What is your view on Non-Theistic Religions

[safeinOhio]

very interesting

some to look at
• The Great Spirit
• Unitarian Universalism
• Quakerism
• Deism
• Pandeism
• Panendeism

https://www.phy.duke.edu/~rgb/Philosophy/god_theorem/god_theorem/node22.html

[CanonRay]

1. UU is the first "church" I've ever joined (voluntarily) in my 64 years

I'm very comfortable with the spirituality and the fellowship.

[safeinOhio]

2. Same here

Using the authors def of spiritualism I agree with it.

[LiberalEsto]

5. Same here

agree with you 100%

[immoderate]

3. Non-Gods to not believe in?

As long as you ask...

--imm

[silverweb]

4. Interesting.

[font color="navy" face="Verdana"]When did "pantheism" and "panentheism" morph into "pandeism" and "panendeism"?

I'd never seen the latter terms until now.

[LiberalEsto]

6. Perhaps it's pandaism

Worship of pandas

[silverweb]

22. LOL

[okasha]

33. There ya go!

I'm a pandaist!

[LiberalEsto]

35. Bamboo! Bamboo!

[TM99]

10. Those terms are rarely used

but they have been around since the 1800's.

It is a combination of pantheism and deism as well as panentheism and deism.

Not too many popular examples of it so it is rather odd that it is listed.

[silverweb]

24. Odd, indeed.

[font color="navy" face="Verdana"]The root words, "theos" and "deus," both simply mean "God," anyway.

The terms in the OP had me scratching my head in confusion for a bit.

[rogerashton]

27. Deist equivalents

of pantheism and panentheism. I have encountered them in deist discussions. But the boundary between gods and nongods gets very blurry here.

[silverweb]

29. I can imagine they do.

[cbayer]

7. Same as my view on theistic religions.

Each to his own, as long as it doesn't harm others.

What's your view?

[safeinOhio]

11. Each to his, or hers, own is pretty good.

I do avoid those that push, pull or prod.

I personally don't think there are any correct or wrong answers, just interesting answers. I really don't have any answers to life's big questions, but do question all answers.

[cbayer]

14. I like your questions and your approach.

[safeinOhio]

16. Thank you, but

I've borrowed, or stolen, both from people much smarter than I am.

[trotsky]

23. If only you could just resolve that enormous problem about who gets to decide...

what "harm(ing) others" means. Dang that must sting to bring inconvenient details into your tidy little black-and-white theory. No wonder you never want to talk about it.

[tech3149]

28. Agreed!

I was raised in a traditional protestant theology but divested myself from it through a study of other beliefs and historical research on the basis for those beliefs. Add to that a healthy investment in the study of philosophy.
I would qualify my current belief as a more naturalist conception of a "creator". It may be a cruel fucking joke but I think the "creator" established a universe based on certain guidelines and just let it go hog wild. We can either live or die based on our own choices or willingness to expand our understanding of the world.
I don't know or care if I will have an afterlife, I just want to make the most of this one.
For me, any so called religions tenant that presents anyone as being "less than" because of their belief is just plain wrong.

[cbayer]

30. I love where you have landed!

It's is my sincere belief that most people follow their own unique path and end up in their own unique place.

I'm with you. The best position is that no one is "less than" simply because they believe or don't' believe. It's only when their beliefs translate into actions that can harm others that it matters.

Great post, tech 3149.

[tech3149]

32. Thanks! I'm pretty happy where I landed too.

There have been many ups and downs along the way. I got to share 29 years with one of the best women on the planet. When I decided to quit being a wage slave I got the privilege of assuring my parents could be as independent as possible until they passed.
I may not have been phenomenally successful by accepted standards but I am more than satisfied, and in some sense pleased, with what I've done with my life.

[rug]

8. Thanks for the link. I'm unfamiliar with a few of them.

[freshwest]

9. I come from Quakers that came here from England. I feel most at ease with them, but don't attend.

It is the reason they came here.

The only war my family was in was WW2 IIRC, but were here long before the Revolution.

My dad didn't want to join the service in WW2, but after Pearl Harbor it was inevitable he or one of his brothers would have to join. So he enlisted to spare his older brothers with children.

I've only been with Quakers as part of the anti-war movement and a prayer session with them in later years. It was like nothing else I've ever done. Special.

Everything in the link from your link applies to my thinking:

Quakerism

https://www.phy.duke.edu/~rgb/Philosophy/god_theorem/god_theorem/node25.html

Thanks for posting this.

