december_solstice | I'm an atheist that prays in desperate situations.

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I'm an atheist that prays in desperate situations.

You're probably thinking -- She's been born again! God has spoken to the poor girl!.

Er...not exactly, fam.

Actually, the exact opposite has happened.

I think embracing (more like humoring) the idea of faith pushed me further towards the reality that our lives are very much our own and there is no outside force leading the world in which we live in. That our reality has ultimately been created by us. Our reality is of our making.

I realized humans reach out for faith, for comfort, in a time of great need. In a moment of desperation, when we feel powerless, when we believe ourselves to be weak, we want it so desperately for God, religion, and such to be true -- that a higher power will save us. Will love us. Will make us IMPORTANT. Will make us MATTER.

Similarly how we want so desperately there to be life after death, to be forgiven for our sins, that there is more to our existence than this -- that we are NOT insignificant in this great wide indifferent universe. A universe that has thrived without us for billions of years before we entered the picture, and ultimately, will thrive without us, for billions of years after we are out of the picture.

This is a hard to swallow. No human heart wants to feel this way -- wants to accept that life goes on once we're dead. That the plants, trees, planets, and so on are unaffected by our existence.

And, I get that. I can understand why faith exist. Why gods have been a part of our lives for hundreds of thousands of years. Why we worshiped the sun. Why we worshiped the stars. Why we worships gods. Because life is hard. Because we're HUMAN. We feel things. Because feeling obsolete is difficult. Because hope feels good. Because God is a beautiful delusion.

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nobody cares

Obviously I care, duh!

What a rude Anon... Don't like, don't care, don't read : /

(I have anonymous comments blocked on my journals usually, not because I get these kinds of comments but because every so often waves of Russian spambots come around)

Pretty sure the motivation came up because this post is Promo'd on LJ's front page, and to be honest, "theists are pathetic idiots" is a pretty obnoxious sentiment to shove down people's throats... That bit is clearly visible without even clicking on anything.

Not that I approve of going on strangers' journals to start shit, but if you're going to pay money for a Promo, you should be prepared for these kinds of comments-- no matter what your post is about, but especially if it insults ~90% of the world's population.

Thanks for your thoughts!

Perhaps you're right! I don't have a problem with anon comments, even the pointless ones.

As I go forward with my blog, I can decide to delete comments that I feel aren't saying anything of value and/or are too offensive or violent (teaming w/ slurs, ect.)

Regardless, I promo what I think would encourage interesting/thought-provoking conversations. Which is why I'm here. There is no way to avoid negative comments. And, I will more than likely ignore them, play along, or delete it.

I welcome others to share their thoughts, opposing thoughts as well. But I'd also hope commenters will at the very least be thoughtful (not *nice*, when I say thoughtful, I mean literally THINKING -- trying to construct something valuable, useful, something that will get us thinking.)

I'm actually relatively new to Live Journal! But for the few weeks I've been journaling my thoughts, I've had a blast. Had some really fabulous conversations with other folks on here. I discuss a lot of controversial topics, btw. Race, Religion, Politics, Ect. For the most part, I just love to hear what other people have to say.

I'm not going to deny I poke a little fun here and there :P because I do, but the post is more about trying to sympathize and understand the human experience when it comes to religion and beliefs.

If you'd like to weigh in on the topic, I'd be more than happy to hear what you have to say. So far, I'm getting that you find it offensive because I am making fun of theists. I try my best to NOT poke fun at the individual when discussing ideologies, but that isn't an easy task, and that isn't really my intention here (to be tactful, because that just isn't the type of person I am. I'm pretty blunt and straight forward).

My intention is to ponder over my experiences. In this case, religion. Anything beyond that is up in the air!

Edited 2015-09-30 00:35 (UTC)

what's the point of trying to start a popular blog on livejournal of all places? nobody uses lj anymore. you're better off making a tumblr or your own website.

I kind of already talked about this somewhere else on this blog...

But, for the short answer: I have an author website, a WordPress, but I use it for "business". I promote my book and workshops there and construct article-like posts. Tumblr is terrible for conversations... among many other things...but I won't talk your ear off about that.

