Explain the presense of your faith...

[Christopher Weeks]

Spawning again from this thread (and from a thread on Vincent's blog a while back), I don't think I've ever asked people to analyze the source of their Faith.  I haven't got any.  I was raised with no religion.  If you do the God thing on Saturday or Sunday or dance around campfires naked, it's all bizarre to me.  I don't think animist paganism makes any more sense than Islam.  And because of it, I'm completely baffled by the certainty that people have about their religion.  Any help out there?  Specifically:

Why do you think you know?  How often have you made pretty dramatic shifts in belief?  Is there any presentable evidence for what you believe (and should there be?)?

Thanks,

Chris

[Bankuei]

The only two things I'm sure about is the idea of a higher power and that of an afterlife.  

Higher power?  The belief struck me when I was in 2nd or 3rd grade and reading a science book about atoms, of all things.  The fact that our world seems so well crafted just struck me as a clear sign that it couldn't be accidental.  Although now I'm aware of scientists pointing to the idea of spontaneous complexity and such, it still doesn't jive with me.  Maybe it's just an irrational self defense mechanism on my part, but hey, that's how I believe it.  I think I'd probably sit closer to Deism or Intelligent Design in those regards, but I don't believe folks ought to be forcing it down kid's throats- after all, basic science got me my belief...

Afterlife?  Let's just say I've dealt with a lot of weird stuff, like knowing the moment my dad died across the country hours before anyone called me...  I woke up in the middle of the night and could feel someone in my apartment.  It was crazy.  Other weird stuff as well.

Everything else has been conjecture :)

[Frank T]

Hi Chris,

I think I know there's "something" because the evolution theory just doesn't convince me. And I somehow believe in God despite myself. See, I grew up a lutheran protestant. Yet the more I learned about the history of my religion and the origins of its sources, the less satisfied I was with that.

Then I married a woman, and realized too late that she wasn't the one for me. So what do you do when your religion tells you you must not get divorced, but you know it'll make you forever unhappy if you don't?

So I turned my back on Christ and the bible. Yet I find myself talking to God, thanking him if something goes well, defying him if I get fucked up. I really can't tell you where this feeling He's out there comes from. I have reasoned with myself that since I do not believe in "nothing", I should become an agnostic or something, but belief won't listen to reason.

- Frank

[TonyLB]

Faith is different from religion.

For me, religion is... y'know... that stuff you do to expose yourself to opportunities for faith.  Welcoming communities, beautiful churches, pushing yourself to extremes (fasting, exertion, etc.), swelling music, inspiring texts, and the like, those are good tools for religion.

Faith is something else, that grows from the loam of your life and flowers at strange hours.  When you look at the world and see meaning rather than emptiness and hope rather than despair, that's faith.

Personally?  You want to know what inspires me to a sense of faith?  There's a scene in the first Spiderman movie.  A building is on fire, a woman is trying to get in and a fireman, who totally understands why she's doing what she's doing, has to be the one to step in front of her and stop her.  "My baby!"  "Lady, I can't let you in there!"

It is hopeless.  It is bleak.  It is the utter, implacable tragedy that we all know exists in the world, and that we all desperately fear.  "The sea is so large, and my boat is so small."  And then there's a guy in blue and red spandex swinging in to do what couldn't be done.

I know it's geeky, and you're welcome to mock me for it, but that moment is what faith is about for me.  Not the guy in the tights, but what he represents.  The certainty that, though tragedy abounds in this world, the world isn't about tragedy.  That though hopes can fade, hope is immortal.  That the world is, at core, good.

Proving it isn't the point.  Feeling it is what you need.  Wherever you get that from in your life, I call it faith.

[Brennan Taylor]

I am an extreme rationalist who periodically falls off the religion wagon, but I always come back to some core belief. I'm a member of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers), and the particular branch that I participate in is very personal and egalitarian, which appeals to me very much. I have had profound spiritual experiences while sitting in worship with other Friends, and that is the empirical evidence I can't ignore. Sure, it may be psychological, but it is most definitely there. Philosophically, I'm not really Christian, but that is something that I can reconcile with my religion because Quakers believe that every person is in direct communication with the divine, and that it will lead each person in the way that is right. I follow a more Daoist philosophy, that there is a Way to everything, and that you need to figure out how to stop fighting against it and instead work with it.

