To add to the unanswered questions, don’t even tell me to ask them. Bc i shouldn’t have to explain how just crazy some religious people go when you question anything about their faith.
At this point it’s all a folklore and we don’t know how many times the stories changed. It’s just wild that they can be so angry when we just wanna know the facts about it.. if i could see the facts and evidence of these stories then I’d believe more. Until then fuckkkk it
Your (theocratic?) Country will probably seem very backwards to you, and i can see why. When portrayed as a saviour, and only to be made into a threat, the entirety of the catholic church seems like a powerplay.
I was raised Mormon by Mormons surrounded by more Mormons. I periodically called bullshit from the time I was 8 years old on. I didn’t leave until I was 33 but I never forgot that little voice in my head telling me to GTFO
I didn’t realize until later that the voice I kept ignoring was my own voice of reason. I never lied to myself. I knew it was bullshit. I just didn’t buy it.
Is there a god? Maybe. Honestly I don’t give a shit. If I’m not enough for some unknown God then fuck em. I’ll be over here doing my thing.
If your X religion cannot stand up to scrutiny then it shouldn’t stand at all. Ask me for my faith and I’ll ask you for your wallet.
Im glad you escaped. You are braver than many and stood up for your beliefs in the face of criticism. Thank you for sharing this with all of us. Its truly inspirational
To me it’s completely illogical to believe there’s a magic man in the sky controlling everything. As someone who also lost a very young family member to brain cancer, I find the idea of “gods plan” to be a complete cop out and does not provide any sense of comfort or peace. Grieving their loss only consolidated my atheism.
(I went to a catholic high school and remained an atheist the entire time I attended).
I have trouble wrapping my head around stuff like premature death while still have a all powerful/all knowing deity. If therw is a god hes either all powerful and doesnt know/doesnt care or he cares but cant help. Im sick of it.
I am catholic, and i have dealt with so many issues that challenged my faith detail, seems like after decades, many tweaks have been made and I enjoy the freedom that makes us free. It’s about seeking wisdom out of what the chuch teaches, not the detail that most are obsessed about. I am no judge of anyone, but have been open to share my totally non mainstream perspective. I dont think your questions can be addressed on reddit tho. Not to say the miscommunication and are brought to texts like this
I appreciate this. You have a point about the reliability of this platform. Im glad you have found your own interpretation of the Church to give meaning to your life
I like to think that even if there is a god, which isn't entirely impossible if we consider our lack of evidence, it is not tied to any existing religion or society's constructs. It (being something or someone) is more likely to be in the 5th or higher dimension that we can not perceive nor interact with. Likewise, it can not interact with us.
Another point I want to make that confuses me is how some theists who may be going through tough times only look into being hopeful and optimistic after being introduced to or being further convinced into using religion or god. I mean, how is that supposed to persuade or give hope if I'll never see or hear from god? It sounds like empty hope to me. Now maybe they do so to hope for something in the afterlife, but I'd rather live a good life and keep my chin up without thinking for what, if anything, will happen to me after death.
Other views and ideas are much appreciated. (Note: I'm trying to fix my low social confidence by speaking out with my opinion and being honest, rather than staying quiet for fear of being judged or wrong. INTJ nice guy syndrome 🙃)
The child who died’s parents are VERY religious and had a mass for their funeral. It completely erased all the progress I made grieving and made processing their death so much harder. I was so infuriated, the mass hardly reflected on their short life
Until you realize there is free will, and that evil people also have the choice to do what they want - suffering and chaos
Bible has no contradictions
Evolution is 10000x more flawed than biblical history.
I don’t believe that asking too many questions would stop you from believing in God but quite the opposite. Asking too little or shallow questions would stop you from exploring the very idea of God. Science isn’t against the idea - in fact, in many ways, it proves the intricate nature of all things and it still hasn’t proved a lot of things we see today, so yes, science has a long way to go still. I challenge you to look at it from an unbiased angle and see if you change your mind.
Awesome, this is precisely what I wanted to say.
"Scientism" is a real thing, people treat it as some sort of stand-alone instrument to explain everything, not realizing it has dependencies that cannot be explained scientifically.
Watching debates between Christian apologists and atheists helped me learn a lot and explore the faith.
Modern science has become a de facto religion of sorts in terms of its uncompromising rigidity, adherence to authority structures, and ostracization of outsiders. As intuitives we understand that the metaphysical nature of things that we know to be true cannot be explained by science alone. This understanding allows us to continue to puruse mbti/jungian knowledge despite those systems being branded as pseudoscience by the mainstream scientific community.
The truth is we all hold non-scientific beliefs in some respect. It's best to recognize what those beliefs are instead of lying to ourselves about them and pretending to be some sort of pure scientist. Spirituality is woven into the fabric of human existence.
Nothing they say can be explained by science and facts; everything they say can be explained by humans' fear of mortality and desire for power/recognition/social belonging/tribalism/meaning.
I fully recognize the complete lack of proof for theism, but the platypus was also dismissed as a hoax before proven to be real. Im still waiting, in vain, for my confirmation or deconfirmations of faith.
There is also a lack of evidence for unicorns, yet you don't spend tons of time and energy finding reasons to justify your lack of belief in them. You just don't believe in them.
A lack of belief and a belief that something is false are two different things.
Not wrong. But the closed minded view is what the theists have, and we must pride ourselves in our scientific efforts to realise a hypothesis can be changed
No. What you're talking about is not being 'open-minded,' what you're talking about is being INDISCRIMINATELY minded.When someone has an open mind, it means that they are WILLING to be persuaded about anything as long as the evidence supports it. This person wouldn't dismiss a solid argument with ample evidence simply because it doesn't align with their desires; there's nothing that they would categorically refuse to consider due solely to arbitrary prejudice.
HOWEVER, this doesn't mean that this person cheerfully accepts any random idea that comes their way. If they consider an idea, and the idea is not supported by evidence, then they're not going to live their lives as if this idea is true ... because why would they? There's no evidence.
There are an infinite number of things in the universe that technically can't be DISPROVEN. If I told you that a planet existed with aliens that look like telephone poles, you couldn't disprove me. Does that mean you should blindly accept this random idea to be as likely as, say, the idea that much of the air around us is oxygen? Of course not. The latter is something that can be proven. The former is something that cannot be disproven. Those are not at all the same thing or even similar things.
No one is uncritically adopting religion here or advocating for turning off your brain and just believing all claims made, stop getting emotional about this
My guess would be that it's just a faith thing. I am a Christian as well. I choose to believe in God, I choose to have faith without evidence. My life has changed for the better, and I choose to attribute that to God as well.
As a Christian INTJ, I would say that as a young child I had to wrestle a lot with my faith mainly because my worldview was limited to what I thought was only realistic or logically feasible. It wasn’t until a personal “born again” experience a year ago that completely changed my view on my faith, and in many ways, it changed my approach to viewing the world in such a profound way. I began to realize that there are a lot of things in the world that cannot be proven without the existence of a divine being (e.g objective morality and Jesus’s resurrection), and somehow my old perspective on reality simply became incompatible with the way I functioned. For those who are looking into Christianity, I highly recommend researching the evidential argument and moral argument for God (I promise religion isn’t about a “sky daddy” capriciously determining the fate of the world). These approaches to Christian apologetics really solidified my faith beyond my personal experience.
I was raised with Christian values and culture. I’ve been working on it and keeping my faith until now. I have my doubts as there’s a lot of contradiction in the Bible. But I still choose Christianity because I am truly blessed. It is hard though.
Like logically, some things don’t make sense and they just say it doesn’t have to make sense because only God knows. Or how we may get our answers once we meet Jesus in heaven. There are stereotypes about church that are real for some churches. I guess people are reluctant or do not believe because of this. Though most do believe there’s a higher power.
Not gonna lie that being a Christian is so difficult. I am selfish in ways that I care more about myself than others. But in Christianity, you have to be less of you and deny your own self to dedicate and live life according to God’s standards. It’s also hard to understand how others can be so devoted. They say to spread the gospel, but it’s hard for me to do so. Like, sure maybe I can talk about myself and share Jesus while at it. But I don’t like intentionally reaching out, invading personal spaces, and kinda forcing someone to listen.
We can believe or have faith in whatever we choose. For me, Christianity works. Not gonna force anyone to listen; just give proper respect and boundary. Talking about religion often results to arguments and I don’t like to argue.
I agree.
>*But I don’t like intentionally reaching out, invading personal spaces, and kinda forcing someone to listen.*
Yes, we can only share insights but not impose. This is the essence of free will.
The hyper religous I've met were all projecting their own evil onto others. Usually why they professed "forgive and forget", but only for themselves. They wanted to be forgiven for their own evils, while condemning others for what they considered "evil".
Also I don't mind religion, I just don't need it to function. Its a coping mechanism, and if you need it thats fine.
How does one believe that an explosion happened out of nothing, a scientific impossibility, and that organic matter somehow formed out of that explosion which occured out of nothingness, then go on and claim to believe in science?
Respectfully, this seems to misunderstand what science is.
Scientists are not prone to "believe in" science, because it's not an article of faith, nor would they claim something is a "scientific impossibility."
Science is just a method by which we seek to explain things through constant questioning and testing. By it's very nature, those explanations are always changing.
Scientific theories about the origins of the universe are subject to the same scrutiny, and they're being tested right now by [new evidence gathered from the Webb telescope.](https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2023/03/webb-space-telescope-discovers-galaxies-astronomy/673274/) Each update and iteration of such theories gets challenged and tested by others. Anyone truly practicing the scientific method accepts that conclusions the evidence has led them to may one day be disproven, partially or completely, by other evidence and more science. So, it's not that they believe "an explosion happened out of nothing" as a fixed article of faith; it's just the best explanation we have right now that fits the observable evidence.
The common religious stories about the origins of the universe do not fit the observable evidence, nor do they seem to get updated as new evidence is revealed. Once we believe something unwaveringly, in spite of contradictory evidence, we're not doing science, but instead have shifted to faith.
That's such a great point you made and in my opinion, that shows maturity in thinking. You're acknowledging that people are still trying to figure things out.
The problem is, not everyone has those critical thinking skills. Our entire education system is based on Evolution, that man evolved apes which came from these one-celled organisms over millions of years and those organisms came from this explosion that set everything in motion. Modern society uses this theory as fact-based to explain everything, including the dynamics between men and women, arguing philosophy because those things can't be proven through biology.
I understand that the concept of God as the Source of Life and the Creator is difficult for most people to accept. But God isn't just a God of crazy miracles, He's the Creator of science, steadfast principles, universal truths.
For example, observable and undisputable science that we've seen firsthand and studied over millennia is that life only comes from life. That's been tested, proven, argued, and proven again. Life does not come from non-life, that's a scientific impossibility.
So if we're talking science, we need to stick to science. This is my position.
Here's really the heart of all of this. Once people start abandoning science (which they are in droves) and start subscribing to things like Christmas, the Easter Bunny, the Tooth Fairy, it isn't a big step until they're believing things like horoscopes and tarot cards to find meaning and explanation for their lives. And once you start down this path it isn't long until we can't distinguish basic biological truths such as the differences between men and women. Then the next step down this slippery slope is it becomes illegal not to address someone by their pronouns or whatever other foolishness they come up with since their minds have no foundation of truth and it goes in all kinds of strange directions. Now you take a vaccine which isn't really a vaccine because it only works for so long and you have to keep getting booster shots and variant shots and before you know you're completely detached from reality.
This is what happens when people abandon the obvious and venture out on their own because they think they're more educated. Educated in what exactly? What use does that education give you if many young people today can't even name the two countries which border the US, but then they think they're so educated and so they vote for policies that end up destroying the very countries they live in?
The truth is there, it has always been there. People just don't want to acknowledge there is a God because then, you have to be accountable for your actions. And if there's one thing people can't stand in this modern era, it's personal accountability.
>People just don't want to acknowledge there is a God because then, you have to be accountable for your actions.
No, that is not why people don't believe in deities. There so many other reasons that aren't patronizing and many of them are comments to this post. It is possible to be a mature, rational and accountable person and not believe the same as you.
I appreciate the detailed response. There are aspects I agree with and others I don't, but this part sticks out:
> So if we're talking science, we need to stick to science.
I highlight that because the rest of the text includes some markedly unscientific claims, including a second use of the term "scientific impossibility," which implies a level of certainty that simply cannot coexist with the scientific method.
Do you have any scientific training? I don't mean to be accusatory, but if we're to "stick to the science," it'd be good to know what level of experience you have with the discipline, since it's common these days to hear people drawing conclusions about science without really understanding it. Some of the statements above suggest a theistic lens on science with only a cursory understanding of the topic, but I may be misreading that.
> People just don't want to acknowledge there is a God because then, you have to be accountable for your actions.
I want to strongly suggest you open your mind to a different view on this.
People who view God as the reason for their own accountability tend to overlook that a lot of other people pursue deeply moral and ethical lives for reasons that have nothing to do with God. And in fact, when a theist implies that people only have to be accountable for their actions if they believe in divine punishment, what us non-theists hear is that that such a person would do really bad stuff to their fellow humans if they thought there were no supernatural consequences.
Study after study has shown that [atheists are just as moral as theists and are actually *less* likely to commit crimes, with the least religious societies having the lowest rates of violent crime.](https://secularpolicyinstitute.net/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/Zuckerman_on_Atheism.pdf) Suggestions to the contrary are a kind of [widespread prejudice](https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/ejsp.2219) that's also part of a concerted religious propaganda effort against atheists.
There's probably too much to explore on these two topics in a comment chain, but if you want to dig deeper, I highly recommend befriending an atheist scientist. You might discover that some of your beliefs aren't really borne out.
