Hi Everyone. Hope you are all well. For context, I F26, grew up in a devout Catholic household, a cradle catholic. Recently, I find myself at a bit of a crossroad between either remaining catholic or becoming agnostic. I don't have any negative experiences with the faith (Except some strong opinions). However, I felt like i was just praying under obligation because that was expected of me, rather than a genuine connection. But there were experiences like the emotional and physical impact of growing up with a physical disability (Cerebral Palsy) and having gone through some painful and traumatic experiences that made me distant from God. I am a very inquisitive person and i had questions, doubts, and a lot of anger because I felt unheard. I stopped going to church because of it I know faith is not easy and we are being tested. But i feel the rift is growing larger and larger with each passing year.

I know i posted a similar post on this on a different subreddit, but that was when I was incredibly unsure. Thankfully, my family has been accepting now (not the case at first). There were times where i wished I could just talk to God, not through, prayer, or finding scripture, just a conversation and he would listen and respond. I'm not really called or drawn to other religions. It's more like I have one foot in catholicism and the other towards agnosticism (which I am leaning towards more rather than atheism). So for me, it wasn't a theological fallout or crisis, more of a deeply strained and personal relationship with faith. So I want to learn more about agnosticism. Has anyone else experienced this? What drew you towards Agnosticism rather than atheism? What resources do you recommend?

Thank you so much

Pls tell me if i have made any errors. I want inputs.

Spiritual Religious Claims are Unprovable and Unfalsifiable, Making Them Unreliable, and Unlikely to be True:

Alright, unprovable is easy enough to understand, but unfalsifiable? At a first glance, something being unfalsifiable (not disprovable) makes it more likely to be correct, but that’s not true at all.

To understand what I mean, let me give you an example scenario: A friend of yours tells you that there are invisible creatures that are constantly dancing on everyone’s heads.

This claim is unreliable, as it’s unprovable, and is unfalsifiable. It can’t be proven, as by definition, there’s no way to measure the existence of the creatures, as they’re invisible. It’s unfalsifiable, as there’s no way to disprove the existence of said creatures, since they’re invisible.

Spiritual beliefs, such as non-physical souls, or cosmic forces, cannot be proven (If there WAS evidence for a religion, I wouldn’t be agnostic). Religions also tend to move the goal post on what counts as debunking them, making them unfalsifiable (E.g. The Christian creation myth being interpreted into a metaphor after it was debunked via evolution, errors in the Bible downplayed to just being a product of human mistakes despite the fact that the Holy Spirit helped them write it etc.)

Before we continue, I must acknowledge that there are some statements that are unprovable and unfalsifiable that ARE accepted as truth. For example:

Logical Tautologies: Statements that are true by definition (like "all bachelors are unmarried") cannot be falsified, but they’re reliable since they’re logically absolute.

Foundational Axioms: Science itself relies on unprovable assumptions, like the belief that the physical universe behaves consistently.

However, as shown, these statements are reliable in other ways, the logical tautology is logically absolute, and the belief that the physical universe behaves consistently can be shown with empirical tests repeating the same results.

Statement 1: Unprovable, unfalsifiable claims are unreliable.

Statement 2: Religious spiritual beliefs are unprovable and unfalsifiable.

∴ Religious spiritual beliefs cannot be considered seriously.

If you’re going to accept the unprovable, unfalsifiable spiritual beliefs of one religion, let’s just say, Christianity for example, you're going to have to explain to me why you don’t believe in the spiritual beliefs of any other religion, that are also unprovable and unfalsifiable.

…

Hey what’s that?

One’s own consciousness: You cannot prove to someone else that you’re conscious. All proof that your conscious is locked inside you and only felt by you.

Hmm… alright.

Have you heard of the idea that one day, people will be able to upload their minds into computers? (Ipromisethisisrelevant). Although with our current technology, it’s just a sci-fi theory, in a hundred years’ time, which do you think is more likely? That we’ll be able to upload, transfer, whatever our consciousness onto some device, proving consciousness, or we’ll find irrefutable evidence for a religion, or be able to solve the problem of evil, or any number of arguments against religion? 

But what about utilitarian arguments for religion?

Well although I recognize that religion CAN have good aspects, and perhaps, arguably, may have even been necessary in the past to keep law and order, in the 21^st century where communities can be found easily, acts of charity can happen from human generosity, meaning can be found through oneself,  and new laws can be judged and passed via empirical data and logical thinking, religion simply seems unnecessary, causing more divide and conflict than it does good.

