Asklemmy

I guess at this point I should consider myself a buddhist.

I was raised in a Christian household in the us midwest but never felt drawn to it or any form of sprituality, over the years Buddhism in its many forms kept creeping up on me enough times and explaining things in such elegant ways that I eventually looked into Tibetan Buddhism more closely and realized that once you understand how the symbolism of it all works in terms of connecting the words of practices to actually useful life tips then it becomes a great benefit to yourself and others.

As simply as possible, I chose this route because it is like becoming a scientist of experiences and all the practices we do are things that prove what we experience just as a scientist forms a postulate, a Buddhist forms a practice that leads to some form of awareness.

Grew up in a very religious home, in a very religious country (orthodox christian). I don't think I ever truly "believed", but I didn't want to upset my family, so I got married in church and baptized my kids. I am an atheist, and don't practice any religion now.

I was raised Christian, went to church every Sunday and believed as a kid. Then I stopped believing in all my imaginary friends. Being slightly cheeky, but also I genuinely just grew out of it as I learned more about... Everything, really.

Atheist, I never was interested in spirituality as I believe religions are population control tools.

However, I recently got the chance to meet Sikh peoples, and I understand they define themselves more as warriors than group of religious people. I just fell in love with what they are, what they represent.

Raised non-denominational Christian to Agnostic to Gnostic-curious.

I was raised protestant Christian.

I would say what I believe now is heavily influenced by that, but also heavily influenced by how clearly the focus that evangelical Christians put on the idea “God needs to be feared more than They need to be followed” has fucked up so much of the world. Fearing someone at the cost of spreading their message is nonsensical, idiotic, hypocritical, and toxic to human society.

According to the Bible, Jesus Christ rarely answered direct questions with direct answers; most of the time his answers came in the form of a story or a parable explaining one possible answer to the question given one possible context, implying that humans are encouraged to use their judgment to figure out how best to approach a situation. Imagine that. An all-powerful creator who granted intelligence like Their own to Their creation and actually wanting that intelligence to be exercised.

One of the most notable instances where Jesus answered a direct question with a direct answer is Mark 12:28-31:

“Of all the commandments, which is the most important?”

“The most important one,” answered Jesus, “is this: ‘Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ The second is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no commandment greater than these.”

In no uncertain terms, love is the most important commandment. Furthermore, Jesus equates loving your neighbor to loving God in Matthew chapter 25. It’s not evangelism, it’s not religious authoritarianism. It’s not indoctrination. It’s love.

I believe this world was created by an omniscient Creator who wanted humanity to use the intelligence granted to us to freely develop a society centered around love.

Atheist. Raised atheist but it doesn’t effect my viewpoint, I’d be atheist either way at this point in life

I was raised in an atheist/agnostic household. nobody ever came out and said we were atheist or agnostic, but no one went to religious services Weekly or on holidays. There was never talk of prayer or worship or god.

Both my parents came from different religious backgrounds. One parent is Jewish. The other is Christian, though I would argue that their parents were atheist/agnostic as well.

We celebrated the holidays that involved presents so Christmas, Hanukkah and Easter. I didn’t really learn any of their religious symbolism behind these holidays until I was much older and it wasn’t through my parents. Part of it was cultural, osmosis, and part of it was curiosity about these religions when I figured out what they were.

We lived in a pretty big Jewish community or so it wasn’t uncommon to get invited over for Passover dinner at someone’s house.

I went to Synagogue with Jewish friends and church with Christian friends. My friend’s mother holiday taught classes at their synagogue so I do remember going and learning about Judaism and the holidays there but I didn’t last very long. I didn’t really enjoy it, I remember not wanting to go back in after our little recess/break and watching fiddler on the roof.

When I was curious about Christianity and wanted to know why my friends went to Sunday school or church on the weekends, my mother took me to a Unitarian church. We didn’t attend for very long and I don’t remember being particularly interested or involved in any of the activities they were doing for the kids.

Now I would say, I am firmly an atheist.

Im a romuvis :3

Used to be an atheist before ig

born in islamic nation (turkey), family didn't really do anything to teach religion (except trying to teach Arabic), I got more and more estranged from islam as I did my own independent research using online sources of the Qur'an

I don't think I can be considered a Muslim anymore, I don't follow what is written down as a must, this actually makes me eligible to hell, and it is all so ridiculous for me now.

I've talked with a lot of people, self proclaimed Muslims but their beliefs are far more deist than anything else, but they still call themselves Muslims but with their own additional beliefs.

Another note, I haven't read hadiths, only the Qur'an. The Qur'an is very short and anyone here could read it, it's the absolute words of god so it is essential to follow if you're a Muslim.