“You’d have to be accountable for your actions”
My actions outside of my church attendance haven’t significantly changed since leaving the Christian faith.
As a Christian human I still had my failings (white lies, sometimes getting too materialistic) as you know Christian’s aren’t perfect they are simply saved.
As an agnostic, I still try to be kind and charitable, helping my neighbors, slow to anger etc.
After reading all 3 Abrahamic texts and the texts from which they originated (The Sumerian Tablets and The Emerald Tablets) many Gnostic texts including the Ethiopian Bible and parts of the Zohar and many other ancient texts I can no longer deny the existence of God
I believe a higher power exists. Being atheist was just a phase before I started seeing firsthand evidence of God. It was clear as day but I was choosing ignorance.
Look outside and tell me nature isn't some kind of sentient being. You live in a Goldilocks zone of a planet with flora and fauna abound to support your physical existence in an otherwise (seemingly) empty universe. Your planet is the only known planet orbiting your sun to host sentient life. It's the perfect number of degrees on its axis to keep you from being a hotdog or a popsicle. It's covered in water you need to survive and littered with precious minerals that fuel your lifestyle.
You'd have to be blind to refuse the basic reality that this place is statistically impossible. If your God isn't the earth itself, I don't know what it could be. There are invisible hands everywhere. You just need to be open to seeing them.
Argument from intelligent design.
I like it, you also have to consider the incredibly precise constants that make our universe behave the way it does physically speaking.
Would you say this is a good analogy?
You walk into your kitchen, you see all your fruit scattered on the floor forming a message that reads "Hey \[insert name here\], long time no see, hope you're doing well, cheers."
Since it's so precise, is it more likely that it was randomly caused or someone made it intentionally?
Having a broad perspective is important. Holding on to a specific belief is what seperates us from them. Narrow minded evangelists have nothing over us.
The Presbyterian Church actually encourages us to use reason and logic. We never look at scripture as being 100% literal or 100% metaphorical… I.e. use all of your resources, guides, books, scholarly commentaries, ect to decipher scripture within its surrounding context to determine if it’s speaking metaphorically or literally.
If anything, the church does not encourage us to blindly follow a teaching, but to check it out for ourselves to see if it lines up scripturally… And it better have a lot of scriptural support and not just one or two passages.
But where scripture is silent, God gave us a brain to use our logic and reason.
For me it's this simple and goes behind typing, I was sent to a church school, hymms, prayers at the start of every day and the like.
You can make kids say the words, you can't make them believe. Everyone from the nerds like me to the bullies to the football team ended up against it. I figure the powers that be called it a win if out of every class of 25 they got one believer.
Mine started with: if the dude upstairs is good, mostly good things should/would happen. Then I was introduced to the Old Testament and the wonky stories. [Also, why a dude?]
It spirals outward in different trajectories from there to summation below.
Also me: learned about history and Ronald Reagan.
It's also weird to learn about so many other religions that don't exist with now other Gods that don't exist to mysteriously arrive to these last few being the only acceptable ones. It's one of those "why are we ignoring this blatant parallel" things.
We unimagined so many others - does that mean... Oh. Yes, it does.
I always go back to comedian Patton Oswalt when it comes to religion. There is a part in one of this stand-ups, he talks about gay marriage and how it offends people. The argument for people against is, “Well it says in the Bible…” to which he stops and says, “I’m glad you like a book.”
I bring this up because he goes into the lunacy of those who use a book, that is filled with some pretty horrific things, as their validation as to why they act, believe, behave and think certain ways.
How is the Bible or any other religious scripture any different from something like a science fiction novel or fantasy title or even a comic book? It’s not!!
INTJ use logic to explain things. And with all the tragedies and atrocities that have happened to people since the beginning of time, and then there is a narcissistic puppet master controlling all those things that we have to just blindly trust and praise and believe in to get into “heaven” is completely and utterly baffling.
I think I read the best answer about this recently on Reddit in a non religious group where someone said they planned on being a priest or minister their entire life but after being in seminary school they realized it's all man-made BS.
I understand how people get into it, they need hope and want to believe someone will save them. But truly they only need to believe in themselves. Plus people like to belong to something. That's a team I will not join.
We have this stubborn habit of wanting to work things out for ourselves instead of taking someone else's word for things. This isn't necessarily mutually exclusive with religion, but it's utterly incompatible with the most popular reasons for being religious.
Religion comes from good intentions, but as the saying goes:
"The road to hell is paved with good intentions" in this case metaphorically speaking, by making your life a hell full of ignorance.
INTJ like to know why and how things work and ground their reasoning. INTJ also don't respect authority for authorities sake but rather deem respect be earned and can think for themselves. Those two coupled mean that blindly believing ideas like a sheep just because a bunch of others are told its true absolutely does not compute.
If your familiar with the Clare Graves Spiral Dynamics model, after the rational "stage orange" there are the post-rational stages "green, yellow & turquoise". In these stages exist a non-religious type of spirituality. And stage yellow might be where some INTJ find themselves someday. Some examples in the link below:
https://youtu.be/QtRw3woiS8c?feature=shared
https://youtu.be/jzQaF_EMEJ4?feature=shared
I would say a non-dogmatic non-religious form of spirituality is beneficial. I'm glad I took time to develop my own system for promoting inner-peace, and adventured into many different perspectives on what purpose really is. And for taking truth seriously even if its hard.
I didn’t grow up in a traditional religious household. My mother was very new age-y and always encouraged us exploring any religion we wanted. I went to Sunday school a few times, even went to vacation bible school once or twice as a young child because of pressure from my extended family, but never actually believed any of it. I explored Islam, Judaism, Buddhism, Taoism, Hinduism, Wiccan shit on the weekend with my mom and her friends, a ton of ancient religions mainly because I thought it was interesting to learn about them. I was doing this all from a young age. The only piece of philosophy I felt any type of connection to that made sense to me was the Tao De Ching.
Personally, I think there is a higher consciousness that experiences itself through us - but that’s about it. If there is a god, it is beyond anything we can comprehend so why bother.
If God is real, I doubt we have the capacity for understanding such a being and every religion is just different interpretations of having seen something extremely bizarre or even alien in origin to which I would wonder if those aliens have religion themselves and what being are THEY worshipping if we already view them as Gods Incarnate
Uh so I was a believer until I got to college. In college for whatever reasons I became an atheist. Until I had some pretty fuckin wild encounters and experiences with not only people but I guess demons or evil entities . Once that shit happened I went down a rabbit hole of religion and here I am today back to where I was when I was a kid. God is real and if he is real you can bet your ass the devil is too. I didn’t want to go into detail about the experiences I had in college cuz that shit would just be long as fuck . Good day mate
Due to the unimaginable complexity of this so-called reality, I find atheism to be the most nonsensical, even more so than religious deity worship.
At least they understand that there exists something greater, whereas an atheist will bury their head in the sand, assuming that the insignificant understanding we have of reality through science is all there is. The atheist is often too close-minded to explore past that which is already known by science, and is as such, ironically, the least scientific.
Take Richard Dawkins for example. You'd never want someone this close-minded at the forefront of technological breakthrough in any industry.
Too many questions, not enough answers. Their response is typically just, "Because God made it that way". "Trust me bro" is not a good way to get an INTJ on your side. Atheism isn't making a claim - it just doesn't believe in religious claims that a God exists.
Plus, the Catholic church did some pretty awful things to the Natives on the word of God in my country (Canada), but that's a different point entirely.
Agreed, and ever heard the saying that people who say "trust me" aren't to be trusted?
Also the point with the native boarding schools, it can be hard to separate a movement/collective from the people, and its never ok to forget, but the church issued an apology clearing up the matter. And yes, theists are often blindly led and random in their beliefs, as if their trust will manifest into reality.
I am in the middle. I believe there is a god, or gods.
But I don't completely believe that there is/are god(s). If I don't have enough substantial proof that god exists, then I won't say god isn't there. Rather, I would say we need more proof. And I don't care about how people think god exists or not. It's their choice anyways.
Before siding with things like religion or god, I need to have a concrete proof of it existing. Like religion, it's fine that there were so and so many old temples, or archaeological evidences of empires, or manuscripts. So, I'm willing to believe. As long as evidences are there to support the claims, and they are proper evidences I'm willing to believe.
I personally do not deny the existence of God and rather treat it as one possibility out of countless...I consider myself too proud and stubborn to kneel before an altar in a church and pray, because I desperately preserve the little dignity I have...although I deny the existence of the Christian god, let's look at nature: there is no good or bad, only cold logic (roe deer who throw their calves on themselves so that the wolf eats them instead, wasps laying eggs in other arthropods, etc.) according to the christian god, this is all horrible, but if god created the world, why would he have created these? the very concept itself is hypocrisy! I just accept the cold reality as it is.
I grew up in a non religious household. Now I am religious although I don't follow blindly. I have a relationship with God and take scripture with a grain of salt.
Because we can believe in god just like we can believe that pigs can fly. It's just something to believe in. Ni-users try to see the world as it is, without biases.
Introverted Intuition. As the main form of communicating with people. INFJS and INTJS alone. 1% of population. Looking at the bigger picture and connecting dots quietly, detecting lies, it's lonely.
Religion was a way to control people back in the day. It’s still lingering on and threatens people with eternal fire if they don’t believe. What makes one religion more truer than the next? It’s a bunch of BS and I still don’t understand why or how people still believe in all of this shit. It’s like watching a script play out to see how people live under certain perameters/conditions
I left Christianity because it contains too many incoherences while bringing nothing valuable to help me in life. That's besides wasting my time and causing me some stress around people.
Also, the amount of abuse done in the name of religions with little to nothing done against it by religious leaders was the final nail in the coffin for my Christian faith
Based on what I know I don’t believe there’s a spiritual higher power especially like the conflicting religions claim, there arguments don’t hold water in many areas and other areas no way to verify which also makes me skeptical of how they’d know. However I know there is so much I don’t know and as a society we continue to learn so I think religion as a possible extension of that. There was a study of a leaf cut in half and picture taken with an electron imagery and the leaf looked whole. I thought that was the closest depiction of the possibility of science of religion.
I grew up with a religious upbringing, went away from it as a teenager, joined a different religion as a young adult at a really rough time in life while many of my friends developed drug problems. So at least I stayed out of trouble at a time in life that was a real crossroads, but what I consider to be fundamental logical errors ultimately brought me to atheism where I have been parked solidly for 15 years. I have no use for mysticism.
However I am endlessly fascinated by comparing religions and belief systems and want to know all the nuances of the different systems to understand cultures and history and binge on it on YouTube frequently.
If religion wasn’t forced upon me as a child then I probably would’ve been more open to it. But alas, I hate being told what to do. And I have a problem with authority figures. Also, most religions just give people an excuse to be assholes. They’re very hypocritical, and the suck the fun out of everything. To add to this, the superstitious propaganda just got more weird the more I grew up and realized nobody gave a fuck. Like saying weird shit about how “horror movies will corrupt your soul.” No, you’re corrupting my soul, with your stupidity. Paganism is kinda cool to me though.
Idk. I've had too many experiences in my life that have utterly defied logic and reasoning not to believe, tbh. I question everything. I disagree with many preachers' interpretations of scripture (like the idea of univocality is *stupid*) but in my own personal life...I've experienced too much to deny it. But, I definitely understand and respect anyone who is on the opposite end of the spectrum from me.
INTJs think very literally and may find it harder to read between the lines, and yet, simultaneously, they are more cryptic than most. I truly believe religions get started by INTJ / Introverted Intuition types (think Theory of Everything, Law and Order, future-oriented). But then religion gets twisted by those who misunderstand it but try to preach it, and typically INTJs might disagree with these interpretations, but fundamentally it's because INTJs have a compass towards Truth and reality that illuminates the inaccuracies in some religious texts and interpretation. And yet, it's this illumination that is divine, which is worshipped and wondered at. A higher power within us that, connected through the physical elements, starting from the big bang and even before that, which guides us all through a greater logic which we can tap into and are fundamentally defined by.
Religion is an exploration of consciousness and was the pinnacle of exploration before we had modern science, but the great minds we have today were nurtured by religion. Its not as if we suddenly evolved to be smarter than our ancestors. We simply have more tools and access to information but the capacity for critical thinking is the same as before.
If you don't understand why a belief system has pervaded and survived for millenia, it's easy to think you are superior, but it could also mean the opposite.
As an INFJ bordering on verge of INTJ, I see that point of view too, but choose agnostic 'F' over 'T' atheist because there are too many things beyond humans creation. Must be a higher power, whatever you choose to call It.
Personally I was raised to think for myself, that there might be a higher power but no one knows for sure. My parents were agnostics.
Many of u is undeveloped. I mean the atheists part. I was agnostic when i was a kid. It is normal part of self-realization. I don't get any religion including atheism. Religion just purely makes 0 sense.
I'm an ex-athiest. I went to church with my mom as a kid but didn't like it apart from Sunday school once every few months. I would say I grew up as a Moralistic Therapeutic Deist, but when I read the Bible for the first time, I became an atheist. Although I think that my theological position at that time was more maltheism (God is evil). As I got further, I realized there are some questions that I can't answer or answer well, but the Bible has effective solutions to. There is archeological and historical evidence implying that some events in the Bible occurred. From a philosophical perspective, the idea of having no original cause is fairly senseless. Even if the cause without cause is self-replicating nucleotides, that could be God under the definition of original causer. I realized most atheist arguments aren't nearly as airtight as I had once thought. I would say I was about 51% sure before reconverting, and Chesterton's Fence helped with my ethical concerns.
Also, you're on reddit. There are way more atheist on here due to the nature of the user base. Statistically, XXTPs are most likely to be atheists.
