this post was submitted on 26 Nov 2025

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Why do you personally believe in your religion? (blackneon.net)

submitted 5 months ago by King@blackneon.net to c/asklemmy@lemmy.world

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[–] SatansMaggotyCumFart@piefed.world 3 points 5 months ago (2 children)

What’s the term for not knowing for sure if there’s a god or not and not giving a fuck about it either way?

[–] CXORA@aussie.zone 3 points 5 months ago

Apatheism

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[–] arin@lemmy.world 3 points 5 months ago (1 children)

I don't. Not Buddhist anymore

[–] Allero@lemmy.today 2 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Buddhism looked appealing to me until I actually looked into it (I come from a Western culture)

[–] ripcord@lemmy.world 2 points 5 months ago (1 children)

What didn't you like?

[–] Allero@lemmy.today 3 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Cosmology, mainly. To someone who's barely familiar with Buddhism, it may seem like it's all Buddha's wisdom with some Samsara magic sprinkled on top of it. Really though, it's every bit as bonkers and reflective of the ancient perceptions of the world as any other way of mystical thought.

As for teachings, I honestly didn't go to deep into that, but I visited a local temple and the way a monk told about them made me feel I visited some sort of lnternet life coach with some mystical stuff on top.

[–] CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org 2 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

made me feel I visited some sort of lnternet life coach with some mystical stuff on top.

There's another kind that probably prefers a local language, and would feel very much like a Christian priest. It fills the same basic social roles in some places.

Kind of like how there's actual shamans, and then the kind that tells white people what they want to hear before feeding them mushrooms. The West never stopped loving a wise noble savage.

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[–] weaponG@lemmy.world 3 points 5 months ago

Santa's elves don't make toys, Chinese children do.

[–] dil@lemmy.zip 3 points 5 months ago

I believe it partially, I'm sikh and I think a lot of rules were based on them needing to identify each other or living in times of war, like keeping long hair and a beard, always carrying a kirpan (dull small blade these days used to be a full sized sword til the british forced changes)

Most of the shit is legit just telling you to be a good person because we all come from the same place and goto the same place. Energy, doesn't really have an afterlife, which I hated as a kid. Was so jealous other ppl get afterlifes lol.

I kinda like the concept, like the one omniscient god can't die or really live becaue they can't die, experince pain, or get hurt, so we live and exist to experience life/death, etc. for them. That's why once you stop caring about wordly desires you rejoin god.

Idk it's kinda fun and makes sense, kinda supports my personal belief that we all evolved to eventually become god like beings (not us but descendants millions of years from now)

Like if a god exists, they would set into motion all the events that need to occur for life to exist and eventually humans to evolve, but we aren't the final step or goal. It's like a simulation game where they know what combination of events leads to another god like being existing.

Or the more fun option is that time isn't linear, and whatever god is, is the furthest evolution of the human race and it loops back creating itself in a paradox.

[–] agamemnonymous@sh.itjust.works 2 points 5 months ago (8 children)

I don't believe in a religion. I am a syncretic pantheist.

"Syncretic" meaning that I don't think any one religion or sect has a monopoly on divine truth, even if they are sincere and productive attempts. Refer to Rumi's Elephant.

"Pantheist" meaning that I think God = Universe. The laws of nature are God's attributes. We are all literally one with God, everything that exists is.

I believe these things because I exhausted basically every other reasonable metaphysical alternative.

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[–] UrPartnerInCrime@sh.itjust.works 2 points 5 months ago (1 children)

I believe in the Goddess of Luck because, hopefully not sounding too cocky, she's been kind to me. I've told people about her before and they think I'm slightly insane, but then as they hang out with me they start to thank her on thier own luck because they see how she speaks in crazy ways.

All you have to do is thank her when luck is on your side and you'll see the difference.

[–] allo@sh.itjust.works 3 points 5 months ago

beautiful

[+] Sterile_Technique@lemmy.world 2 points 5 months ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (2 children)

[deleted]

[–] NoneOfUrBusiness@fedia.io 2 points 5 months ago (1 children)

(feel free to take that as a challenge if you think you've got the answer).

