Does faith (belief in a Higher Power) play a role in your life?

Great Debates
41

Sorry, the “arrogance” bullshit doesn’t wash. It is not arrogant if one goes around opening stating what, by all logical standards, appears to be true: There is no God (at least no “God” as commonly understood in the major religions).

Similarly, it is not arrogant to go around openly stating that there is no Genie In A Bottle that grants three wishes.

The arrogance more often shows itself in the people who believe they are so special that some “being” cares about them and watches over them, and smites anyone who isn’t one of the “chosen ones” (IOW, a believer).

42

To get back to the OP, Yes, faith does play a part in my life. Organized religion does not. Although my faith is the remnant of being brought up in an organized religion. Yes, I pray daily. No, I don’t miss being part of an organized faith community.

Our universe is so well ordered that I believe that there is a God who created it and any other universes that may exist. I marvel in the beauty and elegance of all we know about our universe and our place in it. I am hopeful that our spirit continues to exist after our body dies.

I am a Christian who firmly believes in evolution - universal evolution. In my view, this process was begun with the big bang and continues on through time.

I have no problem with anyone else’s belief or lack thereof since we have no proof either way. That’s why it’s “faith” - it is belief without proof.

43

Corollary to Scott opinion of I Love Me, Vol. I‘s statement: When pressed, those who believe in a being who strikes down those who don’t do as that being says, usually points out the all the incidents of said being striking people down, are found in the book they revere, which they, personally, do not take completely literally.

44

Does faith (belief in a Higher Power) play a role in your life? No.

What do you believe in if you don’t believe in a higher power? Who says I have to believe in something? I think that science has proven a lot of stuff, but there’s no belief involved, only reason.

To me, belief implies faith, and faith implies suspension of critical thought. No thanks.

45

Does faith (belief in a Higher Power) play a role in your life?

Yes.

But that’s all you’re getting out of me :wink:

46

I’m an atheist, but I don’t like defining myself by what I **don’t **believe. So call me a humanist.

I believe that we humans have the potential to be our own “higher power,” and we don’t need to look elsewhere to find meaning for our lives. We are the meaning; we have the power and the right and the responsibility to create our own meaning and purpose.

So what do I believe in? I believe in reason, truth and reality. I believe in freedom and intelligence and joy and love and intimacy. I believe in independence and justice and creativity and happiness and beauty. I believe in evolution (personal and otherwise) and integrity and peace and pride.

And I don’t need faith or the supernatural to believe in any of these things.

And oh yeah, I believe in Chocolate.

47

I am an Atheist. And I was raised in a non-religious family, so religion has never been part of my life. I’ve never felt any “need” for “belief,” no intellectual reason—or even a “gut feeling”—to worship anyone or anything.

48

I think a lot of theists have never felt the need to worship God. One does not need to worship God to believe He exists.

49

I suppose it’s about time a hard-core Christian jumped in here and said, “Yes.” As I said over in the Pit the other day, my faith really is the most important thing to me. It has saved my life and my sanity; it’s also given me a chance to hang around with some really neat, kind, interesting people, and sing some glorious, intricate music. OK, I will admit there’s a downside to the latter, especially when my choir master asked us to sight-sing some intricate, 5-part contrapuntal harmony in practice yesterday, especially when I got completely lost! :eek:

I’m actually going to reply to the atheists here who talk about the importance of reason and logic. I greatly appreciate those two qualities. I’m a good computer programmer who’s the daughter of an engineer. I was taught to reason things through as soon as I showed evidence of rational thought. I also suffer from clinical depression. Two and a half years ago, I’d been laid off for several months with no programming jobs in sight. I eventually took a job as an administrative assistant to keep a roof over my head. I’m also single. Straight reason filtered through a depressive’s mindset was telling me this:
[ul][li]I was not supporting myself.[/li][li]There were very few jobs available in my field and the ones there were were getting hundreds of applicants per job. I knew that because I’d been doing some work for my company’s HR department before being laid off.[/li][li]I had no one depending on me.[/li][li]Among the people competing with me for jobs were people who did have families, including children, depending on them.[/ul][/li]Therefore, with no job in sight and others needing the jobs I was qualified for more, reason, coupled with depressive thinking, coupled with an altruistic streak, led me to one logical conclusion: suicide. You see, my continued existence was benefitting only myself, and that alone wasn’t reason to keep existing. Faith, along with a very good therapist, got me through that and kept me from giving up.