[Brennan Taylor]

I know it's geeky, and you're welcome to mock me for it, but that moment is what faith is about for me.  Not the guy in the tights, but what he represents.  The certainty that, though tragedy abounds in this world, the world isn't about tragedy.  That though hopes can fade, hope is immortal.  That the world is, at core, good.

Very cool, Tony.

[xenopulse]

I realized after a while that, while I don't believe in any sort of religion (though like Frank, being from the same place, I was raised and confirmed Lutheran Protestant), I do believe in some fundamental things like human dignity and absolute values. And life and sentience are so amazing, I can't understand them simply in terms of biochemistry.

So I ultimately found that I fit in very well with the Unitarian Universalists. I plan to be more involved on that front in the future, when the toddler gets a little older.

[Anonymous]

I'm an omnitheist.

I believe every myth structure ("religion") in the world has something important and valid to say about the human condition.

I've burned sacrifices to Athena,
I've been baptised in Christ's name,
I've celebrated Passover,
I've prayed to Odin,
I've danced for Buffalo,
I've killed the Buddha,

but I haven't walked the Haj. I want to, but I don't think the current political situation will allow me to in my lifetime.

[John Wick]

I'm an omnitheist.

I believe every myth structure ("religion") in the world has something important and valid to say about the human condition.

I've burned sacrifices to Athena,
I've been baptised in Christ's name,
I've celebrated Passover,
I've prayed to Odin,
I've danced for Buffalo,
I've killed the Buddha,

but I haven't walked the Haj. I want to, but I don't think the current political situation will allow me to in my lifetime.

Drat. This was me.
I wasn't logged in at the time. Curses!

(Loki is at it again.)

[Sydney Freedberg]

I used to go to church 3 weeks out of 4 on average, but then I had a baby who really, really needs her morning nap.... still managed Easter thi year, though.

I'm a practicing Episcopalian (pronounced "Anglican" for anyone not in the US or Scotland), which is kinda-Protestant-but-not really. My mom was one (Dad was highly assimilated Jewish) but we didn't take it all that seriously until I started going to an Episcopalian school; I had various doubts and struggles during adolescence, mostly based around "well, it's unfair that someone else should die for my sins, and kinda patronizing too"; and on Christmas Eve, 1991, while attending the evening service mainly for the music, I decided I needed all the help with my sins I could get and walked up to the altar to take Communion.

I'm completely baffled by the certainty that people have about their religion.

Certainty? Not here, friend. Doubt and struggle, all the way, including late at night where I'm lying in bed praying that God exists (which is, when you think about it, not a highly logical activity). Evolution and the Big Bang I'm certain about. That it all means anything I'm not sure of. But I try to have faith that it does -- that, to spin off what Tony said, the universe is fundamentally good and there's something good that endures. Eternally.

And that this something good is not a blind force but actually a person, in some weird way, and even cares about me. Cares enough to die for me, actually. Oh, and for all of you guys, too.

"Lord, I believe. Help thou my unbelief."

[Jason L Blair]

My faith is about 5'8" tall with green eyes and white hair, broad shoulders, and he carries a katana.

[joshua neff]

My faith is about 5'8" tall with green eyes and white hair, broad shoulders, and he carries a katana.

Dude, your faith scared the bejeezus out of me the other day. I was taking a shower, and he walked into the bathroom to get a Q-Tip.

