Do you ever find yourself analysing your spirituality, religious beliefs or lack of?

I very often lament the fact that I lack comforting rituals. Even something as simple as crossing oneself when you’re scared, or to center yourself before doing something uncomfortable, can be a nice little thing to lean on. But I don’t pray. And crossing yourself or lighting candles doesn’t do anything, and I can only make so many cups of tea in a day.

It’s a bit frustrating.

But aside from this selfish desire for comfort, no, I don’t second-guess my atheism anymore. It was a decision made after many years of thought and study and evidence-gathering, and I’ve stopped holding my breath for new evidence of a deity.

I think your thinking is still shaped by reductionist Christian patterns, even though God isn’t really a person even in (non-dummified) Christianity.

The universe is where you are. It’s there. It doesn’t matter what or how it was created, billions of years ago. It is there are you are a part of it. That’s what God corresponds to in Christian religion – the universe, which you are a part of. There’s no question that is exists and has existed for so long that it’s creation story details are irrelevant and nearly incomprehensible.

The core purpose of spirituality and religion, however, is not about belief systems and cowing the public into tithing and surrendering itself to church authorities – that’s just the way religion is used and abused for material purposes. The core purpose of spirituality is about your connection and relationship to the universe. Materialism, skepticism and atheism are about reactions against the abuses of bad religion, and they also tend to involve separation from spirituality, separation of mind from body, and denial of non-proven materialistic models and relationships to the universe. But that denies a lot of the human experience, and tends to interfere with the good and healthy side of spirituality.

@Zaku

Could you explain to me from a non-religious point of view why it doesn’t matter how the universe came to be? And what exactly is the connection between this and Christianity? Could a non-religous individual not question the origin of the universe? It seems to me that if one is to truly question everything, that this matter should be part of the package (so to speak).

I totally accept it’s creation stories are not relevant. But isn’t that more of a reason to attempt to seek out answers to what really happened billions of years ago? Isn’t that not indeed what scientists such as Stephen Hawking are attempting to do?

Fairly frequently, actually, I ask myself this question. I see people around me being believers and going to church or temple or mosque, and I examine whether their faith makes sense – what do they see that I don’t? Am I wrong?

But each time – and I think about this a couple times a year – I come back to the same conclusion, namely that religion is irrational and it doesn’t mesh logically with the world that I see and live in.

I always did, when I had religious beliefs; I hated the inherent contradictions. It’s a relief not to have to deal with any of that anymore.

What you are experiencing is what many go through and cannot figure out why. At the core we are all given a measure of faith, if we did not no one would ever be able to be a believer. That said, every person has a God-sized hole in their soul that many try to fill with anything but God. People who have fame, fortune, etc. that would make most envious kill themselves because all that stuff still could not make them happy. People believe that believing in Christ will cost them too much, there is a cost, but the benefits outweigh the cost. People look to the heavens and all about the earth for proof that God is out there, even though the evidence is about them every day, they just do not want to give Him credit for it. Yet, people are so quick to believe what scientist say, even though they can rarely execute any of their theories, or have any proof other than the facts they agreed upon that makes true what they believe, and explain away things that don’t fit in to the mold they created. In short, many things of science cannot be proven beyond all reasonable doubt, but because people will ingratiate themselves more to those facts, they are taken as more credible. Some things in science can be figured out or proven even if one is not sure how they are to be, a lot is just educated guess. It is taken that the Big Bang which supposedly started all of this was when bunch of nothing decided to become something for no reason whatsoever, then once being something, for no reason started to organize into something, but there is no explanation that even if all the building blocks were there, how did they manage to find themselves assembling in the correct order? There are sure theories of that, but they are unproven, if it were a proven theory I could take every part of a V8 engine, from the smallest to the largest, put in in a big cement mixer and start it up, let it run for 15 years and when I came back there should be some assembled parts, even if very basic to the engine, but I would more than likely come back to a pile of metal no different than when I left it. In the back of your mind you might have similar reasoning which keeps bringing you back to there has to be something more, even though that something more you cannot fathom.

Constantly. I Think that I am one of the false gods that the Christian bible speaks of. Either that or I have PTSD.

Not very much. I am quite comfortable with my philosophic beliefs and have been for most of my life. I am not complacent exactly I have just never encountered anything that seriously challenges them.

I rarely analyze my religious beliefs. The most basic part of my beliefs is that the most important thing is our behavior. That we care about our fellow man, and we do our best to be good, fair, nonjudging, and understanding. I believe if there is a God He wants the same, and if there isn’t a God it doesn’t matter, because it doesn’t change those things for me.

