Do you believe in some kind of God?

[Fossa]

Myself, no, but I am tempted.

"Where has God gone?" he cried. "I shall tell you. We have killed him - you and I. We are his murderers. But how have we done this? How were we able to drink up the sea? Who gave us the sponge to wipe away the entire horizon? What did we do when we unchained the earth from its sun? Whither is it moving now? Whither are we moving now? Away from all suns? Are we not perpetually falling? Backward, sideward, forward, in all directions? Is there any up or down left? Are we not straying as through an infinite nothing? Do we not feel the breath of empty space? Has it not become colder? Is it not more and more night coming on all the time? Must not lanterns be lit in the morning? Do we not hear anything yet of the noise of the gravediggers who are burying God? Do we not smell anything yet of God's decomposition? Gods too decompose. God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. How shall we, murderers of all murderers, console ourselves? That which was the holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet possessed has bled to death under our knives. Who will wipe this blood off us? With what water could we purify ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we need to invent? Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us? Must we not ourselves become gods simply to be worthy of it? There has never been a greater deed; and whosoever shall be born after us - for the sake of this deed he shall be part of a higher history than all history hitherto."

~Nietzsche

And, this:

 

[LadyRadarEars]

I do, but I do not ascribe to any particular religion, instead collecting various books and scriptures in the same manner some people collect stamps or collectible cards and such. Also my view is mostly along the lines of 'either too big to care, or a giant throbbing cuntnozzle like we are when we find anthills and have free time.'

Most of the time I don't really think about it overmuch, unless I'm depressed or in a debate with one of my friends.

[Vallium]

Well this thread should go over well

[Fossa]

Thanks. I don't mean to get into any religious debate; merely what folks believe, and why.

[Gator]

no, at least not literally... but having been raised as a believer in a christian family, i reference god frequently as though i still do.  sometimes i even pray, despite not feeling like it's being heard by anything, just out of habit and some basic need for emotional release and comfort.  because at the end of the day, that's what "god" really is.  a vague and distant support system-slash-all-encompassing answer to the unanswerable.  something to which i can attribute various happenings when i need to feel like there's a motive behind them, as per my human desire to anthropomorphize and rationalize anything that happens to speak to my ego in one way or another.  if i'm happy, i have someone to thank.  if i'm pissed, i have someone to blame.  if something works out a little "too" perfectly, i can call it destiny or a plan, something set in place without my prior knowledge by some force far wiser than myself.  because it's comfortable and easy to do so sometimes, as opposed to just accepting that coincidence is coincidence. 

but rationally, logically, i know it's unlikely if not downright impossible for everything to be the workings of some magical skyfather, especially considering all the contradictory elements supposedly attributed to the same entity.  i don't see any real, tangible evidence telling me why i should believe in god, so i don't.  i don't "feel his presence"; the most spiritual experiences i have are those in which i feel attuned to myself and the physical world around me, and maybe open myself up to the possibility of energy having more power than our current understanding can explain.  and i think even if we made the scientific discovery one day that yes, some omnipotent ball of energy set the formation of earth and life as we know it into motion, i wouldn't feel any need to worship it or think of it as a god.  a force, maybe, a creator, in a sense... but not god.  i feel like the idea of god as i and most people tend to understand it is impossible.

[Lucyfish]

I pray to Red. She's my god. Call me a weirdo or whatever, but it's just what I do.

[DrDingo]

I don't believe in one. But that's not to say I live in fear of dying. 

If heaven is perfect, there's nothing left to achieve there. Meaning one would get just as much done as they would if life ends at death.

I wouldn't want to relax for eternity. Or in fact, even live for eternity. I'd like an eventual end.

[Endless/Nameless]

Yes. 

[#00Buck]

34 minutes ago, Endless/Nameless said:

Yes. 

Worship me!

[LadyRadarEars]

3 minutes ago, #00Buck said:

Worship me!

But you aren't Joe Kucan tho

[#00Buck]

5 minutes ago, LadyRadarEars said:

But you aren't Joe Kucan tho

No I'm more like...

 

[LadyRadarEars]

5 minutes ago, #00Buck said:

No I'm more like...