LJ is ideal for discussion and that is what I'm after. Y'all can chime in if you feel up for a chat.
This is more personal musings. I'm not about constructing a well written essay here. Lol.

Also, yeah, there isn't that many people on LJ, but what's left of the thoughtful and intelligent internet... seems to be here LOLOL

I wasn't asking about motivation. I don't know why you're even writing to me in the first place, unless the typo in my username caught your ire.

A quick google says that "more than 14% of the world is not religious" so I don't know where you got that 90% from, unless you misread "the USA" in the comments below to mean "the world". I also don't know why you'd assume that if a person is religious that means they are easily offended - if a person is secure in their religion then they don't get offended.

If I say "TV isn't the same as television", you don't get offended or angry, you simply find me stupid. If I'm some memory-genius brain-surgeon transsexual and you say "all transsexuals are huge idiots who do nothing good for humanity", well your comment would hardly be worth reading, let alone replying to.

(Also: There's never an excuse for rudeness, as they say.)

Edited 2015-09-30 03:17 (UTC)

I totally assumed she was just taking a stab at me for the heck of it.

"Not that I approve of going on strangers' journals to start shit..."

are you really nitpicking between 90% and 86%? lmao

where the hell did they say that if someone is religious they're easily offended?

i have no idea what you're talking about re: your second to last paragraph

I don't know who you're responding to/what you're talking about/ or if you're the same anon as the other one. If you wanna chit chat, it might be easier and less confusing to do it off Anon.

i was responding to the other person lol

i don't have an account

All the cool kids are doing it ;)

When they said that 90% of the world would be offended by the post - I assume that meant 90% of religious people, because of the "90% of Americans are religious" and also because someone who's not religious has very likely already thought about this stuff (or just wouldn't be offended because it doesn't concern them).

Last bit is just me going a bit off-topic as usual.

Wow! That's an amazing article!

Thanks Mr./Ms./Mrs. Anon!

I have been thinking a lot about religion and God, and such.
I wonder how people choose their God and their religion, should one choose the oldest or the newest? Should one be prepared to die for one's beliefs, or to kill for them?
If there were no religion, in the fashion of John Lennon's Imagine, would there be other ways of making differences, in order to bring about groups that fight each other?
Yes, brains need a spirituality...but...

I believe most people don't usually "choose their religion". Of course, there are situations where a person may convert to another, marry into another, ect. ect. But, for the most part, the religion in which we follow is very much a result of what we have been taught to believe. What we believe in comes down to geographical luck. You'd more likely be Muslim if you were born in Iraq. You are more likely to be Christian/Catholic if you were born in the US.

When people hurt others based on their beliefs, I think there is something fundamentally wrong with them. This could apply to simply supporting the taking away of someone else's rights, to the taking away of someone else's life.

Personally, I cannot quite fathom a world without religion. It has been a part of us since the beginning of time, and I don't think we will leave this part of us for a long time more.

But, in the same light, I do think humans are capable of great things without faith. Morality, emotions such as empathy, are not at all created by religion. I consider myself a Humanist. Being so, I tend to feel very protective of other humans and will act to protect the rights and lives of others.

Great thoughts, thanks for sharing!!

I've come to a similar conclusion. What is a prayer, anyway? A wish...a hope...a thought for something better. In this context, I have no issue whatsoever about praying for someone. I just use a different definition than many!

Prayers is wishful thinking, plainly so. But, some have argued that it is more than wishing, it is also giving thanks and being appreciative. Anyone can hope for the best, but I think it's healthy for people to realize that hope has very little to do with the results. Giving thanks is important! But, it is also important that we are projecting that thanks in the right direction. Thanking people for what they have done is powerful. It motivates and recognizes the hardships people go through for others. Personally, I would thank a friend, a community member, a doctor, but I would not thank god. I would give appreciation to where it's due.

someone had on their profile some quote about how "i used to feel sad about how everything was unfair in the world, then i realized that if life WERE fair it'd mean that we all deserved what we got, and that was scarier" lol

Wow I never thought of it that way. But what you just said got me thinking.