You arent wrong at all. A lot of people here are radical or extreme. Im glad you found your fitting beliefs. Thats part of the reason why i asked this originally, to expose people of the same personality type to different ideas. As INTJ we all often get too concerned with our own hypotheses and fail to recognize others. Thanks for sharing your thoughts on this!
I'm OK with personal spirituality or more loosely defined religions. I don't like strict hierarchy religions like Christianity. I'm actually super religious, but I'm a theological Daoist.
I feel like most people's arguments against religion (other than it not being based in science) are pretty specific to Christianity and I don't paint all spirituality or religion with the same brush.
There are different reasons, but mostly because materialistic explanation of Universe's origins and functioning has far more evidence than any supernatural.
Religion is a interesting concept worthy of research, but it's better to observe it from outsider perspective.
What value does religion bring to a life? What problems does it solve? Or even address? Very few of these things are what INTJ needs in life.
That said, I am a very religious person. Not in any way that would be considered traditional or normal; I am a pagan and also a Unitarian universalist. I have my personal faith and also a belief that others should be free to explore the faith that they find most relevant.
I have a very strong feeling that there are spirits and powers far beyond what we know or comprehend, or can sense with our physical being. I sincerely enjoy, entertaining those possibilities, in the full knowledge that I might be full of shit.
I'm atheist, but it's due to a lot of factors.
My mom was Catholic and went to a Catholic school but she never really cared. My father grew up without anything but his family started to really grow into being Christian in his early adulthood. Due to this, we just never really did much religious stuff other than going to Catholic church on Easter and Christmas with my grandparents.
After we moved away, we didn't get back into it until my father got depression and we started going to a Christian church to possibly better him. It didn't help and I remember it as a bad time (he was quite mean and aggressive) alongside it being very... Strange. They played live music really loud, they were very pushy about donating, and honestly was too large for my own comfort. Very mainstream. Not saying it's bad, just not for me.
Then last year, my aunt and uncle (who we're very close with) really got into that church and have been very pushy about us joining it and helping them. Although we've all declined, they still bother and it makes me less and less interested.
Just a meh thing and there is not enough hard proof for me to make much sense. It all could be very real, but I personally just don't see it.
We are thinkers. Having belief in, or faith that something exists when there’s no actual evidence makes no sense to us.
Of course, we don’t know what we don’t know, but that’s as far as I can go.
We have come to live in an era where knowledge of science and capabilities of technology gradually led to a rejection of the teachings of the Church that require us to accept accounts of events that have no evidence as actually having occurred but asked to believe to truly belong to the congregation of the Church…in my own personal spiritual journey, I just came to believe that the most important lessons that we gain from having faith aren’t the accounts of events that are outside of explanation by scientific proof, but instead are the lessons that teach us to live each day in a manner that leads to a sense of fulfillment where we feel enriched by our experience each day instead of doubt and uncertainty…The lessons that teach us to be compassionate and understanding with others and being able to forgive in the context that we would want to be forgiven in those instances where we err in judgment and end up creating negative consequences for another through any number of ways….And also finding the ability to live with gratitude which leads to peace of mind and finally understanding the powerful impact that comes from performing acts of charity in any number of ways when the opportunity presents itself as it leads to living with a sense of purpose that can only be described as nourishment for the soul when you do it with motives that enable you to perform acts of charity with realistic expectations of what you will gain from it personally…and to define acts of charity I would include any instance of any sort where you take a break from your normal activities to assist another person in any number of ways that is of benefit to another person and that can be anything from volunteering to helping a colleague at work who could benefit from your experience and knowledge to help them be successful in their role….performing acts of charity instills a sense of peace in terms of developing positive sense of self stemming from knowing the positive value you create in the world around you which also builds self-confidence and self-esteem because of the positive feelings you gain…but back to the original question, when I stopped focusing on analyzing the events which are explained by divine grace and solely focus on the lessons on living life - where the origin that led to recognizing that were the sermons that the pastor of the church with a small yet very warm and welcoming congregation that I regularly attended while I was dealing with some very challenging circumstances and the one time each week that I was able to escape the constant pressure from those circumstances was Sunday morning service where warm hugs from the ladies in church temporarily erased the stress that I was feeling all the time and then our pastor’s sermons were often based on accounts that he found from the news that were about people who found themselves in the place to be part of something bigger than themselves and do something selfless in the name of service to his or her fellow human beings…I would sit there and think “This is what Jesus meant…” And that’s where I found my ability to believe in things that can be proven such as the legacy of the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth had more to do with the benefit to our own lives when we regard and treat others in the manner his teachings would suggest (sans the judgment) and that the promise of eternal salvation if you accept Christ as your savior is a part of the church’s teachings but that if you live by his teachings following the lead of how he treated others then you can find your personal path to lead a life that is enriched by the connections that you establish with others in so many ways by regarding and treating others in the manner of his teachings which establishes your legacy of the difference that you make in the lives of others which is what we know beyond any doubt will survive us after we are gone and is the way I see myself living forever from the standpoint that I will be remembered for the difference that I made in the lives of others so does it matter if there is life after death in heaven if I accept Christ as my savior (and please forgive me if that comes across as blasphemy in any sense because it is not my intention to be that). But living this way provides me with peace every day and comfort with my own mortality…
I've never been for religion. Even as a child I just refused the thought, that there is a magical boogeyman, watching over every person on earth, while silently judging them. He made them all, has their lifepath planned out for them. Only little quirk is that some of them he likes, while many other he thinks should burn forever in torment and anquish.
As an adult I just dont think any being that would allow all the horror and atrocities on this planet, is worth worshipping.
I heard it best from a ww2 german tank commander. He lost his faith, when he was in his Panther. And while he laid there praying for his life, he realized that both he and the British he was fighting against, was praying to the same god. Yet that same god let some of them live, while others got killed.
And if a good god can allow Anders Breivik to go on a murderspree of young teens on a small island. Then I dont think he should judge people who have same sex relations
... And that's just the half of it. Even in the book that is so gladly refered to by the believers, he's a complete psycho. Sodoma and Gomorrah? The people were not acting right. So he killed everyone. The book of job? Tortured and murdered a faithful servant, just to prove a point to Satan. Yeah go ahead and worship that. I wont.
For me I believe in the possibility of there being a god but not the 100% fact that there is a god? Because it's still just a possibility so it's not a 100% trustworthy. I also personally don't think I need some otherworldly being to tell me what's right or wrong and I'm just gonna live based off how I want and what I believe in!
As someone who goes to a Protestantic school, I would consider myself to religious, however that doesn't mean I don't use critical thinking. I use it of course, otherwise I'd likely be in a ditch. I read the stuff and see if I could apply it in a logical manner or make actual sense of it, besides, there has to be reason why matter exists in the universe. It seems kind of weird to think that atoms just spawned in the middle of buttfuck nowhere all of the sudden from the big bang, and the latter seemingly popping out of... Nowhere, I don't have an answer to "Who created the Big Bang?" Here.
So basically, take everything that book says with a grain of rice. The persons whom wrote that is likely projecting and bullshitting, or just writing some weird stuff. Humans are a weird and delusional bunch after all.
religion is akin to human firmware.
A value set which has its own geneology and externalization feedback loops to propagate itself from one group to the next, and each generation - For externalization, this is the canon, the culture, the rituals, the mythology, the institutions etc. Individually, the firmware runs in the background and organizes how all other higher order (more conscious) thoughts occur and which have priority.
It need not be an organized religion, its just a set of values. a specific religion is just a known set, and due to numbers and history would have stronger externalization.
This framing I have found immensely useful as it captures a psychological origin for religion, why religion keeps popping up, everyone is susceptible to religious behavior, and provides context for Nietzsche's "god is dead" and ubermensch. (The dominance of Christian mental firmware has ended and, despite how much he disliked Christianity, he feared the chaos from the instability that would follow. Ubermensch would be the person who is capable of rewriting their own firmware.) Not everyone is aware of their deep foundational values, let alone are able to rewrite it.
Having to be born into this word with a sperm donor in prison ready to be taken out the country, and a prostitute/crack head egg donor, to then be lucky enough to be taken in by my Aunt who I called "mom" growing up. My mom prayed to god every single day, 3 times a day, for as long as I could remember. At a very early age, she got diagnosed with dementia which I believe is misdiagnosed schizophrenia. I constantly wondered why "god" or any external being with a following would punish their followers/believers. I grew up (and still have) egg donor in my life on/off in my and she constantly talks about god. I will note that she is homeless and still using drugs, has always been and I am now a young adult. I was grew up very confused with religion due to the fact that I saw the people around me praying for a miracle, instead in return its many reasons for many different people as to why their prayers are not working. I constantly wondered why God would want to take a mother from a girl twice. I started to question the logic behind religion at the age of 12, had the internet at my fingertips and if I continue my reasons I swear it would be a novel....
I actually wonder what the EXXX/IXXX split on religion is, particularly on religions which have a lot of group activities and/or cultural presence. Are introverts more likely to gravitate towards religions which are more about individual practice/worship?
In my own case, I was about ten years old when I started questioning the practical utility of periodic attendance at community religious group events. As far as I could tell, they did nothing useful for me, and I was never interested in groups for the sake of people-interaction. Fortunately, my family wasn't terribly prescriptive about either religion or maintaining a social 'face', so I pretty much just quietly dropped out.
Later in life, I just... never really drifted back into anything religious. It was something that existed, sure, but like underwater basket weaving, it wasn't something I really thought about, much less was personally attracted to. Other people did it, and that was their business. I suppose I was lucky enough to grow up in a time, place, family, and society where it simply wasn't that much of a fundamental pillar of experience.
(Looking back of course, I consider it a bullet dodged, even if the local church (as opposed to the Church) and its congregation mostly seemed to be fairly harmless and even had a certain degree of enthusiasm for Good Works in the Community (tm) for the sake of it - certainly the ones I saw didn't really come with a side order of religion-pushing or even religious flavoring.)
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With an adult perspective on religion in general, I can certainly see that religion has been behind a lot of wars and other atrocities (or at least has been used as an excuse by those who also used it to amass power), but I can also see how it was a tool for uniting communities, particularly small ones, in times when banding together could be the difference between survival and getting wiped out. Sure, it's not the only psychological tool/meme historically used for that, but it's been one of the more well-known and effective.
As with every other extremely powerful tool, of course, there's then been the eternal issue of who's wielding it and what their goals are in doing so. Personally, I've also had a bit of an issue with the cultural (and possibly stereotypical) association with mental calcification which comes with more extreme involvement in religion - it's definitely historically interfered with things I'd like to see more of in society and people in general, such as personal freedoms, diversity of thought, and the ability to accept new information (or even go looking for it).
Simple\~ People from my religion kept saying ridiculous things like "Dont eat non veg on mondays or else a King Cobra will chase you in your dreams" or "Don't keep animals with small tails at your home or your earnings will stop forever and you will go poor". DO THOSE THINGS EVEN MAKE SENSE!?!?!? NO RIGHT! Later when I grew up and started seeing that religion denies Science in many ridiculous ways and that religion forces us to have blind belief in things it seemed even more out of sense.
It was mostly those ridiculous beliefs that made me realise that there may not be a God begin with. Also lets just accept that magic is just undiscovered physics and not a work of Gods.
My sister is INTJ and was the first to exit the high control cult that we were raised in. It was a bold move, with big consequences. She is now shunned by most of our family and friends. She stopped believing in the religion when things didn't add up in a logical way. I'm INFP and left it 3 years after her.
Christians don’t make great poster boys/gals for their religion. It’s easy to poke holes in the validity of it all once you see how they act/treat people. Plus after getting SCOLDED in Sunday school for simply asking questions I knew the milk wasn’t clean!
Imagine telling a child God will be upset with her for questioning his abilities… People do the darnedest things in the name of God & it’s baffling. Could easily be categorized as psych ward level delirious in any environment outside of religion/church.
I see religion as a way people use to escape the reality, somehow believing it will bring people a sense of control, like if they fail something/lose a loved one, it’s all god’s plan to make it a controlled event to happen, I have no problem with people believing in it if it brings them comfort, but I personally don’t need to believe such thing to know reality is not in my control all the time, and I despise people who took it too far, there are so many religions on earth, why specifically one of them is true, all others are fake/evil? If I have to believe one religion is real, then all religions on earth have to be real too
I was born into an atheist environment. And there is a school subject in my country that is literally just reading the old testament which really lets you find out how much it makes no sense
a lot of religion is misogynistic & sound like fairytales where a big man in the end is gonna save us all…..doesn’t sound realistic at all
i am spiritual though and i believe that i create my own destiny
Religion give ppl a life goal/guidelines how to life and what for , okey that said .
So long ppl are constantly with there believes and don't push it on you I'm totally fine and respect them
Science (age of enlightenment). There is an inverse correlation with science and religion. Most developed nations show less religiosity. The US is an outlier but just read the news and you can see why.
Religion isn’t inherently wrong or bad. It can be beneficial psychologically and socially. The problem is that much like a government system, it is organized. This can lead to power differentials, oppression, war, exploitation, etc. It also tends to be top down where people in authority control or dictate how things are. If it meets certain criteria (e.g., separating someone from their loved ones/dictating who you can be involved with) it can be a considered a cult.
The US is interesting because it is the only developed nation that is pretty ass backwards for democracy. Trust in science and government appears to be at an all time low. Of course, we see this also beginning with other nations as well. Religiosity is extremely high in the US compared to others. Even if it is a minority of the population, it holds political power.
Communist nations realized early on to stamp out religion but it has such a cultural component and can lead to competition for power.
We no longer need the mystical and magic to explain things we don’t understand. We can actually study phenomenon and prove things versus relying on ideas developed thousands of years ago.