Muslim here and sure (I've wanted to try this for a while now): The criteria for the first pillar are arbitrary. What's being proposed is that a good creator wouldn't allow their creation to suffer, or—taking it a step further—wouldn't create a world where suffering is even possible. However, that would require human (or, really, lite in general) not to exist; give humans free will and suffering will happen. You could argue then that the act of creating humans was evil, which would be logically consistent, and in that case my answer is: I'll drop (your conception of) the first pillar. God knows about suffering and is capable of stopping it but tolerates it for one purpose or another.

[+] Sterile_Technique@lemmy.world 2 points 5 months ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

[deleted]

[–] NoneOfUrBusiness@fedia.io 2 points 5 months ago (1 children)

I'm much more familiar with the Christian version which presents god as perfect in an absolute sense.

Islam does too, but with less emphasis on the idea of benevolence. Most relevantly, Islam states that life is a test by God and therefore suffering is an inherent part of it, which is kind of my framework here (though I don't assume that in my argument below).

Step on a Lego > hurts > not evil. Stick a knife in someone or like commit genocide > very clearly evil.

My point is that that's logically inconsistent. A genocide killing thousands of people and an earthquake or famine killing thousands of people both leave thousands of people dead. Hell, even letting people die at all is suffering. Back to our postulates, pillar 2 states "his will is our reality." When you get down to it, the only kind of world that would not run afoul of the Epicurean paradox would be a no-scarcity paradise with only 100% happy thoughts, and at that point we'd be looking at robots (or I suppose angels, if there's a material difference), not humans. Worse, when you get down to it in such a world people would either lose the ability to even conceive of evil, or be prevented from committing it by an external force. Imagine if at the mall you always had an angel making you return your shopping cart, now multiply that by ten thousand times. Essentially we're looking at a world of lobotomized robots, which to me doesn't sound all that appealing.

is god not capable of creating free will without evil?

It might be possible in some outlandish alternate universe, but restricting the discussion to things we can conceive of, evil is baked into the concept of free will. As I argued above, take away the capacity to commit evil and you remove almost the whole breadth of human emotion and activity, by definition running afoul of free will. Perhaps most importantly, though

a god that's aware of evil and has the power to stop it, but chooses not to, is himself some degree of evil.

at the core of this is the assumption that suffering is ontologically evil. This is very egotistical, but it also betrays a fundamental instability in the whole thing: Without objective morality (which immediately follows from the lack of belief in a creator), how can there be good and evil? This application of the Epicurean paradox assumes that evil can exist independent of a higher authority able to determine good and evil, so it's a case of circular reasoning more than anything else. The Epicurean paradox can only be used to reject complete benevolence (which, well yes), not complete goodness.

[–] Bigfishbest@lemmy.world 2 points 5 months ago

I think for some people the scale of God simply doesn't compute, which is why old man with big beard image persists. Look at the size of our galaxy, and the size of the universe as a whole. If any being was the creator of such a vast and complex universe as ours, that being would be to us like we are to a "Hello world" script.

The analogy is flawed, but that is what we are saying if we believe in a being capable of creating our universe, defining its laws and bending them to create us. We could not truly begin to comprehend such a being, and largely we are left to our own. However, if you believe, then this being does care about us in some way. And it has shown us this through inspiring humans to share its path for our improvement.

That is the reason I believe in the teachings of the Christ. The path of loving your enemies, of caring for everyone as one would your own family, forgiveness, that is the path to a better world, revealed to us through a man and his story. I am unable to fully live up to such ideals, but like Data says, the struggle yields its own rewards. Those who take such ideas to heart are worthy in the eyes of the creator, because if all people were such, there would be little suffering in our world. We have the means to reduce our suffering, but we choose not to. God could, remove it for us, but then we will not become the free and good beings we are meant to be.

You don't need God to have such ideals as the Christ demonstrated, but I find such ideas so much better than any of the alternatives, that I suspect they have divine origin. And even if they don't, if I follow them, then I will contribute to making the world better regardless. God could take away my struggle and suffering, but that would leave me still flawed and unable to improve, and so it would be for all humanity as well.

[–] ArcaneSlime@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 5 months ago

I was born a SubGenius just like all other SubGenii. I must have Slack!

Praise "Bob"

[–] allo@sh.itjust.works 2 points 5 months ago

Because someone has to; otherwise it wouldn't be a religion.

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