Well shit.

This is a truly intriguing entry, no matter what religious belief/view one follows. I enjoyed your thoughts. It makes one think. Especially since I've come to terms that in Christianity people want God to love them as a Fatherly figure (from what I understand in my learning so far). I think we can agree on that. Well-written and well-thought!

Yes, I think it's pretty interesting as well! Perhaps it is because Christians believe he is the creator, therefore our father? You'd think considering humans come out of females, we would more likely follow a female god and love them as a motherly figure.

Indeed! Christians do believe he created everything. It starts in Genesis. And that's an interesting perspective, too. I know there's various views that consider God to be a woman, as well. Due to Christianity's beliefs and the Bible it is written man came first, of course, but your comment definitely is intriguing. :) I like the way you think.

Well, girl, I was like you, gotta admit that. Then I undestood that the belief in something higher is some serious shit, that i really cannot agree with, but that has my full respect.

I think I mentioned SOMEWHERE on this blog that I am actually quite a "fan" of beliefs and religion. And, I have not thrown spiritually out the window. So many experiences can be spiritual!

I just find the concepts of some of these largely organized religions pretty darn unlikely. Maybe the thousands upon thousands of gods worshiped by man kind DO exist. Maybe they all have their own special realm in some other universe far far away. I am not kidding, I do wonder this. Lol.

You make a good point. I had this professor who once told me that religion was created because of human's aversion to death and we all want to cling on to a hope of a better future. It does make sense.
Though right now I am still confused as to how I label my faith because I don't usually talk about it. But I'm raised by atheists sometimes agnostics parents so I guess I had somehow adopted their beliefs or nonbeliefs of a diety.
Seeing your article makes me lean towards the idea that humans created this God. It's very intriguing.

I think humans create gods that reflect their values, their society, and their thoughts of the time (it was written). I think they make sense to the communities that follow them. For example, it makes sense of rural farmers to pray towards gods that grant fertility and abundance because their livelihood depends on it!

Your thoughts seem to have reason. But how do you know you can trust your thoughts?

I can't! Who can? Still, I think we should feel confident in our own reasoning and ability to be logical.

Coming from the Western Hemisphere, I've seen a lot of religiosity. The USA is the land of the Freedom of Religion. It's there in the Bill of Rights as the very First Amendment. But I've had people in my life all across the board religiously. But talk about a land of double standards! They'll hang a picture of Moses in Congress, (Saw this cause, I saw Pope Francis mention it and point it out in his address) And yeah he may "make nice" with Jews and Muslims, but then he just Cannonized Junipero Serra, responsible for Californian Indigenous Genocide...he "cares" about Indigenous people, but only insomuch as we make "Good Converts" to Christianity.

So I say this "representative" of Yeshua, can just go back to Rome and "Pontificate" some more. His "Truth" is blind to Indigenous realities and peoples. We have always been seen as "part of the land", but we are Rising up! #RedTideRising #Native Lives Matter

I used to try to apply Biblical Standards to my life, but then I realized that it's like Louise Erdrich points out in her book "the Painted Drum" that book is rated R... I've tried to study with Mormons, Evangelicals, Roman Catholics and Lutherans and Baptists. Each of them believe something quite different from the other, and some like to "fight" the others...

I've come to the conclusion that while I'd like to believe....all evidence says that Christianity on the whole has been too diluted and diverted by contact with pre-Contact European paganism. (Hellenized, for lack of a better term.) Christianity started as a bunch of disparate groups, some more gnostic in flavor, some less so....just look at the history! Jesus chilled with Essenes and that's probably why he butted heads with the Jewish religious Establishment.

Do I really want to apply standards of genocide to my life? I don't think Jesus would want me to do that.

#Anishinaabe Pride

Great comments, thanks for sharing!

