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I agree it would be great to give up and give God the wheel. But do the believers really do that?
I've come to a middle ground that I can live with. Which is basically "Hey God, if you're real, I'm sorry I didn't believe it. You haven't given us much to go on recently. The best I can do is commit myself to doing good and not evil. If you exist, I'm totally for you."
Otherwise I think we are just no different from guinea pigs, and no different than any other apex predator at the top of the feeding chain.
Otherwise, I see too many people of faith preaching hate to want to be a part of that.
If there IS a God, creator of the universe, why would he be concerned with the day-to-day existence of our petty lives? Does he judge the lives of ants?
I contemplated this a lot when my first husband died at a young age. My stance was "if there is a God, and you deemed this to be right, then who am I to question?" But my belief is, we are just intelligent guinea pigs with opposable thumbs who are subject to random ****e.
Neither gave me comfort. But one sat more solidly in truth.
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I don't think anything you are describing has much to do with it. I'm a very strong INTJ and not a joiner at all, but I believe.
Don't think this thread will give you the answers you seek. Faith is a choice, not something you are wired to have or not have.
I think faith, faith in anything, even oneself, grows out of hope. You work at it and over time you began to see what works for you. That strengthens you.
For me peace of mind comes from realizing my place in the world of people and things and how little control I actually have over them. Until I stopped trying to change everything but me I struggled a lot. Now I allow the world to be its typical frustrating self and work on changing myself to live the best life I can in its limiting parameters. That's what works for me.
I didn't get there until I was fairly beat over the head with what life on this planet can do. Tired of rowing upstream every day and ready to make the ride more enjoyable for myself and others.
Maybe TJs don't like that much. Maybe they have a strong urge change things. But they probably do reach a place of acceptance using different skills and abilities? Either that or stay discontented.
I think faith, faith in anything, even oneself, grows out of hope. You work at it and over time you began to see what works for you. That strengthens you.
For me peace of mind comes from realizing my place in the world of people and things and how little control I actually have over them. Until I stopped trying to change everything but me I struggled a lot. Now I allow the world to be its typical frustrating self and work on changing myself to live the best life I can in its limiting parameters. That's what works for me.
I didn't get there until I was fairly beat over the head with what life on this planet can do. Tired of rowing upstream every day and ready to make the ride more enjoyable for myself and others.
Maybe TJs don't like that much. Maybe they have a strong urge change things. But they probably do reach a place of acceptance using different skills and abilities? Either that or stay discontented.
There was something a minister once said in a sermon that stuck with me. God isn't asking you to do the BIG things. He wants you to do the small things every day.
These are things like a smile at the cashier, an encouraging word to a co-worker. Small things can multiply and spread.
I remember going to church as an 11 yr old. Local church rounded up some of us kids and told us about the lord and our savior.
I mean no disrespect to anyone or any religion.
I'm an INTJ, alway score that way. Logical science based view of the world. Test for repeabilty, question results, wash, rinse, and repeat.
I could never shake the idea that religion is a psychological way of coping with the inevitable death that finds us all. Roll the clock back several hundred years ago when life was miserable. Disease, death, abject poverty. People died young by today's standards. Life sucked.
The promise of something or someone who cares about you and the idea of a beautiful afterlife that organized religion proposed must of had some appeal.
Every culture across the millenia has similar notions hence why I'm wondering if it's built in our psyche, lizard brain, if you will.
How does a spider weave a web? How does a myriad of natural phenomena happen? Who or what drives this?
Take every question you have and keep asking, why or what.
Big bang? What or who caused that? Just keep going backwards.
I realize this is a bit disjointed on my part.
Did I mention that I'm envious of the believers?
religion is mankinds greatest invention
its a great antidepressant , other than this people just had alcohol before modern science gave us all these meds
its a great antidepressant , other than this people just had alcohol before modern science gave us all these meds
Absolutely! It tries to explain all the chaos of life. Some god's in control; somehow, everything will be okay. For everything, there's a reason or a season.
I've seen many non-religious people become religious later in life in my small town. These folk are often retired or develop a health issue in their 50s or so, suddenly realizing that life is very short. Off they go to church...
As for me, standard religion is not in the least comforting.
Last edited by FrancaisDeutsch; 04-05-2024 at 10:52 AM..
I read your post and definitely had thoughts. I'm still not sure if it's a good idea to share them, though.
I don't envy believers. Very few of the ones I know really have peace of mind. I mean, sure, when their loved ones pass, perhaps they find comfort in the idea that Grandma is in Heaven, a better place. That a benevolent God has us all in His hand, safe from certain threats, that people get only what they deserve and deserve only what they get, even if it doesn't seem that way...well...God works in mysterious ways, must be something He knew that we didn't.
OK. But for most I've known, where the rubber meets the road in day to day life, they are often much more engaged in digging a chasm between their in-group and everybody else, and being upset about every other person who does not share their beliefs and is therefore a threat.