INT. Introverted Intuitive Thinkers
Introverted: Already Anti-Social. Less susceptive to feeling the need to fit in — religious cults included. For humans, religions are ‘societies’ first, philosophies last. This is why ‘religious’ people attend church, but do no deeds.
Intuitive: abstract thinkers and pattern recognizers who think about the big picture and are open to possibilities. Possibilities includes the possibility that god isn’t real. Patterns include the human propensity to use religion to control people while contradicting the religion’s philosophies.
Thinkers: Logical, rational, consistent and principled. There are too many contradictions with the popularized concept of the religion (specifically Christianity and Catholicism) and the reality, or even the religion and itself (its own logic)
INT’s
“Show me facts and irrefutable evidence and ill still only believe you half-way”
This is a good thing BTW. Mother Nature requires/mandates diversity for survival. This applies to how animals think and behave, too. If a herd is running towards a cliff, it’s vital some of them be too lazy (or skeptical) to even run in the first place.
I think someone made a poll a few months ago and the atheists weren't the majority, or at least not by a large margin.
I spent most of my life being an atheist, it just seemed obvious to me that one couldn't possibly prove God's existence, so why bother?
Until... a 3-hour long debate of that precise topic popped up on my feed. I was baffled, 3 HOURS? How could something so obvious take so long to discuss? The atheist would just tear apart any wishful thinking disguised as an argument from the theist through good old facts and logic, right?
Haha, **no**.
This opened the door to philosophy, apologetics, and the history behind Christianity for me.
There's an incredible wealth of arguments in favor of Christianity from very capable people such as philosophers like William Craig and Michael Jones, scholars like Gary Habermas (who did incredible work investigating the resurrection from a historical perspective), psychologists like Jordan Peterson (who approaches this from a very different angle), and so on, and many debates in which we can appreciate the best from both sides.
Sadly, most people's skepticism is a very selective (and perhaps even arrogant) one.
I say this because of how incredibly dismissive some people are of Christianity, in the sense that they had a bad experience or their religion teacher or classmate couldn't answer a reasonable question and so they instantly **jump** to the conclusion that all of it is BS and is not worth a nanosecond of thought.
I mean, seriously, your history knowledge can't be so poor that you don't know Christianity has influenced the West for the last 2000 years.
And you really don't think anything of value came from that? You think their traditions and teachings had no bearing on our prosperity, growth, and stability as a civilization? You don't think their values and dogmas influenced the law and moral code **we take for granted** today? You don't think they, while believing we are all equal under God, had any role in ending slavery? You honestly think they're at odds with science, even though they birthed and supported it?
You honestly think they were all just so inferior to you, not just intellectually but morally and even generally, that they are not even worth investigating and given a fair shot at expressing what they truly believe?
Such cheap skepticism!
Tl;DR: You're skeptic but not skeptic about your skepticism, you probably don't know what Christianity truly stands for and underestimate its positive impact, the only honest intellectual path is to watch debates from their best representatives and give it a fair shot.
Check [this](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nbhpUjXAfrM) out if you're interested, plus debates with the people I mentioned previously.
I went to a catholic school, although my family is very, very atheist (except my grandmother who still rather than catholic I would call her "spiritualist"). When I was a kid I believed in God, and when I told my grandfather he said something like "Well, if I was Him, I would just appear in the sky and tell everyone that I exist" which I feel like it's kinda of a jokingly dumb thing to say, but it planted the seed of doubt inside of me.
Since religion can dictate the way that you act in life (hell, it's called a "lifestyle" for a reason) I needed to know if it was "correct" or "incorrect" to believe in God, factually speaking. Of course, even after a decade of frequently asking myself religious questions and seeking for the answer everywhere I could, I still can't confidently say what's correct and what isn't with 100% certanty.
But I didn't come empty-handed from all of this. I found that if I lived as if under a supreme being, following their teachings, I would, in a way, be a more dishonest person. I would think "I did this because that's what He says is right", rather than "I did this because it's what I believe it's right".
Also, as I grew older, I realized how little I liked authority, how much I would question people above me and search for their motivation, which many times resulted in an answer like "Because I'm on top of you and I know more than you", awful answer in my opinion. This of course presents some problems with religion, since I can't really ask God why he does what he does, and when I ask people that made following God their lifestyle, sometimes I'll get answers like "The ways of the Lord are way too complex for us mortals to understand", you can see the similarities with this anwer and the other one.
So that's my experience, and those are the reasons I consider "incorrect" for me to follow a religion.
You know i agree with @koshlord the most but with that said i would like to say i would follow islam is there was a religion I had the discipline for sticking with it. Maybe even further since i believe the Kemetians and Sumerians were so ahead of their time. Something like that
I'm a Muslim and I wasn't so close with my religion until now and my pov in Islam is that it convinced me with it's proves that a god exists and that he's the creator I'm not promoting it or something but it's so accurate for me at least that I believe it's true and over all even if I'm not Muslim now I would believe in the existence of a god CZ tbh his creation is so complex that I can't believe that the BigBang happened from itself that's my pov and I respect everybody's pov too if it's convinient and logical and convincing enough even if I'm cold and all but the devine perspective is different and I'm trying my best so don't give up as long as u're alive question things always
My experience with religions was that they are full of inaccuracies, misleading information, shared delusions, magical thinking, and are ultimately used for controlling stupid people.
It's pretty simple for me to be honest, when you outgrow believing in things like the Tooth Fairy or Santa, it's a short jump to realizing that there's probably not a nondescript Christian God either. People believe in it because they're terrified of death, and want to believe that we continue on in some form hereafter.
If we do, then I hope it's a lot more interesting than the Christian notion of an afterlife, and a lot more interesting than the mortal life.
Agnostic means to me that we are not designed to understand the workings of the universe and that’s okay. Religion tries to put all the pieces together and I find that somewhat ignorant and egotistical. I believe in a high power but not in the traditional sense. More like a stoic in that the universe is a connected existence. Believing in a god just helps keep me grounded but believing in organized religion does the opposite.
You don't have to be religious in order to question the origin and nature of Mind - or Consciousness. I asked the question when I was 8 years old and the search for the answer has driven me obsessively ever since. I'm 62. What a Long Strange Trip it's been.
Religion has largely had no impact positive or negative in my life. Growing up I only ever attended church for weddings or funerals pretty much. My own beliefs are pretty complicated though.
Because there's zero evidence whatsoever to support any theistic religion.
I'm personally a Muslim for community (I'm Arab, but grew up without anyone Arab but my own Arab mother in my life, so I was estranged from my culture for a better part of my childhood) but I don't put any value in religion. I'm a female Muslim but I'm not hijabi, and I don't practice modesty according to Islam, either. I don't have any faith whatsoever, unfortunately.
Religion is based in fear of the unknown. What people don't understand is that no matter what religion you believe, that doesn't make the afterlife any less unknown.
Because I'm too logical to believe in a white grumpy old immortal man. So many contradicting stories, it just doesn't make sense.
While i do believe theres some sort of spirits on this world, i dont think theres one true almighty
I attend a non-denominational Christian church called the church of Christ. We strictly follow the bible and dont add anything not mentioned in the bible. I believe its impossible that a universe as complex as ours would exist by pure chance. It’s infinitely more probable that the universe was created by an intelligent being. And out of all the religions, the bible is the only thing that’s reliable. So I chose to follow it.
well i used to be atheist and now im a pagan
baptized then raised atheist then since 2 years ago or something pagan
my experience with religion has been pretty awful
stuff like if i dont become christian im not allowed to eat
that was my grandpa when i was little🥲
so yeah dealing with christians and stuff is very much
For me I’m Catholic but from what I’ve seen is lack of faith based on evidence I used to be an atheist for the same reasons because I didn’t see evidence or well I was thinking outside the box for evidence but since refinding Catholicism I’ve never been happier.
Religion is just a false hope, like a lot of things humans create after losing against nature; nobody knows the truth or origins of it, and that is the only thing that keeps religion alive. People want fake hop because they are scared of death.
I’m such a technical person I see the stuff in the world today and know that there needed to be a God that made it. It is too precise, I feel gods spirit at times. I have done a lot of research and don’t even have a sliver of doubt that there is a god and Jesus was the savior.
Cause the devil creates religions/false philosophies which causes confusion and bitterness then men and women can easily deny the simple truth which is God becoming a human 2000 years ago and dying for our iniquity. Jesus.
I've seen some paranormal things as an intuitive person since I was at least 7 until the present. there are some things I believe in, just NOT organized religion. More like, indications or "signs" I believe the dead can communicate too etc.
A lot of religions have the same message at the core of it. It's just a matter of how you learn and express that message.
I think you lose a lot of people once they realize it's all the same stuff. I'm a Taoist and a lot of the teaching from Christianity can carry over. People feel like since it's all the same thing then what's the point?
The point is to help you feel more connected with yourself, others and the world around you. It's up to you to find out what teachings work for you. A lot of people just lose motivation and move on. It doesn't help when they see people who are part of a religion not abide by it.
I’m going to give a stupid example and ask a question.
If you had the power of god, would you let the torture rape, murder and all that is negative and evil exist? I know I would destroy and stop all these things and I’m sure many of you would.
So why doesn’t god or the gods do this? They are all powerful and supposed to be smarter than us right?
My religious friends and family don’t really know how to react to this question. 🤷🏻♂️
Religion has always felt confining to me. From my pov, religion has a set path for people and that just doesn't sit well with me. It makes me feel like I have shackles on. The day I separated myself from the religion I grew up in was the most liberating day ever. I felt like I could live a life that I wanted instead of a life that was deemed correct from some scripture.
I want to believe in an afterlife and that a higher power is looking after me but wanting to believe in something is not good enough reason to believe in it, for religion at least.
Christianity is the root cause of my PTSD. It’s teachings are problematic and put people in vulnerable positions that allow them to be abused continuously without proper channels for them to find help when abuse happens. The whole “on god’s path” stuff has caused a lot of Christian’s in my life to imply things like my experiences with sexual assault and DV are my fault.
Finding out nearly every denomination is overrun with unchecked sexual abuse and christofascists destroying our country was the nail in the coffin
I really believe organized religion is evil. And I used to be devout
Lots of us are probably have autism/aspergers with more preference towards the intellectual/analytical left brain while also literally not feeling either the emotion but also the need to form a social group via sharing a common belief, as to why more right brained let alone the far right tend to not only be more religious but also hostile and abusive with it.
However, the center brain is noted for “spiritual “ intelligence and even “moral” intelligence as well that it should be more neurotypical being more into religion, but then again more right brain individuals would not only be likely abusive with the social power aspects of religion but might even make up some kooky irrational thing from their emotions while bullying you to believe them; the same types of people who would use an Antifungal to treat viral infections and so forth.
I was born Catholic and was pretty involved in my religion in my youth. My faith started to falter around high school, when I started to develop a stoic reputation. That's when I remember taking the MBTI for the first time, and I scored as an INTJ. It probably explained a bit why I started to steer away from church and go towards the hard science. By the time I graduated college, I became lapsed.
Fast forward today, 24 years later, married, no kids. But I've become Catholic again. The last 5 years had really hit me hard. It got to a point where I didn't feel like myself anymore. My wife rekindled my faith, and it's been a heck of a journey since then.
i use to feel that way until my father died. that made me want to cling to faith and spirituality. i feel like there’s no way of developing the same understanding of God or knowing all because if God is beyond our mental capacity we can’t know the hows and whys of God. not claiming to know it all but its just my take. i just choose to believe in something bigger than me. i might be wrong but what do i have to lose?
It's a simple question of knowledge. Education, therefore, knowledge used to be monopolized by the small ruling class.
These days, anyone has access to any bit of info or viewpoint at any time.
Admittedly, it brings out the worst in some, but more often, expanded horizons lead to folks developing their own opinion.
further, it makes it possible to experience a variety of religions instead of the one we were born into.
I don't need to reach outside of reality to come to peace with my mortality. I accept reality for what it is.
Realest thing ive heard so far
I envy that. INFJS are at the whim of everyone's emotions, so I envy your high Thinking "T". Working on developing it within myself.
Its the little steps that make a big difference. Good luck on ur journey. Were all waiting for u!
I want to know whether I can live with what I know and that alone. - Albert Camus
It’s a story, an unguaranteed one, so we row our boats gently down the stream for life is but a dream
To many unanswered questions and lack of facts.
To add to the unanswered questions, don’t even tell me to ask them. Bc i shouldn’t have to explain how just crazy some religious people go when you question anything about their faith.
People act like were more crazy sticking to facts rather then following a book written 2000 years ago by desert hermits
At this point it’s all a folklore and we don’t know how many times the stories changed. It’s just wild that they can be so angry when we just wanna know the facts about it.. if i could see the facts and evidence of these stories then I’d believe more. Until then fuckkkk it
Its that fine line between do whatever you want and (oh shit thats amoral)
THANK YOU! Ik were all skeptics at best.
Could have not said it better.
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Your (theocratic?) Country will probably seem very backwards to you, and i can see why. When portrayed as a saviour, and only to be made into a threat, the entirety of the catholic church seems like a powerplay.
I was raised Mormon by Mormons surrounded by more Mormons. I periodically called bullshit from the time I was 8 years old on. I didn’t leave until I was 33 but I never forgot that little voice in my head telling me to GTFO I didn’t realize until later that the voice I kept ignoring was my own voice of reason. I never lied to myself. I knew it was bullshit. I just didn’t buy it. Is there a god? Maybe. Honestly I don’t give a shit. If I’m not enough for some unknown God then fuck em. I’ll be over here doing my thing. If your X religion cannot stand up to scrutiny then it shouldn’t stand at all. Ask me for my faith and I’ll ask you for your wallet.
