they're immoral either).
That's fair. I have not fully digested Sapiens yet, and was arguing against the smaller point of clear belief communities versus engagement in the abstract mental models we call society writ large :)
I reread my comment but I'm not sure how you leaped there. I said morality need not be tied to ritual.
Religions and morality are often disjoint, simply due to Euthyphro's dilemma and how that plays out in practice. Divine command theory externalizes responsibility for behavior and thus promotes and excuses immoral action (meaning many religion's resolution to the dilemma puts them into a commitment to behaving immorally).
Religions usually usurp the role of being the source of morality. It's a necessity for them because that's the only way they can cover up their deep and vast immorality.
You can't be evil if people believe you define what evil means.
This way omicient, omnipotent God can still be most moral being in existence while allowing babies to die of cancer.
I'll take the downvotes but this entire thread is mostly depressing. If you want to know why people believe in 5G nanobots from vaccines or pizzagate you need only look here in this thread at all these people believing in nonsense.
most similar videos critique religion but to me, spirituality just means persoal religion and has many of the same traps, bad reasoning, and bad consequences.
Not going to downvote you, but I consider that view extremely naive. Without an all encompassing worldview, you are going to need lots of luck to navigate life and the world. The word religion, once you divest it of superstitions, means re-legare, to bind together. And this is what spirituality essentially is, the construction of a coherent worldview that makes sense. God or other concepts like that are just syntactical proxies. Don't read things too literally, or you'll end up coming across as more deluded than the targets of your criticism (or as Harris). "Only the shallowest of minds would think that in great controversy one side is pure folly".
The person you linked (Sam Harris) is actually one of the leading voices advocating for spirituality without religion. He wrote about it in his book Waking Up: A Guide to Spirituality Without Religion.
Instead of unthinkingly downvoting the parent, consider this thought experiment: what if the question had been:
“Ask HN: What form of Christianity do you practice?”
Asking a large, diverse community such a question comes off as gaslighting those who are not part of the implied group. As such, it’s rude and offensive and has a detrimental effect.
It would be better to just change the form of the question to remove the problem: For those people who have one, what is your daily spiritual practice?
Christianity, after comparing few religion, the Jesus teaching and practice (the only required practice is pondering/remembering His words and implement it in real life: like love one another, forgive, test every teaching, etc) far way superior than newer one that claiming to be continuation of it '__')
after reading history of the religion's founder (the killings/torture and robbing, marrying a minor when he's already 50s, marrying his adopted son's wife, very suspicious teachings that only benefit himself, mixed up names and messed up commands in their scripture, demeaning women, etc), I feel like 25% of this world been totally fooled or brainwashed, but thankfully only a little of them that are truly following his teaching/deeds (one that in war region)
I’m an atheist, so I think the most spiritual thing I do is indeed believe in the power of my favourite programming languages’s type system to stop me from writing broken software.
If that serves as a higher power enough to stop you stepping into God-mode yourself and childishly assigning yourself powers far beyond your actual reach, it'd be a higher power enough to work if you were recovering from alcoholism and drug addiction.
That would make it a higher power powerful enough to legit save your life, whether or not you ever refined the concept further.
I do wonder to what extent God is defined as negative space (or, if you like, you can call your human-centered drives and selfish whims 'negative space' and define God as 'positive space', that which is not you and never will be)
If you're into stuff like chaos theory, Godel et al (I grew up reading Godel, Escher, Bach by Hofstadter) it's really not a big jump to conclude that 'not-me' is not only powerful and meaningful beyond your comprehension, but knowingly or unknowingly has motivation and intentionality.
We often 'humanize' this intentionality. We make it act like a toy human in our minds. My own spirituality is in trying to remember that this God, this coherence of systems that are not me, exists: but also in trying to recognize when there's a harmony and synthesis beyond what I would expect of callous randomness. I don't know how it works but I get reminded that the energies I put out, come back favorably to me… or, indeed, to others who are not me but who need a break.
I'm happier living my life in that mode, especially when I'm able to receive this process as a gift. If I put out 120% and feel like I'm getting back 70% I'll be very bitter and cranky, even if half my effort is waste and wheel-spinning and second guessing. If I put out 60% and get back 70% it feels like a gift.
I can control how I orient myself to all this, but I don't know how my 60% turns into 70%, any more than I understand how artificial life ants learn to traverse the John Muir trail. I'm just a little piece of it and now and then I get glimpses of the bigger picture. I'm not meant to stay there, but I get a peek.
I'd call that spiritual practice. It's stepping outside cold rationality and mastery of all abstraction, and letting a big chunk of 'not-me' into my world.
Not to be snarky but why do you think this can't be seen as spiritual?
What's the real difference?
Even if you think believing in the spaghetti monster is just a joke, it does the SE thing as other believes: it units you with other believers, it gives you an answer and it gives you structure.
It's not your place to evaluate your belie e against others.
After all I have never seen someone who actually follows Jesus Christ and does what he apparently in there believe system did.
