ILX Religiosity and Spirituality and Agnosticity and Atheicity Poll

That should have said "God or anything at all for that matter". Been a long week.

The Nick Cave book/interview "Faith, Hope and Carnage" has a lot of really thoughtful, moving, provocative stuff to say about, well, faith, but also specifically religion, especially considered in the wake of his son's death. I posted the recommendation to the/a Cave thread, but it's well worth a read, imo.

it’s interesting— even as a non theist/agnostic/atheist i don’t perceive my system as “to believe in nothing” (though i suspect i’m sort of mischaracterizing the actual intent of that summary). Still, instead i think/feel of religion as a kind of like, an interesting or even fascinating intersectional behavioral collection of— dunno, ideas? rules for living? social systems? i must think more about it. and i i’ve not yet. it is more of just an “understanding” in the back of my mind. and often intuitive. but it’s not like “believing in nothing” outside of my own mind and perception, or outside of this perceptual world. rather, i can perceive or believe in no external, intentional agency.

so god feels fake but religion seems real

There is definitely a particular understanding in religion that is worth indulging in at one point or another simply to experience the richness of life. I think a belief in God can be separate from this. In fact I think a belief in God must be separated from this if you're going theist. It's a small God that only lives in religious rites and church incense. But where I'm sceptical about evangelising belief, I'm utterly on board with spreading the good news that religious rite is an open door, and a part of the world worth experiencing (and hey maybe it's not for you! My wife doesn't like sport the weirdo)

TBC I was raised religious, attended mass most Sundays until I left home, and went to Catholic school so it's not as though I haven't given the whole religion thing a good college try. I just can't get past the fact that to me it all just seems like BS designed to make people feel better about the many terrifying, cruel, and unexplainable things in life. Trust me, I wish I could believe in something. I think it would be a lot more comforting but I just can't.

Hunt3r's description of atheism is quite apt. It's not really belief in "nothing." I don't consider myself an atheist, but I struggle with that idea of an intentional God who has a discernible Will. There was a (brief, and increasingly distant) time in my life where I believed in such a God wholeheartedly. But for most of my life, I've found the idea of such a God unthinkable and unbelievable in the most literal senses of those words.

These days my position is agnosticism: there could very well be a God, but if there is, it is likely nothing like what people imagine, or are even capable of imagining. I find people who say they know the will of God extremely arrogant, and always return to that bit from Cat's Cradle: "She was a fool, and so am I, and so is anyone who thinks he sees what God is Doing."

Xxps I get that, many conversations with friends where it all just get reduced down to: we're both seeing mostly the same thing, agreeing on most points, communicating clearly about religion, but one of us believes and one doesn't and that's just some unbridgeable gap and so let's just go on.

I mean belief is a real property right? Makes sense it would be that way.

I find people who say they know the will of God extremely arrogant

I'm a Catholic atheist, I enjoy the mystery, the ritual and the spectacle,

*raises hand*

I also dig the robes and incense.

brb going to call my next dinner party for my gay ladies 'fellowship'

― ꙮ (map)

ok this but unironically

at the risk of being controversial i am very much a "when in rome" kind of person, someone inclined to "go along to get along". i got a lengthy history with religion, christianity in particular. so i lived in indiana for a decade and i did religion when i was there. that was what was available and expected - unitarian universalist, and then episcopalian. it's one of my special interests, honestly we _could_ have that "origen of the species" thread about early christian history. i mostly can't speak to non-christian religions, unless you're talking "ironic" ufo cults (scratch the surface of an ironic ufo cult and underneath there's often a real ufo cult) or, i guess, witchcraft - i think of myself as kind of culturally a witch, though i don't really practice.

the thing about christianity is that it has in the past done a lot of good, it's a complicated phenomenon. in nearly every case it's been a source of strength to both the oppressed and the oppressor alike. christianity through its history has been a beacon of hope to all sorts of different people.

except. except i don't really think i can say that about queer people. christianity has never really been _for_ queer people, only ever really _against_ them. that's why i say i'm "culturally a witch" - a lot of what christianity calls "occultism" is really just fucking queer. i mean you need do no more than look at eliphas levi's conception of "baphomet" (the name appears in medieval christian texts, likely as a corruption of "muhammad"). "half-human and half-animal, male and female, good and evil, etc.", sez the wiki article. "male and female" meaning that baphomet has tits and a dick. i mean, people can read into baphomet whatever they want, but for me, baphomet makes me feel _seen_, in a positive way.

