ILX Religiosity and Spirituality and Agnosticity and Atheicity Poll

Sorry some of those seem to have gotten cut off. I think it's basically clear what I was getting at with each option though. I forgot to put an "other" button.

I'm so Athiest I pee secularism

U.P. Freely

kevin shields is god

but yeah i believe in a god, just no affiliation. /end tragic teenage cliche

i just can't come to grips that our whole world was founded by swirling helium. i mean, i believe that it WAS - but i think there's gotta be an entity behind the whole thing. not even a man. something like that futurama god that was just a blinking galaxy. that wuz cool.

Yeah, I probably should have put in something more reflective of a deist or a "god is the universe" kind of view. I sort of unfairly collapsed both that and new ageyness into "spiritual but not religious"

are we talking about Terry Jones on any thread?

thank god no

kevin shieldsarsene is god

I am a hardcore atheist. I don't want to go anywhere near a house of worship unless it's for my cousin's wedding. but I have found value in a religious or spiritual tradition that I did not grow up in.

is actually the weird but true answer for me. i dig and kinda envy how great religion can be, i just cant do it myself.

not bitching about that not being a poll answer btw

shame buddhism or supporting arsenal don't count as a proper religion - atheist and f that noise.

jewish agnostic

Atheist, and teaching biology to college freshmen for six semesters made me never want to talk about religion again in my life.

hahaha abbott your new sn = <3 <3 <3

*shrugs*theist

agnostic i guess? maybe "other"? but i do play capn save-a-religion on the internet

justen, what tradition(s) did you find value in?

That is great, Abbott.

As for me, relaxed agnostic.

Yeah I don't really want this to be about what you 'think' about religion in the abstract so much as how you view its role in your own life (xpost)

Atheist.

Some houses of worship are interesting/beautiful and I like to go near them to admire them though.

indifferent to the existence of god, hostile to the existence of churches

Atheist, and teaching biology to college freshmen for six semesters made me never want to talk about religion again in my life.

You ran into a nest of Young And Rock Solid In Their Belief Christians too?

As for me, atheist since childhood. (I made the mistake of telling some junior high classmates that I didn't believe in God. One of them told a teacher, sure that I was breaking some law by being so, and was surprised when I wasn't called into the principal's office and/or arrested.)

Nontheist, At least until Great Cthulhu rises from the watery depths.

it'd be interesting i guess to discuss when you became an atheist/agnostic - my mother and her family are all pretty religious i guess (polish catholics) but i really lost interest/faith in whatever i was being taught at a pretty young age, around 12 or so. she was pretty cool i guess to let me skip out on confirmation, but i think she'd be shocked (or hurt?), even now, to find out i don't believe in god, or whatever

i guess i guess i guess

Extra Ecclesiam nulla salus

I was raised catholic and went to church (almost) every Sunday growing up. Went to catholic HS and figured out sometime around then that I didn't believe any of it. I wasn't lucky enough to skip confirmation but I had a crush on the kid I sat next to in confirmation class and got some good presents so that wasn't too bad. My parents weren't thrilled at first when I told them I was an atheist but they don't ever mention it at all anymore and neither do I.

There isn't a choice for those of us who actively participate in a faith, or do go to a place of worship every week (or at least try to - the Christian sabbath being a Sunday morning can be a real pain in the ass, though I guess it's kind a circular cause/effect that people go out on a Saturday). Probably go for the fifth choice?

i don't know

I'm pretty militantly agnostic, in that I believe nobody actually knows anything and I think it's arrogant to presume that you do.

There isn't a choice for those of us who actively participate in a faith, or do go to a place of worship every week (or at least try to - the Christian sabbath being a Sunday morning can be a real pain in the ass, though I guess it's kind a circular cause/effect that people go out on a Saturday). Probably go for the fifth choice?

― textbook blows on the head (dowd), Thursday, September 9, 2010 12:48 AM Bookmark

Yeah, the fifth choice would probably be the best. I didn't mean to exclude people from that choice who participate every week so much as to include those who didn't but were basically committedly religious.

Re Hurtings question of what traditions i dig/envy in religion: lots of stuff i guess - in the dig/admire category, it is a legit force of good in the world obv, i mean soup kitchens and house building and food distribution in crisis areas and all that stuff i guess. as a full on atheist, i get infuriated by the peeps in my camp that diminish that because its based on some sort of eventual eternal reward. so fucking what? and yeah there are certainly charitable non-religious organizations but the harsh truth is that they lag far behind the actual person to person level achievements that religion pulls off on the regular.

as far as envy - i think any atheist that can claim that they are glad not to have the haven of eternal reward/afterlife/whatever waiting in the wings during tough times or the death of a loved one is denying the reality of those moments. its not an awesome or comforting worldview, and as a dude that has never had that feeling of superiority that a lot of half-assed atheism flaunts, id be happy to believe, i just kinda dont/cant.

oh and to whoever was curious about the origin of when we became whatever we are, i was raised atheist with an ancestral irish catholic dollop on the top.

hardcore atheist, raised by 1 agnostic and 1 buddhist. would kill for a little bit of faith in my life, tbh

Agnostic, raised Catholic but just found that too oppressive/ridiculous. But I often wish I was a believer because I think, wow, so many people really ARE, why am I not built like that? But any time I go to churches, I find myself looking around at people, wondering if they are really sincere about their belief/prayer (yes, I realize this is incredibly rude).

