Requestblogging: Great cosmic questions

[sabotabby]

symbioid  asked: "Existential origins, big bang, cosmos, where it's all going, shit like that? That's my question for you.
How do you feel you relate to the all o' this shit.
Do you feel any sort of "spirituality" with that or is it pretty secular atheist (I imagine the latter, but I've been surprised by friends I thought were pretty non-believing in any sorta afterlifey stuff ending up believing in something beyond, at least on a personal/psychic level). Cosmic horror? Cosmic Pessimism? Does it matter even if we have beliefs on that?"


I am in some ways fascinated and in other ways deeply uninterested by these questions. I remember when I used to get car rides all the time home from work with a colleague, who was a massive stoner. He'd often wonder things like "but what caused the Big Bang?" or "how will the universe end?" and he was baffled by how little I thought about them, since they don't affect me or anyone I know, and since there are smart people who went farther than Grade 11 science class who spend a lot of time looking into it.

I'm an atheist with caveats, which is that I don't actually care if there is a god or afterlife. I don't feel any spiritual phenomena or vibes, I've never had a genuine religious experience despite having tried to induce them by various means, and thus I think that at a very fundamental level, I am incapable of believing in gods. How do I behave basically feeling what awaits me after I die is a meaningless void? I try to make my life on earth meaningful in every way I can. How would I act if there was a loving God who cared about their creation? The same way I do now. How would I act as if there was a judging God who condemned sinners to a fiery pit for all eternity? Exactly the same as I do now, and when I'm condemned to Hell I will organize my fellow non-Christians, sodomites, and D&D players into a militant union with the demons and then we will storm heaven and make war on said judging God.

That said I despise 90% of vocal atheists in ways that I do not despise 90% of religious people. Most of humanity believes in some sort of religion or spirituality and I'm not interested in writing them off or condescending to them. Meanwhile the loudest atheists, both on the internet and at the state level when they get into power, just believe in a secular version of Christianity without the God bit. They push for economic and political policies that are identical to those proposed by Christian extremists. I came to this position during Elevatorgate when I realized I had more in common with my friend smhwpf 's church at the time, which sheltered refugees facing deportation, or my friend M's Sikh temple, which fed homeless people, than I did with anyone who professed lofty ideals about human potential but didn't consider 50% of the population human. 

I also believe in the value of ritual. I keep trying to connect with Jewish religious practice, and am put off by 90% of other Jews, but I do think there's something to be said for the value of ritual and community. I think having been raise secular Jewish makes me very chill about religion in general but wistful for a spiritual community. I would have liked to have been a Yiddish-speaking Bundist; that would have been perfect for me.

Ultimately I care about one thing: the actions we take in this world, with this planet and our nonhuman relations, in the here and now. If you are doing good things because you think God wants you to do them, that is rad and good, actually. If you think you're superior to people who do that, I have no time for it. If God is your excuse for bigotry against queer and trans people, or folks who get abortions, or poor people, I hope that a literal reading of the Bible is true and Jesus greets you in the afterlife with a steel chair to the side of the head for not listening to him when he was in fact pretty clear about this shit. 

Philosophy aside I low-key believe in ghosts and supernatural phenomena, not as a literal material thing but as a narrative device. I would have also been quite happy being a 19th century occultist.

Comments

[ioplokon]

Yeah, I mean, I guess that is because basically the way everyone deals with atheists they know in their personal life is to pretend they are not atheists. So, when you think of religious people, you think of the people you personally know in your community, but when you think of atheists, you don't think about me - you think about some asshole on the internet (ok, maybe you do think of me :p)

[sabotabby]

Well, I also think of annoying religious people on the internet or in government. I try to draw equivalents—the organized atheist movement is as garbage as organized religions. Individual atheists, individual religious people, even individual religious and atheistic communities, far less garbage.

[ioplokon]

Right, I'm just pointing out that the individual atheist basically disappears because there are so few (& because many individual religious people are still very weird about atheists ime; lots of covert manipulation and sneak evangelizing - I probably see more of it though as a "lapsed Catholic", which is a demo that everyone is trying to get their hooks into)

[sabotabby]

I think I also just know fewer religious people, and very few of them are the kind of religious people who have issues with atheists. Like my milieu is so secular that every religious marker disappears unless it's attacked.