 

 

needs be moar like dis tho

[Zaraphayx]

In all that I do, the posting gods guide me along the righteous path.

[Sidewalk Surfboard]

I'm an edgy atheist fedora tipper. M'lady.

[Socketosis]

If God exists, he abandoned us a long time ago.

[#00Buck]

6 minutes ago, Zaraphayx said:

In all that I do, the posting gods guide me along the righteous path.

Excuse me dear wise and righteous furson...

I'm currently writing an epic nerd essay about how I'm leaving the fandom forever. 

Can you please proofread it for me? 

Thanks

[Vitaly]

Atheist since studied Godel's theorems at university.

But I'm not anti-religious in general.

[Socketosis]

4 minutes ago, #00Buck said:

Excuse me dear wise and righteous furson...

I'm currently writing an epic nerd essay about how I'm leaving the fandom forever. 

Can you please proofread it for me? 

Thanks

You're going to bring that up in every thread now aren't you?

[Endless/Nameless]

29 minutes ago, #00Buck said:

Worship me!

do you go mouth-of-praise to bass?

do you accept PayPal for the daily tithe?

[PastryOfApathy]

12 minutes ago, Zaraphayx said:

In all that I do, the posting gods guide me along the righteous path.

I personally prefer the meme gods tbh.

[#00Buck]

1 minute ago, Socketosis said:

You're going to bring that up in every thread now aren't you?

Only if it makes people feel like leaving the forum forever. 

2 minutes ago, PastryOfApathy said:

I personally prefer the meme gods tbh.

 

[Zaraphayx]

12 minutes ago, #00Buck said:

Excuse me dear wise and righteous furson...

I'm currently writing an epic nerd essay about how I'm leaving the fandom forever. 

Can you please proofread it for me? 

Thanks

It would be by honor, I look forward to making plenty of revisions.

[Aouzy]

Not really, but I hope there is one.

[Jtrekkie]

I do, but didn't always. Why is a complex answer. I have experienced some unique things, yes, but mostly reason.

Nietzche, at least in that voice, had a peculiar view of God. Ultimately he wanted a magician and as laws were found that simple magic was lost. The laws of course are more beautiful than the mystery, but then God never was a magician to begin with.

 

[Alexxx-Returns]

I believe in some thing.

[Feelwell]

I sure hope if there is a god, it is forgiving.

Plus the afterlife freaks me out.

[Dr. Doggo]

I feel like I wouldn't be at all surprised if there were some alternate plane of existence or some dimension or some elements of our universe that are beyond our ability to observe or comprehend as mortal humans (i.e. magic), but I'm not religious either. I do find religion very interesting to read and think about but I can't bring myself to participate because I won't be able to shake off the feeling that I'm LARPing, because I can't bring myself to have a sincere faith in any deity.

[Kleric]

I personally don't know what to believe, I don't know enough to be so confident in a straight answer, I am just a small hooman. :0

That would make me agnostic. I've seen reason on both sides, especially since I had been with Trekkie (When he believes something, there's most definitely reason to support it). Of course I'd prefer there to be a God, and for that god to truly be a god of love, because love is something I do believe in; that it has the power to change so much for the better.

[Zeke]

I do not believe there is a god or gods above us. 

If there were, Gods would be just as flawed and human as the mortals they've created. 

[DevilBear]

Yeah I believe in something greater than us.

But I also believe that it's a mistake to try to understand God. We cannot ascribe human emotions and whims to something so much greater than we are. Every emotion we feel has an evolutionary purpose. But what would an all powerful all knowing entity need with anger? Or sadness?

I honestly don't think about God too much because it doesn't affect my day to day life.

[Zerig]

i worship Kek

meme magic is the future

praise Kek

[Vallium]

I believe in the existence of God, or in the existence of a higher representative beyond people...a belief in good. I consider myself Christian agnostic, I have no reason to believ any one side has the exact truth. wont know until Im there...

If God is there, truly, I do not believe he's the hateful, vengeful, callous thing we make him out to be, even Christians who puts words there where it wasnt.

The ultimate purpose and idea of God is sacrifice and love, and something I/we should aspire to

Im thankful for the creation and world around me, wherever it came from.

