What's your religious experience?

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What's your religious experience?

Postby Marcuse » Fri May 24, 2013 4:49 pm

Please read me first...please

So this is thread for you to detail your experiences or viewpoint on religion, beliefs, whatever you use to get through life. I have been reading a lot of passionate accounts of personal religious/belief experience and think it would be nice to have a space where we can lay down what we feel about the divine or lack thereof.

But: here's the rules

Because religious and belief threads can get derailed or devolve into arguments this thread is going to work quite differently to other thread. Each post should detail the person's individual thoughts and not address any other post in the thread directly. This thread isn't here to debate, it's to put down your thoughts without judgement or prejudice.

To be clear: any statement that has the tone of "______ is stupid and the people who believe in _________ are stupid" is strictly forbidden here

Put as much or as little down as you want to, nothing is invalid here, I would love to hear from anyone who believes anything.

Edit:

For those wishing to engage in debate, there is now a Religious Discussion Thread to do that in. Please keep this thread clear of debating.
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Last edited by Marcuse on Fri Sep 06, 2013 7:11 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: What's your religious experience?

Postby Marcuse » Fri May 24, 2013 5:07 pm

I guess I should go first then.

I have always had problems with religion, obviously Christianity was the prevalent religion I was exposed to at a young age. I was never taken to church by my family, but the school I went to was fairly religious and we had visits by priests and hymn singing and so forth. At about the age of 7 I realised I wasn't particularly involved with the stories and tenets of Christianity and began to question the existence of God. I looked into it with all the incisiveness a 7 year old can bring to bear, and decided I hadn't a clue.

I spent the next few years questioning the things I was being taught about religion, and life in general. I still kept the faith I had been taught (as much as that was worth) and when I felt low, sad or despairing I reached out in my mind and my heart to God as I envisioned it. I felt and found nothing.

I have heard it said by people of faith that they feel the prescence of God in everything, I felt (and still feel) the prescence of "nothing" everywhere. When I reach out I feel nothing outside myself, have never experienced the personal relationship with a deity that others talk about. Instead I have become intimately acquainted with nothingness. The inevitability of entropy gives me a comforting certainty to cling to, even if it's not a positive one.

I see it everywhere now. Nothing exists in everything, and I long since gave up denying that fact. My philosophical interest in existentialism is based in this awareness of nothingness. I know that almost everyone on here will disbelieve what I'm saying, but that's not the point of this thread, part of the reason I'm interested in everyone else's viewpoint is because it will likely be different from my own.
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Re: What's your religious experience?

Postby reallifegirl » Fri May 24, 2013 6:45 pm

I was born and raised Catholic. When I was a kid, I went to a Catholic elementary school, and I was very devoted to it. As a teen and an adult, I got increasingly more lax about following all the rules, particularly the vice ones. (Though to be fair, I don’t think most Catholics do keep those at least not in the U.S.).

My feelings on the church are fairly complicated. I do truly love the sense of community and charity that comes with it – in the corners of Catholicism I’ve been in, there really has been an emphasis on helping those who need help and providing charity. There is a lot of good charitable work that is done through the church. And while I don’t agree with the Church’s political policies on a lot of things (birth control, gay marriage, etc.), I do like their politics re: welfare, the death penalty, and some other topics.

That said, my level of faith seems to fluctuate month by month. My mother got diagnosed with cancer six years ago, and I went through a depression for a while after where I spent a lot of time mulling over death and the afterlife and whether any of it was real or if everything really was as bleak as I was feeling at the time. Mom has gotten better, though she isn’t in remission yet -- and all along the way, the women from our church parish went to chemotherapy sessions with her and made dinner for nights when they knew she’d be exhausted from treatment. I’m not stuck in the same nihilistic state as I once was, but I’m not sure I ever went back to the full level of faith – not because I feel like God ‘failed’ me or my mother, but because it was just such a shake-up to how I was living.
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Re: What's your religious experience?

Postby Ganymede314 » Fri May 24, 2013 8:09 pm

Ok I'll share.
I was raised a Catholic (in Ireland - so extra Catholic?), but I am an atheist now. I attended a convent school until I was 16, but I had lost any faith long before I left that school.

