Maybe the answer you keep getting is “no”.
Sometimes I wish there was perfect justice in the universe, but then I realize it’s probably lucky for me that there isn’t. I do think it would be nice if I could have answers to all my questions about the universe and the great historical mysteries, but I don’t need those answers to come from a deity. I don’t want to have to worship anything, and I don’t want to have to exist forever.
Yes. Over the past six months, I’ve become more and more atheistic. It’s not that I ever had tons of faith to begin with - I was never Christian, only marginally a Wiccan, and happy as an agnostic - but what little I had has evaporated. I don’t mind the lack of a benevolent Creator or the idea that I’m loved and cherished as a unique and precious individual (just like everybody else!), but what I do miss is the idea that there is a reason for everything. Well, a reason other than “people are just fucked up”. I also struggle with my own and others’ mortality. It’s bad enough that at some point I won’t exist anymore, but I really resent that the people I love will stop existing as well.
I am not an atheist or an agnostic any more, as a consequence of exactly this.
Suppose you were to focus on this “wish for a god”, distilling exactly what it is that you wish for, for the purpose of clarification. Is it a desire for a Dad-like (or Mom-like) entity to turn to to make things all better? Is it a thirst for perfect justice so that the truly evil would get what’s coming to them while the innocent get by unscathed by jackboots? A fear of death and a desire for a means of surviving it? Etc.
In my case, none of these so much as: That the desire for reciprocal kindness instead of competitive cruelty turn out to be a relevant desire. That we value this and see it as a good thing for a valid and functional reason. That our positive emotional response to it and by extention to the ideological attempts to implement a world that works that way is practical, pragmatic, functional. If it were not, then one would have a choice of either embracing domination and coercive power as one’s personal principles in accord with those being the principles of life and world, or of embracing a status as victim in a cruel world that one might easily conclude is unfit for human habitation anyhow.
From such an inquiry, you may come up with answers to which you decide the term “god” adequately and accurately applies, even if isn’t precisely God as described by the loudly omnipresent promoters of established religions.
See also Concerning the Silly Notion that “God” must refer to the babytalk version thereof
Then why bother? I mean, if there’s no payoff in believing…if when you ask for something and god gives you the stink-eye, what would make you continue to ask for favors?
I’m agnostic, so hey, there might be a god anyway! Actually, i’d prefer something like a pantheon of gods, along the lines of the Greek/Roman model. Need help in work? Pray to Hephaestus! Need a bit of juice back in your love life? Pray to Aphrodite! Much clearer. Plus, gods don’t tend to get along, so it’d be like having a giant, celestial soap opera. Rock**!**
I wish there was a benevolent infinitely loving god, and that I lived in a universe that such a god created. It’d be a very different universe than this one.
I wouldn’t call the Ethical Society an atheist church. The members are not all atheists and agnostics. It’s the “ethics” thing that’s important.
Yeah, see the thing is, I wish there was an organized thing I could go to on Sunday mornings where we didn’t talk about spirituality or religion or anything like that. All I would want out of it is the singing, snacks, and some good conversation. Maybe some arts & crafts thing for the kids. All the social aspects of church without any of the god/philosophy parts. You wouldn’t have to be an atheist to join, I would just think the religious people (at least those who worship on Sunday mornings) would have something else to do. I don’t mind the occasional sleep-in on Sunday, but it would be nice to have something like that to look forward to every week.
I’m agnostic and when I was going through the (long) period of losing my faith of the fundamentalist variety, I desperately wish I still resolutely believed there was one. If, selfishly, for no other reason than it would be easier. But I’m pretty much the reverse of what the others have mentioned here… I’d rather there for sure be a God than an afterlife. Just ceasing to be sounds good to me, for both the worthy and those who must feel would be better off in hell. Of course I do mean a benevolent and kind one, but I’m not sure I’d want him/her/whatever any different than I might view the proposition now; as pretty much hands off and ever simply an observer. Not sure which part of the handbasket those thoughts land me in. 
Hey! Is this some kind of subliminal advertising?
Confirmed atheist. No, I don’t wish for a god. I am certain that science will answer the rest of the Big Questions very soon as many of those questions have been answered in my lifetime. If I found myself obsessing over karma, or reincarnation, or consciousness after death, I would get myself quickly to a post graduate program in physics and work towards those answers.
If it is metaphysical answers that are eluding you, try philosophy. You would be hard pressed to ask a question that hasn’t already been posited by a wiser man, and plenty of theoretical answers.
There isn’t anything wrong with wishing there was a Paternal Benevolent Someone to protect you and watch out for you. But if you have seen no proof of that, be greatful that you have free will and the independence to determine the course of your life and create your own happiness.
Alas, as i had just parted with my hard-earned money to subscribe here, I was hoping that I’d have a nice “Posts = 1” sign at the top. Sadly, it seems it counts those I posted while still a guest.
No. I have never been a believer, and it has been my exposure to religion that turned me away from it. I call myself an apatheist. I don’t think there’s a god, and I don’t really care. What really scares me is that all these people who have convinced themselves that there is a god, and who even claim to be in communication with him/her/it, and can hear the voice of god guiding them, look down on non-believers and actively shun them and tell their children that we are evil and need to be saved. I need to be saved from people who are like this!
Someone posted here one time about a conversation with a girl who had never met a non-believer (!), who asked, “Well, what stops you from just going out and killing people?” If that’s the kind of thing believers in god believe about non-believers, words fail me to describe how ludicrous I find it.
I liken religion and god-worship to the popular type of role-playing game called a MUSH, which stands for Multi-User Shared Hallucination.
No, mainly because
isn’t any kind of answer. It just leads to further questions.
I occasionally wish for a god. My father was a mostly devout Catholic, and when he died I kept thinking “Let him be right. Let him find heaven.” He was my dad, and he was a good man, and he deserved to wake up and say, “Hey, God, I thought I might find you here.”
Then the rational part of my brain kicks in and reminds me that he died alone, in a basement crawlspace, looking for a leak in the plumbing, and no gods were there.
Nope. I especially wouldn’t want the Middle Eastern maniacal god of the Jews, Christians and Moslems. The religious are dangerous enough in their delusions, if they had something real backing them up they’d kill even more people than they already do.
Regards
Testy
:dubious: What gods generally do? I wasn’t aware they generally did anything. You’re complaining about the behavior of entites that don’t exist?
Obviously your speaking of a common belief about what gods generally do. Which isn’t intergral to a conception of god (isn’t to mine, inasmuch as I have one). And may have nothing to do the nature of god, if there is one.
I understand disliking that idea, but I say again, why assume?
Atheist here. I guess what it comes down to for me is that I’d rather live in a universe that I could comprehend, and most problems could be solved from first principles than having some unkowable entity dictating the rules in a very unclear manner.
God seems like a boss who expects you to do his work for him without being told what needs to be done, and willl take it out of your salary when you fail to read his mind. Sod that.
Like Dio, I often wish that things really were fair and that the world really was a pleasant place, and if that meant there needed to be a god to ensure that, so be it. But I cetainly don’t wish that the god that most Americans believe in existed, because he’s an ass.
–Cliffy