ILX Religiosity and Spirituality and Agnosticity and Atheicity Poll

xp my first thought was "shit. no sex, no drink, no fun". then quickly said out loud "oh wow that's great!" bizarre moment.

― The referee was perfect (Chris)

had the same reaction to my best friend getting engaged a month or two ago. seriously.

-I am an atheist, religions are wrong or misguided and I see no point in indulging them
-I am an atheist, personally, but I accept that the spiritual or religious experience may be useful to others

see even this is too binary. I'm definitely down with the first one, but not quite so arrogant or hubristic as to deny the second. organised religion might suck imo but that doesn't mean i'm completely blind to the benefits it might have for individual communities or people. and likewise as a diehard materialist i might think that spirituality is just a psychological phenomenon, but it's a real and potentially useful phenomenon nonetheless.

this is a really good post and kind of gets at my feelings. it's funny to read that a lot of you find your atheism mellowed out over time b/c i find mine getting stronger--i have really been hating on some religion in the past couple years. but totally feeling the "not so arrogant" concept when it comes to individual experiences of religion and spirituality.

I wouldn't describe myself as a hardcore atheist either, as I concede that there is a possibility that there is a god, I just think it's extremely unlikely. This position is stronger than agnosticism, however.

I don't get why this is stronger than agnosticism - at least by my definition. I don't think of myself as an atheist because I think it's just as presumptuous to claim to know that god doesn't exist as it is to claim that one does.

I'm totally with you though on the "spirituality" thing having connotations of outside influence rather than simply having your brain chemicals tweaked in a particular way.

I was raised Catholic and do love old churches, but for history and not any spiritual reasons. I spent a day at the Vatican this summer and it totally blew my mind, in a way that was probably the opposite of what they intended - it made me think about how much untoward shit was done in the name of god over the centuries and how ridiculously opulent and excessive it all was.

I was telling my still sort of Catholic mom about it and she told me how she stopped giving money to the church at collection time right when all the big child abuse scandals were happening, and now she donates time to help people locally to ensure that none of her money goes to Rome which really made me happy.

I am atheist/agnostic but I was raised in a religious tradition and I like to maintain at least some contact with that
I am atheist/agnostic but I have found value in a religious or spiritual tradition that I did not grow up in.

I chant Hare Krsna on japa beads and keep deities of Sri Sri Gaura-Nitai - I don't believe, but I enjoy the act of worship and the concepts that the process succeeds in keeping at the front of the mind (service, humility, all good things people do think about without worship but for me it is helpful). I also pray the Rosary but that is the tradition I was raised in. For a while there I did nightly offerings to the deities. freaked the guests right out tbh

You were making burnt offerings of vegetables?

"The altar is stained with tomato juice!"

bloody mary?

ha copied in the wrong part - I was answering sarahel's q :

what are these other spiritual practices that people weren't raised with but that they're drawn to?

the process succeeds in keeping at the front of the mind

without ever being able to do this myself, can totally see the benefits and get behind the concept

You were making burnt offerings of vegetables?

lol no there is a whole processing for converting prepared food into prasadam and it extends to the cooking process - more here if you're interested.

ah cool I totally know what I'm serving my houseguests tomorrow evening

people actually come to your house?

Might not be people

would say 'are lured' tbh - it's amazing what an interest in amateur medicine can lead you to

Now you're scaring me

lj are u claiming to be a doctor in bars cos thats not cool man

serve him with an ASBO

Yeah, take off that white coat and go home LJ

You cannot forget who you are.

Ditto. The Evangelicals scarred my worldview for life. Am misquoting someone here but... I don't believe I could live as if there IS no god, I just haven't found a god I can stand to believe in.

gr8080 and I actually grew up in the same denomination but I think his experience of it was possibly less...prescriptive than mine?

Also I took religious very very seriously, like I believed that what you think and what you do in secret is no secret to God and is therefore under just as much scrutiny/pressure as your public life. There IS no private life in Protestant Xtianity, really. Unless yr like a Methodist or sumthin. (joeks)

how about "I am a hardcore atheist and I don't think people who believe in magical faeries, demon goblins, virgin-birthed superheros or talking snakes should be allowed to hold public office or operate heavy machinery"?

I don't believe I could live as if there IS no god

I just do not understand this, so I suppose that makes me a bit of a hardcore atheist

I'm a mixture of options 3 and 6 and don't see them as mutually exclusive at all

also the ocean at night is teh awesome

also Kate OTM throughout here

Are there any Jewish ILXors reading who are atheist/agnostic but still at least semi-observant?

I'm kinda like this...? Although I don't consider myself an atheist at all, I also find the Old Testament conception of God to be mostly lolz. I have loads of respect for various Jewish traditions and schools of thought tho (it's a BIG tent) and definitely consider myself Jewish, if not particularly observant.

shanah tovah btw

basically imho God is totally inscrutable/unknowable/ungraspable by the human intellect, except in the most tangential and random ways (thus my affinity for the "poetry of the ocean at night"). There's plenty of room for this POV in Judaism.

basically imho God is totally inscrutable/unknowable/ungraspable by the human intellect, except in the most tangential and random ways (thus my affinity for the "deep symmetry of nature and mathematics").

