What's your religion?

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Hillbilly cynic and philosophical Christian (there's an overlap between cynicism and Christian philosophy in many ways).

So, none, I guess, as I don't "believe".

what exactly does "uncertain" mean?
a. I am uncertain there is a god
b, I am uncertain I belong to a religion
c, I am uncertain if I am religious
d, I am uncertain of which religion to pick?

Nothing formal or with ritual, but if you need a label, shamanistic. Spiritual people see our similarities. Religious people see our differences.

If religion was a hair colour I'm bald.

Pretty much all of the above, I could have phrased the option "Atheist/Agnostic" but I'm not sure it would have been better

/Mats

Fun fact: the jedi philosophy surrounding the force is actually borrowed from the wife of the hindu god Shiva called Shakti - represented by a dynamic energy that is responsible for creation, maintenance, and destruction of the universe. This energy for humans can be both good and evil.

I guess the hindus win

No I'm not.

I guess Hypothesis could be used, my understanding of the words is that it is more of a "this is what I think" and a hunch is more "I wouldn't be surprised if"

Sounds relatively reasonable, It can go both ways though, some people who didn't will claim to have voted for the loser.
(Happened in Brexit and when Sweden joined the EU for example)
But what is your point? Is nobody going to vote "Jewish" since nobody has picked that choise yet?
I actually believe that it's the other way around.

Anyways, it's mostly just for fun. You won't see "Aspies are mostly XYZ" in any tabloid based on this, at least not written by me

/Mats

I voted other.
My concept of reality is heavily influenced by Buddhism but I've found I needed to move on and abandon what I call magical thinking. I tend to focus on the self these days (probably because I'm autistic!). I see mostly through the lens of regarding us as complex animals, living in a meaningless universe, who have developed an advanced form of prediction where we make meaning in order to explain the unexplainable to ourselves. I do like to look at other systems of belief though.

When people have become disappointed with all the religions because of their flawed followers, there remains a yearning for escape from the confines of a body. People standing on the edge of a cliff often get an urge to jump and fly. The book "Jonathan Livingston Seagull" fed the same hunger that identifying with the Jedi does.

(•) Other: Fnordism

I don't have a particular religion but in the past I have been called a pagan.

I didn't even know what a pagan was at the time.

It's a good job I don't take offence easily.

I'm an ex-muslim.... I've been agnostic for many years. I respect people's beliefs, but religion really isn't for me.

Catholic

The position I've been forced to is that religion and actual/raw pursuit of epistemic truth can't be in line with one another because they're cross-purpose. The purpose of religion, as far as I can tell, is that it's an escrow of sorts for cultural wisdom, traditions, and social contracts, ie. it's institutionalized social capital or what Ferdinand Tönnies referred to as a Gemeischaft / centripetal social dynamic whereas market liberalism by itself would be Gesellschaft / centrifugal. What's interesting is that blood relation and religion were the two biggest centripetal social factors and religion developed to help manage much larger tribes than the Dunbar number of 150. The benefit of that is that it can not only bridge blood relation but it can include billions of people and bridge races, the downside of course is it's still not a 100% patch for racial tensions and it puts people, particularly where the theodicies are heaven vs. hell, necessarily at odds of those who participate in other religions.

I think when you come to your own positions on this by reading a lot on science, philosophy, parapsychology, social psychology, etc., you really can't easily call your destination a 'religion', it's more like a philosophy. Similarly, for example, if my philosophic position is panentheistic and my bet would be on either very naturalistically-structured idealism, panpsychism, or neutral / dual-aspect monism and by the time you try speaking of a 'God' whatever's up there is too different from the Abrahamic traits to quite qualify as anything other than maybe the god of Plotinus or someone like Spinoza, while some of that did sort of sneak its way into the fluffier sides of Christianity it's a very different structure, ie. one where of course its tough to tell whether it's emanationism in the Neoplatonist or Kabbalistic sense, whether it's bottom up where said broader mind is an aggregate of smaller minds, or whether it's somehow both at the same time. Regardless of where you end up - what you're doing isn't religion because it's not a system of rituals, beliefs, and social agreements that you're extending to other people, and the more humility you bring to it the less likely you are to fake an encounter with angels, speak of mystical objects now disappeared from physical reality (can't be scrutinized) or take 'twelve disciples' and spread your gospel, that's a completely different game than individual pursuit of truth - much more like realpolitik.

This is part of why I feel like discussions on these sit in a really strange place. For a long time it was Christians and atheists just shooting it out and anyone who wasn't one or the other was just in the way (some people could comment from the sidelines as agnostics), people could talk about other idea but they generally couldn't participate because most people were either saying that their own belief system was 'the right one', or they might say 'no one could possibly know' (suggesting that the whole thing is inscrutable - IMHO they seem to have triaged Zeus off just fine), and then you get people who'd look at anyone who was trying it on from first principles and say that if you didn't just pick an already-made belief basket that you were just 'making stuff up' (those people got the social capital part but couldn't relate to pursuit of base-reality truth). For a lot of different reasons it seems like this is territory where very few people can have an open or honest conversation without bringing in a lot of duct-taped kluges that manage their relationships with other people and how they manager their own internal psychology - and then it becomes clear that if you changed their minds quite often that you've actually done damage and put them in a worse place.

It might be fun to talk books again with some people who are really interested in this topic. I've read a lot on the topic, took a break for a while, and just recently picked up George Hansen's 'The Trickster and the Paranormal' because I'm interested in aggregating more viewpoints on just what relationship the 'weird' stuff has with biological entities, let alone what relationship consciousness properly has with them, and I think Karl Friston and his idea of Markov blankets as well as disequilibrium systems trying to grab up 'free energy' in the environment (ie. fundamental tragedy of the commons dynamics) seems to lead in the right direction, I find Forrest Landry's Imminent Metaphysics and triplicate isomorphisms interesting but I'm still looking for more ideas that help snap all of that into place better.

Last edited by techstepgenr8tion on 11 Jun 2022, 8:03 pm, edited 1 time in total.

There is an innate sense that one's consciousness transcends the physical body. The stumbling block is that we don't know if consciousness is simply a projection and that when we die we simply cease to exist.

[quote="techstepgenr8tion"]
I think when you come to your own positions on this by reading a lot on science, philosophy, parapsychology, social psychology, etc., you really can't easily call your destination a 'religion', it's more like a philosophy. /quote]

Good point. Many people's response to this thread is to provide their philosophy (or even creed).