I had a thought this morning, that 500 years ago give or take, I would surely have been burned as a witch. Not because I actually consider myself to be any such thing. I'm not into wicca or paganism or any kind of witchy stuff, none of that is of interest to me. No, I'd have been doomed because I do not believe in a sacred mandate of authority bestowed upon any other human being, that gives them the right and the wherewithal to tell me how to live my life. I would never gaze beatifically up at a man who stood in a high place declaiming himself to be the leader chosen by God to guide the poor ignorant masses to paradise (upon the corpses of their enemies first of course.) And fundamentally every religious institution I've ever seen that has gained any real traction in any big society has become more a means to control people and empower the guy who claims the mandate to exploit everyone else, than it has been about truly good philosophy and genuine faith. Refusal to submit and obey is probably the most unforgivable act, if one is a figure who knows that only faith driven compliance keeps the mob from overthrowing your life of power and privilege.
It's nothing but a big ol' pecking order of folks needing a hierarchy and to know their place in it, who they have to suck up to and who they get to push around. I'm not into that. Never was. I don't want to lead, I don't want to follow, I just want to live.
I am an ENTJ. A friend once told me that she did not believe this because I'm "not enough of an a-hole to be an ENTJ." I have no idea what that means.
To the bold --
My GUESS is that your friend might view TJ's as non-compassionate, which is a worry that I have had about myself, even though I am just barely a T. I am a very analytical and logical person, so I take a rather hard-hearted and objective approach to people, and I am sentimental about almost nothing. In short, I think that people who do not have a lot of compassion and come across as being "just the facts, ma'am" are often viewed as a-holes.
And by the way, I love what you said, " I don't want to lead, I don't want to follow, I just want to live." That is definitely part of my personal code, also.
My GUESS is that your friend might view TJ's as non-compassionate, which is a worry that I have had about myself, even though I am just barely a T. I am a very analytical and logical person, so I take a rather hard-hearted and objective approach to people, and I am sentimental about almost nothing. In short, I think that people who do not have a lot of compassion and come across as being "just the facts, ma'am" are often viewed as a-holes.
And by the way, I love what you said, " I don't want to lead, I don't want to follow, I just want to live." That is definitely part of my personal code, also.
We can be compassionate while remaining very logical.
I have discovered that letting emotions override reason and logic is never a good thing.
We become better people and citizens when our emotions are less controlling.
We can be compassionate while remaining very logical.
I have discovered that letting emotions override reason and logic is never a good thing.
We become better people and citizens when our emotions are less controlling.
If one has empathy and compassion (or is human), it’s illogical to suggest emotion never plays a part in our thoughts or actions. What is ‘never a good thing’ is allowing negative emotions to control you i.e. anger, jealousy, resentment and so on.
I don't think anything you are describing has much to do with it. I'm a very strong INTJ and not a joiner at all, but I believe.
Don't think this thread will give you the answers you seek. Faith is a choice, not something you are wired to have or not have.
Faith is not a choice open to a certain brand of empiricist, myself being one of them, who sees everything in terms of deterministic physical processes that happened to emerge from quantum indeterminacy, the latter of which we'll never be fully capable of understanding, given that natural selection endowed us with brains built for linear, causal thinking. So, the world will indeed always have its unresolvable mysteries, but that's due to the incompatibility of fundamental properties of the universe/multiverse and the investigative 'equipment' (technological or biological) that we're bringing to the endeavor.
There's a new book out by Sapolsky about humanity's full enslavement to deterministic processes, biochemical and otherwise. I was going to start reading it today, but the bookstore I go to nearly every day decided to hide it on me, lol. Gods can only exist in the knowledge gaps of science, and there'll come a time when the quantum world will be the last bastion for humanity's myth-creating impulses
Faith is not a choice open to a certain brand of empiricist, myself being one of them, who sees everything in terms of deterministic physical processes that happened to emerge from quantum indeterminacy, the latter of which we'll never be fully capable of understanding, given that natural selection endowed us with brains built for linear, causal thinking. So, the world will indeed always have its unresolvable mysteries, but that's due to the incompatibility of fundamental properties of the universe/multiverse and the investigative 'equipment' (technological or biological) that we're bringing to the endeavor.
There's a new book out by Sapolsky about humanity's full enslavement to deterministic processes, biochemical and otherwise. I was going to start reading it today, but the bookstore I go to nearly every day decided to hide it on me, lol. Gods can only exist in the knowledge gaps of science, and there'll come a time when the quantum world will be the last bastion for humanity's myth-creating impulses
You still have to explain how all of this came into being. Simply saying, it just was, it not particularly empirical. Being an atheist is a leap of faith as much as believing in God.
An agnostic, at least, can say he is not making any decisions.
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