I didn’t miss this post - I’ve been thinking about it since you made it, believe it or not. What you imply has literally never occured to me, but now that you mention it - okay, so I have this problem which means that sometimes I’m not very good at making connections. Really. I have a doctor’s note and everything. Like Ford Prefect, I’m excused from self-reflection and universe-saving.
What is underlying this aversion is more than I should get into it here, I think, and I’m really not entirely sure, but I wouldn’t say no to a bet on it, if the terms were right. I’m thinking about it now, so thanks. If I can figure it out, I think it’ll help.
Thank you. And I saw this advice, too - I’ve been thinking about one person in particular that I owe an apology to, at least, and maybe doing so could open the door to conversation again. I’m not sure how to find her, but I’m back in the same city again, so it is possible. I could just…go there for services one day, in fact, with a little arranging. I don’t know why I’m so reluctant to, but perhaps see above.
I will look for this and any other books anyone cares to recommend, including pro-Catholic ones, if I haven’t already read them.
I think you expanded on this a little later on, and I’m glad you did because those kinds of concerns (and any answers to them) are just what I’m looking for in this thread. Thanks again for your kind words, too.
Hearing other people’s stories is moving for me as well. I hope more people lurking will share. ;j
I will keep these things in mind. What you say is useful here and, I think, in other situations as well. I’ve asked myself that question - what advice would I give me? But the answer is only static. This is one I’m conflicted to the point of being a bit stuck on, I’m afraid. But this conversation is helping unstick me. I’m glad Stan intervened when I was about to toss it.
If you don’t know what you would say to someone else who came to you with these issues, perhaps those baby steps are needed. Go to see this person you mentioned above or call her. That is one step.
Think about all this–if a friend came to you ( or a woman, crying on the bus–I know, we look away etc, but what if?) and asked this stuff of you–would you really turn away or have no answer? Somehow, given your posts here, I seriously doubt it. I think that most of care for our fellow man on some level, despite daily frustrations and there being no cure for stupid etc. Certainly, I dont’ see you as saying something destructive to a friend or stranger–so why not to yourself as well?
Much as I hate to take refuge in this…be patient. Give this time–answers (or at least comfort) will come. (I’m not even referring to spiritual comfort neccessarily, but some peace of mind will come). Perhaps some of it can be managed just by acceptance of the here and now–a “let it be” attitude.
You have given me support and a great deal to think about. I am thinking of confronting my pastor with my daughter’s exclusion etc. I don’t know as yet if I will. but I thank you for listening to me. Please know that I am thinking of you.
We had a drash (sort of like a sermon) at my synagogue a while back about how the story of Noah and the ark couldn’t be literally true (because, if it were, how would the kangaroos get to Australia and nowhere else?). I love my synagogue.
I’m not Orthodox. Non-Orthodox and Orthodox Jews disagree on a number of issues, and attitudes toward gays is one of them. I considered converting Orthodox (Orthodox Jews don’t consider my conversion valid, as it is), but decided that since I couldn’t agree with a lot of what Orthodox Jews do and believe (such as their stand on gays, among other things), it would be dishonest to do so.
I was raised Jewish. It was a few years ago now, maybe five or six, when I was in high school, that I lost whatever remnants of religion I had remaining. I know not how the thought came to me to do this, but I decided to conduct an experiment. During the Yom Kippur service, the most holy of days for the Jews, the cantor sings a particularly poignant prayer, the Hineni, in which he supplicates himself before the Lord as unworthy of leading the congregation. He begins the prayer at the rear of the sanctuary and slowly progresses back to his station on the small raised area at the front (called the bima). I decided to note exactly where in the prayer the cantor was when he first reached the stairs leading up to that area. Twice, three separate times he managed to be at the exact same word as he placed his foot on the first step. This was no poignant prayer – this was a performance. Suddenly I realized that the bima was naught but a stage, the rabbi and cantor the players, and the congregation the audience. Since that day I cannot participate in such pageantry.
And this just goes to show that what makes a religion unappealing to one person might make it appeal to another. One of the things I found deeply unsatisfying about Methodism was the lack of ceremony and pageantry involved in the worship services.
I grew up Christian, and when I stopped going to church because I moved away, I found I did not miss it at all. I had never felt moved by it once, and had begun to resent that the last few years, so after I moved, it was like a bag of bricks that I had just stopped carrying around. I very gradually started to realize that the things moral, intelligent non-Christians (and non-religious, for that matter) said resonated much more with me than the things Christians said. I got interested in science, and noticed that many God-believers flat-out ignored it. I saw Devil’s Advocate and realized that much of what Al Pacino’s character said was true. the final, crushing blow came in college, when I took philosophy, and every single argument made by someone trying to “prove God” was circular. Marx and Nietzsche made devastating sense. tada, I was atheist.