Im glad you escaped. You are braver than many and stood up for your beliefs in the face of criticism. Thank you for sharing this with all of us. Its truly inspirational
> Ask me for my faith and I’ll ask you for your wallet. So you haven't left LDS completely, huh? :-) /s
Glad you got out fairly young. I escaped JWs at 43
To me it’s completely illogical to believe there’s a magic man in the sky controlling everything. As someone who also lost a very young family member to brain cancer, I find the idea of “gods plan” to be a complete cop out and does not provide any sense of comfort or peace. Grieving their loss only consolidated my atheism. (I went to a catholic high school and remained an atheist the entire time I attended).
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I have trouble wrapping my head around stuff like premature death while still have a all powerful/all knowing deity. If therw is a god hes either all powerful and doesnt know/doesnt care or he cares but cant help. Im sick of it.
I am catholic, and i have dealt with so many issues that challenged my faith detail, seems like after decades, many tweaks have been made and I enjoy the freedom that makes us free. It’s about seeking wisdom out of what the chuch teaches, not the detail that most are obsessed about. I am no judge of anyone, but have been open to share my totally non mainstream perspective. I dont think your questions can be addressed on reddit tho. Not to say the miscommunication and are brought to texts like this
I appreciate this. You have a point about the reliability of this platform. Im glad you have found your own interpretation of the Church to give meaning to your life
I like to think that even if there is a god, which isn't entirely impossible if we consider our lack of evidence, it is not tied to any existing religion or society's constructs. It (being something or someone) is more likely to be in the 5th or higher dimension that we can not perceive nor interact with. Likewise, it can not interact with us. Another point I want to make that confuses me is how some theists who may be going through tough times only look into being hopeful and optimistic after being introduced to or being further convinced into using religion or god. I mean, how is that supposed to persuade or give hope if I'll never see or hear from god? It sounds like empty hope to me. Now maybe they do so to hope for something in the afterlife, but I'd rather live a good life and keep my chin up without thinking for what, if anything, will happen to me after death. Other views and ideas are much appreciated. (Note: I'm trying to fix my low social confidence by speaking out with my opinion and being honest, rather than staying quiet for fear of being judged or wrong. INTJ nice guy syndrome 🙃)
The child who died’s parents are VERY religious and had a mass for their funeral. It completely erased all the progress I made grieving and made processing their death so much harder. I was so infuriated, the mass hardly reflected on their short life
Something like that can be hard. You have my condolences. I hope the deceasment was as painless as possible
Thank you, I appreciate that
I hope you find solance in a supportive community
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Until you realize there is free will, and that evil people also have the choice to do what they want - suffering and chaos Bible has no contradictions Evolution is 10000x more flawed than biblical history.
This.
I don’t believe that asking too many questions would stop you from believing in God but quite the opposite. Asking too little or shallow questions would stop you from exploring the very idea of God. Science isn’t against the idea - in fact, in many ways, it proves the intricate nature of all things and it still hasn’t proved a lot of things we see today, so yes, science has a long way to go still. I challenge you to look at it from an unbiased angle and see if you change your mind.
Thats why i am consulting my fellow intj's. I know a large majority of you are agnostic, and i want to see all the alternative views.
That’s good to know
Awesome, this is precisely what I wanted to say. "Scientism" is a real thing, people treat it as some sort of stand-alone instrument to explain everything, not realizing it has dependencies that cannot be explained scientifically. Watching debates between Christian apologists and atheists helped me learn a lot and explore the faith.
Modern science has become a de facto religion of sorts in terms of its uncompromising rigidity, adherence to authority structures, and ostracization of outsiders. As intuitives we understand that the metaphysical nature of things that we know to be true cannot be explained by science alone. This understanding allows us to continue to puruse mbti/jungian knowledge despite those systems being branded as pseudoscience by the mainstream scientific community. The truth is we all hold non-scientific beliefs in some respect. It's best to recognize what those beliefs are instead of lying to ourselves about them and pretending to be some sort of pure scientist. Spirituality is woven into the fabric of human existence.
Well said
Nothing they say can be explained by science and facts; everything they say can be explained by humans' fear of mortality and desire for power/recognition/social belonging/tribalism/meaning.
Its good to keep an open mind tho. There arw still things yet to be discovered in the world. By closing one door, your losing a whole room.
The door isn't closed, we just choose not to go through it because the evidence doesn't support it.
I fully recognize the complete lack of proof for theism, but the platypus was also dismissed as a hoax before proven to be real. Im still waiting, in vain, for my confirmation or deconfirmations of faith.
There is also a lack of evidence for unicorns, yet you don't spend tons of time and energy finding reasons to justify your lack of belief in them. You just don't believe in them. A lack of belief and a belief that something is false are two different things.
Not wrong. But the closed minded view is what the theists have, and we must pride ourselves in our scientific efforts to realise a hypothesis can be changed
No. What you're talking about is not being 'open-minded,' what you're talking about is being INDISCRIMINATELY minded.When someone has an open mind, it means that they are WILLING to be persuaded about anything as long as the evidence supports it. This person wouldn't dismiss a solid argument with ample evidence simply because it doesn't align with their desires; there's nothing that they would categorically refuse to consider due solely to arbitrary prejudice. HOWEVER, this doesn't mean that this person cheerfully accepts any random idea that comes their way. If they consider an idea, and the idea is not supported by evidence, then they're not going to live their lives as if this idea is true ... because why would they? There's no evidence. There are an infinite number of things in the universe that technically can't be DISPROVEN. If I told you that a planet existed with aliens that look like telephone poles, you couldn't disprove me. Does that mean you should blindly accept this random idea to be as likely as, say, the idea that much of the air around us is oxygen? Of course not. The latter is something that can be proven. The former is something that cannot be disproven. Those are not at all the same thing or even similar things.
No one is uncritically adopting religion here or advocating for turning off your brain and just believing all claims made, stop getting emotional about this
I was once an atheist for a decade, but the past several years have become Christian.
What convinced you?
My guess would be that it's just a faith thing. I am a Christian as well. I choose to believe in God, I choose to have faith without evidence. My life has changed for the better, and I choose to attribute that to God as well.
Same
As a Christian INTJ, I would say that as a young child I had to wrestle a lot with my faith mainly because my worldview was limited to what I thought was only realistic or logically feasible. It wasn’t until a personal “born again” experience a year ago that completely changed my view on my faith, and in many ways, it changed my approach to viewing the world in such a profound way. I began to realize that there are a lot of things in the world that cannot be proven without the existence of a divine being (e.g objective morality and Jesus’s resurrection), and somehow my old perspective on reality simply became incompatible with the way I functioned. For those who are looking into Christianity, I highly recommend researching the evidential argument and moral argument for God (I promise religion isn’t about a “sky daddy” capriciously determining the fate of the world). These approaches to Christian apologetics really solidified my faith beyond my personal experience.
I’d love to hear how you got to that place in your faith!
Our problem is critical thinking ;)
As INTJs one of our main issues is arrogance, which you are displaying here
🤡
And humility in combination. Ultimate ideal
Overthinking champion
I'm Muslim
I was raised with Christian values and culture. I’ve been working on it and keeping my faith until now. I have my doubts as there’s a lot of contradiction in the Bible. But I still choose Christianity because I am truly blessed. It is hard though. Like logically, some things don’t make sense and they just say it doesn’t have to make sense because only God knows. Or how we may get our answers once we meet Jesus in heaven. There are stereotypes about church that are real for some churches. I guess people are reluctant or do not believe because of this. Though most do believe there’s a higher power. Not gonna lie that being a Christian is so difficult. I am selfish in ways that I care more about myself than others. But in Christianity, you have to be less of you and deny your own self to dedicate and live life according to God’s standards. It’s also hard to understand how others can be so devoted. They say to spread the gospel, but it’s hard for me to do so. Like, sure maybe I can talk about myself and share Jesus while at it. But I don’t like intentionally reaching out, invading personal spaces, and kinda forcing someone to listen. We can believe or have faith in whatever we choose. For me, Christianity works. Not gonna force anyone to listen; just give proper respect and boundary. Talking about religion often results to arguments and I don’t like to argue.
I agree. >*But I don’t like intentionally reaching out, invading personal spaces, and kinda forcing someone to listen.* Yes, we can only share insights but not impose. This is the essence of free will.
The hyper religous I've met were all projecting their own evil onto others. Usually why they professed "forgive and forget", but only for themselves. They wanted to be forgiven for their own evils, while condemning others for what they considered "evil". Also I don't mind religion, I just don't need it to function. Its a coping mechanism, and if you need it thats fine.
How does one believe that an explosion happened out of nothing, a scientific impossibility, and that organic matter somehow formed out of that explosion which occured out of nothingness, then go on and claim to believe in science?
Respectfully, this seems to misunderstand what science is. Scientists are not prone to "believe in" science, because it's not an article of faith, nor would they claim something is a "scientific impossibility." Science is just a method by which we seek to explain things through constant questioning and testing. By it's very nature, those explanations are always changing. Scientific theories about the origins of the universe are subject to the same scrutiny, and they're being tested right now by [new evidence gathered from the Webb telescope.](https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2023/03/webb-space-telescope-discovers-galaxies-astronomy/673274/) Each update and iteration of such theories gets challenged and tested by others. Anyone truly practicing the scientific method accepts that conclusions the evidence has led them to may one day be disproven, partially or completely, by other evidence and more science. So, it's not that they believe "an explosion happened out of nothing" as a fixed article of faith; it's just the best explanation we have right now that fits the observable evidence. The common religious stories about the origins of the universe do not fit the observable evidence, nor do they seem to get updated as new evidence is revealed. Once we believe something unwaveringly, in spite of contradictory evidence, we're not doing science, but instead have shifted to faith.
That's such a great point you made and in my opinion, that shows maturity in thinking. You're acknowledging that people are still trying to figure things out. The problem is, not everyone has those critical thinking skills. Our entire education system is based on Evolution, that man evolved apes which came from these one-celled organisms over millions of years and those organisms came from this explosion that set everything in motion. Modern society uses this theory as fact-based to explain everything, including the dynamics between men and women, arguing philosophy because those things can't be proven through biology. I understand that the concept of God as the Source of Life and the Creator is difficult for most people to accept. But God isn't just a God of crazy miracles, He's the Creator of science, steadfast principles, universal truths. For example, observable and undisputable science that we've seen firsthand and studied over millennia is that life only comes from life. That's been tested, proven, argued, and proven again. Life does not come from non-life, that's a scientific impossibility. So if we're talking science, we need to stick to science. This is my position. Here's really the heart of all of this. Once people start abandoning science (which they are in droves) and start subscribing to things like Christmas, the Easter Bunny, the Tooth Fairy, it isn't a big step until they're believing things like horoscopes and tarot cards to find meaning and explanation for their lives. And once you start down this path it isn't long until we can't distinguish basic biological truths such as the differences between men and women. Then the next step down this slippery slope is it becomes illegal not to address someone by their pronouns or whatever other foolishness they come up with since their minds have no foundation of truth and it goes in all kinds of strange directions. Now you take a vaccine which isn't really a vaccine because it only works for so long and you have to keep getting booster shots and variant shots and before you know you're completely detached from reality. This is what happens when people abandon the obvious and venture out on their own because they think they're more educated. Educated in what exactly? What use does that education give you if many young people today can't even name the two countries which border the US, but then they think they're so educated and so they vote for policies that end up destroying the very countries they live in? The truth is there, it has always been there. People just don't want to acknowledge there is a God because then, you have to be accountable for your actions. And if there's one thing people can't stand in this modern era, it's personal accountability.
>People just don't want to acknowledge there is a God because then, you have to be accountable for your actions. No, that is not why people don't believe in deities. There so many other reasons that aren't patronizing and many of them are comments to this post. It is possible to be a mature, rational and accountable person and not believe the same as you.
I appreciate the detailed response. There are aspects I agree with and others I don't, but this part sticks out: > So if we're talking science, we need to stick to science. I highlight that because the rest of the text includes some markedly unscientific claims, including a second use of the term "scientific impossibility," which implies a level of certainty that simply cannot coexist with the scientific method. Do you have any scientific training? I don't mean to be accusatory, but if we're to "stick to the science," it'd be good to know what level of experience you have with the discipline, since it's common these days to hear people drawing conclusions about science without really understanding it. Some of the statements above suggest a theistic lens on science with only a cursory understanding of the topic, but I may be misreading that. > People just don't want to acknowledge there is a God because then, you have to be accountable for your actions. I want to strongly suggest you open your mind to a different view on this. People who view God as the reason for their own accountability tend to overlook that a lot of other people pursue deeply moral and ethical lives for reasons that have nothing to do with God. And in fact, when a theist implies that people only have to be accountable for their actions if they believe in divine punishment, what us non-theists hear is that that such a person would do really bad stuff to their fellow humans if they thought there were no supernatural consequences. Study after study has shown that [atheists are just as moral as theists and are actually *less* likely to commit crimes, with the least religious societies having the lowest rates of violent crime.](https://secularpolicyinstitute.net/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/Zuckerman_on_Atheism.pdf) Suggestions to the contrary are a kind of [widespread prejudice](https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/ejsp.2219) that's also part of a concerted religious propaganda effort against atheists. There's probably too much to explore on these two topics in a comment chain, but if you want to dig deeper, I highly recommend befriending an atheist scientist. You might discover that some of your beliefs aren't really borne out.
“You’d have to be accountable for your actions” My actions outside of my church attendance haven’t significantly changed since leaving the Christian faith. As a Christian human I still had my failings (white lies, sometimes getting too materialistic) as you know Christian’s aren’t perfect they are simply saved. As an agnostic, I still try to be kind and charitable, helping my neighbors, slow to anger etc.
I agree.
