My Religion

I became agnostic after growing up atheist, when i grudgingly decided it was just as arrogant to say "there is no god" as it was to say "there is a god, and this is what he/she/it/they are like." I became less grudging over time. The world is full of wonder and mystery and emergence, and sometimes it makes sense to use god or other spiritual language when talking about it.

Beside simply being everything, i do not think of god as having many attributes much of the time. Usually it's just the god-ness, the goodness. "God is good" is not a description to me, it is an equation, the universe has directionality, a preference which we can call good or any other word, expressed by the results we see around us all of the time. "Even" the best current theories of science's most fundamental model of the universe, physics, expresses a preference for interesting things (changes in many theories tend to lead to uninteresting universes). Even something without consciousness can have a preference.

Anyway, that and a sense of humor is usually all that i ascribe to god. Actually, most of the time, i'm more certain of the humor than the goodness. Now i understand all those TricksterGods?.

That's about it. I'm a minimalist in what i believe, but it's rather startling to believe in anything so ludicrously large. I call it Credulism. Well mostly i don't call it anything, it's just there. Naming god(s) seems like a very dangerous business. I take the infinite-name and no-name gods as warning to that effect. We name, we start to think we know attributes, we get it wrong, next thing you know we're slaughtering each other.

Is it the "think we know" part that's the or at least a nub of the problem? Agnosticism remains an important part of my belief system. There's just so much we can't be sure of! It's about humility. I don't see a contradiction between believing and agnosticism. I may be understanding agnosticism as simply the opposite of dogma.

(Mumble mumble NonViolence, RadicalInclusion, ConSensus, AnArchy, DemoCracy?, EquaNimity?, Courage, Purpose, Power, Mutuality, Love, Truth, Mystery, Celebration...)

From earlier, with dangling inquiry

When i'm feeling hopeful/trusting, i also 'know' that there is some positive (creative, life-supporting, "good") impulse as well. given what i just wrote i'm getting more that the causality there probably flows both ways

Talking with myself in public - causality the other way would mean that when the positive, creative energies are flowing my way, i feel more hopeful/trusting.

Another mind-blower for me is that faith does not hinge on belief.

To elaborate a bit, i think of good/god/interesting as creating dynamics among itself that create apparent 'evil' whatever the 'real' nature of these dynamics, they are always challenges that provoke further evolution of good/god/interesting. I'm thinking of everything from the development of larger particles out of smaller particles, molecules out of atoms, cells and life out of complex molecules (& earth systems), sentience out of life, suns, SolarSystems? and spiral galaxies out of dust and gravity, etc. For humans, ConsciousnessIsOurOxygenChallenge.

Also see MyReligions, SpiritualityAndReligion?, ReligionAndScienceFiction, MinimalCompact