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You cannot have a painting without an artist. A sculpture without a sculpture. A tool will never use itself, it takes a user.
Imagine a blank and static universe. Someone had to add or move something to start the initial reaction even if they never play a part in the events after.
In some sense there is a creator. I just don't know in what capacity.
I think I believe in something more like… biology and physics working together in some way to create our existence. I had a near death experience once when I was in ICU for several months. I met, a… thing, it was like a large glowing spark but its light didn’t travel away from its self, its glowing was contained to its “body”. I asked “is that me?” and the “room” we were in was filled with a sense of “no” it’s taken me ten years to process that experience and be able to talk about it, idk what that spark was but I’ve come to accept I believe that is the All Thing, it’s the eternal spark all sentient life stems from, I do believe access to long term memory is critical for being a part of the All Thing not simply being animated biology, like a mosquito for example.
I think the All Thing animates biology as a way to experience the physical world because it must “live” somewhere and we are all avatars, our thoughts are only important in the sense that they lead us to experiences and forming memories. I believe in nonduality and that physics is actually the closest humans will ever get to describing a god, an All Thing
Truth is proof - I can neither prove the number of gods is >0, nor prove it is =0.
Thus cautious agnosticism (since the evidence suggests, if there is at least one god, then they really hate us).
Upvoting the actual answers here, as some who were not the target audience and haven't read the question have answered.
Agree.
OP wants to hear opinions from people agreeing with statement X, not those who disagree.
I disagree with the notion of the universe being a probability game, but that's not asked.
Thumbs up from me too. I'm always eager to hear/read from people who aren't shy but rather open and reasonable about their beliefs, whatever those may be.
Sort of, but it's more a comforting theory rather then a true belief. I came up with it when I was younger, doing a lot of psychedelics, and meditating often on the nature of existence and reality.
My theory is that God is everything. The earth, the stars, our fellow beings. All of reality makes up a complex web that I loosely refer to as a "consciousness" for lack of a better word. The nature of this "consciousness" is incomprehensible to us. It does not activly intervene in our daily lives, and operates on a scale beyond our comprehension. Mostly, it simply is. It is the oblivion from which our consciousness was once plucked, and it is where we will one day return.
In essence, each of us is a tiny fragment of reality experiencing itself. The meaning of life is to experience it. All of it. Joy, pleasure, and suffering. It is all a part of the whole of existence. When we die and return to the infinite our individuality is lost, but maybe God learns something about itself.
In some sort of greater being yes, in any kind of church or following no.
I find I have my own belief in some unknown cosmic entitys, something along the lines of energy is always in a state of flow, life and death, rocks to dust, consciousness to the sprawling reaches of the universe a bit of new age spirituality stuff,
That’s kind of where I am with it. Anything human led is suspect and I think any resemblance to “Jesus church” is long gone. I want to believe but I struggle with God being “just” but also allowing so much injustice.
If I had to put myself somewhere I believe in God but my faith for the rest of it is dwindling.
It provides hope and comfort. Christianity and Romanian culture are deeply intertwined, and I’m a fan of our traditions.
I went to a Romanian Holy Unction service and it was beautiful.
Makes me feel more assured and will reduce my suffering until I die. After my death, regardless of if I am right or wrong, the net positive of having had the soothing idea of a larger meaning can’t and won’t be retroactively undone. So why the hell not?
No reason. I just do.
I saw something fitting a common description for God (in meditation). Yes, a total mystic vision.
(The creator of reality. A star (that also looks like a jewel) that emits poetry energy. And then I react to that energy by dreaming this dream that I call reality. Like contriving lyrics for an instrumental song.)
No intelligence or personhood as far as I can tell. Just a vast brainless mystico-cosmological gusher of energy.
Consciousness exists. This implies that either consciousness is some emergent property of sufficiently complex interconnected systems, or it's some universal force that complex interconnected systems "channel".
If it's emergent, it seems less presumptuous to assume that the most complex interconnected system of all, the universe itself, would develop consciousness. That universal consciousness might as well be called "God". If it's a universal force, it might as well be called "God". Anyway you slice it, a universal consciousness seems inevitable from a sober metaphysical analysis.
Lots of people have ascribed lots of culturally specific attributes to the universal consciousness which are obviously quite silly. The core statement that "I am that 'I am'" is really the only meaningful attribute we can identify.
Personally I'm a huge fan of the Alcoholics Anonymous understanding of "god" and I think it applies more widely.
In AA it is supposed to be A-religious so as to accommodate as many people as possible. To them, god is whatever higher power you need to put your faith into to do better. An entity who you are striving to make proud or you are asking for guidance or help, etc.
This genericized god idea kinda gives up the game to me as an atheist, but it doesn't mean it's bad. In fact it's made me believe in god as an idea.
There are plenty of studies on "manifesting" goals and how saying out loud to yourself or to someone at all substantially increases your chance of succeeding in your goal. This is just prayer or a magic spell or whatever else you wanna call it. I call it a ritual.