At the same time, I do sometimes pray, just in an "are you there, God, it's me, Sara" kind of way. Especially if someone asks for prayers, I feel like it's rude to refuse, but I often warn them that the prayers of agnostics might be useless or even worse.

I do like churches, at least ones that don't seem like warehouses full of evangelical Jesus-as-self-esteem jerks. I'm kind of down with the do-goodiness of the Catholics when they aren't oppressing women and gay people and covering up pedophilia.

I voted for the second one, but wasn't really sure that was quite right.

atheist/antitheist/misotheist

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.

both of these.

Atheist who is only hardcore about it in terms of my own life choices - strikes me religion is frequently one of the lesser stupidities/superstitions in most people's lives, and you'd be better off getting irate about magical thinking in general?

I fuck with the Tao tho

i just straight up worship the devil at this point

Where is:

I am atheist/agnostic BECAUSE I was raised in a religious tradition, and I don't want to go anywhere near a house of worship unless it's for my cousin's wedding.

(nb not strictly true; i like going into churches or cathedrals to potter around like a tourist, and they're frequently great musical venues, but unless it's, like, proper choral evensong or something i can appreciate on an aesthetic level, fuck actually going to services. unless i'm back home for xmas in which case it's pretty jokes.)

i used to be a hardcore atheist - but now i'm more of an agnostic, but it's less about "not knowing" and more about "not caring" whether there's a god or not. Because i don't really experience things in a religious or spiritual way, but that's purely an issue of semantics, probably.

Like some people pray, and other people medidate, and i just sit around or go for a walk and reflect on things, or have a dream about things i've been anxious about or not knowing what to do about, and it'll put things in perspective. But I don't see it as any sort of spiritual practice.

This is probably because my parents never made me go to church as a kid, except on vacation - for historical or architectural value. The only other time i went to church was the occasional school choir concert. Churches with shitty acoustics are sad things. Churches with good acoustics are great to sing in, and some of the music is amazing, and really exhilarating to sing with others.

Little from pot 1, little from pot 3. Have no faith, but having being raised Irish catholic and (more relevantly) coming from a cliché-confirming huuuge extended family of Irish catholics, I attend the necessary christening/marriage/funeral ceremonies more than a few times each year. Skip out on anything beyond that though, from memorial masses and any actual praying onwards.

Aunts pray for my soul, which, though I don't believe it's worth anything, is nice.

I am atheist/agnostic but I have found value in a religious or spiritual tradition that I did not grow up in.

This. I was a hardcore atheist growing up but I've since decided that there is so much more joy and wonder in contemplating the mysteries of certain spiritual practices ALONGSIDE the cosmic mysteries of scientific discovery than in Dawkins' dull dogmatism.

xp - like my first memory of religion as a thing was at this lady's house where i'd go for daycare after kindergarten. She was quite religious, and there was a Young Person's Bible that was basically easy reader style bible stories with hanna barbera-esque illustrations - and rather than take a nap at "naptime" - because i'd never be tired - I read this Young Person's Bible. I didn't really grasp that we were supposed to believe the stories. I thought it was kinda like Greek Mythology, which i was also a fan of at the time, where the stories are historically relevant but it's not something you're supposed to believe is true anymore.

The mysteries of spiritual practices are another testament to the fecundity of the human brain imo but yeah I wouldn't wanna just dismiss all that great music and architecture.

I am sure tho that societies reach a point where big R Religion is a negative drag on our possibilities as a species and we've long reached that point.

i think the fact that at least one of the disciples looked like Freddy from Scooby Doo also made me think they were just made up.

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

Xp Thanks Heez

let's just say if I didn't have people that depended on me and as many close connections that I knew would be hurt by it, my desire to stick around a long time would be significantly less

Same, Neanderthal

Any time this subject is brought up, it reminds me of the "inverted lamp" story posted years ago on Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/Glitch_in_the_Matrix/comments/30t9kd/repost_a_parallel_life_awoken_by_a_lamp/

this is pretty wild. but not the first time I've heard stuff like this. my friend who took a bunch of shrooms in the forest claimed he lived about 30 years of another life while he was tripping. in some sense you can have experiences like that in your normal life. I joined RYM around 2008 and sometimes I'll read reviews on there and not realize until afterwards that I was reading something that I myself had written. it doesn't sound like me at all.

