addone on 1/8/2009 at 20:02

---

I was reading through the escapist forum and I came across (http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/18.128359?page=1) this thread. I always loved these kind of discussions. No arguments or huge debates or anything, I have NO INTENTION at all for one of those. No flaming, no disagreeing or anything. This is PURELY out of curiosity of everybody else's opinions.

Although, I'd rather this thread be a little different. I decided to post it on a forum I'm more familiar with (even though I don't post a whole lot) and one where you won't get banned for simply saying "lol" in the wrong context.

So, going along with the original thread, I am just curious as to who believes in god or gods and what their beliefs and faiths are. No slagging off other religions or anything, I don't want people to say what they think of the different religions, that's not the objective of this thread. This is a mature and laid-back forum, (even if you don't think so, compared to almost every other forum, it really is), so I don't think anything would go wrong.

Vasquez on 1/8/2009 at 20:51

---

hahaha

Ok, on topic. I find Taoist philosophy closest to my personal beliefs and thoughts (although I'm not always very good at the "do not meddle" ;) ).

Sulphur on 1/8/2009 at 22:32

---

I have a very simple belief, one that I suppose most would find quite alien, being as it is divorced of most of the usual features applied to faith and divinity and theistic philosophies.

I believe the force that sparked us all into being, the fundamental reason behind that explosion of energy and matter in the infinite dark beyond time that started off the entire chain of events that culminated in our here and now -- right here, right now, our reason for existence, is god.

What else could you call that, anyhow? Why can't god be a force, and not just a person, or a thing? I have a hard time believing there's no god, because the very fact that anything exists at all means someone or something or some as-yet-humanly-undefinable what had to have made it. I won't buy the 'everything has always existed' argument, because it's just not a very good answer in the face of things like evidence of the Big Bang.

----

And here's a good place to split this post off into a sort of semi-tangential note - naw, I don't intend to raise another ruckus about religion, just want to say something I've had running around in my head for a while.

My personal belief is that blind faith in a deity - faith in a higher power that is somehow looking out for and has an inscrutable plan for each individual one of us - is something that people as a whole need to outgrow.

We as people have a fundamental need to reaffirm to ourselves that we have a place in the overall scheme; we need to believe in things we can not see, or understand still yet. And that belief, in the end, is faith. A way of comforting ourselves.

What faith isn't, though, is the ultimate answer to all the questions we have about ourselves and things around is. To really find answers, we might need to reject the comforting blanket of faith for once and for all.

Also, I just realised I've rambled off another essay at 4 in the morning on the internet. Aw, fuck. I hope at least some of this makes sense to you guys.

Sulphur on 1/8/2009 at 22:41

---

Yeah, I agree with you there. It's understandable why pretty much all religions start from that point, but it's one of the things I think we need to move away from as well.

37637598 on 1/8/2009 at 22:56

---

I believe that we are diseased with the ability to question our reason for existence. We're blinded by the questions of our wandering minds, to the greatness of life, which cannot be measured in a lifetime, nor in a religion, but in a thanks to the cause of such a wonderful freak experiment or great accident of nature; Whether it be a force of mass destruction, sending a pebble floating througgh space only to land perfectly in the universal 'hot spot' for such things as spiritful life to grow and be nourished, or a delicate creation of one force or individual being, created to perfection for a few petty organisms to leech off of and grow, sucking the life out of the very rock that water its seed. Blind as we are, the plant, the animal, the spirit, the stone, all built from the same legos by the same spark that generated our livable surroundings.

I call it, Lifeism.