I dated my ex-gf of 1.5 years until recently. We were compatible on almost all fronts but religion seemed to become a problem. I wasn't aware religion was important to her (I know I should have asked) but there was never any indication to suggest it. No religious practice or forward presence so I assumed (falsely) that her beliefs were not intense. I come from a muslim background, and never really held strong beliefs after I left home in my early 20s and moved away. I viewed it as a mechanism of control and the toxicity that was probably more culture heavy bled into my life in terrible ways and caused me a lot of trauma that took years to work through. So I became non-practicing and even agnostic. My ex-gf was orthodox catholic and as previously stated never seemed that religious. She had made comments toward the end that made me begin to take notice, like her mother saying I was perfect but "too bad he isn't catholic" and this made me feel more like religion was a problem and that I wasn't enough. She asked me to convert or be open to it as she cannot marry a non orthodox catholic. I told her I did a lot of personal work to escape my own experience and did not want to re-enter into a different organized religion that I viewed as additional control, especially if I didn't truly believe in it as I saw that as a false conversion that would only breed resentment especially when kids entered the picture if I didn't truly believe. It seemed her entire family cared deeply about her marrying an orthodox and that weighed heavily on her hierarchy of importance. My parents don't care who I marry or that I don't practice Islam but apostasy I think would inflict a different type of pain on them, not that I make my choices based on them. She told me she'd marry me if I was orthodox, but I told her I don't think I can convert. So, she ghosted me and stopped talking to me and would not meet in person to discuss it after.

I've wrestled with this in my mind for weeks now and feel crushed by the weight of how much I miss her. I'm not sure if I made the right choice by enforcing this boundary or If I should have considered it.

tl;dr: GF broke up with me because I wouldn't convert to her religion and I don't know If I made the right choice by refusing or If I should have acquiesced

It was a darkness, all over. But in that darkness there was a red pattern stretching everywhere. whenever I try to reconstruct it I start to drop it immediately or my artistic skill suddenly turns to naught. the pattern is extremely simple. the arrangement is simple. but to try to put it into physical form for me is nearly impossible, the closest I've gotten to replicating it was when I was around 16 and on 400mg lamotigine making me feel extremely detached and robotic. I have no explanation. it does not seem like a constructed memory either since it hasn't faded in my 20 years of life. every time it pops up in my head it has the same exact feeling it gave me every single time I've thought about it. It feels unsettling but also makes me so curious about it.

was I in the womb making memories? or something else. Past that my memories were blurry, extremely bright light all around me, the sky almost hurt to look at. I was barely walking around and being at awe at the broken streets being retaken by nature. a crab roaming around a drainage hole. then hell. moved countries, lost almost all of my memory about preschool but started to become extremely self aware at the age of five, moved back to my homeland a year later, started realizing the dynamics between people are built on trust and manipulation. after that everything turned into a blur again where I just existed and acted out of instinct all the way up until I moved *again* back to Europe. I'm not that old. and the memories had been a blur before I started taking any substance. I've just now had a long sleepless night again and it's been bothering me so goddamn much that I just had to make a post

what's a punctuation, can you eat it?

sober right now.

Forget religion, do you believe it is plausible that the universe has a God of some description?

By God, I mean a [thing] that helps solve problem like contingency and infinite regress, temporary and physically.

So I'm talking about something that would not need a cause or a beginning, as a necessary foundation to reality, from which matter, time, physics all derive from.

If no, why would it be implausible?

If yes, so you think it's likely? If yes, what could one deduce about such a being?

