Agnostics “R” Us...

Good Morning Sonic17,

You may be right that you don't belong in this thread and you are welcome in my thinking. In reading your post to me it does indeed sound like you could benefit from someone with a spiritual counseling approach. I would recommend the works of Father Leo Booth to you. Father Booth is not your traditional Christian shall I say. Maybe one of these books of his you would find of value:

When God Becomes a Drug: Book 1; Understanding Religious addiction & religious abuse

“Spiritual leader Leo Booth knows that many of us are searching for ways to move beyond trauma, beyond old messages, and beyond the limitations of obsessive behavior. Inspired by his numerous workshops, The Wisdom of Letting Go seeks to answer the complicated question "How do we let go of the unhealthy situations in life that weigh us down and keep us from living in the moment?"

Spirituality and Recovery: A Classic Introduction to the Difference Between Spirituality and Religion in the Process of Healing

A part of the blurb on this book: “Spirituality is recognizing that we have the power to change the things in our lives that bring us pain. Whether it's simply a life in need of greater positivity or a life ravaged by addiction, each of us holds the key to initiating the healing process. Spirituality is recovery.”

He was an Episcopalian priest and later a Unity Minister.

You can see about all of his books here: https://www.amazon.com/Leo-Booth/e/B001JS6ID0/ref=sr_ntt_srch_lnk_1?qid=1429068198&sr=8-1

I hope you find what you are looking for. As the Buddhists say: May you be well. May you be happy. May you be free from suffering.

Henry

 

Agnostics are people who have no conviction as to whether god actually exists or not.

We simply do not know, and believe that it is in fact impossible to know of the existence of god.

We do not say that god does not exist.

 

Some of us have no doubt in the existence of God, I feel it in my heart, body and soul. And so... I leave the thread. God Bless.

 

I miss going to church sometimes and listening to beautiful choir singing.

 

Yes, COVID-19 has made this difficult. And even once COVID-19 restrictions ease, I still (like many of us) wear earplugs in church.

 

Funny that the top two threads in “General Chat” are one about maybe god and one about maybe aliens.

 

Hi Henry,

I appreciate all your information. But I am not sure how my little prayer turned into referrals for self-help and addiction? I was simply having a hard time sleeping last night and like many of us found comfort in saying a prayer.

Nonetheless the books you suggest look interesting. Thank you.

 

Because it's hard living in emptiness. Got to have something to hold on to in this life. Whether it's God, universe, hobby, love to music, sports, beautiful person... It doesn't matter. There has to be purpose and aim because emptiness leads to self destruction.

 

You are welcome Sonic17. I first ran across Father Leo Booth back in the mid-1980s. He was the first minister I read that delved into shall I say the juncture of emotional/addiction troubles and Christian spirituality. His message at that time and his work was mostly working with people with addictions. I think he has broadened out beyond addictions over the decades since then. He must be well into his 70s by now.

I found him since I have a food addiction. In the 1980s there wasn't any literature on food addiction so the Overeaters Anonymous groups read the literature primarily written for those who had addictions like the major books of Alcoholics Anonymous. In reading them when the word "alcohol" was in the writing we just changed it in our minds to "food" since the principles were the same. As you may know, AA is a "spiritual program" in the sense one needs to have a higher power to work the program. Now, each individual has to decide what that "higher power" is on their own. Most pick God and the AA literature mostly refers to "higher power," not using the word "God" often. Then, most AA meetings conclude with the Serenity Prayer said which is indeed a prayer to God. That said, for atheists and agnostics the "higher power" picked by them is usually the power of "the group" meaning the "AA ancestors" if you will, and body of knowledge developed by Alcoholics Anonymous over the last one hundred years or so. The individual AA member basically "surrenders" their ego and acknowledges that AA knows better than they do so they will follow the principles/steps of AA rather than their own mind. Sort of like a believer in a religion surrenders to the will of God.

Well, long way to get to your welcome. I just figured you sounded like someone in a tough place who could use some support from someone who was focused on emotional issues and Christian spirituality. That is the rest of the story for you.

Henry

 

Thanks Tanni. I appreciate it.

 

I very seldom read news, as most of it is journalistic bull.

But I did come across an article I found to be quite interesting. In Canada the folks there have discovered 215 children's bodies, they were found at the remains of an old boarding home, from the 1890s, these children were physically and sexually abused, and beaten if they didn't obey the rules. The children were stripped off their culture and their language, the hair cut off. These children came from different tribes of indigenous people.

The terrible thing about this is that these boarding homes were run by the Catholic church. There's religion for you.

 

‘Celibacy breeds sexual predators’

 

‘In all probability there is likely to be far more than one!’

 

Not enough love in the world to go around.

You could also have mentioned the babies and children disposed of in the sceptic tank in Tuam, Ireland.

But you gotta take a step or two back. In the modern world, unwanted children are put into care or they are aborted. Sad fact. The catholic authorities in the Canadian orphanage/boarding home at least made a half-hearted attempt (or half-assed attempt) to bring them up.

Modern society has ways of keeping it all out of sight and out of mind.

 

The Catholic Church had no right to capture those children and strip them of their heritage and culture, any more than stripping you of yours.

The point is what fucking religion would rape human beings of their right to life? Maybe you should read up on native Americans and their struggle to survive. And I have read about Tuam and those children the "church" again at work.

 

Fires my dander up @Jazzer, even though it's past, it just goes to show how holy they were. I think about it, this is what I come up with.

"Sisters, come, we must pray for forgiveness, our heavenly father will tell us we have done right. What could be wrong, we've only murdered innocent children. Pray now."

And they go on and on with guilty conscience, and keep up the good work. Fuckers.