I definitely have vivid memories from childhood of things that did not happen - one in particular I'm in this library, where you have to climb up a ladder to get to this attic area where all these books are stored. my great-uncle, the one guy in the family whose personality I definitely inherited, is up there too, and he's teaching me about the universe. there's a chance this is something I remember from when I was 4 or whatever but no actual location I went to, to the best of my knowledge, represents this place at all. I only saw my uncle once or twice a year. But I can tell you exactly what the ladder looks like, the color of the books, even the way the place smelled. idk where it comes from.

That kind of story suggests to me the faultiness/subjectivity of human memory and experience, not that such a place actually exists somewhere.

The inverted lamp story was fake--the original poster eventually admitted that it was fake.

When I was at uni we used to have a game of knocking ourselves out, towards the tail end of a night out on pills then smoking weed for a few hours. One member of the gang had been a rugby player and could knock the rest of us out with a sleeper hold / bear hug (obviously not a safe thing to do but we hadn't moved on to opiods and psychedelics were impossible to find) The first time I did it I did feel like years had gone by with many experiences and bizarre discoveries, then waking up I couldn't even remember who I was or where I was, though it all suddenly came back after about ten seconds.

xp where was that admitted? I'm trying to look it up and not finding the evidence, though a lot of the shit written about it seems to be AI-generated, unfortunately

I had an entire series of dreams over years that included a building that was similar to my high school but not the same building. Eventually, it had a courtyard that was foreign to me, a field nearby, and recurring characters. The mind does some weird things in dreams, and even moreso with a traumatic injury

I want an afterlife where I can drink Negronis.

Curious if afterlife Negronis have made the transition to modern non-insect-based Campari, or if they're still old-school (can you kill bugs in the afterlife)?

We had a close encounter with death here in the household a few days ago when we euthanized our beloved 16-year-old cat. He'd had kidney disease for a while and been in serious decline for several months. It was time. We had an incredibly kind traveling vet who does this as her business come to our house and administer the shots here so he could die comfortably at home, with us holding him. I've had pets die before, but it's been a while and the experience, while of course deeply sad, was also fascinating. Watching his body, which had reached the point of visibly struggling with every breath, suddenly go still was touching in a way — like we could feel him relax for the first time in months. And the essence that was HIM, the traits and accumulated experiences that made up who he was, which had still been present albeit in greatly diminished form just a few moments earlier, was just ... completely gone.

Except not, because of course for us he will never be gone. We will carry him with us. Just as we carry all of those we knew who are no longer here, as someone said upthread. The only afterlife that I think we can count on is the one that happens here, among the people who know us or the things we did and left behind. And those things can be good or bad, god knows. Anyway, R.I.P. Barton, may you run in fields of baby bunnies and slow fat birds.

Sorry to hear Tipsy, I'm sure Barton is napping on a cloud, probably found a job as a lapcat in the waiting room to the pearly gates. I have it on good authority St. Peter was looking for a replacement

Obviously the lamp story could have been fake, but I can't find said confession anywhere and can't recall reading it on the original thread. I did discover it inspired a TikTok trend last year though

I love the idea of dreams having their own separate continuity, like a different life that runs parallel to our waking one. I've occasionally had dreams refer to events of previous dreams, but that's about it.

Is "atheicity" a word?

it is if you understand what it means, but especially if you didn't need to be told what it means

my favorite Police song

I prefer Atheicity II

I wonder what makes people believers/non-belivers. When I was 11 my favorite person, my autistic non-verbal cousin Andy ran away from home, was hit by a train, and died. I'm pretty sure that's the moment I stopped believing in God but I'm sure the same experience could have had the opposite effect on another person. I wonder what about me made me lose faith after that but what in another person might make them do the opposite. I think about this a lot.

I think about that too. I know a guy whose catalyst towards believing was his son (TW) comitting suicide..... Which when stated so plainly makes absolutely no sense, its basically an offensive proposition. But when you talk to him... I don't know it's just beyond a value judgement, it's beyond argument. I don't think he leaned into the faith as an anaesthetic, but Lord knows its been that for him and from a standpoint of pure pragmatism, I'm glad he has been able to find solace from something in that place

Sorry ENBB, I just realised me posting that after you shared your story is slightly insensitive. Truly sorry for your loss, that's a terrible thing that no 11yo should have to bear

Sympathies to you tipsy, ENBB, and H.P.

The world sometimes just wants to give us more things than we can handle.

Watching my mother nearly die for a year and then my father simultaneously get a degenerative nerve disease between 10 and 11 sure did a number on my belief in a higher power. Then the reverend at the church quit because he was having an affair with a member of the vestry. That solidified it.

