What is your faith/religion?
What is your faith/religion?
and if you atheist/switched faiths, why did you do it and what faith did you choose?
im in a curious mood today :>
Atheist. Religion is an explanation of the world that's made the fuck up. I think people make shit up to explain reality because accepting uncertainty is difficult, but that doesn't make it ok. The world around you exists, just like it is. There is no special place you get to go if you follow the right set of rules .
My true faith is: don't be an asshole and be a decent, rational and empathetic human being.
Everything else I may or may not believe does not matter, it's decoration.
Nihilist, insofar that even if there is a god (about as likely as me actually being a secret agent for moon people) why would it matter? While nihilism is not a religious belief I think it fits the prompt.
I made a poop the other day, I'm its creator, I don't care about it, I don't control its destiny beyond the flush.
I'm an optimistic nihilist, nothing matters and that's kinda neato. Existence happens, how fascinating is that? It's absolutely meaningless just like everything in the universe, but that doesn't mean we can't enjoy the ride.
I'm an atheist. I grew up super religious and had a falling out with my church due to their "if someone believes different than our denomination they are going to hell" mindset. After that I found out that most other denominations are like that except for mormons but they are worse in other ways. Then I did more and more research that sort of caused what belief I had left to fall apart and now its kind of like Santa Claus, once you figure out its your parents putting presents under the tree theres no believing in Santa anymore
Taoism is a practice that doesn’t rely on or reject a higher power. It gives meaning to day to day life and the writers I’ve read who practice it have a very practical view on the world.
As for religion, I fall into agnosticism. I certainly don’t have any hard evidence that there is a higher power, but at the same time, with how insanely complex, terrifying, beautiful, loving, and hurtful the world can feel, I can’t help but feel that there’s something beyond what’s in front of us at play. It may not be a theist’s idea of God, but something else entirely.
It's complicated but I used to be essentially atheist but now believe that there is something one might as well call "God" after studying philosophy. Essentially everything has a cause and something must be at the end of that chain, and we might as well call that "God." I also practice Christianity because I feel that it is good to have the community and structure that a religion can provide but I don't think that "God" necessarily exists in the way Christianity typically presents it.
No evidence for God, that’s why I’m an atheist.
Atheist. I was raised in various flavors of southern, whites protestant churches. Mostly the so-called charismatic, non-denominational, types, but also mainstream Southern Baptists, Presbyterians, etc, but not excluding some of the weirder cultish strains.
I left because I began to realize just how fucked in the head they raised me. I couldn't relate to regular people very well at all, and couldn't trust the judgement of religious people at any level. I got out and got the help I needed. I only wish I had done it sooner.
Grew up atheist, went through a semi serious pagan phase, got certified as a shaman, went back to atheism. Will still throw in the odd ritual, but more with the expectation that it will affect the way I think about a problem rather than the ritual doing anything on its own.
So like if you have a job interview you can either raw dog it and show your lack of confidence or.preform a ritual and gain some confidence which will count in your favour during the interview.h
Is the ritual doing any direct alterations? No, but it's still useful.
Agnostic atheist.
Buddhist, I was more Christian. Growing up in a fundamentalist church and becoming more intellectual drove me to ask big question that Christianity didn’t answer for me. Causes and conditions allowed me to encounter Buddhism when I was living in Japan and it’s grown in me ever since. I really liked how Zen meditation made me feel. Very different from being told to pray but there was nothing and also no unstructured. Buddhism has clear practices and results. I know it has “supernatural” elements but it’s all mostly logical to me and I like that
Subgenius.
Zen Buddhist. I grew up Christian, realized I was believing out of obligation rather than genuine conviction, but also I'm pan and Christians have made it very clear that's not okay with them.
I was areligious for awhile. Which I use because I am still an atheist; I don't see much evidence for gods, but that isn't important to Buddhism.
I appreciate the Buddha's teachings and find them incredibly helpful. I'm calmer, more focused, and over all, happier for my practice. It gives me a spiritual outlet that doesn't make me feel "dirty" the way Christianity did.