[sonia]

Ultimately I care about one thing: the actions we take in this world, with this planet and our nonhuman relations, in the here and now.
I appreciate the practicality of this! I think we can be both atheist and spiritual. For me, this sense of the planet and our non-human relations is spiritual. As another secular Jew who doesn't resonate with formal Jewish religious practice, I've realized that my ethics around caring for the planet and all creatures on it matches a Jewish sense of ethics.

And, of course, not meaning to argue with your definition of spiritual or not spiritual for yourself.

[sabotabby]

I have an awkward relationship with the term spirituality because in my experience, it's been used to suggest that I am somehow inherently or instinctively religious in ways that I am not. "Oh, I know you're not religious, but you're the most spiritual person I know," that kind of thing. Which I actually take as religious people trying to turn me into something other than an atheist. Like a Religious Person Lite. My beliefs around connection and community, both human and nonhuman, are coming from an ethical stance rather than a spiritual one. And I don't want to take anything away from people who genuinely are spiritual, if that makes sense.

[sonia]

Yes, that makes sense, and sounds super annoying to be coopted like that. I think I'm trying to make a similar point from a different angle - that the religious folks don't get to define spiritual as meaning them, it's a separate thing (for me), and I think there's spirituality in caring about the earth. Maybe I'll think about it more and make a post, rather than going on in your comments...

Thank you for the thought-inspiring post!

[sabotabby]

I would love to read that post!

[sonia]

Thanks for the encouragement! I tried to put some words around embodied spirituality.

[sabotabby]

Thank you!

[symbioid]

"I will organize my fellow non-Christians, sodomites, and D&D players into a militant union with the demons and then we will storm heaven and make war on said judging God." SIGN ME UP!

This is sorta the plot of a couple game ideas I've had over the years. One an action based game where you kill satan and descend from the depths of hell, gathering demons as you ascend into the heavens slaying god as the final boss. Liberating everyone/everything from good and evil. (it was a 2d platformer)

The other was a board game in which you compete against fellow demons to gain souls throughout the play, and you use their "souls" to build steps out of hell (souls represented as "skulls" a giant pile of skulls you use to climb out of hell, before judgement day and be free from judgement that comes to the rest of earth and the demons (IDK, I guess I'd have to invent some sort of myth about "if you can get out of hell before judgement day you get to escape judgement, I didn't put too much thought in that part).

I'm with you on the "I'd act the same as if there is a god". Same reason I don't profess belief (esp in a Christian god), because I realized in my late teens that I was fooling good, because I realized that I was "believing" out of fear of hell and not actual belief, that real belief requires me to question and think if I do believe it naturally. And I'd come to the realization that, no... In fact, the only reason I try to believe in god is because I am afraid of hell, and God, if he existed, would see that's not true belief (let alone "love"). I saw it in terms of an abuser demanding acquiescence "or else". And that's not "love" and if that's the case, he would know my reasons. Some people are, apparently, either very good at self-stockholming themselves to god, or have some innate tendency or need for this "love".

100% on the "Atheists just believe in Secular Christianity" - 9/11 exposed most of them for the frauds they are, hellbent on defending "Western Civilization" with the same morality and cracks in it that Christians profess. I think Dawkins even straight up admitted he's Episcopalian in nature.

I watch Rebecca Watkins youtube, and still think about Elevatorgate now and then. Especially when thinking about other well known "philanderers" and such. I just learned that Schroedinger was a pedophile, based on notebooks that were found. :(But yeah the more common sexism and boys club of science is still a real thing, even though there are a great many women in, and there are thankfully some who've learned the errors of their ways and work to rectify the situation, but overall. It's still pretty ugly. I'm grateful for people like Sean Carroll trying to advance feminism and social sciences and philosophy beyond mechanical sciences. I may not agree with everything but at least he's trying. Of course, that's not counting all the women who don't even get heard in the sciences, and don't have as much a platform to talk about these issues, or are seen as "soft sciences".

If I were GOd and there was a heaven, you'd get a pass in my book, but I'm mee, so you get the same pass: a bunch of rotting corpses in the ground to turn to nothing when the universe decays. Cheers!

OH I did have a few "experiences" as a kid, out of the blue, that were . I think as an adult I wonder if I had a seizure... Or a heavy weird daydream imagination. Flashing lights, demonic voices, etc... I never saw horror movies, except the commercial for "He's heeeeeere" which influenced it somewhat, I'm sure. Had a few "visions" at times, and EVP has ALWAYS been fascinating, I think the intersection of Technology and Occultism are the two biggest "cool" things I still think about.