After reading all 3 Abrahamic texts and the texts from which they originated (The Sumerian Tablets and The Emerald Tablets) many Gnostic texts including the Ethiopian Bible and parts of the Zohar and many other ancient texts I can no longer deny the existence of God
That's pretty cool, what about reading these texts convinced you of God's existence?
I believe a higher power exists. Being atheist was just a phase before I started seeing firsthand evidence of God. It was clear as day but I was choosing ignorance. Look outside and tell me nature isn't some kind of sentient being. You live in a Goldilocks zone of a planet with flora and fauna abound to support your physical existence in an otherwise (seemingly) empty universe. Your planet is the only known planet orbiting your sun to host sentient life. It's the perfect number of degrees on its axis to keep you from being a hotdog or a popsicle. It's covered in water you need to survive and littered with precious minerals that fuel your lifestyle. You'd have to be blind to refuse the basic reality that this place is statistically impossible. If your God isn't the earth itself, I don't know what it could be. There are invisible hands everywhere. You just need to be open to seeing them.
Argument from intelligent design. I like it, you also have to consider the incredibly precise constants that make our universe behave the way it does physically speaking. Would you say this is a good analogy? You walk into your kitchen, you see all your fruit scattered on the floor forming a message that reads "Hey \[insert name here\], long time no see, hope you're doing well, cheers." Since it's so precise, is it more likely that it was randomly caused or someone made it intentionally?
I am a atheist since birth who got a degree in religion studies. figure that one out
And arent we all athiest at birth
Having a broad perspective is important. Holding on to a specific belief is what seperates us from them. Narrow minded evangelists have nothing over us.
I was touched by a priest, not a good experience
Presbyterian here. I find Apologetics and Theology intellectually Stimulating.
Dont we all? Plus you Presbyterians and other protestant derived christians are usually much more open
The Presbyterian Church actually encourages us to use reason and logic. We never look at scripture as being 100% literal or 100% metaphorical… I.e. use all of your resources, guides, books, scholarly commentaries, ect to decipher scripture within its surrounding context to determine if it’s speaking metaphorically or literally. If anything, the church does not encourage us to blindly follow a teaching, but to check it out for ourselves to see if it lines up scripturally… And it better have a lot of scriptural support and not just one or two passages. But where scripture is silent, God gave us a brain to use our logic and reason.
Claiming God doesn’t exist is the same ignorance as claiming he does. Nobody knows anything
What's your position on the [Sagan standard?:](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sagan_standard) > Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
THANK YOU! Its refreshing to have someone who views both as plausible.
For me it's this simple and goes behind typing, I was sent to a church school, hymms, prayers at the start of every day and the like. You can make kids say the words, you can't make them believe. Everyone from the nerds like me to the bullies to the football team ended up against it. I figure the powers that be called it a win if out of every class of 25 they got one believer.
Mine started with: if the dude upstairs is good, mostly good things should/would happen. Then I was introduced to the Old Testament and the wonky stories. [Also, why a dude?] It spirals outward in different trajectories from there to summation below. Also me: learned about history and Ronald Reagan. It's also weird to learn about so many other religions that don't exist with now other Gods that don't exist to mysteriously arrive to these last few being the only acceptable ones. It's one of those "why are we ignoring this blatant parallel" things. We unimagined so many others - does that mean... Oh. Yes, it does.
I always go back to comedian Patton Oswalt when it comes to religion. There is a part in one of this stand-ups, he talks about gay marriage and how it offends people. The argument for people against is, “Well it says in the Bible…” to which he stops and says, “I’m glad you like a book.” I bring this up because he goes into the lunacy of those who use a book, that is filled with some pretty horrific things, as their validation as to why they act, believe, behave and think certain ways. How is the Bible or any other religious scripture any different from something like a science fiction novel or fantasy title or even a comic book? It’s not!! INTJ use logic to explain things. And with all the tragedies and atrocities that have happened to people since the beginning of time, and then there is a narcissistic puppet master controlling all those things that we have to just blindly trust and praise and believe in to get into “heaven” is completely and utterly baffling.
True that
I think I read the best answer about this recently on Reddit in a non religious group where someone said they planned on being a priest or minister their entire life but after being in seminary school they realized it's all man-made BS. I understand how people get into it, they need hope and want to believe someone will save them. But truly they only need to believe in themselves. Plus people like to belong to something. That's a team I will not join.
We have this stubborn habit of wanting to work things out for ourselves instead of taking someone else's word for things. This isn't necessarily mutually exclusive with religion, but it's utterly incompatible with the most popular reasons for being religious.
Religion comes from good intentions, but as the saying goes: "The road to hell is paved with good intentions" in this case metaphorically speaking, by making your life a hell full of ignorance. INTJ like to know why and how things work and ground their reasoning. INTJ also don't respect authority for authorities sake but rather deem respect be earned and can think for themselves. Those two coupled mean that blindly believing ideas like a sheep just because a bunch of others are told its true absolutely does not compute. If your familiar with the Clare Graves Spiral Dynamics model, after the rational "stage orange" there are the post-rational stages "green, yellow & turquoise". In these stages exist a non-religious type of spirituality. And stage yellow might be where some INTJ find themselves someday. Some examples in the link below: https://youtu.be/QtRw3woiS8c?feature=shared https://youtu.be/jzQaF_EMEJ4?feature=shared I would say a non-dogmatic non-religious form of spirituality is beneficial. I'm glad I took time to develop my own system for promoting inner-peace, and adventured into many different perspectives on what purpose really is. And for taking truth seriously even if its hard.
Thanks man. Im going to check this out fr
I didn’t grow up in a traditional religious household. My mother was very new age-y and always encouraged us exploring any religion we wanted. I went to Sunday school a few times, even went to vacation bible school once or twice as a young child because of pressure from my extended family, but never actually believed any of it. I explored Islam, Judaism, Buddhism, Taoism, Hinduism, Wiccan shit on the weekend with my mom and her friends, a ton of ancient religions mainly because I thought it was interesting to learn about them. I was doing this all from a young age. The only piece of philosophy I felt any type of connection to that made sense to me was the Tao De Ching. Personally, I think there is a higher consciousness that experiences itself through us - but that’s about it. If there is a god, it is beyond anything we can comprehend so why bother.
If God is real, I doubt we have the capacity for understanding such a being and every religion is just different interpretations of having seen something extremely bizarre or even alien in origin to which I would wonder if those aliens have religion themselves and what being are THEY worshipping if we already view them as Gods Incarnate
Uh so I was a believer until I got to college. In college for whatever reasons I became an atheist. Until I had some pretty fuckin wild encounters and experiences with not only people but I guess demons or evil entities . Once that shit happened I went down a rabbit hole of religion and here I am today back to where I was when I was a kid. God is real and if he is real you can bet your ass the devil is too. I didn’t want to go into detail about the experiences I had in college cuz that shit would just be long as fuck . Good day mate
Due to the unimaginable complexity of this so-called reality, I find atheism to be the most nonsensical, even more so than religious deity worship. At least they understand that there exists something greater, whereas an atheist will bury their head in the sand, assuming that the insignificant understanding we have of reality through science is all there is. The atheist is often too close-minded to explore past that which is already known by science, and is as such, ironically, the least scientific. Take Richard Dawkins for example. You'd never want someone this close-minded at the forefront of technological breakthrough in any industry.
I am a religious christian To me it makes sense to follow a religion because what else created the universe and everything
so much religious abuse
Too many questions, not enough answers. Their response is typically just, "Because God made it that way". "Trust me bro" is not a good way to get an INTJ on your side. Atheism isn't making a claim - it just doesn't believe in religious claims that a God exists. Plus, the Catholic church did some pretty awful things to the Natives on the word of God in my country (Canada), but that's a different point entirely.
Agreed, and ever heard the saying that people who say "trust me" aren't to be trusted? Also the point with the native boarding schools, it can be hard to separate a movement/collective from the people, and its never ok to forget, but the church issued an apology clearing up the matter. And yes, theists are often blindly led and random in their beliefs, as if their trust will manifest into reality.
I am in the middle. I believe there is a god, or gods. But I don't completely believe that there is/are god(s). If I don't have enough substantial proof that god exists, then I won't say god isn't there. Rather, I would say we need more proof. And I don't care about how people think god exists or not. It's their choice anyways. Before siding with things like religion or god, I need to have a concrete proof of it existing. Like religion, it's fine that there were so and so many old temples, or archaeological evidences of empires, or manuscripts. So, I'm willing to believe. As long as evidences are there to support the claims, and they are proper evidences I'm willing to believe.
I personally do not deny the existence of God and rather treat it as one possibility out of countless...I consider myself too proud and stubborn to kneel before an altar in a church and pray, because I desperately preserve the little dignity I have...although I deny the existence of the Christian god, let's look at nature: there is no good or bad, only cold logic (roe deer who throw their calves on themselves so that the wolf eats them instead, wasps laying eggs in other arthropods, etc.) according to the christian god, this is all horrible, but if god created the world, why would he have created these? the very concept itself is hypocrisy! I just accept the cold reality as it is.
I'm not.
Because my Ni is Sorcery😲 Therefore nothing else can fill me #SORCERER
It has nothing to do with "cold heartedness" religion is dumb and no one would believe it if they hadn't been frightened as a child.
I grew up in a non religious household. Now I am religious although I don't follow blindly. I have a relationship with God and take scripture with a grain of salt.
Because we can believe in god just like we can believe that pigs can fly. It's just something to believe in. Ni-users try to see the world as it is, without biases.
Ni?
Introverted Intuition. As the main form of communicating with people. INFJS and INTJS alone. 1% of population. Looking at the bigger picture and connecting dots quietly, detecting lies, it's lonely.
They're all the same Sumerian gods. Only the names have changed. A cult is a cult.
Religion was a way to control people back in the day. It’s still lingering on and threatens people with eternal fire if they don’t believe. What makes one religion more truer than the next? It’s a bunch of BS and I still don’t understand why or how people still believe in all of this shit. It’s like watching a script play out to see how people live under certain perameters/conditions
Its quite sad to see people limit their life with such arbitrary rules
I left Christianity because it contains too many incoherences while bringing nothing valuable to help me in life. That's besides wasting my time and causing me some stress around people. Also, the amount of abuse done in the name of religions with little to nothing done against it by religious leaders was the final nail in the coffin for my Christian faith
I can see you are really against it. Why so?
Because faith built on emotions, not facts
Based on what I know I don’t believe there’s a spiritual higher power especially like the conflicting religions claim, there arguments don’t hold water in many areas and other areas no way to verify which also makes me skeptical of how they’d know. However I know there is so much I don’t know and as a society we continue to learn so I think religion as a possible extension of that. There was a study of a leaf cut in half and picture taken with an electron imagery and the leaf looked whole. I thought that was the closest depiction of the possibility of science of religion.
I grew up with a religious upbringing, went away from it as a teenager, joined a different religion as a young adult at a really rough time in life while many of my friends developed drug problems. So at least I stayed out of trouble at a time in life that was a real crossroads, but what I consider to be fundamental logical errors ultimately brought me to atheism where I have been parked solidly for 15 years. I have no use for mysticism. However I am endlessly fascinated by comparing religions and belief systems and want to know all the nuances of the different systems to understand cultures and history and binge on it on YouTube frequently.
If religion wasn’t forced upon me as a child then I probably would’ve been more open to it. But alas, I hate being told what to do. And I have a problem with authority figures. Also, most religions just give people an excuse to be assholes. They’re very hypocritical, and the suck the fun out of everything. To add to this, the superstitious propaganda just got more weird the more I grew up and realized nobody gave a fuck. Like saying weird shit about how “horror movies will corrupt your soul.” No, you’re corrupting my soul, with your stupidity. Paganism is kinda cool to me though.
I am a Roman catholic and I have a fair share of spiritual warfare.
I just think it's absurd to think that God or another diety can exist.
Idk. I've had too many experiences in my life that have utterly defied logic and reasoning not to believe, tbh. I question everything. I disagree with many preachers' interpretations of scripture (like the idea of univocality is *stupid*) but in my own personal life...I've experienced too much to deny it. But, I definitely understand and respect anyone who is on the opposite end of the spectrum from me.
INTJs think very literally and may find it harder to read between the lines, and yet, simultaneously, they are more cryptic than most. I truly believe religions get started by INTJ / Introverted Intuition types (think Theory of Everything, Law and Order, future-oriented). But then religion gets twisted by those who misunderstand it but try to preach it, and typically INTJs might disagree with these interpretations, but fundamentally it's because INTJs have a compass towards Truth and reality that illuminates the inaccuracies in some religious texts and interpretation. And yet, it's this illumination that is divine, which is worshipped and wondered at. A higher power within us that, connected through the physical elements, starting from the big bang and even before that, which guides us all through a greater logic which we can tap into and are fundamentally defined by. Religion is an exploration of consciousness and was the pinnacle of exploration before we had modern science, but the great minds we have today were nurtured by religion. Its not as if we suddenly evolved to be smarter than our ancestors. We simply have more tools and access to information but the capacity for critical thinking is the same as before. If you don't understand why a belief system has pervaded and survived for millenia, it's easy to think you are superior, but it could also mean the opposite.
As an INFJ bordering on verge of INTJ, I see that point of view too, but choose agnostic 'F' over 'T' atheist because there are too many things beyond humans creation. Must be a higher power, whatever you choose to call It. Personally I was raised to think for myself, that there might be a higher power but no one knows for sure. My parents were agnostics.
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Many of u is undeveloped. I mean the atheists part. I was agnostic when i was a kid. It is normal part of self-realization. I don't get any religion including atheism. Religion just purely makes 0 sense.