It was a very religious environment, we said prayers before every class, said the whole Rosary in the evening, and I have done all the childhood ceremonies, Baptism, Communion and Confirmation. I was even in the choir. It was shortly after my Confirmation (which happens at age 12) that I started seriously questioning this religion that I was now a "confirmed" member of, and questioning the idea of a God or Gods existing at all.

It might seem a strange turning point, but this is where I had my first serious problem with Catholicism:
When I was 12 my cat died, and I was obviously very sad in school the next day, and the teacher (who was a nun) asked what was up. I explained, and finished off by saying something like "but it's alright, because she was a good cat so I'll see her in heaven." The nun made a point of explaining to the entire class that in fact I wouldn't be seeing my cat in heaven because animals have no souls. Now, this didn't sit well with me at all, and not just because I was all sad. It just didn't make sense, we are not that different from other animals, we are animals after all. I asked where the distinction was between us and other animals, and never received a satisfactory answer, in fact the nuns got pretty pissed with all my questions.

Anyway, this was a revelation for me, I genuinely thought that that must be wrong. So I started asking more questions, and analysing the bible with a more sceptical eye. I didn't much like what I found, and was extremely frustrated with nuns telling me things like "it is not our place to question Gods plan" and "Jesus died for you, so you are insulting his name by questioning this" etc... They became kind of hostile towards me after a while, and because I was a rebellious teenager, that pushed me away even more. This led to me questioning not just Catholicism, but the idea of a God in general.

I do understand why people are religious. I get it. But for me, and I really don't want to offend anyone here, I found all the awe and wonder in the universe through science. We are able to discover the secrets of the universe, to actually understand them, using evidence. Actual, observable, real, magnificent beauty exists, and we are capable of knowing all this. No faith is needed to bask in the wonder of the universe, we can explain and understand these mysteries with science, a God figure is not necessary.

I realise that there are a lot of people who love science and are also religious, and that's cool. But for me, I just don't believe that a God exists. I have seen no evidence, and even if one does believe in a god, how do you know yours is the right one? There are far too many unanswerable questions for my liking. I generally don't talk about my religious views with people, because I end up offending them, and I really don't want to offend anyone. It is none of my business what anybody else believes, whatever makes your life happy. I may not believe in God, but I respect the views of others, so I hope we can all still be friends :)

I must say, though, that my local parish priest is a lovely person, and he knows I'm an atheist and never tries to make me feel bad or convert me. At my sisters wedding I abstained from taking Communion, obviously, and I was expecting to get a bollicking from him when I told him as much before hand, but he was grand with it. Ireland is not quite so heavily religious anymore, but my very very religious relations look disparagingly on my heathen ways. I am open to evidence, and if there is ever evidence that points to the existence of a god I will certainly consider it. I understand that there any infinitely many unanswered questions about the Cosmos, but at the moment, I cannot see how the answer to any of them is God.

Right, well that turned out very long, and a bit rambly, sorry. I hope my views aren't offensive to anyone, but I think this thread will be very interesting, and hopefully we will all still be friends regardless of our differing views.
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"The Cosmos is all that is or was or ever will be. Our feeblest contemplations of the Cosmos stir us -- there is a tingling in the spine, a catch in the voice, a faint sensation, as if a distant memory, of falling from a height. We know we are approaching the greatest of mysteries."
-Carl Sagan
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Re: What's your religious experience?

Postby LaChaise » Fri May 24, 2013 8:29 pm

Well, my experience is going to be way shorter than the others' I guess.

I have no problem with religion, in fact I find them all most interesting. I wanted to graduate in religious history in college, until life told me "nope".
However, I have a problem with dogma. I can't find myself fitting in any religion (even though the french are usually way less religious and -dare I say- more open about other religions than the americans). That's why I chose to be agnostic. Not because it's the lazy option, but because it allowed me to have some kind of faith, without being bound by human rules about how I was supposed to express it.

I guess my credo basically consists in "be as kind as you can, and try to do good around you, but don't hate yourself when you realize you're just human. Just learn."

