The Faith Discussion Thread

[Mechaman]

I was looking at the first page and didn't know if there was a thread for those of us who are religious (of all types) to discuss our personal faith with others.  I don't intend for this to be a holy roller thread where people try to convert others but merely as a spiritual version of the recent "Update Thread for Everyone Else".  Atheist, Agnostics, etc etc are also more than welcome to contribute if they feel like it.

I think this thread is necessary because it seems too often that this board merely has issues and philosophical ideas being discussed and not our actual faith lives.  Sure, personal faith issues are usually discussed in these other threads and philosophy is crucial to spirituality.  At the same time though, I believe there is a real need for a thread devoted to our own spiritual faith lives, what motivates us to believe, our traditions, what made us what we are today, etc etc etc.

As a kind of a relatively new believer I am fascinated by the discussions of others as to what brought them to what they believe.  And I would welcome anyone, Christian, Muslim, Jewish, Buddhist, Flying Spaghetti Monster, etc etc to contribute to this new thread.

[afleitch]

I have no faith. I lost it and I feel that I am 'spiritually' better off as an individual as a result of that. I don't believe in a god or a need for a god or the need for a being that adheres to our standards of what a god is or a need for that being to reveal it's presence to us in select and pre-determined ways.

All our notions of god, faith, religion and spirituality are androcentric. I feel that we are one planet of 7 billion people that have only been 'people' for a few hundred thousand years and the planet itself is part of a solar system that is 5 billion years old and may not have been the first or the last to have life. And this solar system is one of billions to exist that rotate around trillions of stars that spiral around millions of galaxies that may be part of an infinate number of universes. There could be endless lives out there.

If I was a deist, then I could never accept that all this is just for us and specifically for one tribe who had one god that was no different from all the other gods that headed or protected tribes. Nor can I accept that this god cared about tribal conflicts, what people said, what they ate, what they cursed and whom they f-cked to such an extent it was all written down in a book.

If there is anything divine or spiritual, when it starts to get condensed down into rules and right and wrongs and politics then you know that what is left is as far removed from the intent as you can conceivably get. You know that what is left is so muddied with human fingerprints that it has to be human and not divine or spiritual.

I have often declared (and my signature is a slight play on that) that if I worship anything it would be the sun. It's the one thing that materially impacts upon every thing on this earth and I am made from the same basic materials that it is made of. I'm an atheist but it doesn't mean that I'm not 'spiritual' or don't take a great inhale of excitement and awe from what is simply there in front of me. I find religion in general to be stale. It's stale in part because it's human and because it can never be external or divorced from our own thoughts and desires. All the human gods have human emotions and human concerns. The idea that this standard transcends the universe and all non human things within it just isn't good enough.

[Bleach Blonde Bad Built Butch Bodies for Biden]

I've had belief in a God for as long as I can remember, and I've managed to go eighteen years so far without having once doubted it.  That is far from saying, however, that my faith has not evolved over the years.  I used to have such a simple perception of God.  I used to imagine God as a humanoid figure, just like you or me, who wants us to behave, answers prayers, and does a lot of neat stuff.  But I never really got in touch with my faith until I began to experience life.

God's nature has not yet been embraced by people who claim to know Him.  I think that for centuries, God has been reduced to a mere symbol whose very being exists within the circle of human understanding.  Few God believers are willing to acknowledge that this God, should He indeed exist, goes beyond human conception, which has since the beginning of mankind consisted of people's thoughts and writings.  But this acknowledgment of an unknowable God doesn't discourage me.  In fact, it entices me into thinking of this God as something greater and beyond human perception of its foundation.  Isn't that, in the long run, what makes this God so good?

And this is where Christianity comes in.  As a Christian, I believe that God manifested Himself as a being that's human as God could get while still being wholesome in uniqueness and power.  This, I believe, was to create a relationship between God and creation that could be appreciated and understood.  The great irony of this is that we, if anything, have gone further away from understanding God through the infinite number of questions that have stemmed from the life of this one man.

And this is why I don't believe any side has a monopoly on truth, and I don't believe that anything should be approached with absolute certainty.  I am willing to accept that I may very well be wrong, and if I am, I will take full responsibility for it no matter who's right in the end. 

But I find myself infuriated with those who abuse God for the advancement of their selfish and destructive social agendas.  We now have this notion that you can buy your way into Heaven and use fear tactics to get people to accepting a moral code, which, 99% of the time, doesn't come close to the moral code established by Jesus Christ.  We now have this notion that God only works for man in this universe and nowhere else, and this is a God that I just can't accept.  I think that until we worry more about the people destroying our world than the one Who created it, we as a human race will never advance the way each and every one of us needs it to.

