As simple as possible to summarize the best way you can, first, please. Feel free to expand after, or just say whatever you want lol. Honest question.
Man - how I hate that on almost every post that shows some vulnerability and shares their belief we have lemmys trying to convince people about it not making sense.
Be respectful guys. Thank you to all the upvoters of the actual content - I see you.
Given all of my unresolved prior trauma caused almost exclusively by my upbringing around those believing? No thanks. Fuck everyone that believes this shit. It too clearly self-selects the narcissist asshole who wants excuses to not have to answer for how shitty they are. They ram it into EVERYTHING and use it as a blanket for pure judgment amd shame of others. Fuck em all.
And don’t give me this religion vs spirituality bullshit. Very clearly the vast majority are affected by religion. It ain’t my job to sort through that when 99% are clearly bad apples.
I’m speaking from actual personal traumatic experiences from childhood home, multiple churches, multiple schools, and lots of extended family and family friends. Fuck. Them. All.
Everytime I’ve shared on Lemmy that I’m a Christian I’ve been met with nothing but huge negativity.
Everything from accusing me of being a Trump supporter, to telling me I should abandon my belief system because bad people believe the same thing as me.
I’ll have a read through this thread, but it’s very unlikely I’ll reveal anything more about how Faith has changed my life.
I used to be a hardcore atheist who mocked all believers so I understand where it’s coming from. I’m not here to fight.
Personally I’m a huge fan of the Alcoholics Anonymous understanding of “god” and I think it applies more widely.
In AA it is supposed to be A-religious so as to accommodate as many people as possible. To them, god is whatever higher power you need to put your faith into to do better. An entity who you are striving to make proud or you are asking for guidance or help, etc.
This genericized god idea kinda gives up the game to me as an atheist, but it doesn’t mean it’s bad. In fact it’s made me believe in god as an idea.
There are plenty of studies on “manifesting” goals and how saying out loud to yourself or to someone at all substantially increases your chance of succeeding in your goal. This is just prayer or a magic spell or whatever else you wanna call it. I call it a ritual.
The fact that god is a made up idea has been uncontested in my mind for eons, however the psychological power of a belief in god is new to me and makes me appreciate the systems of religion more (doesn’t excuse a lot of their bullshit).
AA is a great program and is basically secularized Christianity. Two great religious books that talk about the program from a more explicitly religious perspective are “Breathing Underwater” (Catholic) and “Steps of a Transformation” (Orthodox). Even with your agnostic perspective I think you would find them enlightening.
I saw something fitting a common description for God (in meditation). Yes, a total mystic vision.
(The creator of reality. A star (that also looks like a jewel) that emits poetry energy. And then I react to that energy by dreaming this dream that I call reality. Like contriving lyrics for an instrumental song.)
No intelligence or personhood as far as I can tell. Just a vast brainless mystico-cosmological gusher of energy.
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I went to a Romanian Holy Unction service and it was beautiful.
I believe in God because I think its the best explanation for the existence of our universe with it’s laws. A being outside of our current space/time setting our universe into motion just makes sense to me.
That’s essentially the TAG argument.
If our universe requires a being outside it as an origin, why shouldn’t that being itself require another being of even further outside as an origin, and so on?
By nature of being outside of our universe they are not subject to the same constants/restraints or our same concepts of space and time.
But I’m not necessarily saying it’s a requirement. That’s just the line of thought I lean towards personally at this point.
@FooBarrington @IttihadChe It’s turtles all the way down. 🐢
Scientists believed this for the longest time, but I’ve recently seen a documentary explaining that, at the very bottom, there’s a giant koala bear. Apparently they’re still trying to determine why it’s smiling.
I believe that if there is a “God” entity, that it is incomprehensible and not worth attempting to understand.
I also don’t believe in an anthropocentric “God”, in that “God” doesn’t inherently value nor not value humans as somehow special nor damned. I also don’t believe “God” cares nor doesn’t care about humans or existence.