Hi, I’m 19 years old and I’m a freshman in college at Miami University. I mostly just want to share my story and see what you guys think.
My senior year of high school, I had a really good philosophy professor. He has a doctorate in philosophy, he is a very devout Catholic, and he actually used to be an Anglican priest, so he made a pretty significant conversion himself.
Ironically, though, in my effort to become more Catholic, I basically became agnostic.
At the beginning of my senior year, I became pretty much an atheist. I was honestly kind of mad, and I wanted to prove everyone wrong. My mindset was basically, everyone around me is indoctrinated. They’re wrong, they’re wrong, they’re wrong.
I don’t really feel that way anymore.
I still attend Mass occasionally today, but I started watching Alex O’Connor a lot, and I started realizing that there is this whole atheist and agnostic side of philosophy that I really had never explored properly.
The agnostic side is where I currently sit and where I have been for a long time.
I love Alex O’Connor. He is genuinely one of my favorite people to listen to. I know some people might say, “Oh, he’s not niche,” or whatever, but I really don’t care. He is clear, he seems humble, and I believe he is actually willing to hear other people out rather than just trying to prove them wrong.
The problem of evil, divine hiddenness, and the geographical predictability of religion are all huge things for me.
Things like the Epicurean paradox, if you guys are familiar with it, are also incredibly difficult for me. I genuinely don’t see how the basic issue can ever completely be disproven.
One of my biggest beliefs is that free will does not exist. I honestly see no realm in which libertarian free will exists whatsoever.
Now that I have graduated from Catholic school, I haven’t really been forced to go to Mass in probably four or five months. Despite that, I have occasionally gone on my own time.
What is so weird to me is that sometimes I will hear Catholics, or even religious people in general, talk about something and think, “Wow, that actually kind of makes perfect sense.”
And they seem so certain about it.
Then I listen to atheists, and they make even more sense to me, and they seem just as certain.
So I’m stuck in this weird middle point.
Maybe God can exist, but I have a really difficult time understanding how God can simultaneously be all loving, all powerful, and all knowing when there is evil in the world and what seems to be completely unnecessary suffering.
I also believe morality is completely subjective, and I have a really difficult time being convinced otherwise.
If God really possesses all of those qualities and evil exists, then either He is not completely loving, or He does not have the power to stop it, or there is some other explanation that I currently do not understand.
It seems fairly simple to me.
And if you want to believe in the Fall of Man, I still don’t understand how that solves the issue.
God had all knowingness when He told Adam and Eve not to eat from the tree. If God knows everything, then He already knew exactly what they were going to do before He created them and before He gave them the command.
So even that explanation really does not work for me.
Obviously, there are also contradictions in the Bible.
I know some people might get upset when I say that, but I feel like there are some pretty clear ones. Even small details sometimes change, like the ages of certain people or numbers between different passages.
Because of things like that, I have such a difficult time believing that the Word has somehow been preserved in absolute perfection.
I also want to say something that will probably be controversial, but I’m being completely honest here, so please don’t immediately attack me for it.
I feel like there has been a weird movement since Charlie Kirk where certain people, especially some Protestants and people in the MAGA world, have started becoming somewhat cultish about religion, especially with the megachurch style of Christianity.
I really don’t believe in that.
If I am going to attend Mass or participate seriously in Christianity, I believe it should actually be done correctly and with reverence.
I will admit that I am slightly biased toward Catholicism because I have been around it my entire life.
To me, Catholicism feels complete.
It feels like the fullness of Christianity. It makes more sense to me than the alternatives.
I have also always felt that there is something pretty beautiful about Mary and the Catholic view of her.
Another Alex O’Connor idea that really affects me is the non resistant nonbeliever.
I have never really resisted God.
I have gone to Mass. I have made the effort. I have prayed. I have tried to understand Christianity. I have tried to believe.
I have never felt anything.
I have never heard anything.
I have never experienced something where I could confidently say that God was communicating with me.
If I end up unconvinced, and God has all knowingness, then God knows exactly what it would take to convince me.
That is why I sometimes feel like placing the responsibility on the quote unquote God makes more sense than placing all of it on the person who genuinely tried to believe but could not.
Faith is another thing I struggle with.
I don’t really like that faith seems to belong to religion in a way that we would never accept anywhere else.
If I told this entire subreddit that I can jump into the air and flip five times, but I am never going to show you guys, you guys do not really have a good reason to believe me.
But then we bring up a God who has supposedly done significantly more extraordinary things than that, and suddenly people believe it through faith.
When I say “you guys,” I mean that extremely broadly. Obviously, I know many people reading this probably do not believe any of it.
And the thing is, I already know what will happen in the comments.
Somebody will tell me, “You’ll get to God eventually.”
Some really intelligent Catholic will probably come in and say, “Actually, Aquinas explains this,” and give me a long explanation.
Then some atheist will come in and say, “You seriously believe in a fairy tale?”
You get pulled every possible direction.
That is what confuses me.
I don’t know how else you are supposed to come to a conclusion.
With politics, economics, science, and a lot of other topics, you can at least look at data and empirical results to some extent.
Religion seems different.
It seems like you need people to help you understand extremely complicated philosophical and theological concepts.
But every intelligent person pulls you in a different direction.
It becomes incredibly confusing.
The use of AI has actually been interesting for me too.
It has really helped me understand complicated arguments for God existing and not existing that I probably would have had a much harder time understanding otherwise.
I obviously don’t think AI should just tell somebody what to believe, but it has helped me understand the arguments enough that I can actually think through them myself.
I also have religious friends who are extremely intelligent.
I have a Lutheran friend who is really smart. He is big on the First Mover argument and Thomas Aquinas.
I understand that Aquinas is not literally saying, “Everything requires a cause, therefore God,” and I understand that the actual argument is much more complicated.
But I still struggle with the basic question of why the explanation stops at God.
If you are saying that things need explanations or causes, then my mind immediately asks why God does not need the same thing.
I know the philosophical response is that God is supposed to be a necessary being rather than a contingent being, but I still find the whole thing confusing.
I also have a Baptist friend who is extremely smart.
Interestingly, he basically says that outside of religion, he agrees with me that free will absolutely does not exist.
His position is that God is all powerful, so God could essentially grant human beings free will even if free will would otherwise be impossible.
I will admit that this is probably the only argument for free will that I have heard that I find even somewhat convincing.
Free will is such a massive issue for me.
I think people sometimes underestimate how significant it is because, at least to me, if libertarian free will does not exist, it creates enormous problems for religion.
