As long as we’re not being hostile, I’m a deist and not shaken in the slightest, but then my faith isn’t about interventionism.
I’m just here to say, I do not appreciate the title of this thread. I might have reasoned and interesting anecdotes. But not under this particular rubric.
Agree with @RichVR it would be nice to change the thread title and OP if possible.
But yes Atheist, no change here. Whats interesting is I haven’t even considered the matter even though I have considered my, now more likely than before, imminent death.
My thoughts and regrets turned to undone things rather than a putative afterlife or divine beings. At that level really my only thoughts have been “damn it would suck to die before we detect alien life”, if that counts.
Aside from questioning that 99% figure (and I wouldn’t even attempt to hazard a guess as to that ‘0 or near 0’ likelihood), I must align myself with Teiman here.
I sometimes will pray to the Almighty Whomever when people or animals I am close to (or myself for that matter) seem to need it, because I guess it can’t hurt.
Also, wow I don’t think I’ve ever consulted the Wikipedia so much as I have in this thread.
Madalyn Murray O’Hair for example. Her name didn’t come up in this thread, but reading up on American Atheism brought her name up in short order. Fascinating reading. Also, while I did generally know who she was, and had heard about her disappearance before, I was not aware that that mystery had been solved. I admit I don’t keep up on these things as I should.
Yeah, God isn’t in the service industry.
Despite what a lot of the people bilking folks on television and the internet say.
I don’t get the issue with the thread title.
I personally tired of the insipid drumbeat of “you’ll come crawling back to god when you need him most,” style “argument” I heard when I was finally making my divestment from Catholicism final. Often not even from Catholics, who mostly just nodded at my decision as though, having grown up in the same chanting madhouse as I had, they kinda got it, after all.
Anyway, this statement always recalls that particular line of rhetoric for me and gets me all riled up over again, as my strained attempts to keep the vehemence of my militant atheism from breaking through in the text of this post may illustrate. It’s a trite and overused phrase at best, and an offensive canard at worst.
Still not the worst thread title on QT3 by a country mile, though!
According to NextDoor, the virus has been no match for the faithful of my neighborhood:
For myself, I see no contradiction between the current plague and my religious beliefs, and so my faith is as strong as ever.
I’m as strongly atheist as ever. Guess Corona does not have the same religious effect a sustained artillery bombardment has.
People do tell me I sound like a Buddhist often.
“Would you like salvation with that?”
I guess I’m agnostic, in the sense that is asked if God exists, I can’t say it doesn’t, same way I can’t say unicorns exist. big universe after all, but it never affected my life in any way.
But I think just like Marcus in B5, I take heart in not believing a God exists, knowing that the universe isn’t fair and there’s no higher power doling out good and ill to anyone.
A counterpoint seems to be that many people of faith seem to lose theirs’ at deaths’ door as well. It doesn’t even need to be their death that is near. The pain and suffering we inflict upon grandma, or what is left of grandma lying in the hospital bed is horrible.
This seems relevant enough to this topic: Pope Francis gave a pretty stirring address and prayer for the world tonight, standing in an empty St. Peter’s Square.
Quotes:
“Why are you afraid? Have you no faith?” Lord, your word this evening strikes us and regards us, all of us. In this world, that you love more than we do, we have gone ahead at breakneck speed, feeling powerful and able to do anything. Greedy for profit, we let ourselves get caught up in things, and lured away by haste. We did not stop at your reproach to us, we were not shaken awake by wars or injustice across the world, nor did we listen to the cry of the poor or of our ailing planet. We carried on regardless, thinking we would stay healthy in a world that was sick.
It is not the time of [God’s] judgement, but of our judgement: a time to choose what matters and what passes away, a time to separate what is necessary from what is not. It is a time to get our lives back on track with regard to you, Lord, and to others. We can look to so many exemplary companions for the journey, who, even though fearful, have reacted by giving their lives. This is the force of the Spirit poured out and fashioned in courageous and generous self-denial. It is the life in the Spirit that can redeem, value and demonstrate how our lives are woven together and sustained by ordinary people – often forgotten people – who do not appear in newspaper and magazine headlines nor on the grand catwalks of the latest show, but who without any doubt are in these very days writing the decisive events of our time: doctors, nurses, supermarket employees, cleaners, caregivers, providers of transport, law and order forces, volunteers, priests, religious men and women and so very many others who have understood that no one reaches salvation by themselves.
Embracing his cross means finding the courage to embrace all the hardships of the present time, abandoning for a moment our eagerness for power and possessions in order to make room for the creativity that only the Spirit is capable of inspiring. It means finding the courage to create spaces where everyone can recognize that they are called, and to allow new forms of hospitality, fraternity and solidarity. By his cross we have been saved in order to embrace hope and let it strengthen and sustain all measures and all possible avenues for helping us protect ourselves and others. Embracing the Lord in order to embrace hope: that is the strength of faith, which frees us from fear and gives us hope.
I am sorry. This is the same Catholic guilt that I was taught since childhood. We have sinned. Protect us.
Nope. I’m out of here.
When I was back there in seminary school, there was a person there who put forward the proposition that you could petition the Lord with prayer.
Petition the Lord with prayer.
Petition the Lord with prayer.
You cannot petition the Lord with prayer!!
I like what you’re all saying. And I find it sad, that in the end the thing that is rattling my thread-bare faith is trump and his followers in this pandemic. The more destruction, the more evil and unethical behavior, the stronger they become.
Hey Jim. We missed you.
Good cannot exist without evil.
You know when I think of them? When I’m saying my evening prayer (those nights I remember to, when I’m not distracted by having to make dinner or whatever) and I read the words of Mary at the Annunciation:
He has shown the strength of his arm,
he has scattered the proud in their conceit.He has cast down the mighty from their thrones,
and has lifted up the humble.He has filled the hungry with good things,
and the rich he has sent away empty.
Justice may not come soon, but in faith I believe it will come. I’d call that a nice side-benefit of faith!
Not trying to sway you one way or the other on this, as one’s faith is a very personal, individual thing and I respect any perspective except those which are aggressive. But perhaps this may seem helpful in your struggles; when I say I say my faith isn’t about interventionism, it’s to say I don’t demand a good life or world from my faith, I demand following a good path of myself. In hewing to that path as best as this imperfect person can, my faith is expressed and the world is improved one little step at a time.