What are your thoughts on the concept of having faith in a Higher Power but choosing to distance oneself from established religious doctrines?
Hey, so I believe in a higher power but I’m not on board with any particular religion. Anyone else think it’s cool to just fly solo as a good human, no religion attached?
I’m a strong atheist, which means I have a positive belief that no gods exist, just for the record. The way I would put it is that I have never heard of nor have been able to come up with a god concept that I believe is an actual being.
I prefer to use the term “god concept” rather than god to make it clear that we’re talking about a specific idea of a god rather than an actual being. So Odin is a god concept, as is Minerva. Multiple god concepts exist in the bible, including the original regional father-deity El, El’s wife Ashera, their children including Yahweh, and so on. When the Israelites started to move from polytheism to henotheism (many gods exist but you should only worship one), and then to “monotheism” (in scare quotes because there are enough different god concepts as well as divine beings who would be counted as gods in any other pantheon).
In any case, I don’t think having a god concept which you believe refers to an actual being in itself is an indication of anything, good or bad. In my opinion, there’s a feedback loop between the disposition of people and their religions. The problems come in when the religions around the god concepts become extreme. The Amish have a fairly strong god concept, and while I’m not Amish (thank god), I don’t think they do harm unless you think of their actions within their community. 90% of UUs are great people. Sponoza’s Watchmaker would suggest we have to study ourselves to discover what constitutes good. And so on.
So I’d say that your belief is absolutely fine, but you also might be interested in the neurophysiological, social, and anthropological bases of humans so often having god concepts.
Yes. Had religion shoved down my throat as a kid. Learned early on being a religious believer meant nothing, people are shitty no matter what.
Had to decide who I wanted to be, what rules to live by. Realized I don’t enjoy hurting people, try to learn from mistakes, random acts of kindness, to always try for the evolved, educated non violent option. That’s enough for me. If there’s a god who has a problem with that, oh well.
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