Think of it this way outerspace_bae, we had undiluted traditions for thousands of years, ways of relating to the world in a more intuitive and wholistic way. Sure nothing came easy, not like it does now, but we didn't have a need for a "Hell" wherein to put sinners. If you were bad news, you got exiled or shunned and because no person could survive on their own... well yeah that may seem like harsh justice, but we had no need for jails and such. Also we had a long history of allowing people to express their innate gender whether that gender matched biological sex or not. American Society now wants into everyone's bedroom and panties and uterus and i just wanna scream! And for profit prisons? It is a society of the truly insane. And they call me crazy...

If you want to read about the clear evolution of one religion at least, you can read about Shinto (Japan's traditional religion) here:
https://archive.org/stream/shintothewayofth00astouoft#page/n15/mode/2up

You might see some racist talk but keep in mind he was writing this back in the end of the 1800's, lol. This guy could read both ancient and modern Japanese and Chinese, so he gathered as much info as he could from the oldest sources and compared it with the newer sources. It went from a religion that basically said "everything in nature that has some kind of power and can, say, harm you - ex. you can fall off a mountain, or you can drown in the sea - is a god", then it slowly moved on to personification of these natural things.

Then they started doing stuff like having "patron gods" for businesses and villages, and then since they talked about these gods as if they were family members (ex. how we say The Holy Father in English), people started misunderstanding and believing that they meant "my father is literally a god", which helped lead to plain old ancestor worship. At some point Buddhism was introduced to the country and then their religion got changed even more.

(That is, if I'm remembering right, I read it a while ago.)

Also, on Wikipedia I saw something about how almost 90% of people in the US are religious, I had no idea it was really that much before...

Edited 2015-09-29 15:09 (UTC)

Interesting. I'm bookmarking this!!!

I think the evolution from earth-based religion, paganism, indigenous, to "modern" religion is quite interesting. If I were to EVER submit (lol), I would probably be more inclined to worship earth-based religion.

I even danced in a bit of Wicca in my pre-adolescent and adolescent days.

Wow, 90% It feels more like 60...but I guess I'm way off. Then again I realized that of all the people I know, only 1-2 1/2 are openly atheist.

i too assumed it was more like 50%. thinking about it though, there's wayyy too many religious americans online and way too much religious stuff in even things like cartoons for it to be half and half. and there might be a lot of people who keep their religion more hidden...

since a while back i've been thinking about reincarnation, i watched a few videos and read a few stories where little kids had strong memories of past lives and they tried to do research to see if their past families etc. really did exist. there was also stuff like, a woman suddenly woke up speaking some archaic dialect that she shouldn't have heard/had contact with in real life, and then people whose lives flashed before their eyes - "all" of their lives, like all memories. and then people who suddenly strongly remember stuff from 60 years ago. even if most of that stuff is just lies, we still don't know how memories and the entire brain really work for example.

drugs can make you hallucinate - not only in sight and sound but in touch. you can even hallucinate other people existing (as my great-grandpa did in the hospital one time). what if the entire world is our hallucination? and when you sleep - what are dreams? what if (like that fiction book i plan on writing) dreams are, say, parallel worlds, or fragments of the "real world"?

my wife told me one time, that we humans know so little about the world, we can't possibly make any guess as to life and death. we probably know less than 1% about the world and the universe even with all we know now. we laugh at how, say, so many years ago they didn't know about germs, but in 20 or 50 or 500 years we're going to find this modern time just as primitive.

but, life DOES reuse everything in a way. when it rains, it goes into the ground and then eventually turns into clouds again. if a body rots, it gets reused into the soil. baby animals are born from other baby animals, reusing their genes and whatnot. all sorts of animals have consciousness and can learn stuff and (i'm sure) think thoughts. what happens to that kind of stuff in the "reuse" cycle is ours to guess...

but then again, i guess i did read a lot of stuff like the Golden Compass as a kid, where when you die you turn into golden powder that powers everything in the world lol. anyway if things like ghosts and reincarnation and gods exist, i doubt they're in any way that we've already guessed.

'if things like ghosts and reincarnation and gods exist, i doubt they're in any way that we've already guessed." EXACTLY

We know so little about the universe. So so little. So little about the earth. Supposedly of the "known" universe, we can only observe like...1%? So, really, we know nothing.