[John Dibble]

I have no faith. I lost it and I feel that I am 'spiritually' better off as an individual as a result of that. I don't believe in a god or a need for a god or the need for a being that adheres to our standards of what a god is or a need for that being to reveal it's presence to us in select and pre-determined ways.

All our notions of god, faith, religion and spirituality are androcentric. I feel that we are one planet of 7 billion people that have only been 'people' for a few hundred thousand years and the planet itself is part of a solar system that is 5 billion years old and may not have been the first or the last to have life. And this solar system is one of billions to exist that rotate around trillions of stars that spiral around millions of galaxies that may be part of an infinate number of universes. There could be endless lives out there.

If I was a deist, then I could never accept that all this is just for us and specifically for one tribe who had one god that was no different from all the other gods that headed or protected tribes. Nor can I accept that this god cared about tribal conflicts, what people said, what they ate, what they cursed and whom they f-cked to such an extent it was all written down in a book.

If there is anything divine or spiritual, when it starts to get condensed down into rules and right and wrongs and politics then you know that what is left is as far removed from the intent as you can conceivably get. You know that what is left is so muddied with human fingerprints that it has to be human and not divine or spiritual.

I have often declared (and my signature is a slight play on that) that if I worship anything it would be the sun. It's the one thing that materially impacts upon every thing on this earth and I am made from the same basic materials that it is made of. I'm an atheist but it doesn't mean that I'm not 'spiritual' or don't take a great inhale of excitement and awe from what is simply there in front of me. I find religion in general to be stale. It's stale in part because it's human and because it can never be external or divorced from our own thoughts and desires. All the human gods have human emotions and human concerns. The idea that this standard transcends the universe and all non human things within it just isn't good enough.

Allow me to condense your thoughts into a picture.

http://imgur.com/gallery/e9DJjCo

[Oswald Acted Alone, You Kook]

Not a George Michael fan, but Limp Bizkit ruined that song even more.

[anvi]

I don't believe that a divine being exists.  I don't know that, of course.  But I don't believe it.  But even if God did exist, I would not be a fan.  Even when it comes to very imperfect human beings, I am not a fan of parents who mutilate their children, knowingly and willingly.  God, we are told, is our father, is all-knowing, all-powerful, and everything that happened is God's will.  I, in such presumed circumstances, his "child," was born totally blind and with a heart defect that, were it not for twentieth century surgical procedures, would have killed me by the age of 20.  So, while I don't believe there is a God to blame for any of this, if there is a God, I'd like him to leave me alone--he has done enough, thanks.  And, compared to millions and millions of others, I'm one of the lucky ones.

I do, on the other hand, have very profound feelings both for natural power and natural beauty.  I don't blame nature for the way I am, since obviously the way I turned out was not intended by the cosmos at all.  I am also awed and moved by the great things that can be accomplished by a heathy combination of human compassion and understanding--but I don't count on them.  I don't like the idea of dying at all, but I deal with it by cherishing the time I have here, and trying to treat others accordingly.

I don't know if anything here counts as "spirituality" or "faith," but what I've described is where I am.

[CatoMinor]

I've until recent years have always if asked described myself as Catholic, but at best I was a somewhat agnostic one. However when I came to college I got introduced to Chi Alpha (a campus ministry, not a frat) which has completely changed me for the better, through the people I have met and the things I have have witnessed I've come to the conclusion that God is real and He loves us. I once thought of God as being, if He even existed, some creator that just made things and then stepped aside, then if we were good then we could enter paradise, if not then hell. But now I see it more as God keeps the unworthy out, but simply through our choices and decisions we make when we are alive we decide if we want to be in Heaven.

I could make this longer, but for the tl;dr folk here are some goodies I've heard and learned over the past few years as I've become an evangelical Christian:

"What do you do and who do you do it for?"

"God is God and we are not."

"The only difference in death between a Christian and one who is not is that the Christian is ready to meet Jesus. A Christian is dead already - dead to the world, but alive to Christ. Death for you as a child of God is to fall asleep in His arms and awake in the other world, alive forever beyond the power of pain, safe forever from all sickness and suffering."

"God's laws are descriptions of reality."

"Love is proportional to hurt. God is love, so He is enormously grieved by our sins."