I also don’t believe in inherent meaning, nor that there is some form of divine justice. Those are human lenses through which we interpret the world, and are unlikely to apply (at least in the same way as a human) to the supposed viewpoint of an eternal omniscient omnipotent entity that created the universe and will supposedly one day close the door on time and its own existence.
In short, I’m one bleak motherfucker and it doesn’t matter if “God” exists or not. Either way, I don’t get to survive death. What is eternal about me is inherently not a part of me. It is mortality, true mortality, mortality of the consciousness and the ego and the individual that defines the individual. When that dies, "God” or not, either way there is no individual to somehow surpass death.
Leave me be, I’m agnostic. Bother me with religious nonsense and see the atheist come out and ruin your day.
Consciousness exists. This implies that either consciousness is some emergent property of sufficiently complex interconnected systems, or it’s some universal force that complex interconnected systems “channel”.
If it’s emergent, it seems less presumptuous to assume that the most complex interconnected system of all, the universe itself, wouldn’t develop consciousness. That universal consciousness might as well be called “God”. If it’s a universal force, it might as well be called “God”. Anyway you slice it, a universal consciousness seems inevitable from a sober metaphysical analysis.
Lots of people have ascribed lots of culturally specific attributes to the universal consciousness which are obviously quite silly. The core statement that “I am that ‘I am’” is really the only meaningful attribute we can identify.
If it’s emergent, it seems less presumptuous to assume that the most complex interconnected system of all, the universe itself, would develop consciousness.
Is the universe the most complex interconnected system? Complexity implies not random. It seems to be nearly perfectly random. Not understanding something is not the same thing as it being complex.
It seems to be nearly perfectly random
How so?
It forms structures, but it’s exactly what you’d expect from a random process. We expect some points of higher and lower density, not pure uniformity, in randomness. The structures we see are just the results of random processes. If you zoom out far enough it looks just like noise, as you’d expect from randomness.
We expect some points of higher and lower density, not pure uniformity
Which is precisely what we see. I’m not sure where you’re getting the impression that it’s totally random noise, every scientific and mathematical field is based on the universe having consistent, ordered rules of operation.
Which is precisely what we see.
Yes, that’s what I said. Pure randomness expects points of higher and lower density, not pure uniformity, as we see, which implies it’s pure randomness.
every scientific and mathematical field is based on the universe having consistent, ordered rules of operation.
This has nothing to do with being random noise or not. In fact, random noise requires consistent ordered rules. If that isn’t the case then you get something non-random where the rules change to achieve desired results, which isn’t what we observe.
I’m really not sure how you’re defining “randomness” then, or how that randomness precludes complexity and interconnectedness.
If you throw a handful of sand, there will be almost no pattern to it, but if you look closely there WI be some points with more sand and some with less. You could find interesting looking things in this. When you look at the whole thing though it obviously doesn’t have a pattern to it, except what our brain may find because it tries to find patterns, even when there aren’t any.
I wouldn’t call something that’s just noise complex. I guess it sort of is by definition, but not in a way that’s interesting. Normally when I think of “complex” it’s something that has a purpose to it, but we can’t identify easily, not something that’s easy to identify but has no purpose. It’s just a random distribution of matter with the rules of physics applied. It doesn’t create anything that seems to have any purpose.
If it’s emergent, it seems less presumptuous to assume that the most complex interconnected system of all, the universe itself, wouldn’t develop consciousness.
I was, no shit, just thinking about this on my break about an hour ago. God or whatever you wanna call them. If there was a way to develop more consciousness by adding more information to the universe. If consciousness emerges to solve complex problems then maybe if we populate/terraform planets then we will have a deeper understanding.
