Got a serious answer?
Well no, it’s not always good. But the idea that things always have to be good is setting yourself up for dissatisfaction.
I’m not going to conjecture where my suffering in life has ranked among others, but I was raised by abusive parents, I’ve been so depressed I couldn’t get out of bed, and I had PTSD for over twenty years. The question of suffering wasn’t an idle one for me, but a practical one. If this is my life, these are the cards I’ve been dealt, what do I make of it? What do I do with it?
Well I became an activist, a social worker. Part of my life’s meaning is raising money for survivors of gender-based violence. Part of my meaning is providing the childhood for my son that I never had. The meaning of my life has changed over time but I’ve never stopped looking. And I suspect that’s part of why I’m basically happy now.
But yes, I’m privileged in many ways. There are some kinds of suffering I can’t even fathom. Which is why I try to push myself to act more and intervene in the systems that create that suffering.
I agree with all of that. I am so sorry for the shit you’ve been through. I don’t know if I am that strong or not, because I’ve never been TRULY ‘tested’, yet.
I don’t recall if you are ‘spiritual’ or not. It’s something a non-spiritual person could achieve though, (is what I’d say to someone attributing it to their spirituality).
I’ve been an atheist for pretty much my entire adult life. I have always been interested in spirituality though, as a human phenomenon. I’ve also been a secular Buddhist for a long time but I only really started practicing Zen recently, so you could say I got religion. Just in a different way than people usually use the term. This is just how I’ve come to see things and as I’ve gotten deeper into practice I’ve started letting go of the need to Know Everything in the cosmological sense, and so I’ve been suffering less, which has been good for me.
What has happened recently though is that I’ve started questioning what I went through in my teens, as a devout Christian, with a more critical lens. I’ve started reading about the historical context of the Bible to better understand where key tenets of Christianity came from (short answer: probably not from Jesus.) I had to revisit this because I had some lingering fear of hell, as many former Christians do, because making a child believe they will be tormented for all eternity for any reason is to inflict trauma upon that child. So I’m trying to deal with my religious trauma. Which means I’m in a phase of my life where I’m going to be really critical toward Christianity.
Eh, I think the existence of the universe itself, including us in the universe, is evidence of God. I see that there’s the existence of Something, and I don’t think it came from Nothing.
I think Jesus would be evidence - but I don’t have any videos of him raising Lazarus from the dead & stuff.
Which god? You keep assuming that only one god is being talked about. Would you mind telling us which sect you follow?
What is “nothing”?
What did God create the universe from?
If the Universe was created by God, it wasn’t created from nothing. So who created God, or did he come from nothing?
Using the existence of the universe as proof for your explanation of why the universe exists is cheating. That’s circular in the most obvious way.
“Something exists, ergo Odin did it.”
Personally, I don’t think it was God. I think the universe is a giant hairball coughed up by God’s cat, Satan. Satan actually made the universe, and that’s why it’s such a mess, and why God is so mad about it in the Old Testament. But then the cat died, and Jesus didn’t want to get rid of the one thing he had left from the cat. So God said, “Fine, it’s your mess now, I wash my hands.” That’s why God no longer performs miracles. Meanwhile Jesus is off in college and no longer around. So the hairball just keeps festering in the corner.
I know this because the universe exists, and had to come from somewhere.
So your evidence for the existence of one dubious thing is another thing without evidence.
I’m a Methodist.
Good luck in your journey. If you don’t mind me asking, what type of Christianity were you involved with as a young’un?
That doesn’t seem correct, as I read it. What do you mean by that?
That would make for one helluva movie.
You don’t think it came from nothing? Are you casually ruling out the possibility, or granting that it could happen while noting that you don’t find it especially likely?
Belief is what you think is true. What I believe is entirely outside of my control. Also something like a religious belief is an emotional feeling you get, again, something outside of the person’s control.
I was born again at a teen rally called Acquire the Fire in middle school. The experience of mass worship was just impossible for my mind to comprehend as anything other than God. I became a member of a Pentecostal church (discussed in my Adverse Religious Experiences thread.) I was a Bible thumper fundy, minus the exceptions noted above. When my Mom pulled me out of that church, for good reason, I was boring old Baptist for a while.
Then my life fell apart, and so did my faith. I wanted to believe, I just couldn’t. You don’t get to choose.
We have choice in the matter. You’re incorrect.
You had a time in your life where you believed. Then, you had a different time in your life where you didn’t. Those were choices you made.
Same for me. I was once an agnostic, as a fully formed adult, a non-believer. I changed my views later in life. My belief change was my choice.
And he was there not as a guest, but more like Darth Vader getting it back on schedule.
Choose to believe you can fly.
Basically, I see the existence of the Universe as evidence of God. I think there had to have been a source of energy in order for the Universe to come into existence. That source was/is something incredibly powerful, and probably beyond our comprehension. This higher being or entity is what I believe to be God. This God created our Universe, and as part of that our Earth and Humans came into existence eventually. So, I see God as our creator, and the Universe is the evidence.
Now, I can’t prove it. And I know that my religion is based on a leap of faith (all religions are, to some degree) about something that I can’t see or fully comprehend.