What Do You Believe In?

I do believe in some universal force, not exactly a god though. I do meditation and sometimes visualization. I try to believe that I have the strength to create my future and I can make it all I want to be, with the help of some higher power.

 

I try to believe in myself and the kindness of other people.

 

I believe in God, but I don't attend church because I always feel very guilty. I have hope that even though I am a lesbian, God will look past it and understand that I am a good person and I've tried to change. A part of me believes that being gay is ok, and a part of me still struggles to believe that it is right. I guess me living in Alabama is doing me no justice, since you can be a bit influenced by the people you're around. Do I defend gay people when my family bashes them? You're damn right I do. Instead of saying I'm a lesbian, I tell my family that I have very close friends who are gay and that there's no way God can deny how amazing they are as people. People sin every single day, but what we choose is what makes us good or bad. We did not choose this sexuality. We are not hurting anyone by being this way. Why should we walk away from the temptation that is love for another person? I think instead of judging gay people, those other people need to leave it up to God.
But I am human, so I do have my doubts. I also have OCD, also known as The Doubting Disease. I would rather someone not try to convince me that God isn't real, since my OCD confuses me enough. I feel like my faith hangs by a thin string at times and that if someone were to give me "evidence" that God doesn't exist, I would go into a panic. I would never try to throw religion in someone's face even if I do believe there is a God. It's common courtesy. I find it annoying when "Bible thumpers" try to throw Jesus down my throat. I'm like, "Come on, I know you're trying to spread the word, but don't make me feel like a complete ass". >_>

I love this answer. I know you say you don't exactly believe in a god, but it's almost as if you're hoping there is something there that helps guide you in the right direction. I feel like that sometimes when I have my doubts about God.

Absolutely LOVE this answer. This is another thing that motivates me to keep going. You know the saying, "If there were more people like you, the world would be a better place" or "I'm glad there's still some good in the world". It's those kind of thoughts that make someone have hope in this corrupt world.

 

I believe that there is no other force in play than myself, and it's up to me to make things better, or let them get worse

 

I believe in the big guy upstairs but his eyesight's not as good as he thinks it is & he needs to switch his hearing aid on

 

I try not to succumb to the temptation of believing that there are any preternatural or supernatural forces out there looking out for my or others' well-being. I don't believe in free will the inherent goodness of human beings, and think they are merely examples of wishful thinking.

That's a terribly nihilistic and pessimistic view of the world, but I'd rather feel helpless than to be comforted by something that I can't in good conscience believe is real. If others are comforted by their belief in God, fate, karma, heaven, hell, afterlifes, higher planes of existence, etc., and they feel happy and secure as a result, then it's fine by me, because it's better to be surrounded by a bunch of happy people than miserable ones for company. What comforts one won't necessarily comfort another, so if anyone wishes to "help" me by changing my mindset, good luck with that.

That's all I have to say.

 

I am an ignostic. I can not decide if a deity, force, energy, vibration, ohm, etc exists or does not exist because I have not found a logically consistent definition for any of them. I can not adequately define the entity called into question as I do not have a way to determine their characteristics thus making it impossible to logically infer whether or not they exist. Furthermore, I think that there are no logically consistent definitions for any of those terms thus the question of "Do they exist or not?" is meaningless.

The only thing 'getting me through tough times' is my fear of death, which arises from the fear that at death my entire consciousness will cease to exist, which is a quale. Something that is impossible to conceive. That scares me. Otherwise I would have killed myself long ago.

I guess you could say I have fear to keep me going.

 

I have a very fluid set of ideas and faiths that are succeptible to change with proper reasoning and/or experiences. I think that dieties can exist, but that it is not for mortals to conceive of them properly and so we cannot have proof of them. So, based on that, I find that a person's perception of a diety is true for them. "God" is different for every person, and you carry that ideal inside of you. Ergo, your God is inside of you, making you host to your own faith. I believe in myself, in my own ability to affect the world around me, even in the most minute of ways. Life is precious, as it can end at any moment. If you get another shot at it, you probably won't remember anything you learned the previous life. So, you can't very well say "i'll get it right next time" because without cognitive recognition of experiences of the first life, making changes in the next would be quite difficult.

What gets me through tough times though, is a favorite quote:
"If it's good, it's wonderful. If it's bad, it's experience."
Life is learning. It is conflict and triumph and failure. Wash, rinse, repeat. No experience is truely bad if you learned something from it, and even if you don't realize what the lesson is right away, I'm certain that you could look back on it and realize it taught you something.

 

Hope. I always believe that there is hope, no matter what the circumstances. But it sucks sometimes, because hope often leads to disappointment.

 

Fish. I stare at fish swimming and I forget about everything that has happened to me.

 

I pray to God for help but know it's ultimately up to me and no one else. It fortifies my tenacity. I also believe my glass is always half full, not half empty and that there is always those worse off than me.
Like the farmers in the upper Midwest when the Mississippi River flooded a few years ago. They didn't sit around waiting for FEMA to show up. They dug in their heels and went to work helping themselves and each other.

 

I am an atheist. I know that I will only get out of life what I put in. So I work my ass off for a good life.

The tough times are tough, that's just the end of it. No deity will rescue me, no spiritual figure will come to my aid. If life is fucked up, I fix it.

 

While I believe in God, I don't rely on him to fix everything. Usually, if I'm really stressed out, I just try to relax and distract myself, read a book or something, so that I'm less anxious (though I don't wait too long). Then I fix (or try to fix) the problem logically.

 

What gives me comfort is that nothing is predestined and although our universe is deterministic in nature there is no God, only actions causing reactions.

 

I don't want this thread to get into a debate about religion, but I have to agree with you. I see everything as a network of dominoes. Drop one domino and a few goes off. Drop a very certain domino and a whole bunch topple.

 

Adam Savage of the Mythbusters said something at the Reason Rally which sums up my abstract thoughts on this matter:

I find that's a very versatile outlook on life; if gives you all the strengths and reassurances that various superstitions give you, minus the superstition part.

On a more practical level, what gets me through during tough times are writing, my friends and family, and especially music. Music has done as much to get me through hard times as most people of faith would say religion has done for them.

 

I believe there are no gods. I understand the principles of faiths of the world enough to see them for what they are: an oversimplification of the world and the universe all the way down to the basic anthropomorphism. Some faiths are simple and shallow, some are complicated and philosophical. Some are simple, but try to seem complicated through rites and rituals. In the end, all of them are the same, equally transparently wrong. And when you add to that some knowledge of the history of religion, the roots of them and family trees, then you see that not only are they individually mistaken, but also that they are wrong in their most generalized common axiom: existence of supernatural.

So basically, the universe works kinda in the what-you-see-is-what-you-get fashion. When it comes to people, what you see is a fragile heap of loosely coupled biological systems. And that's what I am too. Nothing fancy.

What's more, my consciousnesses, my sense of me, the definition of "me", these are all fluid. I am in every fundamental way a different person than I was a year ago. The guy from last year doesn't exist anymore and "I" am in the process of disappearing.

In such a situation there is no preservable value in me such as a "soul", on any level. There is only a tendency to be similar in future to what I am today. If the tendency is for the better, then maybe I will add to the betterment of the collective mind. As individuals, we can't talk about permanence. Only as a society we can.

So what makes me going is the realization that I can hardly say that I exist anyway. The realization that I am on the way out in any case. The only reason to persevere is the hope to improve the collective. That's the only possible sense to the fleeting "me".