I hope that was clear. If not, please ignore me, I'll just show myself out.
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Re: What's your religious experience?

Postby Deathclaw_Puncher » Fri May 24, 2013 9:23 pm

Though Reform Jewish, I also attended Ananda churches until I was 13. I started becoming really interested in science when I was around 7. I didn't really care for the possibility of there being a god, given what I saw in my books. I didn't see the point of it or why anyone would want that. Also, the notion of "it's all part of God's plan" was a major turn off for me, since if everything is already planned out for you, then what's the point of living for yourself? Nowadays, however, I see myself as less of an atheist, and more of a pragmatic agnostic.
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Re: What's your religious experience?

Postby Learned Nand » Fri May 24, 2013 10:03 pm

Let us all clarify something right now: agnosticism measures knowledge, not belief. You can be an agnostic atheist (i.e. a person who, in the absence of evidence, does not believe in God) or an agnostic theist (i.e. a person who, in the absence of evidence, does believe in god). I should think that most people here are agnostic, whether or not they believe in God. That is, unless somebody has conclusive evidence that God exists.

I went to a non-denominational Jewish elementary school and I've been an atheist my whole life. Having seen no evidence of God's existence, I haven't found reason to believe. The people around me have generally been atheists, or occasionally highly agnostic theists, so my lack of faith has never really been a problem. Doubt of the existence of God is pretty popular in the Jewish community: about half of all Jews doubt the existence of God.
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Re: What's your religious experience?

Postby Dottoe » Fri May 24, 2013 10:35 pm

Why does this topic sounds like a sex thing? Maybe it's just because it's on these forums.

I don't really like the rule where we can't acknowledge each other's posts, but my views are posted fractionally throughout these boards though, if someone wants to talk.
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Re: What's your religious experience?

Postby LaoWai » Fri May 24, 2013 11:15 pm

Barring any semantic arguments, I'd say I was agnostic, by which I mean, "I don't know." If I had to go a step further, I'd say I was a non-believer. (Some folks would like to pin me down as a theistic or atheistic agnostic, I know, but no one seems interested in pinning me down as a "constant-speed-of-light agnostic" or an "inconstant-speed-of-light agnostic.") So, yeah, I'm just a plain-old agnostic.
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Re: What's your religious experience?

Postby Learned Nand » Fri May 24, 2013 11:22 pm

That's because I'd sort of hope you're a constant-speed-of-light-gnostic? I mean, the maximum speed of light is a scientifically accepted fact.

If you don't believe in god but aren't affirmatively certain of that belief, you're an agnostic atheist. It's not that people want to pin you down as something, it's that you are one of those things. Unless, that is, you've found a way to believe and not believe in God at the same time, in which case you must be a bose-einstein condensate, because quantum mechanics only become visible on a macroscopic scale in bose-einstein condensates.
  • 5

Terry Pratchett wrote:The trouble with having an open mind, of course, is that people will insist on coming along and trying to put things in it.

Click for a Limerick
OrangeEyebrows wrote:There once was a guy, Aviel,
whose arguments no one could quell.
He tested with Turing,
his circuits fried during,
and now we'll have peace for a spell.
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Re: What's your religious experience?

Postby D-LOGAN » Sat May 25, 2013 1:34 am

Meh, I never got the big deal on religion. I was raised a catholic in a place where everyone was a catholic more or less, and God was kind of like the planet Jupiter. You're told it's there, but you're never gonna go there and it's never really gonna have any impact on your life, so what's the big deal? Why worry about it.

All the stuff people have seemed to make a big deal over, never really came up for me either. the whole science, evolution thing- never caused a problem, couldn't see why it would. Honestly didn't see why evolution or the Big Bang or sandwich toasters had any negating effect on faith. Was 23 before I even met anyone who actually believed that if you believed in God you couldn't believe in evolution (which made him seem fascinating to me, like a rare and fragile butterfly. Like hearing them talk about how the earth was only a few thousand years old-so quaint)
And the Bible- well, wasn't it just metaphors and morality tales and whatnot, not meant to be taken literally.