since then, my disdain for Christianity as a concept has exponentially grown. I have neither seen nor felt any evidence for any God, ever, and I don’t consider anything that can’t be detected by the senses to be real in any significant sense, so there is no nagging fear or belief at all for me to deal with. if there is a God in the tradition that I’ve been taught-- the jealous, wrathful, arbitrary, and deceitful being that I have learned about-- I refuse to worship him. nothing that cannot rise above the pettiness of a mere human will be getting my undying devotion.
that said, I did once have inner conflict about it. I first rationalized it as “well, I believe in God, just not the one in the Bible, because the real God would NEVER do anything like that.” then I ask myself, you know, where the hell am I getting the idea of a God anyway, except from humans? do I have any more reason to believe in it than in leprechauns or fairies, except that the concept of an eternal afterlife makes me feel better about my mortality? after that thought entered my head, I never again had a problem not believing. once you realize you have only clung to something out of insecurity and fear, you feel much better letting it go.
I don’t tell you all this to recruit you as an atheist; I have no agenda but to answer your question. whatever path you choose, I do hope that you find peace-- that’s how you know that your path is the right one. ;j
I was raised without a lot of religion - Mennonite mother, Anglican father, and no baptism for the kids or particular religion in the home. I was more religious as a kid (around 9 or 10, I guess), but lost most of that religious fervor along the way. More recently I have been exploring Buddhism somewhat, because, as Anne Neville so aptly puts it, it seems to fit my outlook better than traditional Christianity. I am also leaning towards Pantheism (God i everything, everything is God.)
Talking about ritual and pageantry, one of the things that puts me off of Buddhism, though, is all the ritual involved in it. I am quite opposed to religious ritual; I think it gets in the way of faith, rather than facilitating it.
This has been a very interesting debate, Ensign Edison. You are certainly not alone in your uncertainty and searching. I found myself beginning my semi-crisis of faith a couple of years ago, when my last grandparent died. It really brought home to me that I am going to die too, someday, and I honestly don’t know what I believe about that. One thing I do believe, though, is that human beings are a whole lot more concerned about things like homosexuality and promiscuity and stuff like that than the creator is. My god isn’t male, either. My god is above our two-sexed ways.
My idea of a god is not like that at all. My idea of god is not the god of the Christian Bible, but a god that loves what it created unconditionally without imposing guilt and shame.
I forgot to add a book recommendation - Kenneth Miller’s “Finding Darwin’s God,” an attempt to reconcile science and religion. My husband has read it, and says it is one of the best books he has ever read, period.
I have to go find out why my sig line is not available to me, but until then, here it is:
I don’t think that is true for everyone. For me, it helps me stay focused on the divine in a way I might be able to explain better in the morning.
T
Believe me, I’m with you on that one. I just can’t imagine why God would care about who’s wearing a dress and who’s wearing pants, or what kind of underwear anybody’s wearing. I think about the universe, all its glorious vast depths, and we’re killing each other and tormenting ourselves over this bullshit? Like it matters? Like God would stir all this majesty up just to bitch about the pronouns on a wedding invitation?
Thanks for posting, nevermore. My experience and conclusions are very different from yours, but I appreciate hearing about them. I think I would actually have to actively struggle to be atheist, and I did have to, in fact, last time I tried it on for size for a while. It just didn’t fit.
I should say that I am opposed to religious ritual for me; I would certainly not try to tell other people not to participate in it. However, after reading the description of Orthodox religions upthread, I am fairly certain that I am not Orthodox in any way. I think the danger of ritual is that it can take the place of real religious experience and expression.
I should clarify what I said in light of this, and in light of featherlou’s remark just above. The pageantry itself is fine, but one of the tenets of the Jewish culture with which I was imbued is that one’s belief should be a deeply personal, deeply moving thing. That is why the discovery of that particular prayer being a performance presented such a contradiction that I could no longer continue in those services.
I thought that for awhile. I just eventually came to the conclusion that I had about equal evidence for the Buddy God and the Fearsome Arbitrary God either way, which was about zero.
if there were a conscious creator of any sort, though, I’d hope it’d be benevolent. at least that way I wouldn’t, y’know, burn in hell for all eternity just for not being able to see past the hide-and-seek.
Well, there are many forms of Buddhism. I’ve also read Stephen Batchelor’s Buddhism without Beliefs, a look solely at the philosophical aspects of Buddhism. Obviously it’s not a religious book per se, but it does show Buddhism without so much of the ritual most people think of.
My husband and I were discussing this yesterday, and he made a point that he had heard somewhere long ago; that a religion that has lost its sense of humour and its ability to laugh at itself is a doomed religion. We went on to discuss how the Fundamentalism that people are engaging in now seems so fragile; that anything contrary to what they believe is attacked as threatening and dangerous, rather than examined for its own merit. He also mentioned that he had a priest in school (he is a lapsed Catholic) who told him plainly that a faith that has never been questioned is not much of a faith.
Oh, thanks for the book reference, too, Ferret Herder. I haven’t thrown the baby out with the bathwater with regard to Buddhism; I feel like I need to know more about it to make any further judgement on it.
Like Ford Prefect, I’m excused from self-reflection and universe-saving.