There are aspects to Buddhism that I have to take on faith even though I am otherwise a skeptical individual. But ultimately, those things don't change how I would have had to live my life. And I believe that a true practitioner needs a balance of logic anf faith: too much logic, and you kill your faith. Too much faith and you wind up in a cult. You need enough logic to stay grounded, and enough faith to believe. But you have to acknowledge that you can rarely prove the things you take on faith and because of that, there will always be non-belivers, and that has to be okay.
I am an atheist and ordained dudeist priest. Because it aligns with my values.
Raised "Christian" in the evangelical/born again/southern baptist milieu. Strip mall churches and unaccredited schools with unqualified teachers and Bob Jones text books. Became atheist as soon as I was able to think rationally. The thing that did it for me was the hypocrisy, which became too obvious to ignore.
Apathetic since forever.
My religion is "keep your religion dar the fuck away from me".
I believe in freedom from religion even more strongly than of religion
Christian. Only by the Grace of God am I alive today.
What do you mean "if you are an atheist, why did you do it"? I just want raised with a religion.
From very young age i never felt i needed to believe in anything, spirituality felt like a part i was missing. my parents took me to church but i never liked the god depicted there and i found the crucified man figurine scary. When they told me that god loves me and that if i didn't love him back i would go to hell it all soured for me. That portrayal of love didn't make sense in my mind.
I don't feel atheist either, religion feels very political to me, and atheism seems more apolitical than an active oposition. Where i live catholicism has a lot of power and it's tentacles wrap around government agencies and institutions. There are weird cults close to where i live that are offshoots of catholicism ; These cults have international power and they have deep histories of corruption and abuse. I feel something has to be done about this but where i live there is very little oposition or regulation for religious institutions.
Atheist, but i find the myth of Lucifer interesting. A being who had feelings of becoming more than what he was. Then confronting his creator to declare he is more, and will not yield.
Grew up in a very religious home, in a very religious country (orthodox christian). I don't think I ever truly "believed", but I didn't want to upset my family, so I got married in church and baptized my kids. I am an atheist, and don't practice any religion now.
Atheist. Raised atheist but it doesn’t effect my viewpoint, I’d be atheist either way at this point in life
Discordian
Atheist, I never was interested in spirituality as I believe religions are population control tools.
However, I recently got the chance to meet Sikh peoples, and I understand they define themselves more as warriors than group of religious people. I just fell in love with what they are, what they represent.
I was raised protestant Christian.
I would say what I believe now is heavily influenced by that, but also heavily influenced by how clearly the focus that evangelical Christians put on the idea “God needs to be feared more than They need to be followed” has fucked up so much of the world. Fearing someone at the cost of spreading their message is nonsensical, idiotic, hypocritical, and toxic to human society.
According to the Bible, Jesus Christ rarely answered direct questions with direct answers; most of the time his answers came in the form of a story or a parable explaining one possible answer to the question given one possible context, implying that humans are encouraged to use their judgment to figure out how best to approach a situation. Imagine that. An all-powerful creator who granted intelligence like Their own to Their creation and actually wanting that intelligence to be exercised.
One of the most notable instances where Jesus answered a direct question with a direct answer is Mark 12:28-31:
“Of all the commandments, which is the most important?”
“The most important one,” answered Jesus, “is this: ‘Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ The second is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no commandment greater than these.”
In no uncertain terms, love is the most important commandment. Furthermore, Jesus equates loving your neighbor to loving God in Matthew chapter 25. It’s not evangelism, it’s not religious authoritarianism. It’s not indoctrination. It’s love.
I believe this world was created by an omniscient Creator who wanted humanity to use the intelligence granted to us to freely develop a society centered around love.
I was raised in an atheist/agnostic household. Nobody ever came out and said we were atheist or agnostic, but no one went to religious services weekly or on holidays. There was never talk of prayer or worship or god.
Both my parents came from different religious backgrounds. One parent is Jewish. The other is Christian, though I would argue that their parents were atheist/agnostic as well.