all of this... "stone that the builders rejected" stuff, i mean, christianity appealed to me as someone who was different, who didn't fit in with the norms of society, and christianity seemed to embody both those norms and the possibility of a rejection of those norms. i'm into paradox. i was really into Dick when i was younger, and his ideas about gnosis, like there's something in there that's not too dissimilar from levi's, you know, "marriage of heaven and hell", except with christianity it never seemed to manifest as tits and a dick

i've said this before, but the whole idea of being "born again", to me that's the most fucking hilarious thing. oh, you're born again? you don't look any different to me. i grew tits. christianity talks a big game about change and community and all that shit but there's no fundamental basis or meaning to it. when christianity has meaning it's a movement of people who have something in common, who share a common oppression. catholicism, i was raised catholic and taught that it meant "universal" but universal religion is meaningless, see: why i stopped being a unitarian universalist. you can't actually be for everyone. you welcome some people in and other people leave. liberal christianity doesn't seem to get that. they talk a form of christianity that loves everyone equally, they love me and the people who want me dead in christ's name.

can christianity now stand for anything but hate? i don't think so. and i don't think it's an accident. i think it's the one thing christianity can't reconcile to itself, the one place where its promise of liberation for all fails: queer people.

queerness itself _is_ a religious experience for me, in some pretty profound ways that i'm not gonna get into right now. being queer fills the same place in my life that i tried, and failed, to fill with religion. and so i'm evangelically queer. i thought i couldn't be queer, and i was wrong, and i am so fucking happy about that. it's changed my life for the better. i'm here to spread the good news: even if you think you aren't queer, there are so many amazing ways to be queer! it's worth learning and exploring and figuring out if there's a flavor of queer that's right for you.

im many times on record in this thread but i guess its an essential topic tbf

one thing im not sure ive picked out before from my thoughts is the treatment of belief as a choice, either way, which ofc it isnt

“belief is a beauty thing” - jim kerr

Not that it's unpopular, especially in the wake of Trumpism, but viewing the nature of belief through the lens of kayfabe has been pretty helpful and I think doing so should be more popular -- like at least as popular as people chucking out their record collections when Marie Kondo was a thing.

Like Camaraderie and Lord Alfred I find a Mass to be great theater. Bells and incense etc. Even though I am not a believer at all.

Generally I can hang with Bertrand Russell and Philip Larkin and Francis David: religion seems aesthetically interesting, and practicing it can be quite soothing. There is a lot of rich history and culture around it. But from an epistemological viewpoint, it's really tough to support absolutist truth claims. Especially, exclusive ones. Having precisely one path up the mountain just feels like a cruel design for a universe. And I can't worship someone who is that openly cruel.

one thing im not sure ive picked out before from my thoughts is the treatment of belief as a choice, either way, which ofc it isnt

― close encounters of the third knid (darraghmac)

interesting. i'd like to hear more about your perspective on this.

An early passage in that Cave book that caught my eye:

As I’ve gotten older, I have also come to see that maybe the search *is* the religious experience – the desire to believe and the longing for meaning, the moving towards the ineffable. Maybe that is what is essentially important, despite the absurdity of it. Or, indeed, because of the absurdity of it. When it comes down to it, maybe faith is just a decision like any other. And perhaps God is the search itself.

Later, when questioned about the "magical thinking" of religion:

Some see it as the lie at the heart of religion, but I tend to think it is the much-needed utility of religion. And the lie – if the existence of God is, in fact, a falsehood – is, in some way, irrelevant. In fact, sometimes it feels to me as if the existence of God is a detail, or a technicality, so unbelievably rich are the benefits of a devotional life. Stepping into a church, listening to religious thinkers, reading scripture, sitting in silence, meditating, praying – all these religious activities eased the way back into the world for me. Those who discount them as falsities or superstitious nonsense, or worse, a collective mental feebleness are made of sterner stuff than me. I grabbed at anything I could get my hands on and, since doing so, I’ve never let them go.

I found this line of thinking intriguing.

Credo consolans

xp truly beautiful. shame about the child abuse.

i'd be more of a fan of religion if this story was canon

Most Delightfully Evil Thing Young Jesus Does in "The Infancy Gospel of Thomas" - a POLL

Danzig's favorite Gospel!

referring to this timeless gem for anyone who's wondering

Now, thoughts: it is interesting that Cave refers to the existence of God as a "technicality." If it were, it would be easy for religions to discard. Obviously, it isn't. I think the basic requirement for all religious communities is the agreement on some indisputable reality. Historically, this has meant a belief in gods; one or many. But the idea is: some deity exists, and their existence requires humans to behave one way or another.

