ILX Religiosity and Spirituality and Agnosticity and Atheicity Poll

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

but like yeah some of the takes here on religion are just, like, totally orthogonal to how i look at it. like there's this point of view that sees it as an abstract theoretical construct, like "What Is The Ultimate Nature of Reality" or some shit, or maybe sometimes "What Is Delusion And How Do We Cure People Of It", and for me religion is more... what the fuck even is this. ok yeah i can cobble together some kind of empiricist explanation for some things but it seems to fall short somehow. particularly since empiricist explanations of, like, my queerness have tended to be made-up bullshit that didn't do me no favors. like, this isn't the only angle for me to approach this from but it's the _least controversial_... why am i a woman? you know what, how about magic, how about literal fucking magic, because you know what, y'all don't _have_ any convincing explanations, y'all can't even _say_ what a woman is, what a _gender_ is, y'all just making shit up and it's internally consistent and it has no relationship whatsoever to reality as people actually experience it.

xp map, alfred, if I was being a jerk, I wouldn't mind a dickish response, and would rather be disabused of whatever it is that bothers people about what I'm putting out. I mean, I came to that POV in the first place by being disabused of the idea that flat earthers etc... were absurd people who genuinely believed what they were saying. I mean, they're absurd for other reasons, but I did come to respect their otherness in a sense while respecting them much much less in other respects.

Trees and squirrels are cool but I am going to push back a bit on the notion of making nature your "higher power," or whatever.

I am really into human connections and art. Empathy and creativity are more important to me than any number of cool birds or whatever.

Like, yeah a forest or a mountain is really nice and I dig those but I get a bit more info from a novel, a symphony, a friend, a rock concert, sexual intercourse, a nonfiction audio book, an architecture tour, a history museum, etc.

Responding to a couple of things:

I know a lot of ILXors love the dude for various reasons, but Nick Cave has exactly the beliefs you'd expect a 66-year-old Australian man to have, and those beliefs hold very little interest for me.

I don't know about "vulgar animism" or any other kind, but animals are fucking amazing and one big part of religion, particularly the Big Three, seems to be setting oneself (meaning humanity) apart from the rest of the world. "Man had dominion over all the animals" and shit like that. And to me it's much more interesting to surrender to the idea that you are an animal, and your way of perceiving the world is just one way of perceiving the world and maybe not even the best one. I mean, other species have sensory arrays that would feel to us like superpowers or magic, but we're supposed to be "superior" to them because...we can drive bulldozers and make porn?

ymp you seem to be kind of insisting that you are competing with another persons expression of what they find wonder in

if we manage to disregard gods and instead it turns into competing arguments for what replaces them then lets just keep gods it saves having to burn a lot of museums

like, yeah a forest or a mountain is really nice and I dig those but I get a bit more info from a novel, a symphony, a friend, a rock concert, sexual intercourse, a nonfiction audio book, an architecture tour, a history museum, etc

We don't actually have the monopoly on sexual intercourse I don't think. Not that I'm advising venturing outside of humanity for these purposes.

I feel the weight of my existence most keenly in cathedrals (not necessarily in Belgium), in the woods, in the attention of an other and in art. I do not know if this is evidence of some higher power. My instinct tends toward the *not* but I'm unsure. And, in truth, the focal point, the endpoint, the whatever of it, is the least interesting and the least attainable part. I'm good with the mystery and am reasonably convinced it's just a quirk of consciousness, and an entirely agreeable one.

a forest or a mountain is really nice and I dig those, but I get a bit more info from a novel, a symphony, a friend, a rock concert, sexual intercourse, a nonfiction audio book, an architecture tour, a history museum, etc.

I could be way off base here, but using this particular set of comparisons makes it sound like you appreciate a forest or a mountain mainly as a kind of intermittent aesthetic experience that happens inside your head when you are in their vicinity. aesthetics seem to me like a very narrow aperture through which to appreciate them.

Sorry, folks, no intention of dissing your formulations of meaning. Just, there are some people who speak about nature (and natural beauty) and science as the main alternatives to religious belief.

It seems like it's less common to hear about human interactions and human connections and human art-making as an alternative to religion. I want to forward those an alternative alternative.