We celebrated the holidays that involved presents, Christmas, Hanukkah and Easter. I didn’t really learn any of their religious symbolism behind these holidays until I was much older and it wasn’t through my parents. Part of it was cultural osmosis, and part of it was curiosity about these religions when I figured out what they were.
My parents basically refused to explain anything about religion to me, even when I was curious just to understand what was being referenced.
We lived in a pretty big Jewish community or so it wasn’t uncommon to get invited over for Passover dinner at someone’s house.
I went to Synagogue with Jewish friends and church with Christian friends. My friend’s mother taught classes at their synagogue so I do remember going and learning about Judaism and the holidays there but I didn’t last very long. I didn’t really enjoy it, I remember not wanting to go back in after our little recess/break and watching Fiddler on the Roof.
When I was curious about Christianity and wanted to know why my friends went to Sunday school or church on the weekends, my mother took me to a Unitarian church. We didn’t attend for very long and I don’t remember being particularly interested or involved in any of the activities they were doing for the kids.
Now I would say, I am firmly an atheist.
Atheist, universalist Unitarian. Other people's theism is just at the bottom of my priorities these days lol. UUs seem like nice people
I wasn't really raised with religion, but most of my family is Christian. I considered myself atheist as a young adult. But after many spiritual experiences, I believe in the unexplainable, but I'm not a fan of organized religion or cults.
born in islamic nation (turkey), family didn't really do anything to teach religion (except trying to teach Arabic), I got more and more estranged from islam as I did my own independent research using online sources of the Qur'an
I don't think I can be considered a Muslim anymore, I don't follow what is written down as a must, this actually makes me eligible to hell, and it is all so ridiculous for me now.
I've talked with a lot of people, self proclaimed Muslims but their beliefs are far more deist than anything else, but they still call themselves Muslims but with their own additional beliefs.
Another note, I haven't read hadiths, only the Qur'an. The Qur'an is very short and anyone here could read it, it's the absolute words of god so it is essential to follow if you're a Muslim.
Atheist
My mom let me figure it out for myself. I wanted to go to mass with grandma so she let me.
I quickly figured out the nonsensical nature of what I was seeing. When I found out I had to do a bunch of extra shit before I could get in line for Jeezits, I lost all remaining interest.
Been an atheist since. Probably was around age 12.
Raised non-denominational Christian to Agnostic to Gnostic-curious.
I guess at this point I should consider myself a buddhist.
I was raised in a Christian household in the us midwest but never felt drawn to it or any form of sprituality, over the years Buddhism in its many forms kept creeping up on me enough times and explaining things in such elegant ways that I eventually looked into Tibetan Buddhism more closely and realized that once you understand how the symbolism of it all works in terms of connecting the words of practices to actually useful life tips then it becomes a great benefit to yourself and others.
As simply as possible, I chose this route because it is like becoming a scientist of experiences and all the practices we do are things that prove what we experience just as a scientist forms a postulate, a Buddhist forms a practice that leads to some form of awareness.
Agnostic Satanist. It's basically the same as humanism but also triggers religious fundamentalists.
I also read the bible extensively and have a bible app on my phone with bookmarks to tell people how Jesus was most likely gay and so on. Most religious people didn't even read their own damn texts haha
This one thinks there were three cycles of moon giving from our mother Fadomai. Ahnurr gave Fadomai her cubs. First was Alkosh, followed by Khenarthi, Magrus, Mara lastly there was S'rendarr.
During the second moon gift there was now Merrunz, Mafala, followed by Sangiin.
Although Ahnurr's house was full, Alkosh and others wanted more cubs to bask in lights warmth.
So Fadomai gave her first cubs their wishes. Azurah, Nirni, Y'ffer, Masser, Secunda all joined with the light children.
Fadomai still had longing for small cubs so she fled to the void and one cub, Lorkhaj was given.
Exhausted, Fadomai knew her time of ending was near. So a gift was given to Nirni, for she desired to give cubs the light.
So it was that Nirni came to her brother Lorkhaj for she needed a new dwelling for her cubs. Lorkhaj did just so, forming the mortal realm. Some of Fadomai's first cubs were imprisoned in the new realm. The second set of Fadomai's cubs saw what had happened and did not follow.
