ILX Religiosity and Spirituality and Agnosticity and Atheicity Poll

Sorry some of those seem to have gotten cut off. I think it's basically clear what I was getting at with each option though. I forgot to put an "other" button.

I'm so Athiest I pee secularism

U.P. Freely

kevin shields is god

but yeah i believe in a god, just no affiliation. /end tragic teenage cliche

i just can't come to grips that our whole world was founded by swirling helium. i mean, i believe that it WAS - but i think there's gotta be an entity behind the whole thing. not even a man. something like that futurama god that was just a blinking galaxy. that wuz cool.

Yeah, I probably should have put in something more reflective of a deist or a "god is the universe" kind of view. I sort of unfairly collapsed both that and new ageyness into "spiritual but not religious"

are we talking about Terry Jones on any thread?

thank god no

kevin shieldsarsene is god

I am a hardcore atheist. I don't want to go anywhere near a house of worship unless it's for my cousin's wedding. but I have found value in a religious or spiritual tradition that I did not grow up in.

is actually the weird but true answer for me. i dig and kinda envy how great religion can be, i just cant do it myself.

not bitching about that not being a poll answer btw

shame buddhism or supporting arsenal don't count as a proper religion - atheist and f that noise.

jewish agnostic

Atheist, and teaching biology to college freshmen for six semesters made me never want to talk about religion again in my life.

hahaha abbott your new sn = <3 <3 <3

*shrugs*theist

agnostic i guess? maybe "other"? but i do play capn save-a-religion on the internet

justen, what tradition(s) did you find value in?

That is great, Abbott.

As for me, relaxed agnostic.

Yeah I don't really want this to be about what you 'think' about religion in the abstract so much as how you view its role in your own life (xpost)

Atheist.

Some houses of worship are interesting/beautiful and I like to go near them to admire them though.

indifferent to the existence of god, hostile to the existence of churches

Atheist, and teaching biology to college freshmen for six semesters made me never want to talk about religion again in my life.

You ran into a nest of Young And Rock Solid In Their Belief Christians too?

As for me, atheist since childhood. (I made the mistake of telling some junior high classmates that I didn't believe in God. One of them told a teacher, sure that I was breaking some law by being so, and was surprised when I wasn't called into the principal's office and/or arrested.)

Nontheist, At least until Great Cthulhu rises from the watery depths.

it'd be interesting i guess to discuss when you became an atheist/agnostic - my mother and her family are all pretty religious i guess (polish catholics) but i really lost interest/faith in whatever i was being taught at a pretty young age, around 12 or so. she was pretty cool i guess to let me skip out on confirmation, but i think she'd be shocked (or hurt?), even now, to find out i don't believe in god, or whatever

i guess i guess i guess

Extra Ecclesiam nulla salus

I was raised catholic and went to church (almost) every Sunday growing up. Went to catholic HS and figured out sometime around then that I didn't believe any of it. I wasn't lucky enough to skip confirmation but I had a crush on the kid I sat next to in confirmation class and got some good presents so that wasn't too bad. My parents weren't thrilled at first when I told them I was an atheist but they don't ever mention it at all anymore and neither do I.

There isn't a choice for those of us who actively participate in a faith, or do go to a place of worship every week (or at least try to - the Christian sabbath being a Sunday morning can be a real pain in the ass, though I guess it's kind a circular cause/effect that people go out on a Saturday). Probably go for the fifth choice?

i don't know

I'm pretty militantly agnostic, in that I believe nobody actually knows anything and I think it's arrogant to presume that you do.

There isn't a choice for those of us who actively participate in a faith, or do go to a place of worship every week (or at least try to - the Christian sabbath being a Sunday morning can be a real pain in the ass, though I guess it's kind a circular cause/effect that people go out on a Saturday). Probably go for the fifth choice?

― textbook blows on the head (dowd), Thursday, September 9, 2010 12:48 AM Bookmark

Yeah, the fifth choice would probably be the best. I didn't mean to exclude people from that choice who participate every week so much as to include those who didn't but were basically committedly religious.