Tldr: I am not arguing with anyone here, just arguing with other people in my personal orbit and wishing to present my own (probably idiosyncratic) perspective.

I see humans, nature, physics, art, religion, et. al. as facets of the same ground source we term "reality". there is no need to see them as alternatives to one another. each may be taken on their own terms, but no one presents more than a partial view of what is.

I've recently embarked on a relatively casual study of physics and it's made me question the rest of reality.

I read something recently that certain hardcore theoretical physicists consider all matter an emergent property and not worthy of study.

Could be a line out of Borges.

fair enough ymp

nb personally, everything is nature, including everything you note

i struggle to understand where youd stop calling things natural, tbh

'you'd' there is the wider sense, not yourself ymp

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.

― poppers fueled buttsex crescendo (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Saturday, 10 February 2024 07:17 (two hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

that was a big oversight in the original options

― close encounters of the third knid (darraghmac), Saturday, 10 February 2024 07:19 (two hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

Yes, and I thought that was funny seeing this poll. It's standard fare for my experience though. You can be religious, or you can have an interest in culture/intelligent-discussion/idunnowhatrewecallingtheworldthatilxcaresabout?. The mingling of the two is a strange fire and water trick to some people I meet. As an 18yo it took a while for my stoner band buddies to release the religion thing wasn't a bit ("How do you listen to pavement and believe in God" looooooooool). Given religion's popular presentation these days, both from itself and from others, I get it. I think it's unfortunate! But whatreyagonnado?

I've recently embarked on a relatively casual study of physics and it's made me question the rest of reality.

― immodesty blaise (jimbeaux), Saturday, 10 February 2024 09:53 (seventeen minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

Me too! Spend my whole damn life denigrating those science nerds as 4-eyed losers who wouldn't know reality if it punched em in the face but ya know what? They actually know a thing or two about this whole world.

*realise

A close mate (atheist) and I typically circle back to punching down on the epistemological arrogance of the positivist world view as a unifying end to any discussion about God/religion. This joke, after years or re-reunning it, sadly led me to believe Science was actually boring and wtf everyone go study the humanities like actualy human beings? Doing some Scie study has cured this. Those dweebs are really onto something

One of the many things that fascinate me about the field (what little I know about it) is how far removed it is from our/my every day experience. I mean, the fundamental components of the universe may reside in 11-dimensional shapes? Being a math dunce especially, I really have a hard time wrapping my mind around it.

On the macro level, the various ways of speculating about multiple universes are mind-blowing.

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), Saturday, 10 February 2024 02:41 (seven hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

He's a crypto-calvinist! Burn him!

One of the many things that fascinate me about the field (what little I know about it) is how far removed it is from our/my every day experience. I mean, the fundamental components of the universe may reside in 11-dimensional shapes? Being a math dunce especially, I really have a hard time wrapping my mind around it.

On the macro level, the various ways of speculating about multiple universes are mind-blowing.

― immodesty blaise (jimbeaux), Saturday, 10 February 2024 10:37 (fifteen seconds ago) bookmarkflaglink

Yeah, the micro stuff blows me away. I literally never did chemistry, so learning its general concepts for the first time... I really appreciate the imagination in it all. This crazy-technical riff on pre-socratic philosophy which has now become a tool that has built our entire modern world? The macro wonder and awe, religion covers that area for me. But science is doing some mind boggling stuff in investigating the micro which makes me feel like an absolute caveman at times.

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!

old religious like the Bible are constantly evolving through a fusion of horizons between the readers and the text, so they are something like alive. as with a work of art, that in between space is way more vital and interesting than original meaning or intent. by regarding any kind of appropriation as a corruption of something pure i think we kind of surrender a lot of the value of an ancient organism like a book that provides access to the innermost thoughts and feelings of *specific users* in *clearly identified interpretive communities* because they considered the meaning of their very existance through this book.

