Why are you a Theist?

[CleanShavenJesus]

Without God, everything like like an internet meme, there is really nothing to say, nothing to do, so you are just trying to be sarcastic or offensive because you are afraid to say something deep because you are scared you will be pretentious or something like that because you aren't a deep person, you are just trying to be cool or sarcastic.

Oh my God.......strodel....you're....you're right. I've felt this emptiness in my life for a while, and I realize it started when I gave up God. I've only been snarky recently. It's because I've been trying to be cool in front of people. i'm not deep at all. There's nothing deep about me.

Strodel, I think you're right, for once.







































(April Fool's)

[Brian37]

Well, as wordy as humans can get life is not that deep. All the titles, all the 50 syllable words which are nothing more than code, humanity invents them to create a false sense of importance, which is nothing more then our denial that we are finite.

[Joel]

Because I love God, more than I have ever loved any female, because I am closer to God than I am to any person, because I see the world clearly through God, because God completes me and apart from God I am not really anything, my thoughts and intentions are not directed towards anything.

Without God, everything like like an internet meme, there is really nothing to say, nothing to do, so you are just trying to be sarcastic or offensive because you are afraid to say something deep because you are scared you will be pretentious or something like that because you aren't a deep person, you are just trying to be cool or sarcastic.

I never feel like that now. I feel as if every one of my intentions is directed towards love and wisdom and holiness. I used to feel like my whole life was just cynicism and everything was a joke because I was afraid to actually care about something. The deepest thought or consideration I had would be based following some some kind of political propaganda.

I don't feel like that now.

If you replace every 'God' with 'Odin' you get this.

Because I love Odin, more than I have ever loved any female, because I am closer to Odin than I am to any person, because I see the world clearly through Odin, because Odin completes me and apart from Odin I am not really anything, my thoughts and intentions are not directed towards anything.

Without Odin, everything like like an internet meme, there is really nothing to say, nothing to do, so you are just trying to be sarcastic or offensive because you are afraid to say something deep because you are scared you will be pretentious or something like that because you aren't a deep person, you are just trying to be cool or sarcastic.

It suddenly seems silly(ier than before)
That's not a reason for anybody (other than yourself, at least) to believe. How do you justify that to other people, in a way that may persuade them that your faith is the correct one.

[Nine]

Sheogorath.

[Joel]

Sheogorath.

Because I love Sheogorath, more than I have ever loved any female, because I am closer to Sheogorath than I am to any person, because I see the world clearly through Sheogorath, because Sheogorath completes me and apart from Sheogorath I am not really anything, my thoughts and intentions are not directed towards anything.

Without Sheogorath, everything like like an internet meme, there is really nothing to say, nothing to do, so you are just trying to be sarcastic or offensive because you are afraid to say something deep because you are scared you will be pretentious or something like that because you aren't a deep person, you are just trying to be cool or sarcastic.

Or, maybe

Because I love Malacath, more than I have ever loved any female, because I am closer to Malacath than I am to any person, because I see the world clearly through Malacath, because Malacath completes me and apart from Malacath I am not really anything, my thoughts and intentions are not directed towards anything.

Without Malacath, everything like like an internet meme, there is really nothing to say, nothing to do, so you are just trying to be sarcastic or offensive because you are afraid to say something deep because you are scared you will be pretentious or something like that because you aren't a deep person, you are just trying to be cool or sarcastic.

[The Grand Nudger]

Best watch out with that Odin bashing shit. He's not a pansy that flings rocks at people or sends them to some pillowy hereafter -or any other such bullshit-. He will straight up gut your ass with a spear - face to one eyed face, and leave you on the ground to bleed out..there won't be anything for you after that - not even torture. He wouldn't care enough to go through the trouble.

[Mystic]

I not a Theist per se, but I do believe in a Creator (don't know if I should worship it and feel that I shouldn't per my relative perspective of praise), and it has to do with my belief in properly basic beliefs (morality, free-will, perpetual identity, etc), that I feel it's not possible to justify myself in these beliefs without acknowledging them to be supernaturally originated.

I also rely on some arguments from ignorance, in that I don't see any explanation possible, so I believe in a designer as a result. This is the weaker of the reasons, but in somewhat adds to the "strength" of my uncertain belief in a Creator.

