Which do you most identify with? (more inclusive poll - 54 options)

[afleitch]

I'm an atheist.

I don't personify anything, but I am in genuine awe of the sun and feel if anything, 'reverence' of the sun should be more commonplace not less the more we understand it.

Similarly I am amazed at bacteria and the synergy between bacteria and other living things including ourselves.

[afleitch]

I'm a Traditional Catholic.

As in vow of poverty, give away posessions, help the sick and poor, monastic adjacent Catholic? Good for you.

[afleitch]

I'm a Traditional Catholic.

As in vow of poverty, give away posessions, help the sick and poor, monastic adjacent Catholic? Good for you.

I'm not going to be lectured by somebody who supports abortion & gay marriage.

Hmm. How would you know that if you've only been here five minutes....

So what you're saying, unless you want to give the actual answer, is that you're the sort of Catholic who probably ignores Church teaching on everything but those two issues but thinks that makes you a good Catholic.

[afleitch]

I didn't realise how old this thread was While I still like my answer back in '15, and I'm still an atheist if I had to pick a standard religious belief, rather than generalised spirituality, I'd be Muslim if I wasn't atheist. My Muslim friends have tried and if anything they've defined a 'god' in probably the most 'okay, I can go with this' manner, but I'm just not there.

[afleitch]

I didn't realise how old this thread was While I still like my answer back in '15, and I'm still an atheist if I had to pick a standard religious belief, rather than generalised spirituality, I'd be Muslim if I wasn't atheist. My Muslim friends have tried and if anything they've defined a 'god' in probably the most 'okay, I can go with this' manner, but I'm just not there.

I have just checked that answer, do you still feel 'reverence' for the sun? I used to do the same for certain constellations.

Of course, in a base sense like all living things I'm conscious of the circadian effect the sun has on me. And from a knowledge derived sense the fact that what formed the sun, what formed the earth is the same 'stuff' that led to me. I can't get traditionally spiritual about it, because it just is. But that 'reverence' is definitely still there because it grounds my outlook on life and death.

To quote from Phillip Pullman;

'We'll live in birds and flowers and dragonflies and pine trees and in clouds and in those little specks of light you see floating in sunbeams... And when they use our atoms to make new lives, they won't just be able to take one, they'll have to take two, one of you and one of me, we'll be joined so tight...'

That's the only spirituality I have.

[afleitch]

I didn't realise how old this thread was While I still like my answer back in '15, and I'm still an atheist if I had to pick a standard religious belief, rather than generalised spirituality, I'd be Muslim if I wasn't atheist. My Muslim friends have tried and if anything they've defined a 'god' in probably the most 'okay, I can go with this' manner, but I'm just not there.

How is the God of Islam described differently from the God of Judaism and Christianity?

My understanding of Islam is very elementary, but if my knowledge is correct then Muslims worship the same exact God as the other two religions.

Well, in most iterations of Christianity, God is described as triune, which is considered shirk in Islam

The Islamic god also appears to be less personal than the Jewish one (at least in orthodox conceptions), which is why he can only be known from natural signs (and not represented in pictorial form) and spoken about in parables

^^^

That's a far better summary than I could have written.

It's been 10 years since I effectively ceased to be religious (I checked Atlas on this one, it's basically a diary at this point!) At that stage I had already abandoned trinitarianism which was fundamentally weak and, to me (and I respect that people think differently) a clear construct. Adoptionism squares that circle at least in part and it was clear to me that was the intent of early Christianity. But by that point I had sort of accepted there wasn't a god at all, or anything remotely godlike humming along in the background. Since then I've spoken with apologists for Islam, or to be more personal, friends (mostly queer) who are Muslim and it going to the point where I effectively agreed with them on the nature of god, but not acceptance (rather than active belief) of god. If I ever changed my position on that, then I would more than likely take time to consider Islam.