You can be religious, or you can have an interest in culture/intelligent-discussion/idunnowhatrewecallingtheworldthatilxcaresabout?. The mingling of the two is a strange fire and water trick to some people I meet.

idk Haela-Ravenna Hunt-Hendrix might like a word? like the most overtly religious art that gets a lot of "hipster kisses" is enough of a counter argument by itself, maybe- A Love Supreme, God Only Knows, obv you don't have to actually be religious to appreciate religious art, that in fact the values of our "specific interpretive community" have to meet the art. but if you really want to bury your head in the sand there is still some ineffable spirituality about certain artworks and cultural artifacts that our comfortable modern context can't just conveniently neutralize, it has to be reckoned with.
and i even wonder if there might be a remotely-Christian aspect to e.g. the feelings a lot of us have about the reflexive indifference poor people constantly face & with which they are regarded - "No room at the inn". just calling youself an atheist or not having spiritual beliefs doesn't automatically sever your ties with the lineage and influence of religious interpretive communities because we aren't separate.

Someone's been reading their Gadamer lol. I agree though: it's a funny idea to apply the death of the author to the Bible, but at least from the Christian perspective, if the Bible ain't *interpreted* then it's a dead book like any other dead book. Religious texts gain their meaning when they are engaged by their (always contemporary) readers. The beauty and chaos of a changing faith is that it actually wrestles with its text. That wrestle can lead to awful consequences like genocidal justification or anti-semitism, but it can also lead to beauty like emancipation or radical forgiveness/generosity. Obviously the Bible, or any text, is not entirely what we make it. We're not radical relativists. It (and everything) has a substance, a sache, but any engagement with it is always going to be a partnering of today and the text.

I'm not saying religion and art has no overlap, I'm not that silly! Just making a generalization that the ilx temperament of unrestrained cultural digestion and critique is not typically partnered with active religious practice

I dunno if socialists would appreciate your suggestion that care for the poor is tied to the culturally religious history they have been born into. Whether right or wrong, don't think you'll win anyone over with that direct line of thought

You can be religious, or you can have an interest in culture/intelligent-discussion/idunnowhatrewecallingtheworldthatilxcaresabout?. The mingling of the two is a strange fire and water trick to some people I meet.

idk Haela-Ravenna Hunt-Hendrix might like a word?

whatever it is that she's doing certainly _seems_ like a strange fire and water trick from where i set, haha. i'm not totally unversed in christianity but i gotta say _93696_ means a lot more to me as art than it does as theology! i do see whatever she's doing as sharing basically nothing with, say, "awesome god".

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!

old religious like the Bible are constantly evolving through a fusion of horizons between the readers and the text, so they are something like alive. as with a work of art, that in between space is way more vital and interesting than original meaning or intent. by regarding any kind of appropriation as a corruption of something pure i think we kind of surrender a lot of the value of an ancient organism like a book that provides access to the innermost thoughts and feelings of *specific users* in *clearly identified interpretive communities* because they considered the meaning of their very existance through this book.

i mean it does come back to robert wyatt to me so often, "god song". "god song" captures something really important about my approach to religion, which is very much "what the fuck, god?" all the shit i hear people say. if "god don't make no junk", why the hell did i need to get an orchi? i'm with neando here. you know why i hate the christian god? not enough fucking _smiting_. people for 2000 years have been using him as a pretext for practicing hatred and violence against queer people. and what the fuck has god done about that? nothing. he is _responsible_ for what people do in his name, or he is dead, or both. either way, you ask me if i want to attack and dethrone god? you betcha. why the hell _wouldn't_ i? this is a being i should love, i should respect, i should _revere_ and _worship_? i mean, god, i love bill fay, but his existence, his deep, profound, meaningful faith, doesn't erase the unremitting abuse christianity has perpetrated in so many ways, so many forms, over the course of my life, doesn't negate the fact that christianity _still_ perpetrates that abuse from the highest places.

if we storm heaven, if we attack and dethrone god, is that bill fay's god? has he had anything taken from him? i don't know. i trust bill fay to take care of himself and those he loves. i see no reason to believe that i wouldn't be one of the ones he loves. bill fay, he's one of the ones i love, and i love him for his faith, and yet i hate god, and i hate christianity, and i want to see... i don't want to see the churches burned, but i want to see the abuse the churches perpetrate _stopped_. i love bill fay and i accept that he thinks of himself as a christian and that word means _nothing_ to me, in the sense in which he uses the term. that's a him thing.

i don't know if any of that makes sense. religion is one of those things, god is one of those things, the more i look at it the more it dissolves into incoherence.