^^^^^^^^Yeah, totally, this is a really good way of putting it (edited for my particular understanding/experience though I can see lots of things fitting in that slot.)

Because I am still, obviously, very interested in religion, and do not think it should be abolished, mainly because of its cultural importance (in both senses of the word: 1) as belonging to a group of people and 2) it seems to inspire some really interesting art) as well as its providing a framework for allowing people to keep a "spiritual" (in my definition, as stated above) element in their lives.

I think it's interesting how many people on this thread give some variation on this answer, which is sort of a detached, objective kind of answer. I guess I was more curious about what kind of personal connection and/or revulsion people feel. I mean I say the same kind of thing about religion all the time, but those sentiments never got me into a synagogue. What did get me into synagogue last night for the first time in a while was more of a combination of family, tradition, curiosity, perhaps a certain sense of something I lost from my childhood.

Like it's funny how we tend to say "Yes, I see the value of religion in people's lives" as though we're talking about other people but not ourselves. Fine for them, no thanks for me.

xpost and I should add that my skin crawled for about the first 30 minutes I was in synagogue before I settled down and sort of started to enjoy certain things about it. And I still really hated certain things about it (the zombie-like responsive readings that are actually kind of creepy but you don't realize it, the obligatory appeal to support Israel, the feeling that some people were mostly there to be seen [this was a high-end manhattan synagogue that I wound up at through a friend of my mother in law])

The main reason that I phrased it in third person is because I am generally thinking of very direct experience of people like my mother and her congregation.

I'm also perfectly happy to say "I see the value of religion and spirituality in my own life" however I am NOT willing to discuss that value on a messageboard where people generally like to play other people's experiences for cheap LOLs any further than the vague terms in which I have already discussed it.

I mean, sorry to continuously post, but what do we really mean when we say we see the value in other people's lives? Are we just accepting a kind of stalemate with religion because it won't go away? Are we sincere?

however I am NOT willing to discuss that value on a messageboard where people generally like to play other people's experiences for cheap LOLs any further than the vague terms in which I have already discussed it.

i can understand this

I guess I was more curious about what kind of personal connection and/or revulsion people feel.

i refer you back to my first answer then (atheist/antitheist/misotheist).

I mean, sorry to continuously post, but what do we really mean when we say we see the value in other people's lives? Are we just accepting a kind of stalemate with religion because it won't go away? Are we sincere?

― Ground Zero Mostel (Hurting 2), Thursday, September 9, 2010 4:01 PM (2 minutes ago)

I couldn't be more sincere. maybe thanks to never converting to atheism, i have no need to spread my view at all - i will take a thousand screaming fundies over a spreading the gospel atheist any day (well not politically, but if i had to be stuck in a room with one of them)

i actually get very angry about some of the indignant atheism out there, i think it is just as loathesome as any other group out to force their views on the unwilling. not being clear here because i get so pissed off when i think about it.

Although I don't consider myself an atheist at all, I also find the Old Testament conception of God to be mostly lolz.

I was looking at the torahs in the ark with those torah crown thingies and thinking about how we enshrine this book and it's so fucking WEIRD, like have you actually read what's in there guys?

like, i remember when being an atheist was just something that people thought was odd or unfamiliar or sure maybe a little unnerving, but not an instant albatross of "intolerant pushy dick" around your neck, and i miss those days. i tend to call myself agnostic if the subject comes up in polite acquaintance conversations because i think the connotations of atheism have gotten really vile. which sucks a lot when you think about it.

xpost

i never felt a personal connection with god even when i thought i was a proper god-fearing catholic.

I find these poll options really awkward (and not just because none of the options really adequately describe my spirituality) - first, too many of the atheist or agnostic options really seem to overlap with one another. Second, there's no option for religious people who don't fall into a vague "easter and christmas specials" or "I'm just a new age" hippie - as if it's inconceivable that people could have a religion and be serious about it.

My first reaction was that this was merely a "what kind of atheist are you?" question since the entire varied experience of the world's religions is so easily dismissed. But my second reaction is that the atheist/agnostic questions are almost as bad.

Like this is a poll for people who don't really believe anything, and want to grade out how little they believe, rather than actually describing anyone's actual spiritual experiences.

I dunno. Some interesting points raised in the discussion portion, but really - Vague Poll Is Vague.

― cymose corymb (Karen D. Tregaskin), Thursday, September 9, 2010 5:33 AM Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

What about the fifth option?

I was looking at the torahs in the ark with those torah crown thingies and thinking about how we enshrine this book and it's so fucking WEIRD, like have you actually read what's in there guys?

I love casually perusing the torah (and the new testament, and the nag hammadi too) - so much bizarre stuff in there. always really thought provoking, even if its just from a historical perspective.