Atheist

I believe in myself. I believe in everyone else too, until they give me a reason not to.

I believe every particle/atom/point within my reality has a connection equivalent to what one might call a 'soul' and it exists outside of dimensional reality, the dimensions being represented by a line (1d), a plane (2d), a field (3d) and the function of time (4d). Currently for me this puts these connections in the 5th dimension. I use the term "philote" as a label for each connection. That term is borrowed from the Ender books.

Life as we know it is made up of many atoms, formed into molecules, cells, organs and so on. At the core, each atom having its own connected philote, an organism is a community of philotes working together to stay connected and keep the organism going. The organism they represent is in a way, their religion. I believe in the philotes representing my human body. They believe in me.

When I die, my atoms with scatter. Some philotes will be swept away in the atmosphere, some will become the rotting and disintegrating organs of my body. Unless I'm cremated or destroyed in some other way similar, some parts of my body will remain connected. The philotes that make up my bones will remain connected to each other, as the philotes of my skin and blood etc. spread and become new things.

If I meet someone and have an affinity to them, I believe that some of my philotes and some of their philotes were once part of the same organism. They belonged to the same philotic 'church' of that organism. They recognize each other. They like each other. Thus I like the other person and they like me, even if we can't explain why ourselves. It is like magnetism, our philotes know each other and know they have similar goals and will work together. Since philotes exist outside of time, this affinity may be caused by something which has not occurred yet. Perhaps the other person and I die and many of our philotes become a new entity sometime in the future. A new church or religion of philotes.

If I meet someone and do not like them and cannot explain why, I believe that my philotes and their philotes are of opposing goals. Their philotic church does not agree with my philotic church. The philotes are repelled from each other, like how a magnet will repel. We go our separate ways. Perhaps their philotes were once part of an organism and my philotes were once part of the blade which killed their organism. Perhaps one day some of my philotes are part of an organism that is consumed by their organism. Some philotic clusters do not like an event. They accept it but will repel future or past encounters with philotes of the opposing mass. They do not believe in them. Their church is not the same. They do not like the outcome. There could be many reasons. Your beliefs still exist within my beliefs, even if yours do not include mine.

The big bang. The heat death of the universe. The big suck. No, the big suck is not referring to an adult video or a powerful vacuum or my ex. It's the opposite of the expansion of the universe. The big bang exploded. It spreads all atoms out. An atom and its philote no longer want to spread out. They want to return. They flip. They become dark matter or dark energy. They change direction in the 4th dimension. They contract instead of expanding. Other philotes agree and flip. Eventually, the universe stops expanding and contracts. The philotes reunite. They become a singularity. All existance in one point. That is too much for one point. It explodes. The big bang happens again. This never ends. This is happening an infinite number of times right now. Dark matter and dark energy are not measurable because they do not exist anymore at that point in time. From the perspective of a flipped philote, our existance is the dark matter. The flipping happens in all directions in 4 dimensions. It can be backwards on a line, diagonally on a plane, it can loop in a field and go sideways in time.

The big bang, the heat death of the universe and the big suck I represent like this: ∞=|¿√∞²?|=∞ Reality is equal to the question of the absolute value of the square root of infinity squared. A pointless math formula. A story that unfolds and returns.

My mom let me figure it out for myself. I wanted to go to mass with grandma so she let me.

I quickly figured out the nonsensical nature of what I was seeing. When I found out I had to do a bunch of extra shit before I could get in line for Jeezits, I lost all remaining interest.

Been an atheist since. Probably was around age 12.

I never "did" anything, I just realised at some point that I didn't think that whole business was true (apart from the bits about being nice to each other). So I stopped going through the motions that I'd been taught to follow.

My privilege here is that I live in a country that is not very religious, where any religion is done in private, and my mum, who taught me a very forgiving and kind Christianity (emphasising all the things a religious right would despise), only cared about me being a decent person, not about what I believed.

Was raised roman-catholic but got disillusioned pretty quickly. I was fairly religious in elementary school but by the time I was 14, I was agnostic/atheist.

Partially because my parents aren’t religious (my mum is from the GDR, so she didn’t grow up with religion and my dad seceded from church before I was even born) and even my grandma, who was the religious one (albeit never very strongly, compared to American catholics. More a „goes to church on religious holidays“ type of person), drifted away from church quite a bit after all the child-rapist priest shit that was uncovered at the time.

By now (mid 20s) I’d probably consider myself agnostic. Can’t prove there is no higher power but also, if there is, we wouldn’t know what religion – if any – is right anyways. It’s probably not christianity though.

Laic

I don't care about religion or beliefs. It's irrelevant to me in my day to day life.