[Eero Tuovinen]

I have no Faith, but I like to think that I know pretty much about it. Always messing around all kinds of religions, I am. Let me tell you what I've learned about Faith:

I stopped considering religion seriously some time in middle school, when my personal ethical development progressed in radically higher-spirited directions than Lutheran christianity, which is the default fate hereabouts. I simply couldn't take it all very seriously, when totally agnostic philosophers (Kant, primarily, which I always read areligiously) could explain morality much better than the church, which in the final calculation is just for kids - go to hell if you don't behave and all that stuff, doesn't really help you to understand the reasons behind ethics. With time this drift became rather discernible, even to a dullard like me. Reading and experiencing different convinctions, I came to consider Christianity much in the same way Nietzche does; nowadays I much prefer "barbarian" virtues of honor, spirit and strength to meekness.

Years later, I've found many admirable religions with much higher ethical standards than Christianity (asatru and satanism pop to mind). However, meanwhile my analytical eye has grown more mature, and I've yet to see a religion that isn't analysable as a system of ethics combined with a system of aesthetics - my current stance on the matter is that religion as cultural activity is essentially about arguing morality based on aesthetic principles. In other words, religion is art, which does exactly that. Now, I much prefer to indulge in my art in honest form, so I've kept out of religion. I fully understand that people get a high from religion; I myself get the essentially similar visionary experience from good art, so it doesn't really matter to me if people want to enjoy themselves while believing in fairies. I'm much more worried about the ethical teachings of those religions, especially as the major religions tend to be those that really just cater to base impulses instead of requiring high ethical standards.

The point: Chris asked about how Faith is born. My convinction is that all faiths you're likely to meet are a result of a strong aesthetic experience. Art can make people experience all kinds of things, and if there's a social context and a philosophy attached, it becomes a major force in molding a human. Then it is very easy to interpret the experience as spiritual, even if an areligious person would classify it as aesthetic. This is especially so for people who don't habitually have those aesthetic experiences - it's hard to realize that there's nothing religious in it if you only ever enjoy feelings of majesty, community and peace in a religious context.

[Bankuei]

Hi Frank,

The way I look at it, is, unless Jesus himself or God him/her/however you want to call it, decides to come to you personally and tell you divorce is bad- the only thing you've turned your back on is ideas produced by people, nothing more.  

If we're talking any of the three religions of the Book(Judaism, Christianity, or Islam), then a great deal of the holy books are loaded with laws, which, I consider secular, but you may or may not.  After all, someone may correct me, but I don't recall where in the Bible it forbids polygamy between the Old Testament and New Testament... :)

My belief is that anyone's personal relationship with higher powers, spirits, or what have you is just that- personal.  A lot of people have pushed secular and personal desires as "holy" in all religions, and down the line it gets codified.

Chris

[Green]

Christopher Weeks>

I doubt that anybody's answer about their faith would really satisfy you because you are asking people to express in conscious terms something that is beyond consciousness.  In my experience, the only accurate explanations or representations of faith I have seen are in metaphor.  Even they fall short at times.  So, I can't really answer your question in the way you probably want me to answer it.

One thing I've learned, though, is that faith is not belief.  At least not in the sense of what people believe.  It is more like how people believe.  In my experience, faith is akin to trust and hope.  However, instead of a person or an event, you put that trust and hope into "the mystery."  I call it mystery because of its inherently incomprehensible nature.  You can call it God; you can call it karma; you can call it chance; you can call it whatever you like, but you recognize that this force (for lack of better terms) makes things happen.

Faith is not forceful, but yielding.  Faith is Yin.  Faith is a lump of clay.  Faith is a bowl or a cup.  Faith is good plumbing.  Faith is a womb.  Faith is your trachea.  Faith is wind chimes.  Faith is all around you.

The expression of faith is not limited to churches, temples, shrines, or synagogues.  It is in Central Park where two old men play a chess game, each staying still for long moments, waiting for the best move to reveal itself to them.  It is in a laboratory where a scientist is experimenting to make a discovery, over and over again, hoping for that "Eureka!" moment when it all comes together and makes sense.  It is in firefighters who enter a burning building to save people they cannot see from the outside.  It is in everyone who has ever expressed hope or trust in things they cannot understand.

Suffice it to say, I know many people who have strong beliefs but weak faith.