joshwriting | My religious beliefs

Current Mood: contemplative
Current Music: Losing my religion

My religious beliefs

A question on Sheroes asked "How did you come to your beliefs?"

After many years of studying and reading about different religions, including the one I was ostensibly raised in, and after prayer seeking guidance (and a clue), and after conversations with priests, reverends, rabbis and shamans...

I concluded that I have nary a clue, nor any chance (in hell) of finding one.

I am a devout agnostic, dedicated to the principle that I do not and cannot know what is going on with deities.

I do pray, though...

p.s. If I listed my mood as contemplative every time I LJed, I suspect it would not be inaccurate.

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Praying is with intention. Wishing is with desire, but no intention.

Praying can be "if there IS a power out there, then..."

Wishing, unless directed (to the star, the well, whatever), is far more aimless than that. And... with less expection that there might be a return on investment.

Wishing is one class down from lottery tickets. Praying is one up.

Not meaning to be rude to you, or anyone - but I'm finding most of these theories to not resonate in the slightest with me.

Prayer is, by any reasonable definition I can see, is an attempt to speak to some deity or combination thereof. To praise, or thank, or intercede. It is, at base, a conversation with some power or powers greater than oneself. Sometimes unidirectional, sometimes asking for bidrectionality, sometimes asking for action.

What else could it really be?

As an agnostic (and a devout one) it seems to me that prayer is at most a forlorn hope. But, more generally, self contradictory. I'm tempted by the word hypocritical, but that's more negative than I am feeling.

This is just me. I consider myself an agnostic - I would never pray.

Wishing is different, it is a hope for another outcome. But not with an expectation that anyone or anything could bring it.

Well, mine is not a theory.

Mine is practice.

If I believed that there was NOT one out there, then I might feel otherwise.

It is to the POSSIBLE deity, not to the definite. Your approach smacks to me of atheism, of conviction that there IS nothing to which (to whom) to pray.

I agree with your wishing description.

I'm not sure I understand the significance of the difference between "wishing" and "praying" (and for that matter "hoping" and "desiring" and "wanting" and various other English words). To be honest, it sounds an awful lot like a roundabout attempt to say what could be said more simply as either "faith is good!" or "faith is bad!" depending on one's predilections.

The semantics aside, I do think there's an enormous difference between purposeful/focused desire and amorphous/undirected desire. The former can often get something done, regardless of whether one attributes the mechanism to well-disposed gods or psychic abilities or attentiveness to mundane opportunities or whatever. The latter, not so much.

It may be to the possible deity, and perhaps but I am being too anthropomorphic.....

But I have to figure that any real deity would be like, "Hey, check this out. Stupid non-believer wants me to do him a favor. Asshole." :-)

There are three basic models of deities that I can imagine, though, to me, they really amount to two.

1) the omnipotent, benevolent ones
2) the anthropomorphic ones
3) the totally alien ones

(I see #1 and #3 as the same) If we have the second ones, then there is a chance that you would be right, though even some of them are supposedly a little less capricious.

If we have the first, "HE" would be compassionate - it is in the design specs.

If we have the third one, we are in so much deep doo doo anyway, that my little prayer thing is not going to have any particular impact at all!

I think you are, in fact, being to anthropomorphic. G-d (or gods, or whatever) was not designed in your image, necessarily!

Of course, it isn't my place to tell Josh what his beliefs are. But maybe it would help if we classified him differently. Maybe he is not so much an agnostic, which seems to be a large and very ambiguous belief, but a deist, who is someone that has a belief in some form of a higher power, but is not necessarily the Christian God.

Josh, do correct me if I'm wrong. I mean, what right do I have to define your beliefs for you?

Last I checked, beliefs were open to the interpretation of the beholder, not to be criticized/categorized by others. :}

I am an agnostic. I sometimes pray. I offer myself as a counterexample to the thesis that agnostics don't pray and to the thesis that everyone who prays is a deist. Josh may be another counterexample, or he may not be.

I am not a deist.

I hold the belief that a higher power might exist, but that I cannot know if there is or is not such a being.

I hold that if there is a benevolent deity, that my lack of belief will not hinder my prayers, that if there is a malevolent deity, that my lack of belief will not cause my prayers to be worse than the rest of what such a deity would do, and that if it is a neutral or alien deity, that my trying to figure out the reaction would be a waste of time.

If there is no deity, no collective unconscious, and no power from my directed thoughts, then my prayers are so much hot air - but they cost me nothing.

I am an agnostic. I have read the definition and it clearly fits. The problems some others have with my praying strike me as assertive on their part that because they do not know, therefore prayer CANNOT help - and that is too much knowledge of how things work for me to be comfortable with.

I definitely agree and understand what you mean. It was just a suggestion. =)

wow, I don't know where exactly to plug this comment into the larger thread, but I am reminded of the time I heard Derrida speak. it was an interview format. he was asked to reconcile contradictory-seeming written statements on his belief in God and prayer. to paraphrase and summarize his lengthy response, which I'm sure I didn't entirely understand: when I pray, if I pray, I believe in God, if I pray, which I do all the time, if I do it at all, if I believe in God. I wish I could find my notes right now so I could do a better re-creation, but all I can find are the notes from the same conference the year before. maybe if I were to sort through the towers of paper around my desk they'd be easier to find.

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My religious beliefs

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