Mayhaps was not just Nirni who was given the gift of cubs. So is said Azurah came down to one of Nirni's cubs and shape his form most desirably, so log as they would be given their mother Fadomai's Beauty, Ahnurr intelligence and Alkosh's streingth.
Azurah found some of Nirni's cubs in the forest and from them Khajiit were born under Masser and Secunda's light.
Angered by Azurah's decision to take so many cubs Nirni came to Y'ffer and ask for punishment. He did so turning the grasses to warm sands and forest to marsh.
Azurah loved her cubs and taught them the ways of the moons and the gift of shapes.
However not all her children were given the gifts of Azurah and favored Nirni. By her hand the fur was taken and the forest given. For Nirni also loved here cubs and their grandcubs.
Although maybe not M'aiq is very practical. He has no need for mysticism.
Discordian!
More serious answer: I never had one to begin with. Why start now? All it seems to do is sow division.
Was raised roman-catholic but got disillusioned pretty quickly. I was fairly religious in elementary school but by the time I was 14, I was agnostic/atheist.
Partially because my parents aren’t religious (my mum is from the GDR, so she didn’t grow up with religion and my dad seceded from church before I was even born) and even my grandma, who was the religious one (albeit never very strongly, compared to American catholics. More a „goes to church on religious holidays“ type of person), drifted away from church quite a bit after all the child-rapist priest shit that was uncovered at the time.
By now (mid 20s) I’d probably consider myself agnostic. Can’t prove there is no higher power but also, if there is, we wouldn’t know what religion – if any – is right anyways. It’s probably not christianity though.
Laic
I don't care about religion or beliefs. It's irrelevant to me in my day to day life.
I have a personal code of ethic, developed through personal experience and reading several philosophy proposals, taking from each what I find useful and discarding the rest.
Atheist.
As far as I see, there are 2 basic possible states for being(s) with regards to divinity: either they're omnipotent or they're not omnipotent. (Partial omnipotence may perhaps be great power, but it is still non-omnipotence by definition.)
The Stone Paradox demonstrates that full omnipotence cannot happen; and any being, however powerful, that does not have full omnipotence is inherently no different than me or you and thus has no right to be considered a god.
and if you switched faiths, why did you do it and what faith did you choose?
Well, I used to be a Christian, but only by virtue of being raised as one. As I grew older, I grew out of Christianity. It makes no sense to me from the perspective of the scientific method or Occam's Razor. Also, my very traditional Christian family did not exactly live up to the Christ-like ideals of love and tolerance, so that definitely put me off it, I can tell you that much.
As I got older, I tried other religions: Islam, Zen Buddhism, Earth paganism, various other forms of paganism. They were excellent experiences that taught me the value of different faiths but they were, in the end, not for me. I like the rock that the scientific method provides, and I like how it teaches and encourages critical thinking ability. With science, I don't need to take some reverend's word for it that a magical sky-daddy is watching me masturbate while my great-great-grandmother judges me from past the celestial gates. I can be confident to know that it's far more likely they're dead in the ground, disintegrating back into the earth from whence they came.
I firmly believe, with all of my heart, that religion is fucking bullshit
I'm agnostic but read somewhere that maybe water is god.
I never "did" anything, I just realised at some point that I didn't think that whole business was true (apart from the bits about being nice to each other). So I stopped going through the motions that I'd been taught to follow.
My privilege here is that I live in a country that is not very religious, where any religion is done in private, and my mum, who taught me a very forgiving and kind Christianity (emphasising all the things a religious right would despise), only cared about me being a decent person, not about what I believed.
The short version: It's complicated.