I saw this circulating meme (lol) that said there is a theory that once someone discovers the true purpose of the universe EVERYTHING disappears. And that this has actually already happened before. HASHTAG Conspiracy Theory HASHTAG Illuminati confirmed

Lawlz.

I am honestly pretty open to a lot of these concepts and even did a healthy bit of research a few years back. I even had a lot of old age occult texts on my hard drive LOL Did I tell you that I used to work in research? Actually, I think I did. I still have access to otherwise inaccessible research databases through different research facilities and libraries. Though I of course used it for work, I also research a bunch of historical occult and other things of that nature out of personal interest.

You are correct when you say that everything in the universe is recycled. Everything from humans becoming fertilizer for thousand year old new forests to atoms, for example, that don't die.

I am open to the idea that consciousness is shared among all living things. I don't mean in a way that atoms have feelings, but that in some type of way, they know they exist. In no way do I have some kind of memory of a past life...of being a leaf or some shit. But wouldn't that be some shit?!?! We couldn't even guess the consciousness of a leaf or what the life of a leaf is like...or what it is like to be a plant. I mean really. Hashtag Talking out of my ass

Edited 2015-09-29 19:25 (UTC)

HMMMMM if you have access, maybe you can find black magic spells for me then lol

black magic is insanely funny, the spells (at least the old ones in swedish) are like "find a human bone, fill it with pus, tie it to a string and dangle it into a river that flows in the direction of the person you want to make ill. they will stay ill until you take away the bone again."

"if you want to win in a lottery, go to a church, carve the number that you want to win onto the church door, then find a very old gravestone that's the relative of a person you know, tell him this..."

yeah, we only use what, 5% of our brain or something? wtf is the other 95% for?? WHAT IF IT CONTAINS ALL OUR DORMANT MEMORIES? lol

I can look and let you know! Also that sounds hilarious LOL

So true!

A great many years ago a discussion was held concerning the possibility of man being a product of the animal kingdom, that somewhere in the remote past what was been called the missing link picture:

by the artist Gabriel Max.

That there was a missing link between man and the animal, that this link was a bridge, and that across this bridge animals moved to become human, and that humanity is more or less an advanced animal creation, and that it has therefore the visible components of animal existence but something is different.

It has been impossible to prove conclusively to anybody's satisfaction, that the inner life of the human being is identical with that of the animal. If we wish to assume another hypothesis that is true, the unfoldment of form in nature through the various kingdoms as we recognize them. Apparently the purpose of this unfoldment as we find them is the creation of bodies, and that these bodies become the vehicles of energies and forces superior to themselves. It is become practically untenable in the knowledge we possess today to assume that the body and the person in the body, that these two constitute one identical being.

The body and the person are separate, the person may function through the body, and my gradually mold the body into the likenesses of its own purposes, but the person and the body are separate beings. Science is reluctant to accept this because to do so would permit the mind to conjure with the thought that if the person is separate from the body, that person can have existence apart from the body, and this is more or less a heretical position in terms of science. It is the opinion of science that the rise and fall of the human being is a complete pattern in itself, and that the individual had no existence before his birth, and will have none after death. This however again is a hypothetical approach to a problem, no one has ever been able to actually prove that the human being had existence before birth and is unable to prove with any conclusiveness that there is any existence after death. But scientifically speaking however, psychology is producing a wedge by means of which it is making it obvious that it is conceivable that the person and the body have separate existences, and that what we would call embodiment is the entry of a preexisting pattern into a material existence. If this is the case, and there seems to be an increasing support of this belief, then it would follow that various levels life would be embodied in various levels of bodies. This again presents the scientist with a problem because he would then have to concatenate life itself, we would have to assume that bodies are the symbols of the degrees of life that is within them, this would mean that the life in the mineral would be less evolved than the life in a plant, and that the life of the animal would be less evolved than the life of a human being thus we would have an evolution of a life through a series of forms and bodies suitable to the expression of that form of life, this constitutes a more or less philosophical approach and more or less agrees with the opinions of antiquity, transmigration or the entry of human souls into animal bodies was never generally recognized and where it was postulated it was nearly always in the form of punishment, that to be involved in less than a human body would be a punishment for the human being.