It makes sense. But why would adding more complexity and information necessarily lead to consciousness? I think there is an assumption that if this much complexity is a consciousness, then more complexity must also be consciousness. I don’t think it has to be the same thing or the same universal consciousness has to exist due to emergence? It can emerge from certain properties, like mushrooms appear in conditions. And then if there is too much of heat or water, it stops emerging. In fact, our planet and existence is on the very edge of a pointy specific and unlikely set of properties tuned just so. It should be said I kind of believe in a universal consciousness anyway but I wanted to discuss this awesome topic
That’s a good point about it emerging from certain properties and not just and idea of more complexity. I forgot where I first heard about the complexity being tied to consciousness, but it could be a simple property that we are overlooking. It might be a simple process that we are just not aware of. I do agree there is a sweet spot where a lot of these interactions could happen, but if it’s too hot or too cold then nothing.
Maybe our consciousness wasn’t actually “supposed to” happen. We might just be an accidental by-product of what the universe is actually working towards.
I am now basking in the profundity of us as the accidental exhaust of cosmic flatulence
Sort of, but it’s more a comforting theory rather then a true belief. I came up with it when I was younger, doing a lot of psychedelics, and meditating often on the nature of existence and reality.
My theory is that God is everything. The earth, the stars, our fellow beings. All of reality makes up a complex web that I loosely refer to as a “consciousness” for lack of a better world. The nature of this “consciousness” is incomprehensible to us. It does not activly intervene in our daily lives, and operates on a scale beyond our comprehension. Mostly, it simply is. It is the oblivion from which our consciousness was once plucked, and it is where we will one day return.
In essence, each of us is a tiny fragment of reality experiencing itself. The meaning of life is to experience it. All of it. Joy, pleasure, and suffering. It is all a part of the whole of existence. When we die and return to the infinite our individuality is lost, but maybe God learns something about itself.
Because it sometimes makes me feel better about there potentially being some purpose to us if we were created intentionally, provides a placeholder explanation for what’s out there besides the universe, makes life more fun, and does not harm anyone (I’m not religious).
I believe in God because I don’t believe knowledge is possible without a transcendent being. (e.g. the impossibility of the contrary) Otherwise you are dealing with infinite regress or axiomatic circularity. Materialism breaks down with origin theories. Metaphysics aren’t substantial yet exist. Math and logic aren’t descriptors of the world but integral to how the world is structured. The Orthodox view is that these principles are a reflection of the divine mind.
If so, your definition of ‘God’ is so far removed from what most people take God to mean as to just invite linguistic debates over debates over the thing itself.
Explain what you think I mean by God.
Did you edit your comment to say you were a Christian or did I just miss that? If so, I apologise, your conception of God is quite likely similar to most Christians! I do fail to see how the argument for a transcendent being predicates the Christian God specifically, though, no offense intended.
I did edit to say I was a Christian because I realized that would probably make things clearer.
The argumentation for the Christian god goes beyond what I posted here but builds on the concept. No offense taken.
The pattern looks like a boxershorts or Lederhose
I do not and i believe that religions are the number 1 problem in the world. The things people do for their “Gods” are stupid and cruel af
I do not, no proof. If there was a god such as in the Bible why give us reasoning abilities when they give no proof? And if so, then I put forward the idea that if there is such a god, they don’t care if we believe so why bother?. Not to go all gamer but like the Sims, they made us and took out the pool ladder and saw what happened.
If there is a god that has such powers and cares, well fuck them cause they ain’t helping us it seems. If they are well we’re too far off course for it to matter, this playthrough is spiraling and it doesn’t matter if we believe or not cause we may be circling the drain.
So seems easier not to believe because if you do it’s more depressing.
It’s not about belief. I don’t believe in Jah the same way I don’t believe in gravity. Gravity just is, and so is Jah. Look around. Breathe. Existence itself is the evidence. I’m not here to convince anyone or convert anybody. Jah doesn’t need followers, He just is. Whatever you call it, it’s all the same current. I walk with Jah because I recognize Him in everything.
DMT