 

Where does ‘Belief’ come from ?
And why is it so resistant to re-appraisal ?
Interesting questions.
————————————
The primary motivation for ‘belief’ is the subliminal fear of hell-fire and damnation, absorbed over years of ‘seemingly innocuous’ Sunday school, and church service attendance, amounting to indoctrination.

Just my view folks.

 

I have spent much time among First Nations people, some good some sad.

One story on god or gods comes to mind.

An elderly man of strong knowledge and kindness explained to me what went wrong for his people 200 years ago.

"As a people of the earth all things are living spiritually. As we lived from what the mother gives us we thank that individual object. We ask but we do not pray as there is no need for prayer, we know that our gods are those that gives us food and shelter. There is no god to take away sickness or to help give life or to take life. We have knowledge of what you call the unknown."

"Then as you whites stormed our land and stole everything form us, that is our way of life our spirit our culture."

"Then you sent religion to us. Forced us to believe that your god is the only way, and, in the meantime you raped and murdered my people and told us your god is the only god and for us to go to your heaven we must follow your beliefs."

"As you can see we have been destroyed."

"Your god is cruel, your god has done nothing do not say to me religion is the way of life and comfort."

I sat and thought how correct he is.

 

I wonder if you ever read the book "Guns, Germs and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies" by Jared Diamond. It certainly made an impression on me. Seems what happened to the Native Americans is the way of human beings at least since the creation of tribes or certainly nation-states. There is nothing unique about what happened to the Native Americans. Or the animals for that matter. Unfortunately, I don't think the human race has progressed beyond this behavior as yet. We can only hope if/when the extraterrestrials show themselves to us, he says with a smile, they have grown beyond our level of human development or we will be toast as we have done to others of our kind!

I also ran across this article today you all might find of interest:

Atheists and believers have different moral compasses

https://www.livescience.com/moral-compass-atheists-believers.html

 

A thought experiment I like to engage is, "what if consciousness is just a filtering and organizational layer, which only advanced organisms possess, but simple awareness is actually just a fundamental property of matter in the same way that mass and trajectory are?" In this paradigm, a rock would not be capable of conscious thought, but, being a rock would be like being something. There would be "experience" associated with being that thing, more or less.

 

I have read that book.

 

‘Empathology is a secular word for spirituality.
You do not need a religion in order to experience spirituality.’

 

Sort of like panpsychism I imagine. See here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panpsychism

Concept
Panpsychism holds that mind or a mind-like aspect is a fundamental and ubiquitous feature of reality. It is also described as a theory in which "the mind is a fundamental feature of the world which exists throughout the universe". Panpsychists posit that the type of mentality we know through our own experience is present, in some form, in a wide range of natural bodies. This notion has taken on a wide variety of forms. Some historical and non-Western panpsychists ascribe attributes such as life or spirits to all entities. Contemporary academic proponents, however, hold that sentience or subjective experience is ubiquitous, while distinguishing these qualities from more complex human mental attributes. They therefore ascribe a primitive form of mentality to entities at the fundamental level of physics but do not ascribe mentality to most aggregate things, such as rocks or buildings.

 

The pictures I put up of the sculptures has an interesting story. So I shall relate the old gentleman told me, from this you may think about it.

After our walk through the sculptures we entered a small shop that was selling trinkets and things. I had gone out finding a bench to sit upon, thinking about those sculptures, along came a man and stopped to look at me, "you look like a Druid," and into the shop he went. A couple minutes after he told my wife that he had to go out and talk to that Druid sitting out there. So he sat down beside me and commented on my appearance, how I reminded him of Druids. My reply was "I'm not a religious person, I've no belief in a biblical God or any god."

He just smiled and then he said, "how correct you are, there's no god, but man makes his own god in whatever he perceives as a god."

"Very interesting you would say that, as it's something I've known for years, and if there was a god why is he letting us destroy our children, our planet, our future?"

He just stared at me with a smile, then asked me if I enjoyed the walk around the land. I said it was quite amazing.

Then he replied, "I spent 30 years as a monk in India, and this is my land and my sculptures I've spent years and money into this, so do you know why men become priests?"

"I've no idea, it's not something I've thought about."

"Two reasons why, the first to control, and the second is because they become filthy rich, with no thought about religion, only what they read and preach, then when it's finished they become men just like you and me, there's no religion, there's no one god."

I'm thinking this man was a monk for 30 years and he's telling all this religion and gods is all a "scam," but I've already known that.

 

I am watching the tribute to those who died on 9/11, as given by their lovely relatives.

So, so sad.

A timely reminder of just what vile religiously motivated minds are capable of.

 

Well, I don't know that I would use the term "vile" myself.

Definition of vile from Merriam-Webster dictionary:

1a: morally despicable or abhorrent nothing is so vile as intellectual dishonesty
b: physically repulsive : FOUL a vile slum
2: of little worth or account : COMMON also : MEAN
3: tending to degrade vile employments
4: disgustingly or utterly bad : OBNOXIOUS, CONTEMPTIBLE vile weather had a vile temper

In a way the religiously indoctrinated folks of all religious traditions are victims. They just did not know any better having been brainwashed if you will and are operating on warped thinking. As some say Jesus said they know not what they do. I always like to remind myself these types of folks are captured in the human condition we all are when born and raised in a certain culture with religion. I was born into one of those of course and I was lucky to have escaped. As my Catholic mother once asked me why none of her children remained Catholic I told her because you also taught us to read and think critically. Once one reads and thinks critically it is tough to remain a Catholic or even a believer in God. So these religious types of people deserve some compassion I figure for being trapped in their thinking. More pragmatically, it is hard to reach someone with a religious mindset if one first makes them wrong for having the beliefs they were raised on. The old Stephen Covey thing of first seek to understand. Then seek to be understood. This approach often opens up the other person to new input so maybe they too can escape the ties that bind their minds. Ah, end rant!

 

I understand.