On the other hand, God to me isn’t some remote presence; as I’ve said many times, He’s been known to interfere in my love life! :eek: I’ve had profound spiritual experiences and they’ve been good ones. It also helped that, when I was growing up, the Episcopal Church was the one place in town I could go and not be insulted. Frankly, if I’d had the experience with organized religion some people around here have had, I’m certain I’d be an Atheist or Pagan and criticizing Christian hypocrisy as loudly as anyone around here.

Faith has given me several benefits it would be impractical to replace and impossible to do so with any one resource. Those benefits range from the music and friendship I mentioned earlier to the pot of flowers sitting in my living room, to money to pay the rent when a few things went wrong at once. It’s also got me accused of all sorts of things, including being irrational and illogical and more recently over in the Pit, being accused of “hating religion”. The benefits, including a sense of profound peace which sometimes comes over my turbulent, argumentative soul, far outweigh the negatives.

CJ

50

Siege, you don’t know me, but let me pre-face this by saying that I have nothing but the greatest respect for you. I always enjoy your posts and I am very glad that there are people like you in the world, on this board and, more importantly, off it. I’m glad that you never did go over the line and actually commit suicide.

Having said that, there have been many times that I have considered suicide, and the only thing (literally the only thing) that kept me from going through with it was that there were people who would be upset, who would grieve, whose lives would be negatively affected by my demise, especially in such a horrible way. That’s why I’m still here and writing.

Had those people not existed, had my existence in fact benefitted no-one (it certainly didn’t benefit me at the time), then I believe suicide would have been the correct course of action. Saying it makes me sound like a monster, I know. Nevertheless, I don’t see how any amount of faith can change that.

51

I’m a Christian, but lately I question it. I’m just not sure if I really do believe what my religion tells me, or if I’m just going through the motions, which much of the time, I must admit, I don’t even do. I guess faith doesn’t play a major role in my life. I believe that there is a purpose to our existence, but danged if I know what it is.

52

It seems to me that this is a witnessing thread in the form of a poll, so I’m moving the whole thing to Great Debates.

53

I guess you’re asking how I get through the day without a spiritual support network? I always start with this:

I take comfort in that. Rather than fearing judgement, or that I’ll be found lacking, or that I’m inherently bad, I see there’s just me, and what I make of the world. If the afterlife doesn’t exist, I’d better use my time wisely, so hopefully I can do something good with now.

I believe organized religion is a massive delusion, but so is fiction, and it’s pretty pleasurable. Like Siege, I’ve had positive group experiences with churches, and I sort of believe in personal enlightenment. If we didn’t have religion, we’d just have something else.

That’s a very good distinction.

54

Guess I am not that great at explaining my feelings. This thread was definitely -not- meant to be for “witnessing” or at least what I take that to be. I was simply interested in knowing what others spiritual beliefs were, realizing that it is an extremely personal thing. I don’t “follow” any particular organized religion, nor do I attend church on a regular or even semi-regular basis, to the probable chagrin of my Dad and my late mother, I might add. The face-to-face with my own mortality (my Mom’s passing and the deaths of several high school classmates in the past several years) has made me look inward and outward as well, searching.

Thanks for all the responses - they have indeed been enlightening.

55

No belief in a higher power for me. And no faith either. I don’t see why the question “why?” needs an answer.

My experience in organized religion when I was younger was fine. But the more I learned about what was really in the Bible, about history, and about science, the less there seemed to be a need for any god. Everything I’ve learned and read in the nearly 40 years since supports this decision.

56

I’m an agnostic; don’t believe in God but don’t deny the possibility of God existing, I just haven’t seen anything that makes me believe.

I don’t know if I ever did believe in God, but I dropped out of Sunday school when I was aobut 11 years old, just didn’t enjoy it. Family is moderately religious (we’re Jewish) but for me it’s a cultural thing.

If by “What do you believe in?” you mean where do I get my moral rudder from…pretty much the good old Golden Rule, treat people the way you want to be treated. I think that this is good for society (and thus all of us) and that we’d have a lot less problems in the world if people practiced this.