fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #2974 ]

[ SECRET POST #2974 ]

⌈ Secret Post #2974 ⌋

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Anons, what is your approach to religion? Do you identify with one? Do you believe in a god or anything else? Are your beliefs more literal, or something more symbolic? Are you spiritual, and if so, what makes you feel particularly spiritual (a place, an event, etc)? Do you pray, meditate, etc? How about your outlook on what happens after death?

I don't think we can know for certain whether or not God exists. That said, I personally believe that there are no god or gods, that there is nothing divine or supernatural in the world. I would not consider myself spiritual, although that's a tough term to define, and I don't engage in any practices I'd call meditative or prayerful. I believe that after death there is nothing. Just death.

I don't have any particular problems with religion, though. I had a religious upbringing (Catholic) and it was extremely positive. I just really don't think God exists. I have no beef with people who do. I just disagree.

I was brought up in an atheist household with parents who were brought up in religious households.

I tried out different belief systems as I was introduced to them, and none of them stuck. I think if I had to choose a spirituality that's closest to my sensibilities it would be Paganism, because I'm all for honouring the earth and your body and your love by being respectfully hedonistic lol.

Also I just get along best with Wiccans and whatnot. I'm friends with tons of them.

I'm an atheist and I find the idea of God irrational and deeply morally repugnant.

I, however, do not judge anyone for their religion, do not dislike religions as a phenomenon, and actually think that they often play a good and important role in societies.

Re: Religion (or lack thereof) thread

(Anonymous) - 2015-02-25 00:36 (UTC) - Expand

Re: Religion (or lack thereof) thread

dreemyweird - 2015-02-25 00:39 (UTC) - Expand

Re: Religion (or lack thereof) thread

(Anonymous) - 2015-02-25 01:00 (UTC) - Expand

Re: Religion (or lack thereof) thread

dreemyweird - 2015-02-25 01:08 (UTC) - Expand

Re: Religion (or lack thereof) thread

(Anonymous) - 2015-02-25 01:27 (UTC) - Expand

Re: Religion (or lack thereof) thread

(Anonymous) - 2015-02-25 04:37 (UTC) - Expand

I don't think we can know anything for sure. I believe in God, and my beliefs lean Judeo-Christian. As far as literal or symbolic goes, I believe that all religions, including Abrahamic, are built on stories based on stories based on stories. So in fact there could be truth to them, but we can't know how much or little.

Re: Religion (or lack thereof) thread

(Anonymous) - 2015-02-25 00:42 (UTC) - Expand

Just anons?

I don't really approach religion much. I acknowledge it's not entirely separate from my culture - I'll still celebrate Christmas and stuff, but it has no real meaning to me.

I'm not religious or spiritual, really. Sadly I think there's nothing after death.

I don't identify with any organized religions, but I call myself a pantheistic or animistic atheist (or, very liberally speaking, spiritually pagan). I don't literally believe in anything supernatural but I find a lot of spirituality just in the idea of the universe and the cyclical and interconnected nature of everything. And while I don't literally believe, I like the idea of gods or spirits as sort of meditative exercises, or symbolic gods.

Death, well, our bodies decompose and the elements that make them up are designed to spread apart and become something new, if there's anything that defines life spiritually, I would imagine our spirits are the same. Nothing can be created nor destroyed, just be altered, and such.

Ooh, I'm staying out of this one.

Re: Religion (or lack thereof) thread

(Anonymous) - 2015-02-25 01:52 (UTC) - Expand

I don't know what I am. Agnostic Christian maybe? I pray. I hope there is a life after death.

I'm a cafeteria Catholic. Most of my spirituality and beliefs align with that faith.

I pray daily, and I see yoga as a form of meditation.

Anons, what is your approach to religion? Do you identify with one?

Yes.

Do you believe in a god or anything else?

Yes.

Are your beliefs more literal, or something more symbolic?

Yes.

Are you spiritual,

Yes.

and if so, what makes you feel particularly spiritual (a place, an event, etc)?

"Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen."

Do you pray, meditate, etc?

Yes.