I also feel humanity is not wrong generally in believing in a supernatural soul, and feel the belief in a soul is very plausibly based on knowledge of who we are. It feels like I have a soul all the time, and I can't help believe that I am a soul.

None of these are conclusive reasons to me, hence I am agnostic.

[Angrboda]

I considered this thread, and to be blunt, was rather underwhelmed by the idea of explaining the history of my faith in answer to this question. Part of that is that my practice and my beliefs are rather private and personal, and the thought of opening up that part of me to others, and being vulnerable in that way, simply makes me recoil. And I would certainly be lying if I tried to say that there isn't a certain amount of defensiveness involved in avoiding the topic on an atheist forum like this. There's every reason to be suspicious and wary in an atmosphere like this. But I gave it a little thought, not planning to share my story, but more simply exploring what the nature of my reluctance towards doing so was.

I didn't really come to any conclusions regarding that, but something else occurred to me as I was thinking. If I were to attempt to explain the origins and development of my theism, I'm pretty sure it would follow a standard, stereotyped pattern. I would turn my gaze inward, searching for memorable events and thoughts related to my history as a believer, and take the salient ones and string them together with a narrative designed to make sense of that history, like stringing beads along a piece of string. But I know, both from my knowledge of psychology and personally, that this is a very flawed procedure....

As a person with chronic mental illness, and particularly one who had many different doctors and therapists over the course of my treatment, I'm intimately familiar with that process in unexpected ways. Every time you start as a new client with someone, the first few sessions are devoted almost exclusively to retelling your history. You spend several hours of therapy time just explaining how you got from where your symptoms and their causes began, all the way up to the present day. But the thing I found through that experience is, that at least for me, that process is fraught with a tendency toward confabulation, or, in plain speech, "just making shit up." I would be in the middle of telling my history to someone, and it would hit me how what I had been saying for the past hour was not actually what had happened. It was a mixture of fact and fiction. I didn't imagine or make up events per se, but how I connected up the events, how I theorized that one event or symptom led to another experience or development, those "connections" between events tended to be thoroughly ad hoc, and driven less by what actually happened or why it happened than it was by "the demands of the story."

So in addition to other reasons for being reluctant to share my story, some of which may be more or less admirable, or more or less defensible, I now have new reasons. It occurs to me that, even if I were to attempt to explain my history, it would inevitably have a tendency to be deeply infected by bullshit, because that is how we, typically, as humans, develop our "belief stories," and, I imagine this is no less true for an atheist explaining why they came to nonbelief as it would be for a theist to explain why they came to belief. And to be sure, I can't say I really know or fully understand how I got here from there. And that doesn't bother me. Tolerance of ambiguity, even in deeply important matters, is to me, a strength, and not a weakness. But even beyond that, if I truly wanted to answer these questions, it would, at minimum, entail an intense and protracted spiritual journey, in order to find out the answer, for myself, and not just to make up some cutesy and defensible mythological story about how I came to be. And even then, given the intensely private nature of the results of such a journey, I likely would be thoroughly uninterested in sharing those details with people on a forum, largely because they matter to me a lot more than what they might mean to someone else matters to me. So if you're looking for my story, it isn't here. Nor is it likely to be any time soon.


For what it's worth.

[Joel]

That's completely okay and I respect that, Apo. Makes a lot of sense.

[The Grand Nudger]

It occurs to me that, even if I were to attempt to explain my history, it would inevitably have a tendency to be deeply infected by bullshit, because that is how we, typically, as humans, develop our "belief stories," and, I imagine this is no less true for an atheist explaining why they came to nonbelief as it would be for a theist to explain why they came to belief.

Wonderful, frank, and open post - but this bit stuck out. I appreciate that this is your personal assessment - and it's not stated or implied to be anything else - but how much bullshit would be required in the case of one who cannot ever recall a moment when they believed - one whose family and other close friends cannot recall a moment when they expressed a belief - or when they expressed anything that suggested a belief, one who continues to find themselves without any belief?

If the question was posed as "how did you get from there to here" and the response was, "there -is- here". There wouldn't seem to be any parity between the two situations. No journey to infect with any bullshit. This would apply equally as well for theists, mind you. In the case of theism, just imagine a child born into a family steeped in religious tradition who has never had (or felt the need) to explore their faith - simply accepting it as is and making no pretense otherwise.