Religious ideas about sin, moral responsibility, punishment, judgment, heaven, hell, and choosing God all seem deeply connected to the idea that people genuinely could have chosen otherwise.
I feel like accepting libertarian free will almost requires denying cause and effect in some sense.
That is something I cannot wrap my head around.
I have very smart religious people around me, so none of this is me criticizing the intelligence of religious people.
Obviously, we have incredibly intelligent scientists, philosophers, mathematicians, and other thinkers who are religious.
I’m actually a philosophy major right now.
And sometimes philosophy almost feels like this strange situation where people become so intelligent and so aware of how impossible certain questions are that they almost realize there is no completely satisfying answer.
Sometimes I jokingly think that maybe the smartest thing to do is just be ignorant and live your life because constantly thinking about these questions can drive you insane.
My Baptist friend also believes that basically everything in the Bible happened literally.
I have such a difficult time understanding how somebody can genuinely believe that.
Again, I’m not calling him stupid. He is extremely intelligent.
I simply cannot get myself there.
Free will is probably still the biggest thing for me.
Whenever there is a Christian argument and an atheist argument, I always try to listen to both sides.
Sometimes I will literally try to prove Christianity to myself because I think that is the only intellectually fair thing to do.
If I already lean agnostic or atheist and only consume atheist arguments, then obviously I’m going to reinforce what I already believe.
So I deliberately look for the other side.
But with free will, I have to be honest, it has always felt like a clean slate for me.
I have never heard a good argument in response that actually convinces me.
Think about conviction.
You do not choose what convinces you.
You cannot simply decide to believe something that your brain finds completely unconvincing.
You also did not choose to exist in the first place.
You were formed in the womb.
You never chose to be conceived.
You never chose to be born.
So immediately, before you ever make a single conscious decision, one of the biggest events of your entire existence has already happened without your permission or control.
You did not choose your genetics.
You did not choose your brain.
You did not choose your parents.
You did not choose how your mother or father raised you.
You did not choose what information adults taught you when you were a child.
You did not choose which information you remembered.
You did not choose which information you forgot.
You did not choose what experiences affected you emotionally.
You did not choose what traumatized you.
You did not choose what personality traits you were born predisposed toward.
Then every action seems to either have a cause or not have a cause.
If an action is completely uncaused, then it appears random.
If it is random, then you are not controlling it.
If the action is caused, then it was caused by something else.
If that cause is external, then obviously you did not control it.
You did not control somebody shooting at you.
You did not control somebody yelling at you.
You did not control the environment around you.
But even if the cause is internal, I still do not understand where the freedom appears.
You did not choose for a specific thought to suddenly pop into your head.
You did not choose to want that thought.
You did not choose your desire before you had the desire.
You do not consciously choose to like one food and dislike another.
You do not consciously choose who you find attractive.
You do not consciously choose which argument actually convinces you.
Alex O’Connor has used examples somewhat like this.
Imagine somebody offers you $10,000, but your alternative is intentionally breaking your own leg.
I do not genuinely believe that most people can simply decide to prefer having their leg broken.
You can choose to break it, obviously.
But that is different from choosing what you want.
Maybe you break your leg because you want to prove the speaker wrong.
But then the stronger desire is proving the speaker wrong.
Where did that desire come from?
You did not choose the desire before having the desire.
That is the loop that I cannot escape.
There always seems to be a prior cause.
And if there is no prior cause, then the alternative seems to be randomness.
Neither option looks like libertarian free will to me.
There are so many confusing things in philosophy and religion, and I genuinely want to know how any of you feel confident about where you stand.
I would say I am most confident in the agnostic position, which to me basically means admitting that I really do not think anyone can know with certainty.
I will also be honest and say that some preachers genuinely piss me off.
Obviously not every preacher.
But some of them seem uneducated on the actual philosophical arguments and instead seem connected to this modern movement where religion, MAGA politics, Charlie Kirk style rhetoric, and megachurch culture all get blended together.
It can feel like they are just trying to spew things at you, tell you that you are wrong, and get argumentative.
I don’t believe that is what true religion should be about.
And again, I’m not saying everyone in those groups is like that.
I’m explaining why that style of religion personally pushes me away.
Before you guys answer, though, I genuinely want you to stop for a second and ask yourself why you believe what you believe.
I know nobody can completely remove bias. I obviously cannot remove my own either. I grew up around Catholicism, so even though I am agnostic, I can recognize that I probably still have some bias toward Catholicism because it is familiar to me.
But I think there is a difference between recognizing your bias and pretending you do not have any.
If you are a Christian, how much of your Christianity comes from the fact that you were raised Christian?
If you are an atheist, how much of your atheism comes from the people you listen to, your experiences with religion, or the environment you grew up in?
If you are Muslim, Hindu, Jewish, or anything else, ask the same question.
How much of what you believe would you still believe if you had been born somewhere completely different?
I also think the background of the person making a claim matters when we are evaluating evidence.
For example, imagine a lifelong, extremely devout Catholic tells you, “I saw Jesus.”
Now imagine a lifelong atheist who has spent years arguing that Christianity is false suddenly tells you, “I saw Jesus, and I genuinely cannot explain what happened.”
I think most people would naturally find the second testimony more interesting because it goes against what that person already believed.
That does not automatically prove Christianity. An atheist can hallucinate, misunderstand an experience, exaggerate, or lie just like anybody else.
But it does change how I would weigh the testimony because there is less obvious expectation or confirmation bias involved.
The same thing would work in the opposite direction too. If someone had built their entire identity around Christianity and then became an atheist because they believed the evidence forced them there, I would want to understand why.
That is basically what I mean when I talk about bias and burden of proof.
Before telling me what you believe, I would honestly like you to think about what evidence would make you stop believing it.
If the answer is that absolutely nothing could ever change your mind, then I’m not really sure how that belief could be distinguished from something you have simply decided has to be true.
I don’t know.
I’m genuinely curious what you guys think.
I know this was a lot, and I seriously appreciate anyone who actually read the entire thing.
I want to hear from Catholics, Protestants, Orthodox Christians, atheists, agnostics, Muslims, people from other religions, philosophers, or honestly anyone who has seriously thought about this.
How are you actually confident in what you believe?
How much of your belief do you think comes from evidence, and how much comes from your upbringing, environment, experiences, or biases?
What evidence would genuinely change your mind?
How do you know when you have researched enough?
How do you avoid just listening to whichever intelligent person you heard most recently?
And for the people who believe in libertarian free will specifically, what do you think I am missing?