The long version: I fell out of Christianity at age 17 because I had hard questions no one wanted to answer, so they asked me to either stop asking or stop coming to church. I spent years and years reading everything I could get my hands on about religion in general and many major world religions in specific, didn't find anything I could agree with or that seemed true to me as-is, and ultimately decided to cobble together my own beliefs from the useful bits I found in others. So now I have a highly syncretic mix of components from many religions (plus some I cooked up myself) that feels right to me. It centers around the idea that divinity is a kind of all-encompassing infinite ur-consciousness/hive-mind of which we are all a part, that the world is an illusion that creates a divide between us (which is why we feel like individuals), but also within us (between mind/thought/idea and feeling/emotion/experience), and enlightenment comes from learning how to heal those rifts and not just realizing or understanding but knowing in your bones that we are one. In short: the truth is love, love is the union of self and other, of mind (intellect) and heart (wisdom), of order/stasis/death and chaos/energy/life, into the unified psyche of one all-pervading ur-consciousness.
Building your own belief system is not a path I recommend for most because it requires a commitment to intense introspection in order to develop self-awareness and a deep willingness or even desire to have your understanding and beliefs challenged and updated with new perspectives and information. But for me anyway it beats being an atheist (I was one for many years, despite my fascination with religion), though I'm not here to convert anyone. This seems true to me, and that's enough.
I believe in myself. I believe in everyone else too, until they give me a reason not to.
I believe every particle/atom/point within my reality has a connection equivalent to what one might call a 'soul' and it exists outside of dimensional reality, the dimensions being represented by a line (1d), a plane (2d), a field (3d) and the function of time (4d). Currently for me this puts these connections in the 5th dimension. I use the term "philote" as a label for each connection. That term is borrowed from the Ender books.
Life as we know it is made up of many atoms, formed into molecules, cells, organs and so on. At the core, each atom having its own connected philote, an organism is a community of philotes working together to stay connected and keep the organism going. The organism they represent is in a way, their religion. I believe in the philotes representing my human body. They believe in me.
When I die, my atoms with scatter. Some philotes will be swept away in the atmosphere, some will become the rotting and disintegrating organs of my body. Unless I'm cremated or destroyed in some other way similar, some parts of my body will remain connected. The philotes that make up my bones will remain connected to each other, as the philotes of my skin and blood etc. spread and become new things.
If I meet someone and have an affinity to them, I believe that some of my philotes and some of their philotes were once part of the same organism. They belonged to the same philotic 'church' of that organism. They recognize each other. They like each other. Thus I like the other person and they like me, even if we can't explain why ourselves. It is like magnetism, our philotes know each other and know they have similar goals and will work together. Since philotes exist outside of time, this affinity may be caused by something which has not occurred yet. Perhaps the other person and I die and many of our philotes become a new entity sometime in the future. A new church or religion of philotes.
If I meet someone and do not like them and cannot explain why, I believe that my philotes and their philotes are of opposing goals. Their philotic church does not agree with my philotic church. The philotes are repelled from each other, like how a magnet will repel. We go our separate ways. Perhaps their philotes were once part of an organism and my philotes were once part of the blade which killed their organism. Perhaps one day some of my philotes are part of an organism that is consumed by their organism. Some philotic clusters do not like an event. They accept it but will repel future or past encounters with philotes of the opposing mass. They do not believe in them. Their church is not the same. They do not like the outcome. There could be many reasons. Your beliefs still exist within my beliefs, even if yours do not include mine.
The big bang. The heat death of the universe. The big suck. No, the big suck is not referring to an adult video or a powerful vacuum or my ex. It's the opposite of the expansion of the universe. The big bang exploded. It spreads all atoms out. An atom and its philote no longer want to spread out. They want to return. They flip. They become dark matter or dark energy. They change direction in the 4th dimension. They contract instead of expanding. Other philotes agree and flip. Eventually, the universe stops expanding and contracts. The philotes reunite. They become a singularity. All existance in one point. That is too much for one point. It explodes. The big bang happens again. This never ends. This is happening an infinite number of times right now. Dark matter and dark energy are not measurable because they do not exist anymore at that point in time. From the perspective of a flipped philote, our existance is the dark matter. The flipping happens in all directions in 4 dimensions. It can be backwards on a line, diagonally on a plane, it can loop in a field and go sideways in time.
The big bang, the heat death of the universe and the big suck I represent like this: ∞=|¿√∞²?|=∞ Reality is equal to the question of the absolute value of the square root of infinity squared. A pointless math formula. A story that unfolds and returns.