[safeinOhio]

12. I kind of like the idea of a service

where everyone sits quietly without a word being said.

"No talking, singing or chewing gum, the Friends service has begun"

[freshwest]

19. I think it would be called in other terms a gestalt. It was remarkable.

Definition of a gestalt:

1.) a configuration, pattern, or organized field having specific properties that cannot be derived from the summation of its component parts; a unified whole.

2.) an instance or example of such a unified whole.

Perhaps an organized field is the term I'm looking for here, IDK.

It created a sense intense joy, timeless and without any feeling of being confined by space. But there was nothing mindless in it, because it was all voluntary. I sensed time and space around me, but wanted the freedom.

[safeinOhio]

20. +1,000

[safeinOhio]

15. I really like the things the author says he likes about it.

My favorite scripture verse is from the Tao Te Ching.

The Tao that is spoken of is not the eternal Tao.

While language is helpful, it tends to distort. In other words, words can not describe what words can not describe.

[freshwest]

17. I carried a copy of theTao Te Ching as a teenager. It was a big influence on me. n/t

[safeinOhio]

18. I have always like the idea

of the mutual interdependence of polar opposites.

Up down
good bad
cold hot

each depends on its opposite and can not exist without it. Works for God, devil. Saint, sinner. Love, hate.

[freshwest]

21. I think it has to do with choice. We are here, we can be dramatic, peaceful, full of angst or joy.

Perhaps they are developmental stages we all go through. It's said that whatever troubles us in life, will re-appear, especially if we hate it, because we have not yet learned how to respond.

So the universe presents it until we learn or have mastered it, then comes the next challenge. It's like crawling to standing to walk, we forget the struggle of one stage we go to the next.

Another thing I think about are the games we play with each other for mental entertainment. DU is such an example. But we are to stay within the rules, or else others will see the game and quit. Such as people don't respond unless they see a conflict as it's interesting. Win or lose is a game.

As Kipling said in the poem IF:

If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster

And treat those two impostors just the same...

At times I seek to leave political discourse, go onto to something higher. But I keep coming back, because real lives are affected. So it's very compelling game, so much so that it doesn't seem to be a game at all.

This is utterly forbidden.

Our lives are the result of the choices we and others make. What freedom it would be to not have to choose - that is the point I think many people have fallen for in other ways.

When I see someone who is dead set in some course or belief, and they say 'God said so, I believe it, and that's that,' They are in denial.

They know better. I think that happens at the point at which their brain gets tired, or they don't know, so they just left the choice to other people or things.

Kind of like the quote:

Destiny is the scapegoat that we make responsible for our crimes. ~ Balfour

I don't believe that. I think we are responsible.

[Warren Stupidity]

13. Quakers are Christians and generally believe

in a more or less standard Christian deity. There are non-theistic Quakers but they are a minority.

[NeoGreen]

25. I was a non-theistic quaker...

...



but then I graduated...

[phantom power]

26. All of those are theistic. They all involve the belief in a deity of some kind.

[gcomeau]

31. I think how it works is...

...super vaguely defined deities don't count.

[NeoGreen]

36. Not all...

... UU does not require a deity, and openly welcomes, embraces and includes atheists.

UU has no creed of required belief.

[okasha]

34. The truest words the writer of that article

ever typed were "I have no idea" in regard to First Nations cultures.

I am so damn fucking glad to learn that "ritual cannibalism has faded" among my people.

[trotsky]

37. Welcome back, okasha. n/t

[pinto]

38. Though raised Catholic and still part of its cultural aspects I appreciate a larger spirituality.

That sense of the parts being greater than the whole in some way. And each individual's questioning. I like the comments above about the questions being as important, if not more so, than the answers. They lead somewhere. And for each of us that may be different.

Robert Frost touched on it, I think, in his own New England taciturn style -

The Road Not Taken
By Robert Frost


Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,

And sorry I could not travel both

And be one traveler, long I stood

And looked down one as far as I could

To where it bent in the undergrowth;


Then took the other, as just as fair,

And having perhaps the better claim,

Because it was grassy and wanted wear;

Though as for that the passing there

Had worn them really about the same,


And both that morning equally lay

In leaves no step had trodden black.

Oh, I kept the first for another day!

Yet knowing how way leads on to way,

I doubted if I should ever come back.


I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.