I have a personal code of ethic, developed through personal experience and reading several philosophy proposals, taking from each what I find useful and discarding the rest.

Atheist.

As far as I see, there are 2 basic possible states for being(s) with regards to divinity: either they're omnipotent or they're not omnipotent. (Partial omnipotence may perhaps be great power, but it is still non-omnipotence by definition.)

The Stone Paradox demonstrates that full omnipotence cannot happen; and any being, however powerful, that does not have full omnipotence is inherently no different than me or you and thus has no right to be considered a god.

and if you switched faiths, why did you do it and what faith did you choose?

Well, I used to be a Christian, but only by virtue of being raised as one. As I grew older, I grew out of Christianity. It makes no sense to me from the perspective of the scientific method or Occam's Razor. Also, my very traditional Christian family did not exactly live up to the Christ-like ideals of love and tolerance, so that definitely put me off it, I can tell you that much.

As I got older, I tried other religions: Islam, Zen Buddhism, Earth paganism, various other forms of paganism. They were excellent experiences that taught me the value of different faiths but they were, in the end, not for me. I like the rock that the scientific method provides, and I like how it teaches and encourages critical thinking ability. With science, I don't need to take some reverend's word for it that a magical sky-daddy is watching me masturbate while my great-great-grandmother judges me from past the celestial gates. I can be confident to know that it's far more likely they're dead in the ground, disintegrating back into the earth from whence they came.

Discordian!

More serious answer: I never had one to begin with. Why start now? All it seems to do is sow division.

The short version: It's complicated.

The long version: I fell out of Christianity at age 17 because I had hard questions no one wanted to answer, so they asked me to either stop asking or stop coming to church. I spent years and years reading everything I could get my hands on about religion in general and many major world religions in specific, didn't find anything I could agree with or that seemed true to me as-is, and ultimately decided to cobble together my own beliefs from the useful bits I found in others. So now I have a highly syncretic mix of components from many religions (plus some I cooked up myself) that feels right to me. It centers around the idea that divinity is a kind of all-encompassing infinite ur-consciousness/hive-mind of which we are all a part, that the world is an illusion that creates a divide between us (which is why we feel like individuals), but also within us (between mind/thought/idea and feeling/emotion/experience), and enlightenment comes from learning how to heal those rifts and not just realizing or understanding but knowing in your bones that we are one. In short: the truth is love, love is the union of self and other, of mind (intellect) and heart (wisdom), of order/stasis/death and chaos/energy/life, into the unified psyche of one all-pervading ur-consciousness.

Building your own belief system is not a path I recommend for most because it requires a commitment to intense introspection in order to develop self-awareness and a deep willingness or even desire to have your understanding and beliefs challenged and updated with new perspectives and information. But for me anyway it beats being an atheist (I was one for many years, despite my fascination with religion), though I'm not here to convert anyone. This seems true to me, and that's enough.

This one thinks there were three cycles of moon giving from our mother Fadomai. Ahnurr gave Fadomai her cubs. First was Alkosh, followed by Khenarthi, Magrus, Mara lastly there was S'rendarr.

During the second moon gift there was now Merrunz, Mafala, followed by Sangiin.

Although Ahnurr's house was full, Alkosh and others wanted more cubs to bask in lights warmth.

So Fadomai gave her first cubs their wishes. Azurah, Nirni, Y'ffer, Masser, Secunda all joined with the light children.

Fadomai still had longing for small cubs so she fled to the void and one cub, Lorkhaj was given.

Exhausted, Fadomai knew her time of ending was near. So a gift was given to Nirni, for she desired to give cubs the light.

So it was that Nirni came to her brother Lorkhaj for she needed a new dwelling for her cubs. Lorkhaj did just so, forming the mortal realm. Some of Fadomai's first cubs were imprisoned in the new realm. The second set of Fadomai's cubs saw what had happened and did not follow.

Mayhaps was not just Nirni who was given the gift of cubs. So is said Azurah came down to one of Nirni's cubs and shape his form most desirably, so log as they would be given their mother Fadomai's Beauty, Ahnurr intelligence and Alkosh's streingth.

Azurah found some of Nirni's cubs in the forest and from them Khajiit were born under Masser and Secunda's light.

Angered by Azurah's decision to take so many cubs Nirni came to Y'ffer and ask for punishment. He did so turning the grasses to warm sands and forest to marsh.

Azurah loved her cubs and taught them the ways of the moons and the gift of shapes.

However not all her children were given the gifts of Azurah and favored Nirni. By her hand the fur was taken and the forest given. For Nirni also loved here cubs and their grandcubs.

Although maybe not M'aiq is very practical. He has no need for mysticism.