Summary of your religious beliefs

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Religion: Christian
Denomination: Catholic

Why do you follow this religion (or lack thereof)? A series of ~experiences~ in my late teens and early twenties. All stuff very specific to me individually. Life got a lot sweeter when I stopped trying to reverse-engineer arguments from first principles.

God: I believe in one all-knowing, all-powerful God in three persons. He is present in some form or fashion in my life but does not talk to me directly.

Afterlife: Heaven, hell, purgatory--of these three, my belief in purgatory is strongest.

Prayer: I pray every day, but I don't spend quarter-hours on end in highly structured, stylized prayer the way many Catholics do (and the way I aspire to tbh). It's generally just ad hoc throughout the day and then for a minute or two before going to bed.

Worship: I tried to go to Mass on every day one is supposed to, before the pandemic.

Ghosts, spirits, angels, and demons: I believe in all of these in the abstract, but I'm skeptical about most individual claims to have interacted with them. I skew Mulderish for a highly educated person my age, but not full Mulder.

One True Path: I think my beliefs are reflective of reality but I don't think you get automatically sent to turbohell for disagreeing or anything.

Spiritual objects: Many, many things about the world around us are outward signs of inward grace. I have animistic/"folk Shinto" tendencies towards certain items in my immediate environment--trees, gravestones, especially old and well-used household appliances, and so forth.

Religious law: I fail to see the point in following a religion that doesn't attempt at least some degree of modification of its devotees' behavior.

Spreading the word: What afleitch said (or, more precisely, what Battista Minola said).

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Why do you follow this religion (or lack thereof)? A series of ~experiences~ in my late teens and early twenties. All stuff very specific to me individually. Life got a lot sweeter when I stopped trying to reverse-engineer arguments from first principles.

Interesting. For me it was quite the opposite and life was "sweeter" when I could look to first principles in the manner of Descartes. In a college class on the Early Middle Ages I found Augustine's view that religion should not contradict science or reason to be particularly enlightening.

I certainly don't disagree with Augustine on that point. But there's little support for the idea that any one particular religion is more or less consonant with scientific observation or generally-agreed-upon philosophical axioms than others.

Why do you follow this religion (or lack thereof)? I was never brainwashed as a child to believe anything else, so I remained at the default state of humanity, which is atheism.

I've never understood this talking point. Most serious research into psychology of religion suggests that the "default state of humanity" is intense but unsystematic superstition.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Why do you follow this religion (or lack thereof)? A series of ~experiences~ in my late teens and early twenties. All stuff very specific to me individually. Life got a lot sweeter when I stopped trying to reverse-engineer arguments from first principles.

Interesting. For me it was quite the opposite and life was "sweeter" when I could look to first principles in the manner of Descartes. In a college class on the Early Middle Ages I found Augustine's view that religion should not contradict science or reason to be particularly enlightening.

I certainly don't disagree with Augustine on that point. But there's little support for the idea that any one particular religion is more or less consonant with scientific observation or generally-agreed-upon philosophical axioms than others.

I think there are some that are less consonant than others (eg young earth creationism).

Obviously there are beliefs present in some religions that are flatly false, yes. What I meant is that there really isn't an empirical way to "decide between" Christianity (writ large), Buddhism (writ large), etc.

There's also the issue of determining what the proper conclusions are of science and reason. There are opinions that are commonly accepted in biblical scholarship that subtly presuppose the falsity of traditional Christian beliefs.

Ah yes, the old "Mark must postdate the destruction of the Temple because in it Jesus predicts the destruction of the Temple" trick. I know it all too well. (And in that particular case, considering how lousy with doom prophets first-century Judea was, you don't even need to believe there was anything special about Jesus to see though it!)