 

I'll leave it at that, theistic arguments are exhasperating and taxing.

[Enigma]

I don't believe in any god(s). I believe in my own capabilities as a person.

I was raised episcopalian when I was a child but I stopped believing when I as 13ish. My mother would have me and my siblings come into her room and pray for my father when he was deployed. One night I told her that I couldn't. I couldn't believe in a god that would let such things happen to this world and constantly take my father away. She understood and never asked me to pray again.

There is a place for religious belief, it is just not for me. I believe all we have is each other and each person needs to believe in themselves.

7 hours ago, Lucyfish said:

I pray to Red. She's my god. Call me a weirdo or whatever, but it's just what I do.

I don't worship Ryan, but I do something similar. I say good morning to him and pretend I'm talking to him sometimes. I miss him so much.

[Vallium]

35 minutes ago, Enigma said:

I don't believe in any god(s). I believe in my own capabilities as a person.

I was raised episcopalian when I was a child but I stopped believing when I as 13ish. My mother would have me and my siblings come into her room and pray for my father when he was deployed. One night I told her that I couldn't. I couldn't believe in a god that would let such things happen to this world and constantly take my father away. She understood and never asked me to pray again.

Regardless of belief in God, people who do nothing and expect it to be in God's hands are fools. It isnt God on his owm but our abilities we have or have been given that makes things better, not sitting around and waiting for good to come

 

that said thats rather sweet of your mom to understand and let her children be different, not many people do that

[Fossa]

I often wish I did, or at least in reincarnation. Yet there's always been this part of me that's skeptical, a very empirical, "see it to believe it" mentality.

But I can see where such beliefs could be a great comfort/consolation over all the various miserable things that happen, that we have no control over. I recall when my friend died at 29 of cancer, and had led a very cautious life; didn't smoke, drink, just suddenly developed liver cancer, and bam, gone in a bout a month. And it made no sense. I lost a few other friends at just past 30, and each time, it always makes me wonder what sense there is in any of it; that it's just random is logical, but not comforting.

I'd like to know what 'happens', if anything, when we die. Often, my main worry is that death will simply be very boring.

~

On the topic of reincarnation: I've been tempted by this notion. Some will argue that if matter and energy are conserved, then something must happen when we die, and there's a certain appeal to reappearing as something else. But in two cases where I saw a friend drift off into a final coma, perhaps a day before death, they both spoke of rather similar sensations: of being dissolved, of some great force pulling them part, as if into pieces, 'reading them', and 'dismantling the categories': In both cases, there was a great sense of dissociation, and the one friend spoke of being in a kind of centrifuge, which was pulling his 'self' apart, and was absorbing him then scattering his energy/matter outwards. Those were his last words, more or less.

So I thought: Perhaps there is a kind of reincarnation, but not one where we are reincarnated as any one thing, but have particles of what used to be 'us' in many things, from blades of grass, to animals, to microbes, perhaps even to stone, to air...and that consciousness and the sense of self are dissolved during death.

I'm not sure what brings this up; my mom has cancer, and has pulled though OK, perhaps that is it, though, that fear again, of wondering what happens.

And then, I have wondered, (as the OP jokingly suggests in song): Why so much suffering?

But that's what I tend to do, is ponder such things, staring out the train window, on the way to work, observing the deer nibbling grass, the groundhogs, the occasional cranes and herons, and sometimes, a fox in the marshy margin of the tracks, the ducks swimming in this huge area where a cemetery has been flooded, oblivious to all this.

~

(Also, I appreciate that people kept this on a 'personal' level, and what the idea of God means to them, and didn't start a huge war! Thanks, everyone:))

 

 

[Strongbob]

I believe in god, sort of, I guess.  I absolutely recognize that there is no need for a god in the origin of life and evolution, but I have experienced things that seemed so unlikely and coincidental that it felt like someone or something had a hand guiding events.  It’s subtle, but it’s there.  Of course I also accept the fact that there is a non-zero chance that we are all living in a simulation which really screws with the idea of a god.   Is it god or the dismembered head of Steve Jobs?

[Tsuujou]

No. But I like the idea of an afterlife and some cosmic divinity governing us all. I hope something like that's true.