Re Hurtings question of what traditions i dig/envy in religion: lots of stuff i guess - in the dig/admire category, it is a legit force of good in the world obv, i mean soup kitchens and house building and food distribution in crisis areas and all that stuff i guess. as a full on atheist, i get infuriated by the peeps in my camp that diminish that because its based on some sort of eventual eternal reward. so fucking what? and yeah there are certainly charitable non-religious organizations but the harsh truth is that they lag far behind the actual person to person level achievements that religion pulls off on the regular.

as far as envy - i think any atheist that can claim that they are glad not to have the haven of eternal reward/afterlife/whatever waiting in the wings during tough times or the death of a loved one is denying the reality of those moments. its not an awesome or comforting worldview, and as a dude that has never had that feeling of superiority that a lot of half-assed atheism flaunts, id be happy to believe, i just kinda dont/cant.

oh and to whoever was curious about the origin of when we became whatever we are, i was raised atheist with an ancestral irish catholic dollop on the top.

hardcore atheist, raised by 1 agnostic and 1 buddhist. would kill for a little bit of faith in my life, tbh

Agnostic, raised Catholic but just found that too oppressive/ridiculous. But I often wish I was a believer because I think, wow, so many people really ARE, why am I not built like that? But any time I go to churches, I find myself looking around at people, wondering if they are really sincere about their belief/prayer (yes, I realize this is incredibly rude).

At the same time, I do sometimes pray, just in an "are you there, God, it's me, Sara" kind of way. Especially if someone asks for prayers, I feel like it's rude to refuse, but I often warn them that the prayers of agnostics might be useless or even worse.

I do like churches, at least ones that don't seem like warehouses full of evangelical Jesus-as-self-esteem jerks. I'm kind of down with the do-goodiness of the Catholics when they aren't oppressing women and gay people and covering up pedophilia.

I voted for the second one, but wasn't really sure that was quite right.

atheist/antitheist/misotheist

I am atheist/agnostic but I was raised in a religious tradition and I like to maintain at least some contact with that
I am atheist/agnostic but I have found value in a religious or spiritual tradition that I did not grow up in.

both of these.

Atheist who is only hardcore about it in terms of my own life choices - strikes me religion is frequently one of the lesser stupidities/superstitions in most people's lives, and you'd be better off getting irate about magical thinking in general?

I fuck with the Tao tho

i just straight up worship the devil at this point

Where is:

I am atheist/agnostic BECAUSE I was raised in a religious tradition, and I don't want to go anywhere near a house of worship unless it's for my cousin's wedding.

(nb not strictly true; i like going into churches or cathedrals to potter around like a tourist, and they're frequently great musical venues, but unless it's, like, proper choral evensong or something i can appreciate on an aesthetic level, fuck actually going to services. unless i'm back home for xmas in which case it's pretty jokes.)

i used to be a hardcore atheist - but now i'm more of an agnostic, but it's less about "not knowing" and more about "not caring" whether there's a god or not. Because i don't really experience things in a religious or spiritual way, but that's purely an issue of semantics, probably.

Like some people pray, and other people medidate, and i just sit around or go for a walk and reflect on things, or have a dream about things i've been anxious about or not knowing what to do about, and it'll put things in perspective. But I don't see it as any sort of spiritual practice.

This is probably because my parents never made me go to church as a kid, except on vacation - for historical or architectural value. The only other time i went to church was the occasional school choir concert. Churches with shitty acoustics are sad things. Churches with good acoustics are great to sing in, and some of the music is amazing, and really exhilarating to sing with others.

Little from pot 1, little from pot 3. Have no faith, but having being raised Irish catholic and (more relevantly) coming from a cliché-confirming huuuge extended family of Irish catholics, I attend the necessary christening/marriage/funeral ceremonies more than a few times each year. Skip out on anything beyond that though, from memorial masses and any actual praying onwards.

Aunts pray for my soul, which, though I don't believe it's worth anything, is nice.

I am atheist/agnostic but I have found value in a religious or spiritual tradition that I did not grow up in.

This. I was a hardcore atheist growing up but I've since decided that there is so much more joy and wonder in contemplating the mysteries of certain spiritual practices ALONGSIDE the cosmic mysteries of scientific discovery than in Dawkins' dull dogmatism.

xp - like my first memory of religion as a thing was at this lady's house where i'd go for daycare after kindergarten. She was quite religious, and there was a Young Person's Bible that was basically easy reader style bible stories with hanna barbera-esque illustrations - and rather than take a nap at "naptime" - because i'd never be tired - I read this Young Person's Bible. I didn't really grasp that we were supposed to believe the stories. I thought it was kinda like Greek Mythology, which i was also a fan of at the time, where the stories are historically relevant but it's not something you're supposed to believe is true anymore.