The Pythagorean's and most of the orientals accepted the symbolical meaning, namely that the individual that lived below the level of his own humanity would return, not in an animal body physically, but on an animal level of human existence as an untutored, undisciplined, unmoralized creature. The next point that would come into focus would have to be what the theologian is concerned about namely what is it that moves through these bodies, is there a life that moves through races, nations, creatures, orders of existence, like a thread moving through a string of beads. Is there one life behind all apparent diversities of life, some theologians including Aquinas have been of the opinion that there is only one life, and that finally and ultimately that life is the life of deity. That there is only one source of life and one source of universal energy, and that is this intangible mysterious being, power or principle which we call God. Science has no substitute for this concept. Some scientists have attempted to explain the matter by assuming that life in its own nature is eternal, has no beginning and no end, that there never was the creation of the divine principle of things, which was a kind of great sea of eternal energy in which everything exists, has existed and will exist throughout eternity. This however does not satisfy a number of human concerns because this one energy has to be in some way conditioned, or various types of living things could not emerge from it. So it has been generally assumed, by the more thoughtful minded people, that in truth and substance the divine being consisting of complete, unconditioned, consciousness, intelligent energy has been at the source of existence. What this is in absolute definition we do not know, but we find it convenient, possible, and almost inevitable to regard it as deity, the one final, ultimate fact of existence. In order to determine the nature of deity, we would have to in one way or another become aware of its own existence and the purposes and motions which are innate in it, this brings us into philosophical speculations which are also rather difficult for modern science to accept. The problem is that to science the ultimate is a completely impersonal energy, to the theologian the ultimate is a purpose conscious energy, it is something that is alive, meaningful, and purposeful, it is not like the petrol or gasoline in a fuel tank, something simply to be used to move a machine, this life is the sovereignty of all things and we can return to Pythagoras to find out something about ancient knowledge about this subject. To the Pythagorean's and in their school of thinking there is, and always has been, only one life in space. This one life in space manifests to an infinity of differentiation's with everything that is conceivable or inconceivable to man is part of the potential of this one life, this one life is all and one, all as a total of everything that exists. In one life all things live and move and have their being.

This one life cannot be analyzed by any of the fragments of itself, but it is the source of all fragmentation, this one life is not only the source of all bodies, but of the minds, of souls, of spirits, and of every type of differentiation that exists in space. This one life then is the totality of all of the manifestations of itself, plus the nature of its own identity, which is known only to itself.

Very very interesting! Thank you for taking the time to write.

This is the first time I've heard anything in-dept about the Pythagorean's. Off to the library I go!

Indeed, we can learn a lot from ancient civilizations. I've always felt there was a higher level of "truth" or at least thoughtful, honest and well established concepts these civilizations can teach us. Just because it is not modern does not mean it is less "developed" than what we have come up with and evolved to know today.

This is a very concering thought to a christian like me. It makes me think that maybe there isn't a god. Maybe there is no afterlife. Maybe there is no god. But there is also compelling evidence thast points towards God exsisting, and other evidence that points that there isn't a god.

So it shows that we can't trust ourselves or posts, there's too much evidence that supports both sides and it's impossible to tell which is right. Maybe my religion is wrong and there is no god. Or maybe my religion is correct and there is a god. Im saying that it's almost impossible to prove whicn side is correct. We can't prove ourselves correct, we can't prove to others that we're correct, we can't trust ourselves with this!

And yes I am a christian. And I believe that there is a god out there.

There is indeed a possibility of either side!

There is also the possibility that there is a god(s), but not the god(s) that you or I worship! That our understanding of god(s) is completely 100% off. In my opinion anyway, that is the most likely scenario. I imagine that the god that exists (or the equivalent -- a powerful creator/entity of some sort) is not at all what we have fathomed throughout the entire existence of human kind.

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I'm an atheist that prays in desperate situations.

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Fair question.

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I was like you

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Red Sky Boy's take...

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just saying hi

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It takes courage to believe ..

Con't

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