"A proud man is always looking down on things and people; and, of course, as long as you are looking down, you cannot see something that is above you."

[afleitch]

I've had belief in a God for as long as I can remember, and I've managed to go eighteen years so far without having once doubted it.  That is far from saying, however, that my faith has not evolved over the years.  I used to have such a simple perception of God.  I used to imagine God as a humanoid figure, just like you or me, who wants us to behave, answers prayers, and does a lot of neat stuff.  But I never really got in touch with my faith until I began to experience life.

God's nature has not yet been embraced by people who claim to know Him.  I think that for centuries, God has been reduced to a mere symbol whose very being exists within the circle of human understanding.  Few God believers are willing to acknowledge that this God, should He indeed exist, goes beyond human conception, which has since the beginning of mankind consisted of people's thoughts and writings.  But this acknowledgment of an unknowable God doesn't discourage me.  In fact, it entices me into thinking of this God as something greater and beyond human perception of its foundation.  Isn't that, in the long run, what makes this God so good?

And this is where Christianity comes in.  As a Christian, I believe that God manifested Himself as a being that's human as God could get while still being wholesome in uniqueness and power.  This, I believe, was to create a relationship between God and creation that could be appreciated and understood.  The great irony of this is that we, if anything, have gone further away from understanding God through the infinite number of questions that have stemmed from the life of this one man.

And this is why I don't believe any side has a monopoly on truth, and I don't believe that anything should be approached with absolute certainty.  I am willing to accept that I may very well be wrong, and if I am, I will take full responsibility for it no matter who's right in the end. 

But I find myself infuriated with those who abuse God for the advancement of their selfish and destructive social agendas.  We now have this notion that you can buy your way into Heaven and use fear tactics to get people to accepting a moral code, which, 99% of the time, doesn't come close to the moral code established by Jesus Christ.  We now have this notion that God only works for man in this universe and nowhere else, and this is a God that I just can't accept.  I think that until we worry more about the people destroying our world than the one Who created it, we as a human race will never advance the way each and every one of us needs it to.

There are contradictions in your post, which are okay, I just feel the need to perhaps touch upon them out of curiosity. Please don’t think me rude

I find it curious that you are happy to embrace the idea of an ‘unknowable god’ which is not an inconceivable concept. Yet you claim that you believe god manifested himself as a human in the Christian tradition. That is a theistic approach; a claim of knowing god in both form (the body) and intent (his message). Now an unknowable god, if it does not have ‘human traits’ means that whatever you do or do not do, whether you worship it, or another created god or none at all has no impact on you. Something that is unknowable cannot demand that you know of it, if it seeks worship or acknowledgement. The same is true of an unknowable god who does embrace human traits and is fair (no rational human would get annoyed at someone not knowing who you are if they had never been told about you or you had never made yourself known to them, of course the unknowable god may in fact be unreasonable.) That approach doesn’t concern me as because it quite literally doesn’t concern me; nothing I do or say or think matters. I just live then I die without it knowing I was alive or knowing I was dead. I’m just intrigued as to why you believe in an unknowable god, nor believe that any side, including your own presumably, has a ‘monopoly on truth’; yet you follow a religion that makes very specific claims about the nature of god that other faiths and spiritualities do not.

I digress a little. You also say that ‘We now have this notion that God only works for man in this universe and nowhere else, and this is a God that I just can't accept.’ Do you mean this in terms of the spiritual domain? Or do you mean something more material. This is a god that we are told in the Christian tradition revealed himself to us on this planet, in this galaxy, in this universe. This was at a time when man thought himself the centre of everything. Now we know we are at the centre of nothing. We are discovering that stars with planets and moons are the norm rather than the exception in our part of the galaxy. The potential for intelligent life elsewhere, even just one more race is more likely than us just being by ourselves with all the countless rocky planets and moons containing either nothing or basic life. If that is the case, and let us for a moment assume that it is, is it just us who get the message? If not, then why are we to assume that human concepts of love, justice etc preached by god apply to other beings? Would this god send someone to talk about ‘love’ if love was not a tangible concept in their world? If it wasn’t, what would he talk about? What if for their existence, as some evolutionary function for example; hate was a better thing to embrace than love. Would he preach hate because it benefits them more than love? What actions and morals are therefore ‘right’ in the universe as a whole? Surely there can be no universal moral code.