The after life- easy. Don't rape or murder anyone. Done, you're in, heaven. That simple. What you do or don't believe in, had no impact whatsoever. Long as you don't rape or murder anyone, you get your heaven on when you die and it's all boobies and cheese burger flavoured ice cream (or whatever you're into)for all eternity.
You don't even have to be good, or even indifferent. Long as you're not straight up evil-murder, rape, torture evil like, and you're laughing. You can spend your whole life in your grandmother's basement, covered in donkey excrement, smearing mayonnaise on a stuffed ostrich, worshipping at a shrine of Satan, leaving the building occasionally to urinate on churches-but long as you haven't actually been murdering anyone, you're fine. Anything else just makes God seem petty, and why would you wanna worship a petty God?

That just seemed obligatory to me, religion just didn't seem like a thing you were supposed to take seriously. And it just seemed everyone felt the same way, no one was mad into it. people went to mass and stuff and prayed on occasion, but anything more than that just seemed strange. Not that I'm saying I don't believe in it, well some of it, just well ..... not a big deal. And if half the things some other people apparently believe about God turn out to be true, like the homophobia or not liking non-believers or ordering massacres in that Bible book I totally will get around to reading one of these days (it can't be that long, they wrote it like over a hundred years ago, I'll fly through it) and whatnot, well then, maybe I'll take my business elsewhere. I'm sure Thor must be looking for new worshippers.
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Re: What's your religious experience?

Postby Learned Nand » Sat May 25, 2013 1:37 am

D-LOGAN wrote:All the stuff people have seemed to make a big deal over, never really came up for me either. the whole science, evolution thing- never caused a problem, couldn't see why it would. Honestly didn't see why evolution or the Big Bang or sandwich toasters had any negating effect on faith.

Some people's faith directly contradicts those facts. In those cases, evolution, science, and the big bang theory are a threat to people's faith, though not a threat to a belief in God in general.
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Terry Pratchett wrote:The trouble with having an open mind, of course, is that people will insist on coming along and trying to put things in it.

Click for a Limerick
OrangeEyebrows wrote:There once was a guy, Aviel,
whose arguments no one could quell.
He tested with Turing,
his circuits fried during,
and now we'll have peace for a spell.
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Re: What's your religious experience?

Postby D-LOGAN » Sat May 25, 2013 2:11 am

I know right, but here's the thing, like I say I was raised to believe there is a God and a heaven in the same way there is an Australia and a North Pole, as in they're so far away they have no real impact on you, so it wasn't a big issue. Life is the here and now.

But I loved the science and nature stuff in school, and evolution seemed so cool, probably cause it had mutation in it, and I was a big fan of the teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. So when I came home and started talking about evolution to my parents, who would have been raised to believe in the Bible, Adam and Eve/world made in 6 days stuff, which was obviously contradicted by all this. They were like, "Oh, fair enough." That was that. No biggie. They didn't know much about evolution because it obviously wasn't something they really dealt with in their daily lives, but if it was facts, then that was that. Just as when they were growing up the Bible was just something you accepted and that was that. At the end of the day, faith/evolution, neither's gonna put food on the table. You live in the here and now, why take it so seriously?

Like I say, the Bible just seemed like stories people wrote thousands of years ago to make sense of the world. You were just supposed to pick and choose the bits you agreed with and move on with your lives (which the inter-net has thought me is a thing some people HATE! Picking and Choosing seems abominable to some folk).
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Re: What's your religious experience?

Postby Learned Nand » Sat May 25, 2013 2:22 am

Well, if you treat something as the absolute truth, obviously you're going to object to people who think it's a recommendation. It pisses me off when people do that with scientific findings (and everybody does that with scientific findings).
  • 3

Terry Pratchett wrote:The trouble with having an open mind, of course, is that people will insist on coming along and trying to put things in it.

Click for a Limerick
OrangeEyebrows wrote:There once was a guy, Aviel,
whose arguments no one could quell.
He tested with Turing,
his circuits fried during,
and now we'll have peace for a spell.
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Re: What's your religious experience?

Postby LaChaise » Sat May 25, 2013 3:43 am

I'd like to remind you that the OP specifically precised that this thread wasn't there for debate guys. As frustrating as it can get, please respect his rules.
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