I can’t imagine a God that punished for not worshipping Him, because to me God should be synonomous with goodness.

I do find myself noticing coincidences lately, and what seems like lessons and signs. Maybe I’m just getting more superstitious? Although, mostly, it’s more like being intuitive and trying to learn to believe I know things. I see things. That I need to listen to my own mind, and all the knowledge I have collected ring his point.

I dint need to wrap any of this into a religious package, but maybe that’s partly because I have the luxury of identifying with a religion that allows for how I think and feel about all
of these things, even including being an atheist.

I know some very religious people and their love of God and the peace I think they find in that belief, and their beliefs regarding their religious doctrine I often find very beautiful. Any person who appears calm, accepting, and comfortable in life I find attractive. I hope I can be more like that. I’m not doing it well in some realms of my life right now.

Sometimes I envy those whose religion bolsters them. It sometimes gets hard when you have to depend on yourself to get you through the rough spots.

@NerdyKeith I wasn’t clear what I meant. (I also mis-typed “It is there aND you are a part of it.”)

I wasn’t trying to say that it might not be interesting, fun, or even fascinating or useful in various ways to ponder and hypothesize about the origin of the universe.

What I meant was I don’t think it’s relevant to one’s spiritual alignment, unless one is worrying about belief in literal readings of creation stories from religious texts as if it’s important if they’re literally true or not.

I mentioned it because you did. I noticed that you talked about being analytical and then framed your conclusion in terms of “a higher being who created the universe”, but that indicates to me that you still have a framework of ideas where that is a fundamental part of your spirituality and what you believe about the universe.

But I would say those ideas surely come from your Christian upbringing and culture, but they are not essentially what actual spirituality, cosmology and even religion need nor should be about. Unless you’re discussing it with people who are aligned with certain versions of certain religions, or you’re dealing with your own ideas and feelings from your background or something.

I overstated it a bit, because I don’t mean to entirely rule out Biblical literalism or even Mormon literalism or whatever as possibly a useable religious framework for some people. But from what you’ve said about yourself, I think it’s probably noise from your background… unless it really starts to resonate for you at some point.

But from what you said about being largely analytical, alternating agnostic/atheist with deist sympathies, I thought what I wrote might be a useful standpoint. Which is, that for the purpose of deciding what to consider yourself, you might want to try on stopping making it be about whether there is a god entity, personal or not, that created the universe. I find it very useful to consider that all religious positions that I would ever consider, understand their supernatural religious texts as metaphorical or allegorical rather than literal, for the most part, including Christianity. Biblical scholars, theology professors, Pope Francis and many (pretty much all) very smart skeptical yet spiritual people I know agree: it’s almost all metaphorical, not literal. Trying to think of that stuff as literal is a huge distraction, and prevents noticing and connecting with the very human and very universal and very useful experiences that broadly fall under or near the word “spiritual”.

I think it’s normal, and healthy to question your beliefs, and your relationship with the universe.

@Zaku No worries, thank you for clarifying. I think you do offer some great advice none the less. I think I just misunderstood your original point. Thank you

There was a situation today that was beyond my control. I so badly, badly wanted to be able to help. I found my self speaking out loud, asking “God” to help us out. It made me feel better, even though I knew it was ridiculous.

@Dutchess_III Sometimes that is a cultural thing many of us do as a coping mechanism.

^^ There was a situation today that was beyond my control. I so badly, badly wanted to be able to help. I found my self speaking out loud, asking “God” to help us out.
You did not think to ask Osiris, Horus, Zeus, Ra, Athena, Shiva, etc.? Strange….thought one would have made the short list, or it being less ridiculous to call on them… ~~

Well, it just made me feel better, although I know it was an illusion @NerdyKeith.

No HC, because I was raised and steeped in the Christian faith.
If I’d been raised in ancient Greece those are the gods to whom I would have “prayed.”
If I’d been raised Muslim, I’d have prayed to Allah.
All the results would have been the same, because the comfort I felt was all in my imagination because it was familiar.

Not much. Ever. In the past couple of years I’ve only done it when a question like this comes up on Fluther, and then only for a few seconds. And then I find myself looking up at my popcorn ceiling and wondering if all those little white flakes I’ve been finding all over the place are coming from there.

^‘I like the way you talk.’

(Sling Blade)

Yes, I do that. I study sciences in college, and they cause me to question my religion.