The mysteries of spiritual practices are another testament to the fecundity of the human brain imo but yeah I wouldn't wanna just dismiss all that great music and architecture.

I am sure tho that societies reach a point where big R Religion is a negative drag on our possibilities as a species and we've long reached that point.

i think the fact that at least one of the disciples looked like Freddy from Scooby Doo also made me think they were just made up.

what are these other spiritual practices that people weren't raised with but that they're drawn to?

I don't know about the divine exactly, but definitely believe in the transcendental power of art — in the sense that it can take us out of ourselves, it offers kinds of connections that I don't think we make any other way.

I was just overcome with the beauty of a song the other day and started tearing up. It made me think about this thread. I realized, however, that I was getting choked up because even though man is mortal, being able to create a song so beautiful is a form of immortality. I don't think it has to signify something actually divine.

music is ultimately communication, right? a way of us molding the energy to tell each other our feelings. tune one string to another. what is that if not honing the energy in some way.

FUCKING MAGNETS

sorry had a few

xp Tables: yeah look, I should clarify not all music is lifting me up to the third heaven. WAP for instance, hasn't taken me there (yet).

Well put Tipsy

I think art can do more than communicating our feelings, it can communicate things outside of ourselves too. I love "not" by Big Thief because it does apophatic theology so well. The song (and a million others) communicates more than a feeling imo

more than a feeeeeeeliiiiiiinggggg

I guess my main feeling about religion is that there’s so much fascinating stuff in science, neurology and psychiatry, etc that I have other stuff to explore than gods and such

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i6l8MFdTaPE

i was just remembering the night i saw the web of energy, i watched my friend snap a small tree in half with his bare hands because his body went into fight mode after being trapped in a car listening to ween's "blackjack." that batch of acid was something else

Light the first light of evening, as in a room
In which we rest and, for small reason, think
The world imagined is the ultimate good.

This is, therefore, the intensest rendezvous.
It is in that thought that we collect ourselves,
Out of all the indifferences, into one thing:

Within a single thing, a single shawl
Wrapped tightly round us, since we are poor, a warmth,
A light, a power, the miraculous influence.

Here, now, we forget each other and ourselves.
We feel the obscurity of an order, a whole,
A knowledge, that which arranged the rendezvous.

Within its vital boundary, in the mind.
We say God and the imagination are one...
How high that highest candle lights the dark.

Out of this same light, out of the central mind,
We make a dwelling in the evening air,
In which being there together is enough.

I give Mr Stevens his due.

Where we are now
Soon it will be there

The arts have both feelings and ideas in them, that is one part of their appeal.

But for me, the main bits are collaboration and connection. In music, one often collaborates with other musicians and connects with an audience. This is the closest thing I have to a church right now.

There are musicians I have played with maybe once or twice, and I strongly feel that I know them. Perhaps as well as I know a cousin or stepsibling or schoolmate.

That's the biggest thing I miss about playing music with people, which I haven't done regularly in 20 years. I've been in bands with people I otherwise never hung out with, we weren't necessarily socially compatible or interested in the same things, except that we could play music together. It is a specific kind of connection for sure, maybe akin to what people who do theater feel about other performers, I don't know. Conjuring something together that only exists for as long as you're playing, it is a kind of magic.

Tipsy otm.

Any collaborative work forges connection - but collaborative artwork is especially magical.

Theater and music and parenting are important to me. (I have never made a movie or a TV show or a church or a business). I do think that people working together to _do a thing_ is the closest I have come to religion-esque ecstasy.

making music alone also makes me feel closer and connected to the universe and history and stuff. I imagine painters get a similar thing?

Perhaps. I like collaborative work most, but solo stuff like painting/drawing can also feel religious.

I just ran across a quote from Bertrand Russell that I think encapsulates the kind of thinking that typifies a large segment of those who identify as atheists.

"I think all the great religions of the world - Buddhism, Hinduism, Christianity, Islam, and Communism - both untrue and harmful. It is evident as a matter of logic that, since they disagree, not more than one of them can be true."

So many things in there to call out and examine in greater detail. The very least of which would be the exclusion of Judaism as one of the great 'religions' he cites (I used scare quotes because he tosses in Communism under the rubric of 'religion'). I'd rate the most tenuous item in that quote as the idea that religion requires, or aspires to, mathematically precise and logically demonstrable truth.