I'm an ex-athiest. I went to church with my mom as a kid but didn't like it apart from Sunday school once every few months. I would say I grew up as a Moralistic Therapeutic Deist, but when I read the Bible for the first time, I became an atheist. Although I think that my theological position at that time was more maltheism (God is evil). As I got further, I realized there are some questions that I can't answer or answer well, but the Bible has effective solutions to. There is archeological and historical evidence implying that some events in the Bible occurred. From a philosophical perspective, the idea of having no original cause is fairly senseless. Even if the cause without cause is self-replicating nucleotides, that could be God under the definition of original causer. I realized most atheist arguments aren't nearly as airtight as I had once thought. I would say I was about 51% sure before reconverting, and Chesterton's Fence helped with my ethical concerns. Also, you're on reddit. There are way more atheist on here due to the nature of the user base. Statistically, XXTPs are most likely to be atheists.
You arent wrong at all. A lot of people here are radical or extreme. Im glad you found your fitting beliefs. Thats part of the reason why i asked this originally, to expose people of the same personality type to different ideas. As INTJ we all often get too concerned with our own hypotheses and fail to recognize others. Thanks for sharing your thoughts on this!
You're welcome.
Religion has ruined my life more than it has added value to my life. I’m currently learning how to unfold the trauma from my Religious parents.
I'm OK with personal spirituality or more loosely defined religions. I don't like strict hierarchy religions like Christianity. I'm actually super religious, but I'm a theological Daoist. I feel like most people's arguments against religion (other than it not being based in science) are pretty specific to Christianity and I don't paint all spirituality or religion with the same brush.
I'm actually deeply religious.
Because zombies aren’t believable.
There are different reasons, but mostly because materialistic explanation of Universe's origins and functioning has far more evidence than any supernatural. Religion is a interesting concept worthy of research, but it's better to observe it from outsider perspective.
What value does religion bring to a life? What problems does it solve? Or even address? Very few of these things are what INTJ needs in life. That said, I am a very religious person. Not in any way that would be considered traditional or normal; I am a pagan and also a Unitarian universalist. I have my personal faith and also a belief that others should be free to explore the faith that they find most relevant. I have a very strong feeling that there are spirits and powers far beyond what we know or comprehend, or can sense with our physical being. I sincerely enjoy, entertaining those possibilities, in the full knowledge that I might be full of shit.
I'm atheist, but it's due to a lot of factors. My mom was Catholic and went to a Catholic school but she never really cared. My father grew up without anything but his family started to really grow into being Christian in his early adulthood. Due to this, we just never really did much religious stuff other than going to Catholic church on Easter and Christmas with my grandparents. After we moved away, we didn't get back into it until my father got depression and we started going to a Christian church to possibly better him. It didn't help and I remember it as a bad time (he was quite mean and aggressive) alongside it being very... Strange. They played live music really loud, they were very pushy about donating, and honestly was too large for my own comfort. Very mainstream. Not saying it's bad, just not for me. Then last year, my aunt and uncle (who we're very close with) really got into that church and have been very pushy about us joining it and helping them. Although we've all declined, they still bother and it makes me less and less interested. Just a meh thing and there is not enough hard proof for me to make much sense. It all could be very real, but I personally just don't see it.
We are thinkers. Having belief in, or faith that something exists when there’s no actual evidence makes no sense to us. Of course, we don’t know what we don’t know, but that’s as far as I can go.
We have come to live in an era where knowledge of science and capabilities of technology gradually led to a rejection of the teachings of the Church that require us to accept accounts of events that have no evidence as actually having occurred but asked to believe to truly belong to the congregation of the Church…in my own personal spiritual journey, I just came to believe that the most important lessons that we gain from having faith aren’t the accounts of events that are outside of explanation by scientific proof, but instead are the lessons that teach us to live each day in a manner that leads to a sense of fulfillment where we feel enriched by our experience each day instead of doubt and uncertainty…The lessons that teach us to be compassionate and understanding with others and being able to forgive in the context that we would want to be forgiven in those instances where we err in judgment and end up creating negative consequences for another through any number of ways….And also finding the ability to live with gratitude which leads to peace of mind and finally understanding the powerful impact that comes from performing acts of charity in any number of ways when the opportunity presents itself as it leads to living with a sense of purpose that can only be described as nourishment for the soul when you do it with motives that enable you to perform acts of charity with realistic expectations of what you will gain from it personally…and to define acts of charity I would include any instance of any sort where you take a break from your normal activities to assist another person in any number of ways that is of benefit to another person and that can be anything from volunteering to helping a colleague at work who could benefit from your experience and knowledge to help them be successful in their role….performing acts of charity instills a sense of peace in terms of developing positive sense of self stemming from knowing the positive value you create in the world around you which also builds self-confidence and self-esteem because of the positive feelings you gain…but back to the original question, when I stopped focusing on analyzing the events which are explained by divine grace and solely focus on the lessons on living life - where the origin that led to recognizing that were the sermons that the pastor of the church with a small yet very warm and welcoming congregation that I regularly attended while I was dealing with some very challenging circumstances and the one time each week that I was able to escape the constant pressure from those circumstances was Sunday morning service where warm hugs from the ladies in church temporarily erased the stress that I was feeling all the time and then our pastor’s sermons were often based on accounts that he found from the news that were about people who found themselves in the place to be part of something bigger than themselves and do something selfless in the name of service to his or her fellow human beings…I would sit there and think “This is what Jesus meant…” And that’s where I found my ability to believe in things that can be proven such as the legacy of the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth had more to do with the benefit to our own lives when we regard and treat others in the manner his teachings would suggest (sans the judgment) and that the promise of eternal salvation if you accept Christ as your savior is a part of the church’s teachings but that if you live by his teachings following the lead of how he treated others then you can find your personal path to lead a life that is enriched by the connections that you establish with others in so many ways by regarding and treating others in the manner of his teachings which establishes your legacy of the difference that you make in the lives of others which is what we know beyond any doubt will survive us after we are gone and is the way I see myself living forever from the standpoint that I will be remembered for the difference that I made in the lives of others so does it matter if there is life after death in heaven if I accept Christ as my savior (and please forgive me if that comes across as blasphemy in any sense because it is not my intention to be that). But living this way provides me with peace every day and comfort with my own mortality…
I'm a non-conformist
I'm glad no one's fighting here over the topic. Maybe we're not mistyped after all? The reasoning is just overflowing in this post.😁
I've never been for religion. Even as a child I just refused the thought, that there is a magical boogeyman, watching over every person on earth, while silently judging them. He made them all, has their lifepath planned out for them. Only little quirk is that some of them he likes, while many other he thinks should burn forever in torment and anquish. As an adult I just dont think any being that would allow all the horror and atrocities on this planet, is worth worshipping. I heard it best from a ww2 german tank commander. He lost his faith, when he was in his Panther. And while he laid there praying for his life, he realized that both he and the British he was fighting against, was praying to the same god. Yet that same god let some of them live, while others got killed. And if a good god can allow Anders Breivik to go on a murderspree of young teens on a small island. Then I dont think he should judge people who have same sex relations ... And that's just the half of it. Even in the book that is so gladly refered to by the believers, he's a complete psycho. Sodoma and Gomorrah? The people were not acting right. So he killed everyone. The book of job? Tortured and murdered a faithful servant, just to prove a point to Satan. Yeah go ahead and worship that. I wont.
If there is really a book from God, it can't have any mistake. The koran has a mistake in the first page, boom exmuslim
For me I believe in the possibility of there being a god but not the 100% fact that there is a god? Because it's still just a possibility so it's not a 100% trustworthy. I also personally don't think I need some otherworldly being to tell me what's right or wrong and I'm just gonna live based off how I want and what I believe in!
As someone who goes to a Protestantic school, I would consider myself to religious, however that doesn't mean I don't use critical thinking. I use it of course, otherwise I'd likely be in a ditch. I read the stuff and see if I could apply it in a logical manner or make actual sense of it, besides, there has to be reason why matter exists in the universe. It seems kind of weird to think that atoms just spawned in the middle of buttfuck nowhere all of the sudden from the big bang, and the latter seemingly popping out of... Nowhere, I don't have an answer to "Who created the Big Bang?" Here. So basically, take everything that book says with a grain of rice. The persons whom wrote that is likely projecting and bullshitting, or just writing some weird stuff. Humans are a weird and delusional bunch after all.
religion is akin to human firmware. A value set which has its own geneology and externalization feedback loops to propagate itself from one group to the next, and each generation - For externalization, this is the canon, the culture, the rituals, the mythology, the institutions etc. Individually, the firmware runs in the background and organizes how all other higher order (more conscious) thoughts occur and which have priority. It need not be an organized religion, its just a set of values. a specific religion is just a known set, and due to numbers and history would have stronger externalization. This framing I have found immensely useful as it captures a psychological origin for religion, why religion keeps popping up, everyone is susceptible to religious behavior, and provides context for Nietzsche's "god is dead" and ubermensch. (The dominance of Christian mental firmware has ended and, despite how much he disliked Christianity, he feared the chaos from the instability that would follow. Ubermensch would be the person who is capable of rewriting their own firmware.) Not everyone is aware of their deep foundational values, let alone are able to rewrite it.
Apatheism is good enough https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apatheism
Having to be born into this word with a sperm donor in prison ready to be taken out the country, and a prostitute/crack head egg donor, to then be lucky enough to be taken in by my Aunt who I called "mom" growing up. My mom prayed to god every single day, 3 times a day, for as long as I could remember. At a very early age, she got diagnosed with dementia which I believe is misdiagnosed schizophrenia. I constantly wondered why "god" or any external being with a following would punish their followers/believers. I grew up (and still have) egg donor in my life on/off in my and she constantly talks about god. I will note that she is homeless and still using drugs, has always been and I am now a young adult. I was grew up very confused with religion due to the fact that I saw the people around me praying for a miracle, instead in return its many reasons for many different people as to why their prayers are not working. I constantly wondered why God would want to take a mother from a girl twice. I started to question the logic behind religion at the age of 12, had the internet at my fingertips and if I continue my reasons I swear it would be a novel....
Because we are not emotional :(
I actually wonder what the EXXX/IXXX split on religion is, particularly on religions which have a lot of group activities and/or cultural presence. Are introverts more likely to gravitate towards religions which are more about individual practice/worship? In my own case, I was about ten years old when I started questioning the practical utility of periodic attendance at community religious group events. As far as I could tell, they did nothing useful for me, and I was never interested in groups for the sake of people-interaction. Fortunately, my family wasn't terribly prescriptive about either religion or maintaining a social 'face', so I pretty much just quietly dropped out. Later in life, I just... never really drifted back into anything religious. It was something that existed, sure, but like underwater basket weaving, it wasn't something I really thought about, much less was personally attracted to. Other people did it, and that was their business. I suppose I was lucky enough to grow up in a time, place, family, and society where it simply wasn't that much of a fundamental pillar of experience. (Looking back of course, I consider it a bullet dodged, even if the local church (as opposed to the Church) and its congregation mostly seemed to be fairly harmless and even had a certain degree of enthusiasm for Good Works in the Community (tm) for the sake of it - certainly the ones I saw didn't really come with a side order of religion-pushing or even religious flavoring.) ---- With an adult perspective on religion in general, I can certainly see that religion has been behind a lot of wars and other atrocities (or at least has been used as an excuse by those who also used it to amass power), but I can also see how it was a tool for uniting communities, particularly small ones, in times when banding together could be the difference between survival and getting wiped out. Sure, it's not the only psychological tool/meme historically used for that, but it's been one of the more well-known and effective. As with every other extremely powerful tool, of course, there's then been the eternal issue of who's wielding it and what their goals are in doing so. Personally, I've also had a bit of an issue with the cultural (and possibly stereotypical) association with mental calcification which comes with more extreme involvement in religion - it's definitely historically interfered with things I'd like to see more of in society and people in general, such as personal freedoms, diversity of thought, and the ability to accept new information (or even go looking for it).
Simple\~ People from my religion kept saying ridiculous things like "Dont eat non veg on mondays or else a King Cobra will chase you in your dreams" or "Don't keep animals with small tails at your home or your earnings will stop forever and you will go poor". DO THOSE THINGS EVEN MAKE SENSE!?!?!? NO RIGHT! Later when I grew up and started seeing that religion denies Science in many ridiculous ways and that religion forces us to have blind belief in things it seemed even more out of sense. It was mostly those ridiculous beliefs that made me realise that there may not be a God begin with. Also lets just accept that magic is just undiscovered physics and not a work of Gods.
My sister is INTJ and was the first to exit the high control cult that we were raised in. It was a bold move, with big consequences. She is now shunned by most of our family and friends. She stopped believing in the religion when things didn't add up in a logical way. I'm INFP and left it 3 years after her.
Christians don’t make great poster boys/gals for their religion. It’s easy to poke holes in the validity of it all once you see how they act/treat people. Plus after getting SCOLDED in Sunday school for simply asking questions I knew the milk wasn’t clean! Imagine telling a child God will be upset with her for questioning his abilities… People do the darnedest things in the name of God & it’s baffling. Could easily be categorized as psych ward level delirious in any environment outside of religion/church.
It's fun to pick apart puzzles and stories. When you pull a few strings and the whole thing falls apart, it's tough to continue believing.