It strikes me now that this shared belief might have to be supernatural to function at all, and this might be why attempts to build non-superstitious alternative to religion have been ineffective. After all, the existence of supernatural beings cannot be proven or disproven, and so we end up outside the realm of disputability. That is in contrast to every other kind of knowledge we can have about the world, especially scientific knowledge, whose whole basis is that it is disputable.

OTOH, the fact that every religion and every community invariably splinters into sects and sub-sects means that it probably doesn't matter. It's like people are just built to disagree.

Zchrys, there certainly have been (and are) Humanist gathering places and societies. They're just smaller and more quiet about it.

sorry i'm kinda divebombing in here with this, but i just feel like saying real quick that i think belief itself is completely beside the point. being is right there in front of us and is an obvious deep mystery. belief seems to arise out of that, always as some kind of explanation for it. i just think it's beside the point, like a second order effect or something.

i mentally categorize 'belief' and 'religion' as psychosocial phenomena that arise out of the fact that being is this wild-ass mystery we will never ever make heads or tails out of, but that we can still observe and be nourished by.

I don't remember if I posted in this thread years ago or not. Raised Catholic, haven't been inside a church in 30+ years. As an adult I have been intrigued by Zen Buddhism and Taoism and Stoicism and Norse beliefs (not so much the gods as the ethical codes of honor and what one owes to one's family and one's community) and have kind of cobbled them all together into a moral code/approach to life that works for me. As far as the supernatural? Hard no. Particularly since moving to an area where I am surrounded by nature, the glory of the physical world is all I need.

I mean, what do I need a god for when I can stand in the woods and stare up at 60-70 foot tall trees?

i agree with you about the glory of the physical world.

More musings from the Cave interview/book:

I think, these days, I would be more considerate towards the mediocre in us all. Well, maybe not the mediocre, but our ordinariness, our sameness.

It’s interesting that one of the most common concerns from people who write in to The Red Hand Files is a feeling of meaningless or emptiness. Also a deep bitterness and cynicism towards the world, that the world and humanity is essentially shit. And a loneliness, too. I guess what I try to do through the songs and through The Red Hand Files is to make the case that our lives are more valuable than perhaps we sometimes think them to be, or, indeed, than we are told they are. That our lives are, in fact, of enormous consequence, and that our actions reverberate in ways we hardly know.

-Well, to be fair, many atheists would agree with that.

I'm sure you're right. Still, there seems to be a growing current of thought that tends towards the opposing view, a sort of cynicism and distrust of our very selves, a hatred of who we are, or, more accurately, a rejection of the innate wonder of our presence. I see this as a sort of affliction that is, in part, to do with the increasingly secular nature of our society. There’s an attempt to find meaning in places where it is ultimately unsustainable – in politics, identity and so on.

-But, hang on, are you saying atheism – or secularism – is an affliction? And that you equate it with cynicism? I mean, come on, non-believers can have a sense of wonder at the world – with nature, the universe, with the wonders of science, philosophy and even the everyday.

No, I am not saying secularism is an affliction in itself. I just don’t think it has done a very good job of addressing the questions that religion is well practised at answering. Religion, at its best, can serve as a kind of shepherding force that holds communities together – it is there, within a community, that people feel more attached to each other and the world. It’s where they find a deeper meaning.

-What kinds of questions, in particular, would you say religion is more adept at answering?

It deals with the necessity for forgiveness, for example, and mercy, whereas I don’t think secularism has found the language to address these matters. The upshot of that is a kind of callousness towards humanity in general, or so it seems to me. And I think callousness comes out of a feeling of aloneness, people feeling adrift or separated from the world. In a way, they look for religion – and meaning – elsewhere. And increasingly they are finding it in tribalism and the politics of division.

-The decline of organised religion may be one reason for that, but there are others, of course, social and political.

Well, whatever you think about the decline of organised religion – and I do accept that religion has a lot to answer for – it took with it a regard for the sacredness of things, for the value of humanity, in and of itself. This regard is rooted in a humility towards one’s place within the world – an understanding of our flawed nature. We are losing that understanding, as far as I can see, and it’s often being replaced by self-righteousness and hostility.

And I'll stop posting clips. Like I said, I found the whole back-and-forth discussion unexpectedly provocative.