How about your outlook on what happens after death?

Everybody lives.

Re: Religion (or lack thereof) thread

(Anonymous) - 2015-02-25 01:05 (UTC) - Expand

Ha, my mother has literally spent the entirety of today quietly crying to herself in a corner because I'm queer and her religion is against it.

Right now I'm feeling a tiny bit anti-theist!

I'm ok with religion, I don't mind if someone's religious. (if they don't think that I should cover my body or something like that)

Edited 2015-02-25 01:01 (UTC)

In a nut shell: don't force your religion on others (including forcing your kids), don't use your religion as an excuse to hurt other people. Other than that, live and let live.

I'm lapsed Catholic, currently agnostic.

I fall pretty firmly in the "lack thereof" side of the fence. I generally regard it as wishful thinking on the part of most people, to varying degrees. Then there's the creepy-extremist sides that I'm sure we'd all rather were not so extreme.
Obviously I don't pray or meditate or anything, although sitting quietly and relaxing is good for anyone lol.
No outlook on death for the individual, once you're dead you're dead. But other people are still around and generally I'd prefer that they have alright lives once I'm gone.

IDK if it's relevant but I grew up in a Baptist household. But they didn't pressure us on the religion front, aside from going to church every week and the religious highschool. Wanted us to "come to religion out of our own choice". ...end result is 3 atheists, one conspiracy theorist (TBH no matter what way he went would probably end up on that fringe), 1 baptist and 1 too young to decide yet.

Edited 2015-02-25 01:31 (UTC)

I'm Mormon. Very religious, very spiritual. (And, for the record, I am pro-gay rights. The internets tend to define religion as "anti-rights and anti-science," which is bullshit. Bull. Shit. Gah. Just had to say it before continuing.) My religious and spiritual life are very important to me. I tend to slide a bit between literal and symbolic. I pray as well as reading the scriptures and generally thinking a lot about how I feel about the universe and why things happen in our lives etc etc.

I believe after death everyone ends up happy. Mormons have a pretty complicated outlook on the afterlife, but for me, it all boils down to everyone ending up comfortable and happy and loved. No matter who you are or what you do, God loves you, and He wants you to find joy.

Re: Religion (or lack thereof) thread

(Anonymous) - 2015-02-25 04:41 (UTC) - Expand

Re: Religion (or lack thereof) thread

(Anonymous) - 2015-02-25 05:01 (UTC) - Expand

Re: Religion (or lack thereof) thread

(Anonymous) - 2015-02-25 10:45 (UTC) - Expand

I'm Catholic and identify as such, but I don't believe that the bible is an untouchable holy script. The stories have been passed on by men* before being written down by men, copied by men and translated by men for about 2000 years - the bible is the biggest round of chinese whispers ever, and you can't convince me that what we're reading today is 100% what actually happened (if everything in the bible actually happened at one point, which I'm also not convinced of).

I also have problems with the Catholic Church as an institutions, though I'm cautiously optimistic that with the new Pope the Church will at least start moving into the right direction, even if it's at the pace of a freaking glacier because the Catholic Church sucks that way.

I honour some of the holidays (I won't eat meat on Ash Wednesday, for example), and when I go to church I won't do or think anything that I feel is disrespectful towards God, but I won't join in the hymns or prayers which go on about stuff I don't believe in.

I pray for people who believe in prayers (like when my grandpa was in the hospital) or for a religious fandom acquaintance who asked for people to pray for them, but don't do it for myself, nor do I really believe in prayers.

I don't really believe in Heaven and Hell for myself, but again, for people like my grandpa I want to think that Heaven does exist, and that that's where they are. My grandpa was pretty religious, went to church every Sunday and tried to be a good Christian, so I think it would be unfair if his faith went unanswered.

I don't really care what other people believe in, as long as they're not extreme in their (non-)faith and don't try to shove it down people's throats.

* Originally I meant men as in humans in general, but it works for men as in the gender as well.