Isn't it a bit like saying since particle theory and wave theory disagree then only one of them can be true.

yeah any "skeptic" who looks at christianity and communism and goes like "yeah basically the same thing" has, uh, an interesting set of boundaries around the process of critical inquiry

focusing on which religion of them all is true after noting that none of them is is such lazy baiting

Russell was a pretty committed anti-communist if that means anything

you could also argue their common traits are proof there is no divine being. the concentration of power, misogyny, subjugation of others, abuse, corruption etc. if there is a god, why would the same manmade hierarchies recur so often?

if there is a god, why would the same manmade hierarchies recur so often?

because the nature of god cannot be deduced from an enumeration of human behaviors?

Russell was a pretty committed anti-communist if that means anything

― Andy the Grasshopper

i'm a committed anti-fascist, that doesn't make fascism a "religion", it's just fucking stupid

"i don't like it so therefore it's a religion" yeah seriously that's basically half of "new atheism" right there

Did anyone read that article in the NYer about a study that was done by giving shrooms to a bunch of religious leaders? One interesting thing several of the participants mentioned was seeing (hallucinating) religious iconography from other religions in their visions. I think one participant summarized it as all these different religions are pointing to the same thing but with their own cultural spins

That's basically a rehash of Aldous Huxley's Perennial Philosophy from the mid-1950s.

Xp thinking of this?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marsh_Chapel_Experiment

more like a reshroom xp

booooooo (well done)

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2025/05/26/this-is-your-priest-on-drugs

Googled dirty Bertie, he looks like a stilted lay. If i ever write a porno for dead intellectuals he's totes the creepy guy sitting in the corner.

Also reminded me of that email from 1996 about how to annoy your professor. Cause one of the items was smoke a pipe in class and say "quite right, old bean!" all the time

Religion and truth have nothing to do with one another.

quite right, old bean!

Wasn't Uncle Bertie the guy who famously collab'd for 100 pages in arcane mathematical witchcraft just to prove 1 + 1 = 2?

Through my yoga practice I have been getting into Patanjali's yoga sutras, but only now beginnkng to study the different conceptions of 'God' in things like Vedanta, which are so different to Judeo-Christian frameworks of one all powerful being

There seems to be a line between theism and atheism, which I am looking at putting some work into understanding in the coming years.

because the nature of god cannot be deduced from an enumeration of human behaviors?

at best this just is saying there could be a god but one that has nothing to do with any religion we know

very lovecraftian, that

The old ones can't be as bad as priests

has nothing to do with any religion we know

the existence of a unitary god is impossible to prove or disprove, so yes, of course there could be a god. or not. the next step after this realization is to realize that religion is not limited to a belief in god. it can exist and carry immense value in the absence of any reference to god's nature beyond our total inability to describe what a unitary god's nature would be.

Better to transfer your attention to observing your own nature and finding how it fits into the ultimately unknowable "ground of reality". this process largely centers on shedding the illusions promoted by your mind in order to satisfy its desire for certainties. As one gets used to the idea that one rests upon an ultimate reality that is unknowable, and yet all-encompassing, it becomes possible to neutralize a multitude of anxieties and grow into an attitude of faith in and gratitude for the reality we have.

I should add the desire to promote this attitude of pure faith and gratitude is where most religions originate. They generally fail because the obstinate tendency of their adherents to cling to certainty defeats them. They fall into didacticism and tenets of belief. They formalize, then the formalism devours the religion. But the revelation that forms the seed of religion keeps recurring, because it is perpetually available to those with eyes to see it.

It's all gone a bit Tillichian.

Paul Tillich was just a latecomer in a millenia-long line of people who have elucidated similar ideas, starting with the semi-mythical Lao Tzu.

most religious people wouldn't agree with you, but i accept you are making a good faith argument. just one that seems to demand religion as a core to it when that seems unnecessary to the wider belief or ethos you're espousing.

I think we're bumping into a definitional problem regarding whether religion as an entity requiring a group of people who have developed a set of formalized beliefs, and the degree to which anyone accepts those beliefs defines the degree to which one belongs to that particular religion. This posits religion not as a basic human trait, but as a set of particularized "religions" defined by their differences from one another's beliefs. I don't see it that way.

sher god is anything really

Pascal’s Flutter