R. Crumb's Book of Genesis has been well-thumbed through at my house over the last year

I mean, sorry to continuously post, but what do we really mean when we say we see the value in other people's lives? Are we just accepting a kind of stalemate with religion because it won't go away? Are we sincere?

No, I mean, I genuinely see the difference between my mother as she was in the first half of her life, and the way that she is, now, so much better, has so much more meaning and purpose and clarity and compassion and every positive thing possible, and that she accomplished this without going on mind-melting drugs or becoming a zombie - that religion has made her life better in every possible way.

And I see the things that she does in her congregation and her community, whether it's sitting up all night with the parents who have just lost their only son in a car accident, or organising her congregation to push for the local government to install a more expensive but more envinromentally sound power source at the local hospital, or just rallying the community together to play "cow bingo" to raise the funds to keep the church hall open so, like, people have a *place* to get married and have baptisms and generally just come together and be together as a community. I have respect for the fact that although loads and loads of American religious people are pushing the easy, fundamentalist answers in order to placate their flocks or raise their congregations, that my mother is sitting down and teaching a more intellectual and difficult, but more *tolerant* and conscious and conscience-based version of Christianity. I have respect for her for being one of the few priests in her worldwide church who is *trying* to get people to take a look at the *real* issues affecting the world today - and trying to say things like "what does it MATTER if people are gay? why are we tearing our church apart over this? Why are we IGNORING things like the overpopulation of the earth and the squandering of the earth's resources, because these are the things that we, as Christians, should be trying to deal with" and I really hope that she manages to get her small motion about birth control and the necessity of population control as an environmental issue, and one of the *real* solutions to global poverty, etc. etc. in front of her nationwide church because I do actually believe that this stuff could make a tiny difference.

Because it's obvious from a number of people on this thread that a lot of atheists simply cannot even *grasp* the idea of not being an atheist, and think that somehow, if you can just feed enough *facts* to a religion person, they will stop being religious, and just wake up and become a sensible atheist, like them. When the truth is, that being religious or spiritual is much more something like an issue of *personality* and the response to fundamentalist religion is not *no* religion, but a more humane and compassionate take on religion.

Sorry for the near rant, your mileage may vary, etc. I will probably regret this.

Karen, to be clear I certainly understand what you are talking about, as my father is clergy.

i think this needs to be a double poll with inner and outer life split out.

so, you have your own beliefs ranging from "i know there there is nothing beyond matter, period" to "i am intensely devoted to (the) god(head)" or whatever. and then you have your outer attitudes ranging from "i express my contempt for religious thinking constantly" to "i am actively part of the life of a faith tradition & community". obviously they are related, but that's where people are getting stuck, as i read the thread responses.

I chose the first option, but really I'm not that hostile toward religions and places of worship. I'm more of an atheist with a "live and let live" outlook towards people with other views. The only time I feel hostile towards religions is when they have a direct consequence either on my life on other folks who don't want to take part in them. For example, religion feeding into politics puts me off.

i don't rly fit any of these categories. im atheist but i think churches etc can be nice. and i'd be an idiot to deny that most of the intellectual traditions i 'like' have some relationship with religion.

I might add, clergy that says things like "What is the purpose of kosher meat when we are buying from processors that exploit their workers?" or "Remember what Jews experienced in a new country before you tell people where to build their mosque" (xpost)

relaxed agnostic/cultural Catholic

I wasn't born with a sense of smell and I eventually started to feel that however I am constructed spiritually is similar – just born without whatever part of a person that connects to spirituality/religious thinking/feeling. Which is why I don't worry about being an "intolerant pushy dick"* – why am I going to begrudge another person experiences I can't have? Like I'm not going to go perfume shopping w/my sister or call her stupid and ignorant for doing it, but I'm going to feel pretty depressed and shitty if I go along with her and pretend I'm enjoying myself. So it's fine for others but I'll just leave it alone.

* Plus I try pretty hard, consciously, all the time, not to be this in all walks of my life.

See, I can be awed by nature and mathematics and all that stuff without thinking it has anything whatsoever to do with whatever it is people think they're talking about when they say the word "god."

Because it's obvious from a number of people on this thread that a lot of atheists simply cannot even *grasp* the idea of not being an atheist

????

I think this is far more true in the opposite direction. What's the first things out of most peoples' mouths when they find out someone is an atheist? "How can you live without believing in God? How can life possibly have any meaning? How do you decide what's right and wrong?" Etc., etc., etc.

for my own part, this is best answer:

I am atheist/agnostic but I was raised in a religious tradition and I like to maintain at least some contact with that

but for "like to maintain etc" the answer should be "i know the tradition has affected how i think and how millions around me are thinking"

while we're at it, i find i do have a kneejerk dislike of ppl with the "spiritual but not religious" self-identification. i think there's enough information from the centuries of science and philosophy and religion to make up your damn mind. religions basically ask you to make up your mind, and i feel like i had some kind of intellectual duty to take them up on the offer. is jesus christ the son of god, the risen lord, the embodied eternal word, savior of the world? at 15 i basically said, you know what, no, i really doubt it.