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?
Christian church is made of people. And people are sinful and evil.
Religion doesn’t come from what other people tell you is truth, but from your experience. What experience have you lead you to believe in higher power?
I have experienced Luck so good and so significant in my life that I can only exlain it by intervention of higher power. But maybe you didn’t experienced something like that, and I can understand that.
Religion comes from within, and not from external sources.
I mostly agree but I would argue that spirituality comes from within, while religion comes from external sources. Religion is just other people’s packaged version of spirituality/faith.
In my experience, this usually fills in for something that people need to be true.
I’m not religious, but I’ve noticed religion can (successfully) act as a mental buffer to help people through hard times. To keep them from simply clocking themselves out during the lowest of lows.
Whether someone else likes that idea or not because it’s “lies” doesn’t really matter if it’s a technique for pure animal survival that works for some members of a species.
Personally, I’ve seen a lot of damage done to perfectly good people done via religious institutions, so I’d prefer if a formalized network of mental health services that was affordable and accessible existed. But, again, my preferences for the type of system that performs a function aren’t going to erase what happens in real life with real people faced with survival problems on the ground.
That’s a good take. It offers hope in times of desperation. A mental health solution would be better, but I’m told constantly that there’s a waiting list of 2 years, even though my GP is trying his very best to get me into a program, sometimes a higher power is all we have.
That said, f*ck all the religious rules. Live your life and hang on, even if you have to believe in a unicorn.
I think you’re describing agnostic beliefs, believing there might be a god but not conforming to any religion and basically otherwise being an atheist.
(Not too be confused with Gnostic beliefs, which was a branch of Christianity)
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.
I grew up as a Lutheran Christian in a small, conservative town—and attended Sunday School/summer Bible camp for many years—but became an agnostic after I began questioning things at 16 years old. About a month after that, I became an atheist. I’ve been one since… so almost 14 years.
Unfortunately, I was afraid to tell my parents, so I still went to church with my family almost every Sunday until I left at 18. I was also still effectively forced to be anacolyte/perform piano/sing in the choir/attend most other church activities. Fucking painful.
I still haven’t told my parents, though, and probably never will; it’d cause more pain than anything else, sadly.
I wonder how many other people at the mosque secretly think the same as you? If you have children, do you think they will be less constrained than you? In which case, there is some hope that the next generation will escape the strictures of organised religion.
I very much doubt you’ll find anyone here who discourages you from stepping away from organized religion.
I’m a former Christian pastor on a hiatus from church life, but in no way done with being a Christian in my private life.
I believe the Bible boils religion down to three basic life roles for every individual person to follow: priest, steward, and keeper.
As a priest, every person is meant to determine how they ought best to live.
As steward they are to take care of the world around them in accordance with their beliefs.
As their “brother’s keeper” they should work to ensure everyone else is free from coercion to believe and live how they think is best.
When people function in all three roles they are revealing the “image of God”.
Live your best life and help others do the same to the best of your ability. Or, as James the brother of Jesus, said, true religion is this: “to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.”
There is significant propability by just beeing here that you were hurt in the past and you didn’t heal properly. First step before acknowledging the pain is to go to a safe place, where there are no toxic people and where your basic needs are met. Hurt people are like magnet for toxic people, and hurt people are comforted by familiarity of toxicity.
According to my perspective, having autonomy is core to being human and most religious structures actively work to squash autonomy and force conformity. I think that is harmful for everyone.
For me, it’s taken time to even recognize how hurt I was and I’m still going through a healing process.
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