I'm a pretty hardcore atheist I guess in that I don't believe in anything supernatural or spiritual, but I could get down with some kind of vulgar animism. Watching birds flit about or squirrels run around it's easy to get lost in wonder that animals can even exist.

I'd agree that actual belief is beside the point, as one's own belief is a mystery box even to oneself, but professed belief very much is the point, and the more unbelievable something is, the more valuable the expressed belief is as a kind of summoning call/hazing filter. So existence of God isn't so much an irrelevant technicality, but would actually undermine how valuable it is to profess that belief.

That makes it really difficult to build a fervent and cohesive following around the splendor of the physical world as is. We have to imbue it with unbelievable healing powers or something supernatural to make it sacred. It was telling when William Shatner came down from his space flight and his reaction to the overview effect, this transformative experience of seeing the entire natural world as he knew it from the other side, was a profound depression -- "The contrast between the vicious coldness of space and the warm nurturing of Earth below filled me with overwhelming sadness. Every day, we are confronted with the knowledge of further destruction of Earth at our hands... It filled me with dread." OK, sounds right, but that's not the way to bolster an environmental movement!

xp Squirrels are Magic would be a better beckoning call than "Squirrels are gonna die if we keep killing them"

I'd agree that actual belief is beside the point, as one's own belief is a mystery box even to oneself, but professed belief very much is the point, and the more unbelievable something is, the more valuable the expressed belief is as a kind of summoning call/hazing filter. So existence of God isn't so much an irrelevant technicality, but would actually undermine how valuable it is to profess that belief.

That makes it really difficult to build a fervent and cohesive following around the splendor of the physical world as is. We have to imbue it with unbelievable healing powers or something supernatural to make it sacred. It was telling when William Shatner came down from his space flight and his reaction to the overview effect, this transformative experience of seeing the entire natural world as he knew it from the other side, was a profound depression -- "The contrast between the vicious coldness of space and the warm nurturing of Earth below filled me with overwhelming sadness. Every day, we are confronted with the knowledge of further destruction of Earth at our hands... It filled me with dread." OK, sounds right, but that's not the way to bolster an environmental movement!

― Philip Nunez, Friday, February 9, 2024 8:57 PM (four minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

i don't know what to tell you hon other than you're really far up your own ass. sorry, i didn't invent perspective!

i think a healthy sense of respect for otherness is kind of required to be a person. ilx has so many dudes who think the answer to everything is in their own minds. sometimes i'm not sure how to be kind to that.

what if god is a cheeseburger and someone already ate him

you motherfucker

that was in common lols

xp I feel like I was saying the opposite -- our own minds are unknowable, or do you mean not taking other people's professed beliefs at their word?

lol Neanderthal

map, that was a dickish response to Philip

in all realness my trouble with believing in the Christian God has been, if what he and his Son said are so important, why has he been ok with letting everybody fuck up the message so badly for the last 2,000 years, like...for a long time the two of them are stage managing everything, and then just disappear forever and in some cases the Biblical canon is still in dispute!

I never got past it, even as a youth, it was this huge seed of doubt that pulled at me but really I just left the church because the fundies wanted me to choose between them and Slayer and I chose Slayer

nick caves projections of atheism arent tbh of any value or interest

its literally just not believing in god, ppl need to chill

"the more unbelievable something is the more valuable the expressed belief is" is tantalisingly close to profound but alas it again imbues expressed belief as something innately valuable

and remember we are talking about belief in a god of whatever stripe here, not like belief in democracy or ubi or feeding the poor, stuff that imo you need to perform belief in as a service to actions and outcomes you think are good

expressed belief in a god is not this, even if you 100% believe that yr god is the source of all good outcomes and actions, yr actual belief in yr god is just a thing you have or dont have and expressing it and especially celebrating it or trying to spread it should probably be seen as the very weird behaviour it is

peace tho

So, is anyone in this joint a believer in one of the Big Three who regularly observes the rites of their religion? I'm curious.

that was a big oversight in the original options

I don't consider myself a believer, per se, but we (as a family, and as individuals in the family) inconsistently dip in and out of various rites and rituals, many of which are as tied culturally to Judaism as they are religiously. I assume it means something to them? At the same time, I'm not sure what they means to me, though probably more than nothing.

i think a healthy sense of respect for otherness is kind of required to be a person. ilx has so many dudes who think the answer to everything is in their own minds. sometimes i'm not sure how to be kind to that.

― ꙮ (map)

i think what you're saying makes more sense than a lot of the hot takes on this thread. sometimes being kind is a lot to ask. is an exceptional thing to ask.

otm