I think it's why I joke that I "believe" in Gremlins. But I guess I just believe more in chaos and entropy than actual physical embodiments. But it's why I wanted to be a Glasswalker Theurge in Werewolf if I ever got a chance to play. LOL.

My mom's gonna get a big old steel chair to the side of the head LOL. You've seen my posts! I love her, but man. Thanks for answering!

[sabotabby]

It's also basically the plot of Hadestown. Which I highly recommend btw.

But yeah, it was a shocking disappointment to encounter the extremely online atheists. I used to make a habit of going to Christian AOL chatrooms and arguing theology with them, which was extremely fun but also extremely douchey, and I could have very easily have fallen into that shit if it hadn't been for the fact that I have a lot of Muslim friends.

[selki]

I meant to include one of my favorite quotes:
“Apollo, the god of light, of reason, of proportion, harmony, number - Apollo blinds those who press too close in worship. Don't look straight at the sun. Go into a dark bar for a bit and have a beer with Dionysis, every now and then.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, The Left Hand of Darkness

[sabotabby]

Ohhh I love that.

[selki]

I still think of ElevatorGate when I run across someone bragging about how great skepticism/rationalism is. I mean, I DO think skepticism/rationalism are valuable tools, but in proportion, and with perspective, and not so much self-satisfaction.

[sabotabby]

To me it's very similar to how skepticism, if not balanced by critical thinking, can often lead to conspiratorial thinking. Rationality without empathy leads to the kinds of intellectual exercises where you invent evolutionary reasons for slavery and that kind of thing.

[selki]

Yep. And I'm glad you like the Le Guin quote!

[blogcutter]

I'm definitely with you on the value of ritual and community. It gives us comfort, and in my book is vital to our mental health.

I'm also wondering about who you'd place in the "vocal atheist" category. What about the Quebec government with their enforced secularist policies, outlawing most forms of religious expression and garb, even though there's no proselytizing involved?

In my adolescent years, I typically described myself as agnostic, only to be met with the argument that that was just a cop-out: I could be a Christian or a follower of the Maharishi or any recognized organized religion OR I could be an atheist, but I couldn't be a fence-sitter, regardless of how thick and wide that fence might be. I've encountered a similar attitude in those who opined that one can be gay or straight but if you say you're bisexual, you're only deluding yourself.

I'm fascinated with religions, mythology, folklore and cultural traditions. But nowadays if you asked me if I believe in God or a deity, I'd have to say only as a figure of speech or a synonym for nature.

[sabotabby]

What about the Quebec government with their enforced secularist policies, outlawing most forms of religious expression and garb, even though there's no proselytizing involved?

That was one of the forces I was thinking of. Basically Christians who don't believe in God and hate Muslims and Jews. I don't wear religious symbols (I wear a hamsa sometimes because mine is beautiful and it's a nice symbol of Muslim-Jewish unity, and I have a chai but I don't wear it these days for probably obvious reasons) but I would start wearing every possible religious symbol if they told me I couldn't.

One of my student teachers was a hijabi who spoke fluent French, exactly the kind of teacher Quebec is desperate for, and it is such foolishness that she couldn't be hired there without having to choose between a job and her religious beliefs (not to worry, she had no problem getting a job here).

Actually the book series started with Quebec's first attempt at this bill, because to me it's not even about atheism or religious belief but about control of particularly female and brown bodies, and thus creeping fascism.

I think it's perfectly sensible to be an agnostic. It's funny; I had the opposite thing where people were trying to convince me that because I'm an atheist who isn't reflexively hostile towards religion, that I'm an agnostic. I'm not, because I don't believe in God. If proof suddenly materialized I'd have to adjust my worldview, but I'm going off the evidence I have.

[maeve66]

I fucking hate Richard Dawkins et al. He gives (they give) such a bad, racist, Islamophobic, pissy, arrogant, condescending bad name to regular non-shouty atheists like me.

I also hate France's "anticlerical" bullshit that really only targets Muslims, and especially young women hijabis. And Quebec, too, obvs.