I also bet Mother Nature would be fine as Hell if she exists. 

[PastryOfApathy]

4 minutes ago, XoPachi said:

I also bet Mother Nature would be fine as Hell if she exists. 

Is that a pokemon?

[Osrik]

I don't believe in a god at this point, though I was raised Baptist.

Over my teenage years I drifted away from religion, for a variety of reasons. For one, as I learned more about the world and the natural sciences I found many of its teachings increasingly doubtful, especially as the church my family attended tacitly denied evolution. Further, it didn't really do anything for me on a personal or emotional level, so I didn't really feel like I would be missing anything in my life from leaving, while I wouldn't have to feel guilty about doing things that Christianity condemned.

So, by the end of high school, I had pretty much fully given up on religion. I still find religions and belief systems interesting to study, but from an outside perspective.

[Fantasma]

Before coming into my current beliefs, I was Catholic. I believed in god and all that jazz.

In my teenage years I came to reason that if they did exist that they were incredibly evil for allowing the suffering that they did. God and the devil being one and the same, truly. 

 

 

I have my beliefs today that I love and cherish and will accompany me until my bones turn to sand. I will just say: Love above all else.

[GarthTheWereWolf]

Yes, I identify as a Christian

8 hours ago, Jtrekkie said:

Nietzche, at least in that voice, had a peculiar view of God. Ultimately he wanted a magician and as laws were found that simple magic was lost. The laws of course are more beautiful than the mystery, but then God never was a magician to begin with.

"God used beautiful mathematics in creating the world." <;

[FlynnCoyote]

I believe in nothing unless it can be proven. So, to me no religion on Earth comes close to the answers.

I read about something called the Quantum Energy Vacuum, and found an article the other day about potential omnidirectional time. So that was kind of interesting.

Still don't think any gods are likely or necessary for the universe to exist as we understand it though. So cherish life and all that, because this one is all we can count on.

 

*waits patiently for Rukh...*

[FenrirDarkWolf]

Simple answer? Yes.

Complicated? Yes... but it's... weird. I tend not to think about it because I don't know where to go on it. It's... comforting, to know that, if someone IS looking out for me and those I love and care for, that I can ask them to continue to. I mostly ascribe to the same reasoning @Jtrekkie and @WolfNightV4X1 do, and I know that, without my own work, nothing I pray for will get done.

[Luka]

It's all bullcrap.

I wish I did believe in something though, would help a lot with that silly fear of death

[LazerMaster5]

This song sums it up pretty well for me.

In all seriousness though, I bow down to no gods. Especially not gods from religions that want to kill me for who I am.

[Conker]

Mostly no. It just seems so fucking unlikely that there is a God, but it is hard to shake the "raised religious" thing. Went to church so much as a kid. Funny too, since my parents are hardly what I'd call religious these days. Just...it seems so fucking unlikely.

I'ts one of those things where during the day, no. I don't believe in a God. But at night? Eh, "the night is dark and full of terrors"

[Red Lion]

No, at least not one described by the major religions. I feel like most interpretations of a godlike entity are too human. Jealous, angry, petty these aren't emotions you want to assign to a divine creator. I love humans and their infinite capacity for imagination and compassion but I would not trust the universe to anything even resembling a human.

Beyond that I can't say I honestly care what's there, if anything. 

[Xaende]

I'm basically an agnostic theist. It seems to me that the universe and natural law are the product of a creative intelligence, one that we relate to in a subjective/personal way. I call that creative intelligence God, but I also think religion is a human invention. Trying to define God or gods in detail, and imposing those definitions on others as religions do, is misguided in my opinion. There's so much that we simply don't know, and all the claims that we know what we're talking about won't change what actually is.

 

 

 

[Kalmor]

Nope.

That's all I have to say really.

[MalletFace]

I am an atheist. I'm entirely certain about gods for which there is evidence of absence, but agnostic towards any infinite number of gods imagined or not by virtue of not possessing the burden of proof in the whole deal and lacking verifiable evidence for whichever gods. It is hard to have anything but an absence of evidence with a god such as Norman the Undetectable or Lord Teapot, so I have to be open to the idea that some gods may exist.