The fact that god is a made up idea has been uncontested in my mind for eons, however the psychological power of a belief in god is new to me and makes me appreciate the systems of religion more (doesn't excuse a lot of their bullshit).
AA is a great program and is basically secularized Christianity. Two great religious books that talk about the program from a more explicitly religious perspective are "Breathing Underwater" (Catholic) and "Steps of a Transformation" (Orthodox). Even with your agnostic perspective I think you would find them enlightening.
Cos I've done drugs, and experienced heightened states of love, being, appreciation for nature and humanity, states that feel magical yet real, even if only temporarily.
The very fact those states of mind are achievable at all gives me a certain emotional grounding and inner certainty that reality has purpose, or at least meaning. As opposed to just being a happy accident of atoms and energy arranging themselves in this miraculous way to create life. That's just a logical explanation of how, not why.
We're almost all driven to look for meaning in life. Even if it's just to "find your own purpose", that journey presupposes you have one to begin with.
I guess I feel a belief in god without having much idea of what god is, or even what they want. But I don't believe at all that logic, science, reason etc. are things you have to choose instead of religious belief. They're things you have as well. You can't square the two - the Rubik's cube of logic doesn't twist that way.
OK, our reality might have a purpose or meaning given by a god - but then what about that god's purpose/meaning? Was it given by yet another one higher up? You can keep going up layers like this and finding meaning on each one, but eventually there has to be a final one, a reality that was not designed by anyone. But why does it exist?
Some people may say that there's no proof that we actually exist. And maybe we don't, but the fact that we can think and experience things means that even if our reality is somehow fake, there has to be one that isn't. Because if nothing existed, there would be nothing at all. Not a void, just nothing, not even the possibility of existence. So something, at some level, must exist. But why?
"Because God created us" is not good enough for me, because it doesn't answer anything. If we exist because a god created us, that still means that a god existed before us. Why does this god exists then?
We'll never find out. Any answer we find will only open things up for new questions. And just like a child that is just starting to experience things, we'll never run out of questions.
If you look at it very very loosely, many major religions are reaching toward the same general concepts and have enough similarities to suggest a consensus that there's a "something" up there.
We probably all have an imperfect idea of what that "something" is, but there are enough similarities (or echos of the same ideas) across many religions to suggest they're looking at the same indivisible thing and interpreting it differently.
I don't believe in the Christian god because there are too many contradictions and I don't think the divine truth is corruptable. Anything so corrupt it doesn't even agree with itself cannot be divine truth.
contradictions
Like what
I see a fair amount of Christian-related posts in your post history so I'm gonna go ahead and suggest that this is probably a conversation you don't want to have. I'm trying not to be an asshole here, but I am very well read on the subject of Christianity, so suffice to say that contradictions exist, they are widely known, and I find Christian apologia on the subject wholly unconvincing.
That said, if I'm really the person you would like to go on this journey of discovery about your religion with then I will take you, but I can't say that you are very likely to enjoy the results.
I'm an Orthodox Christian our theology (which is that of the first thousand years) is likely different from anything you take issue with from Catholic or Protestant traditions in regard to soteriology, ecclesiology, sanctification etc
It's great that you have interest in Christianity but Orthodoxy leans on 2000 years of scholarship and tradition. With all due respect you're not going to ask any new questions or bring up any novel points. I don't claim to be an expert but have Orthodox resources I can draw from.
Fair point. I am not very familiar with Orthodox Christianity at all, save a little of the very early history. You also sound fairly well-educated on the subject, which makes you twice over not the usual kind of person who responds to my comments about religion.
So, first, let me apologize for making assumptions; the usual kind of person I get is an American evangelical protestant who hasn't read most of his or her own bible and is of the opinion that anything important for them to know would be whispered on the wind directly into their ear by god himself, so they have a pretty dim view of learning in general, but also of learning about their religion in specific. That's clearly not you. My bad.
Second, it's my understanding that Orthodoxy (probably not the right word, my bad) uses fundamentally the same scriptures as Catholicism and Protestantism, with some additions to the Old Testament. My issues come from the bible's descriptions of god, events, and people, so I'm going to assume there's enough common ground that my these translate to Orthodoxy as well as the others. Please correct me if I'm wrong.
I have 3 core issues with Christianity:
These, to me, seem like unsolvable, unavoidable paradoxes. I see two paths when faced with them:
I don't begrudge people who believe or find comfort in it, mind you, but it's not for me. I'm searching for Truth, not a search for 'it's probably not true but I guess it's a nice idea?'
I believe in God because I think its the best explanation for the existence of our universe with it's laws. A being outside of our current space/time setting our universe into motion just makes sense to me.
If our universe requires a being outside it as an origin, why shouldn't that being itself require another being of even further outside as an origin, and so on?
@FooBarrington @IttihadChe It’s turtles all the way down. 🐢
TAG addresses infinite regress. A transcendent being functions outside of our physical and metaphysical constraints.
Scientists believed this for the longest time, but I've recently seen a documentary explaining that, at the very bottom, there's a giant koala bear. Apparently they're still trying to determine why it's smiling.