If that is the case and universal morality is relative, jumping back to earth, you talk of the ‘moral code established by Jesus Christ’. What code was established? There isn’t anything that he said of material moral value (I’m excluding supernatural claims as it is reasonable to do so when making a comparison) that was new, unique or was ‘established’ at the time he was alive. Nor did he lack the ability to say or do things that relatively speaking (like asking his followers to steal transport for him) that would be considered to be immoral. Are we therefore not the arbiters of our moral code and is our moral code not in fact an imprint of our evolutionary purpose; to live and let others live? What creator god can hand down a moral code of what is right and wrong if morality on this planet is relative never mind any other place where life may exist?

[Bleach Blonde Bad Built Butch Bodies for Biden]

No trouble, Afleitch.  I realize I need to brush up on the way I convey my thoughts, so I appreciate the comments.

First of all, I think it’s important to establish that progressive Christians do not always understand God the way that more conservative ones do – even if a particular aspect of God is mentioned in The Bible.  I am only speaking from my own perspective.

I’ll elaborate on some things.  When I say that God is unknowable, I am obviously not referring to the concept of God, but rather, the specifics associated with it other than what we have been told by authoritative sources.  It is a more apophatic understanding of God.  I think the acknowledgment of such a being is sufficient enough to “know” it, but ultimately we cannot achieve the answers that lie within the competence of human reason.  A theist cannot say with absolute certainty how God uses his power beyond that said power is integral to God.

For the sake of argument, let’s use God’s omniscience and the fate of individuals after they pass on as an example.  One commonly accepted view is that God knows everyone who is going to Heaven or Hell (assuming these exist), but this runs into a big problem: because humans have not experienced God in a literal sense or know all His intentions, we cannot with any credibility say whether God uses His power to, perhaps, conceal that information from Himself.  Because God is not physically or mentally similar to us, we can only speculate, so any claims of certainty about how God acts are futile.

Yet, while we are limited in the ways we can conceive God, we are not totally divorced from His presence, and the important aspects of God that humans must know and are capable of understanding are communicated to us by His son.  With this, we now have a “bridge” to this God for which we can connect, but only in the way we are allowed to.

To answer your second criticism: first, I disagree about morality being universal, at least to man, but that’s wide of the point.  But ultimately, I cannot say whether God communicates to other beings in the same way He communicates to us, because I am limited in my human understanding of right and wrong that is influenced by evolution as well as life experience.  I would argue that God, no matter what message He’s arguing for or to whom, is “right” simply because He is the final authority – even if we, personally, don’t find His methods sound.  (And this is why I don’t think we can apply the same moral standards to God as we do to fellow humans.)

Lastly: I should have mentioned that I use ‘established’ very liberally.  The moral code (i.e. Sermon on the Mount) was established for those who would listen.  Those who lived by the old saying “an eye for an eye” exchanged it for a new one: turn the other cheek.  These rules may not have been original, but I would argue that they were re-established, or re-introduced, in another way that was unique to the people who hadn’t lived that way before.

At this point, I am pressed for time, so I wasn’t able to edit and revise this post as much as I wanted to, but I hope that this explanation of my views on the subject ties some loose ends.  I would like to reiterate that although I am a Christian, I am representative only of my own thoughts, so don't be surprised if I act contrary to traditional methods of Christians.

[© tweed]

good thread and idea.  I've long advocated for a move towards more 'gonzo' or subjective, narrative style posting as opposed to the dispassionate, objective, even academic style of post that has long been the rage.  this isn't an academic journal!  sorting the idea out in its own right has its place, but what does it mean to you?

[© tweed]

And this is why I don't believe any side has a monopoly on truth... I am willing to accept that I may very well be wrong, and if I am, I will take full responsibility for it no matter who's right in the end. 

isn't this a bit of a contradiction?  if the truth can only be approximated, surely you can't be too much to blame if you get it wrong?

[Bleach Blonde Bad Built Butch Bodies for Biden]

And this is why I don't believe any side has a monopoly on truth... I am willing to accept that I may very well be wrong, and if I am, I will take full responsibility for it no matter who's right in the end. 

isn't this a bit of a contradiction?  if the truth can only be approximated, surely you can't be too much to blame if you get it wrong?

I don't think I would be blamed for getting something wrong as long as I'm honest about my methods and ability to distinguish between right and wrong, but just because I desire for something to be true doesn't make it so.  I'm not obsessed with having the correct answer 100% of the time because doing so would be impossible, and I think God takes that into account when deciding who is deserving of eternal reward and who is not.  In the end, it's all hit-or-miss.