I find faith beautiful in many ways, destructive in many ways. It isn’t for me— except the music.

Which is perhaps the most convincing argument for believing in a higher power, if I am being honest

If you're a music lover and don't believe in the divine/only conceptualise the divine in positivist terms, you're short-changing yourself imo

I'm being 50% serious and 50% facetious with that statement

I say that all to agree with you table. If there's any apologetic for the divine, it's whatever good art does to a person. By no means a good enough reason to believe, but enough to make you think "damn I'm so small and there is incomprehensible beauty/forces in this world" which is as much an experience of the numinous as any devotees religious fervour

Music fits into my belief that we’re just energy reacting to other energy. It’s beautiful y’all

One of my deepest lsd experiences was sitting by myself in the dark woods and seeing this kind of web of energy. The other deep religious experience was staring at the moon on a bottle robitusin and realizing how insignificant we are.

I don't think he leaned into the faith as an anaesthetic

Why?

One of my deepest lsd experiences was sitting by myself in the dark woods and seeing this kind of web of energy.

LSD otm, the web of energy is real. (Or as real as anything.)

https://www.energy.gov/science/articles/modeling-cosmic-web

I’ve visited the same dingy multifloor record store almost every night in my dreams for several years. The stock is dwindling and it’s gradually been getting shabbier.

xpost to HP:

totally. What is interesting to me is that I categorize certain music in my head as religious, but it isn’t at all— it is simply that I associate the divine with it.

I don't know about the divine exactly, but definitely believe in the transcendental power of art — in the sense that it can take us out of ourselves, it offers kinds of connections that I don't think we make any other way.

I was just overcome with the beauty of a song the other day and started tearing up. It made me think about this thread. I realized, however, that I was getting choked up because even though man is mortal, being able to create a song so beautiful is a form of immortality. I don't think it has to signify something actually divine.

music is ultimately communication, right? a way of us molding the energy to tell each other our feelings. tune one string to another. what is that if not honing the energy in some way.

FUCKING MAGNETS

sorry had a few

xp Tables: yeah look, I should clarify not all music is lifting me up to the third heaven. WAP for instance, hasn't taken me there (yet).

Well put Tipsy

I think art can do more than communicating our feelings, it can communicate things outside of ourselves too. I love "not" by Big Thief because it does apophatic theology so well. The song (and a million others) communicates more than a feeling imo

more than a feeeeeeeliiiiiiinggggg

I guess my main feeling about religion is that there’s so much fascinating stuff in science, neurology and psychiatry, etc that I have other stuff to explore than gods and such

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i6l8MFdTaPE

i was just remembering the night i saw the web of energy, i watched my friend snap a small tree in half with his bare hands because his body went into fight mode after being trapped in a car listening to ween's "blackjack." that batch of acid was something else

Light the first light of evening, as in a room
In which we rest and, for small reason, think
The world imagined is the ultimate good.

This is, therefore, the intensest rendezvous.
It is in that thought that we collect ourselves,
Out of all the indifferences, into one thing:

Within a single thing, a single shawl
Wrapped tightly round us, since we are poor, a warmth,
A light, a power, the miraculous influence.

Here, now, we forget each other and ourselves.
We feel the obscurity of an order, a whole,
A knowledge, that which arranged the rendezvous.

Within its vital boundary, in the mind.
We say God and the imagination are one...
How high that highest candle lights the dark.

Out of this same light, out of the central mind,
We make a dwelling in the evening air,
In which being there together is enough.

I give Mr Stevens his due.

Where we are now
Soon it will be there

The arts have both feelings and ideas in them, that is one part of their appeal.

But for me, the main bits are collaboration and connection. In music, one often collaborates with other musicians and connects with an audience. This is the closest thing I have to a church right now.

There are musicians I have played with maybe once or twice, and I strongly feel that I know them. Perhaps as well as I know a cousin or stepsibling or schoolmate.

That's the biggest thing I miss about playing music with people, which I haven't done regularly in 20 years. I've been in bands with people I otherwise never hung out with, we weren't necessarily socially compatible or interested in the same things, except that we could play music together. It is a specific kind of connection for sure, maybe akin to what people who do theater feel about other performers, I don't know. Conjuring something together that only exists for as long as you're playing, it is a kind of magic.

Tipsy otm.

Any collaborative work forges connection - but collaborative artwork is especially magical.

Theater and music and parenting are important to me. (I have never made a movie or a TV show or a church or a business). I do think that people working together to _do a thing_ is the closest I have come to religion-esque ecstasy.

making music alone also makes me feel closer and connected to the universe and history and stuff. I imagine painters get a similar thing?

Perhaps. I like collaborative work most, but solo stuff like painting/drawing can also feel religious.