I consider religion to be cheating. If I say premarital sex is okay, and you say it's wrong, I can argue with you on equal grounds. But if I say it's okay, and you say God told you it's wrong, I can't call up God on the phone and ask him. The most I can do is say "God didn't really tell you that!", and then it devolves into a five-year-old's "Did so!"

To try to answer that a little more seriously, I feel like I became so much happier and more content when I stopped caring about all philosophy other than ethics. I don't care what it means to "know" something, or whether thermometers have a consciousness*, so why should I care what created the universe? All that matters to me is being a good person.

*Not a hypothetical argument.

I'm in a weird state of flux right now, soooo this is an interesting question to me. I generally identify as an agnostic atheist -- I don't believe in God (atheist) but I am open to possibilities and don't believe I *know* one way or the other (agnostic). I definitely don't identify with any major world religions, but I do find them fascinating as far as storytelling and community-building and collective histories and making-sense-of-the-senseless go.

I've got a lot of anger toward certain aspects of organized religion, too. I think we have enough ugliness in the world without justifying that ugliness with some kind of ultimate moral authority. This isn't to say that religion is the *cause* of people's intolerance -- a lot of people take away messages of love and acceptance instead, and plenty of atheists and agnostics will find some other excuse for their nastiness -- just that it's hard enough to shake off misogyny or homophobia or racism or [insert -ism] when it *isn't* being attributed to the will of some supreme authority figure.

But lately I've been going through a really shitty time thanks to some pretty horrible things, and I've been having this internal crisis. I've been feeling very alone and wondering if there might be some comfort, or at least less loneliness, if I were more spiritual, if I could believe that something out there wasn't completely apathetic or that there was some grander purpose to suffering. I've been wondering if maybe it would be easier to get through if I could believe it had some meaning. I don't know, maybe I'd be angrier if I were a believer, but maybe I'd be able to console myself the way my grandmother would: "God never gives you a burden he doesn't think you can carry."

So I don't really know exactly where I stand on it any more, but I certainly have more empathy and understanding for why some people are religious/spiritual.

What is the statement for "Sure, I believe higher deities exist but because the unfairness of the world is so deep I don't think they're much use and ignore religion."

I´m Catholic, and while I don´t think it´s always right, I´m not interested in other religions because all have faults. At least we Catholics can ignore the dogmas and what the Pope says and nobody can force us to believe in them. I don´t like smaller religious groups where the leader or Pastor is checking what people do in their daily lives.

Also I don´t believe in God as a Zeus like entity. For me God is more like the energy of the universe, where we all come from and where we all will go back when we die.

Atheist. I wasn't raised that way, but at some point, I just couldn't rationalize what Christianity preaches and claims in order to fit what I know of reality. I don't really like the idea of being "spiritual" either, it sounds so... vague? I'm not even sure what people mean most of the time, but it seems like people mean they're religious without a central deity to worship. Worst case scenario, it means people who sneer at the idea of organized religion, but still believe in equally ridiculous stuff like crystals or psychic energy. I guess the closest I get to feeling spiritual is being somewhere surrounded by natural settings that inspire me.

I don't think there's an afterlife. I think when we die, our consciousness ends and there's nothing beyond that. A lot of people find that idea scary, but I think it sounds peaceful-- like the time before you were born. That wasn't scary, because there was no you... you know? So after death there will be no you to feel pain or fear.

In order: Fairly private (within my local community.) Yes. Yes. Nonsense question. Yes, trees. Yes. Don't know.

Opinions vary here. Mac is the only flat-out religious person in our system; he's a Christian. (No specific denomination; he was raised Southern Baptist, but since coming out has bounced around between UCC and MCC and various one-shots.) I don't understand it, but it seems to give him comfort and solace.

Miranda has a slight Buddhist flavor, but mostly in the way of using mindfulness and meditation.

Sneak is agnostic. Zie's also into tarot cards.

Me, the kid, and Gigi are all strict atheists, but in different ways. Gigi seems to believe that free will in an illusion and everything is predestined; pretty grim way of viewing the world. Me and the kid both mostly would want to kick a god in the face, but the kid is more "fuck religion," while I'm more, "I don't get it but whatever works for you."

--Rogan

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