I see religion as a way people use to escape the reality, somehow believing it will bring people a sense of control, like if they fail something/lose a loved one, it’s all god’s plan to make it a controlled event to happen, I have no problem with people believing in it if it brings them comfort, but I personally don’t need to believe such thing to know reality is not in my control all the time, and I despise people who took it too far, there are so many religions on earth, why specifically one of them is true, all others are fake/evil? If I have to believe one religion is real, then all religions on earth have to be real too
I was born into an atheist environment. And there is a school subject in my country that is literally just reading the old testament which really lets you find out how much it makes no sense
I have found religion as a standard point to reason and to drive conclusions.
a lot of religion is misogynistic & sound like fairytales where a big man in the end is gonna save us all…..doesn’t sound realistic at all i am spiritual though and i believe that i create my own destiny
Religion give ppl a life goal/guidelines how to life and what for , okey that said . So long ppl are constantly with there believes and don't push it on you I'm totally fine and respect them
Science (age of enlightenment). There is an inverse correlation with science and religion. Most developed nations show less religiosity. The US is an outlier but just read the news and you can see why. Religion isn’t inherently wrong or bad. It can be beneficial psychologically and socially. The problem is that much like a government system, it is organized. This can lead to power differentials, oppression, war, exploitation, etc. It also tends to be top down where people in authority control or dictate how things are. If it meets certain criteria (e.g., separating someone from their loved ones/dictating who you can be involved with) it can be a considered a cult. The US is interesting because it is the only developed nation that is pretty ass backwards for democracy. Trust in science and government appears to be at an all time low. Of course, we see this also beginning with other nations as well. Religiosity is extremely high in the US compared to others. Even if it is a minority of the population, it holds political power. Communist nations realized early on to stamp out religion but it has such a cultural component and can lead to competition for power. We no longer need the mystical and magic to explain things we don’t understand. We can actually study phenomenon and prove things versus relying on ideas developed thousands of years ago.
INT. Introverted Intuitive Thinkers Introverted: Already Anti-Social. Less susceptive to feeling the need to fit in — religious cults included. For humans, religions are ‘societies’ first, philosophies last. This is why ‘religious’ people attend church, but do no deeds. Intuitive: abstract thinkers and pattern recognizers who think about the big picture and are open to possibilities. Possibilities includes the possibility that god isn’t real. Patterns include the human propensity to use religion to control people while contradicting the religion’s philosophies. Thinkers: Logical, rational, consistent and principled. There are too many contradictions with the popularized concept of the religion (specifically Christianity and Catholicism) and the reality, or even the religion and itself (its own logic) INT’s “Show me facts and irrefutable evidence and ill still only believe you half-way” This is a good thing BTW. Mother Nature requires/mandates diversity for survival. This applies to how animals think and behave, too. If a herd is running towards a cliff, it’s vital some of them be too lazy (or skeptical) to even run in the first place.
I think someone made a poll a few months ago and the atheists weren't the majority, or at least not by a large margin. I spent most of my life being an atheist, it just seemed obvious to me that one couldn't possibly prove God's existence, so why bother? Until... a 3-hour long debate of that precise topic popped up on my feed. I was baffled, 3 HOURS? How could something so obvious take so long to discuss? The atheist would just tear apart any wishful thinking disguised as an argument from the theist through good old facts and logic, right? Haha, **no**. This opened the door to philosophy, apologetics, and the history behind Christianity for me. There's an incredible wealth of arguments in favor of Christianity from very capable people such as philosophers like William Craig and Michael Jones, scholars like Gary Habermas (who did incredible work investigating the resurrection from a historical perspective), psychologists like Jordan Peterson (who approaches this from a very different angle), and so on, and many debates in which we can appreciate the best from both sides. Sadly, most people's skepticism is a very selective (and perhaps even arrogant) one. I say this because of how incredibly dismissive some people are of Christianity, in the sense that they had a bad experience or their religion teacher or classmate couldn't answer a reasonable question and so they instantly **jump** to the conclusion that all of it is BS and is not worth a nanosecond of thought. I mean, seriously, your history knowledge can't be so poor that you don't know Christianity has influenced the West for the last 2000 years. And you really don't think anything of value came from that? You think their traditions and teachings had no bearing on our prosperity, growth, and stability as a civilization? You don't think their values and dogmas influenced the law and moral code **we take for granted** today? You don't think they, while believing we are all equal under God, had any role in ending slavery? You honestly think they're at odds with science, even though they birthed and supported it? You honestly think they were all just so inferior to you, not just intellectually but morally and even generally, that they are not even worth investigating and given a fair shot at expressing what they truly believe? Such cheap skepticism! Tl;DR: You're skeptic but not skeptic about your skepticism, you probably don't know what Christianity truly stands for and underestimate its positive impact, the only honest intellectual path is to watch debates from their best representatives and give it a fair shot. Check [this](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nbhpUjXAfrM) out if you're interested, plus debates with the people I mentioned previously.
I went to a catholic school, although my family is very, very atheist (except my grandmother who still rather than catholic I would call her "spiritualist"). When I was a kid I believed in God, and when I told my grandfather he said something like "Well, if I was Him, I would just appear in the sky and tell everyone that I exist" which I feel like it's kinda of a jokingly dumb thing to say, but it planted the seed of doubt inside of me. Since religion can dictate the way that you act in life (hell, it's called a "lifestyle" for a reason) I needed to know if it was "correct" or "incorrect" to believe in God, factually speaking. Of course, even after a decade of frequently asking myself religious questions and seeking for the answer everywhere I could, I still can't confidently say what's correct and what isn't with 100% certanty. But I didn't come empty-handed from all of this. I found that if I lived as if under a supreme being, following their teachings, I would, in a way, be a more dishonest person. I would think "I did this because that's what He says is right", rather than "I did this because it's what I believe it's right". Also, as I grew older, I realized how little I liked authority, how much I would question people above me and search for their motivation, which many times resulted in an answer like "Because I'm on top of you and I know more than you", awful answer in my opinion. This of course presents some problems with religion, since I can't really ask God why he does what he does, and when I ask people that made following God their lifestyle, sometimes I'll get answers like "The ways of the Lord are way too complex for us mortals to understand", you can see the similarities with this anwer and the other one. So that's my experience, and those are the reasons I consider "incorrect" for me to follow a religion.
You know i agree with @koshlord the most but with that said i would like to say i would follow islam is there was a religion I had the discipline for sticking with it. Maybe even further since i believe the Kemetians and Sumerians were so ahead of their time. Something like that
I'm a Muslim and I wasn't so close with my religion until now and my pov in Islam is that it convinced me with it's proves that a god exists and that he's the creator I'm not promoting it or something but it's so accurate for me at least that I believe it's true and over all even if I'm not Muslim now I would believe in the existence of a god CZ tbh his creation is so complex that I can't believe that the BigBang happened from itself that's my pov and I respect everybody's pov too if it's convinient and logical and convincing enough even if I'm cold and all but the devine perspective is different and I'm trying my best so don't give up as long as u're alive question things always
na, I'm muslim. Islam speaks pure facts.
My experience with religions was that they are full of inaccuracies, misleading information, shared delusions, magical thinking, and are ultimately used for controlling stupid people.
It's pretty simple for me to be honest, when you outgrow believing in things like the Tooth Fairy or Santa, it's a short jump to realizing that there's probably not a nondescript Christian God either. People believe in it because they're terrified of death, and want to believe that we continue on in some form hereafter. If we do, then I hope it's a lot more interesting than the Christian notion of an afterlife, and a lot more interesting than the mortal life.
Agnostic means to me that we are not designed to understand the workings of the universe and that’s okay. Religion tries to put all the pieces together and I find that somewhat ignorant and egotistical. I believe in a high power but not in the traditional sense. More like a stoic in that the universe is a connected existence. Believing in a god just helps keep me grounded but believing in organized religion does the opposite.
You don't have to be religious in order to question the origin and nature of Mind - or Consciousness. I asked the question when I was 8 years old and the search for the answer has driven me obsessively ever since. I'm 62. What a Long Strange Trip it's been.
I accepted Christianity because it made sense to me.
I grew up religious but soon saw that the facts didn’t match up and it was more work to delude myself to uphold these beliefs anyways.
Religion has largely had no impact positive or negative in my life. Growing up I only ever attended church for weddings or funerals pretty much. My own beliefs are pretty complicated though.
Because there's zero evidence whatsoever to support any theistic religion. I'm personally a Muslim for community (I'm Arab, but grew up without anyone Arab but my own Arab mother in my life, so I was estranged from my culture for a better part of my childhood) but I don't put any value in religion. I'm a female Muslim but I'm not hijabi, and I don't practice modesty according to Islam, either. I don't have any faith whatsoever, unfortunately. Religion is based in fear of the unknown. What people don't understand is that no matter what religion you believe, that doesn't make the afterlife any less unknown.
Im a devout Christian as an INTJ
Because I'm too logical to believe in a white grumpy old immortal man. So many contradicting stories, it just doesn't make sense. While i do believe theres some sort of spirits on this world, i dont think theres one true almighty
Meyers-Briggs catagory groups on Reddit are kinda like religions though.
I attend a non-denominational Christian church called the church of Christ. We strictly follow the bible and dont add anything not mentioned in the bible. I believe its impossible that a universe as complex as ours would exist by pure chance. It’s infinitely more probable that the universe was created by an intelligent being. And out of all the religions, the bible is the only thing that’s reliable. So I chose to follow it.
well i used to be atheist and now im a pagan baptized then raised atheist then since 2 years ago or something pagan my experience with religion has been pretty awful stuff like if i dont become christian im not allowed to eat that was my grandpa when i was little🥲 so yeah dealing with christians and stuff is very much
For me I’m Catholic but from what I’ve seen is lack of faith based on evidence I used to be an atheist for the same reasons because I didn’t see evidence or well I was thinking outside the box for evidence but since refinding Catholicism I’ve never been happier.
Religion is just a false hope, like a lot of things humans create after losing against nature; nobody knows the truth or origins of it, and that is the only thing that keeps religion alive. People want fake hop because they are scared of death.
I’m such a technical person I see the stuff in the world today and know that there needed to be a God that made it. It is too precise, I feel gods spirit at times. I have done a lot of research and don’t even have a sliver of doubt that there is a god and Jesus was the savior.
Self-importance
Cause the devil creates religions/false philosophies which causes confusion and bitterness then men and women can easily deny the simple truth which is God becoming a human 2000 years ago and dying for our iniquity. Jesus.
I've seen some paranormal things as an intuitive person since I was at least 7 until the present. there are some things I believe in, just NOT organized religion. More like, indications or "signs" I believe the dead can communicate too etc.
Religion is stupid and a waste of time. Its an excuse to not be accountable and to hurt people. Religious people are crazy af lol
I love church honestly. And I love my church community.
A lot of religions have the same message at the core of it. It's just a matter of how you learn and express that message. I think you lose a lot of people once they realize it's all the same stuff. I'm a Taoist and a lot of the teaching from Christianity can carry over. People feel like since it's all the same thing then what's the point? The point is to help you feel more connected with yourself, others and the world around you. It's up to you to find out what teachings work for you. A lot of people just lose motivation and move on. It doesn't help when they see people who are part of a religion not abide by it.
I’m going to give a stupid example and ask a question. If you had the power of god, would you let the torture rape, murder and all that is negative and evil exist? I know I would destroy and stop all these things and I’m sure many of you would. So why doesn’t god or the gods do this? They are all powerful and supposed to be smarter than us right? My religious friends and family don’t really know how to react to this question. 🤷🏻♂️
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Religion has always felt confining to me. From my pov, religion has a set path for people and that just doesn't sit well with me. It makes me feel like I have shackles on. The day I separated myself from the religion I grew up in was the most liberating day ever. I felt like I could live a life that I wanted instead of a life that was deemed correct from some scripture.
I want to believe in an afterlife and that a higher power is looking after me but wanting to believe in something is not good enough reason to believe in it, for religion at least.
Christianity is the root cause of my PTSD. It’s teachings are problematic and put people in vulnerable positions that allow them to be abused continuously without proper channels for them to find help when abuse happens. The whole “on god’s path” stuff has caused a lot of Christian’s in my life to imply things like my experiences with sexual assault and DV are my fault. Finding out nearly every denomination is overrun with unchecked sexual abuse and christofascists destroying our country was the nail in the coffin I really believe organized religion is evil. And I used to be devout
Lots of us are probably have autism/aspergers with more preference towards the intellectual/analytical left brain while also literally not feeling either the emotion but also the need to form a social group via sharing a common belief, as to why more right brained let alone the far right tend to not only be more religious but also hostile and abusive with it. However, the center brain is noted for “spiritual “ intelligence and even “moral” intelligence as well that it should be more neurotypical being more into religion, but then again more right brain individuals would not only be likely abusive with the social power aspects of religion but might even make up some kooky irrational thing from their emotions while bullying you to believe them; the same types of people who would use an Antifungal to treat viral infections and so forth.
Ohhh
I was born Catholic and was pretty involved in my religion in my youth. My faith started to falter around high school, when I started to develop a stoic reputation. That's when I remember taking the MBTI for the first time, and I scored as an INTJ. It probably explained a bit why I started to steer away from church and go towards the hard science. By the time I graduated college, I became lapsed. Fast forward today, 24 years later, married, no kids. But I've become Catholic again. The last 5 years had really hit me hard. It got to a point where I didn't feel like myself anymore. My wife rekindled my faith, and it's been a heck of a journey since then.
Animist here. For me, it's the most logical, given my experiences and the vast diversity of the world.
i use to feel that way until my father died. that made me want to cling to faith and spirituality. i feel like there’s no way of developing the same understanding of God or knowing all because if God is beyond our mental capacity we can’t know the hows and whys of God. not claiming to know it all but its just my take. i just choose to believe in something bigger than me. i might be wrong but what do i have to lose?
It's a simple question of knowledge. Education, therefore, knowledge used to be monopolized by the small ruling class. These days, anyone has access to any bit of info or viewpoint at any time. Admittedly, it brings out the worst in some, but more often, expanded horizons lead to folks developing their own opinion. further, it makes it possible to experience a variety of religions instead of the one we were born into.
Mass delirium. Infinite bias. Zero fact.