As for me... if I were from a Jewish background, 19th c. Bundist would be perfect. As it is, the closest I get to religion is that the mere existence of life on earth seems miraculous to me, in its most micro and most macro elements, and the closest to any kind of out of body or 'spiritual' experience I have had on occasion is the kind of dizzying visual fascination with the outdoors, particularly, say, swooping flights of flocks of birds. I can stare at that for a long, long time, and it reminds me of some stuff in Ralph Waldo Emerson's essays on Transcendentalism, though I don't know much about it apart from the phrase "the All Seeing Eye", which... I don't think of it as anything to do with a God, but it does feel like being taken out of my own limited self.

[sabotabby]

Oh, definitely. I think for at least some of us a switch gets flipped or something where suddenly birds go from boring to interesting and the most fun thing you can do is watch birds. At least, that happened to me.

[minoanmiss]

Eee these essays are fascinating. I'm still thinking about the disability one.

Being an Exvangelical as I am, two things saved me from being a Dawkinsite atheist: having Jewish friends to talk to about The Life Of The Soul or whatever, and realizing I'd be signing up for "Christianity without Christ but WITH all the sexist racist cultural patriarchal bullshit I was fleeing".

I do think some people have a much larger 'religious sense' than others. My parents believe intensely in a very particular form of a particular religion's deity, but I don't care overmuch, as if their fervencies cancelled out in me. I never felt a connection to Jesus when I was a Christian: I judged the religion by what it was telling me I should do, and what it told me to do was to try to convince my friends to give up religions that made them happy, to backtalk my science teachers, and to believe that I was inferior to boys and that falling in love with a woman would be evil when falling in love with a man would be holy. So.

And now, I feel... there is so much to be done here and now to take care of our fellow sapients. Plus the abusiveness of the "love me or go to Hell" formulation. There are probably Numinous Entities out there but I don't really have much idea of their past, current, or future relationship to we humans and out fellow thinking species.

Anyway. continues taking notes

[sabotabby]

Yeah, I am kind of fascinated by the question of why some people experience religiosity and others don't. My grandparents were extremely observant but I don't think they felt or believed.

I'm glad you escaped.

[smhwpf]

How would I act if there was a loving God who cared about their creation? The same way I do now. How would I act as if there was a judging God who condemned sinners to a fiery pit for all eternity? Exactly the same as I do now, and when I'm condemned to Hell I will organize my fellow non-Christians, sodomites, and D&D players into a militant union with the demons and then we will storm heaven and make war on said judging God.

A good way of thinking about things. I sometimes think similar from the opposite point of view - so what if it turns out there isn't a God? So we'll have spent our lives seeking to act justly, love tenderly, and walk humbly with God, and it'll all have been for nothing?

One of the frustrating things is that the Christians who believe in the judging God who condemns all sorts of people to Hell for being who they are believe that they believe in an all-loving God, they just manage to logic that love into meaning a cruel and judging God who sends people to hell.

Aw, glad to hear the St. James community made a positive impression!

I also believe in the value of ritual. I keep trying to connect with Jewish religious practice, and am put off by 90% of other Jews, but I do think there's something to be said for the value of ritual and community.

I know of practicing, observant Jews who do not believe in God. Apparently this includes some rabbis. (I'm guessing probably not most).

[sabotabby]

A good way of thinking about things. I sometimes think similar from the opposite point of view - so what if it turns out there isn't a God? So we'll have spent our lives seeking to act justly, love tenderly, and walk humbly with God, and it'll all have been for nothing?

That's like the nice version of Pascal's Wager, I think.

One of the frustrating things is that the Christians who believe in the judging God who condemns all sorts of people to Hell for being who they are believe that they believe in an all-loving God, they just manage to logic that love into meaning a cruel and judging God who sends people to hell.

I wonder if it correlates with abusive childhoods. Your only model of love is a terrible one.

Aw, glad to hear the St. James community made a positive impression!

It's rad. And not the only example, of course, but a tangible example of how I calibrate my compass in regards to these questions.

I know of practicing, observant Jews who do not believe in God. Apparently this includes some rabbis. (I'm guessing probably not most).

Definitely a non-zero amount. Belief in God isn't necessary to be a good Jew.

[greylock]

I would have liked to have been a Yiddish-speaking Bundist; that would have been perfect for me.

This jumped out at me because I just got around reading The Complete Invaders, and they keep on beating up Bundists in that.

Obviously, it was a reference to the German American Bund. Still. I had to do a double-take. And a google.

[sabotabby]

Extremely different Bund.

[greylock]

I think you may have mentioned it a year or so back, but it had quite fallen out of my head.

That said, I was confident you weren't a secret nazi.