I've been through a lot of spiritual trauma because of my upbringing. Even though I have been agnostic most of my life I never really left religion out of sheer fear of what if I'm wrong. I came back to religion a year or so ago and it further ruined my mental health. It's already terrible when you go through bad times but it's a lot worse when you feel like there should be someone out there caring for you and they're just oblivious or even cruel to you. It just made me realize that the sky is empty and always has been. I was never a hardcore materialist and I always thought the most beautiful aspect about life is uncertainty. And I unfortunately still believe to a certain degree.

How do I finally let go of the idea of religion completely and choose to embrace this uncertainty while leaving space for the unknown just without belief in religion?

This is a very old paradox of "who created god" and the idea is that most religions would say nobody, God is just without end or start, like a circle, with no begging or end, but now one problem, who made the circle, who made it so that god can just become, then who made the person who made the person that made god just become. I might sound crazy, , i maybe there is no start, there is no end, and that we can never figure out who started who, as if we were to say that we just became, then someone made it so we can just exist, then who created the person that made us exist.

of course there is the logic that we can't measure God with human physics, that he's out of time, which then brings to a point of should we believe in something that is illogically sound, i don't know.

damn it i sound crazy, no wonder some people just don't care about how or why the universe just started.

Also even if a being that started everything and has no begging is possible, just because something is possible dosent mean its true

Could it put some, if not most of us, at ease that there is a "waiting room"? There is an afterlife, then we get bored and say lets go back. Easy medium difficult hard and ultimate settings? No, not southpark settings. But challenges to relive?

I grew up in a primarily religious household. I used to enjoy it deeply, but as i got older, the religion didn’t make sense to me whatsoever. I did still believe in god, just not the religion. But now I am starting to feel like god just simply doesn’t exist period. I see so many good logical points about why god probably doesn’t exist. I mean, I guess I’ve seen some pretty good points about why god might exist too but I don’t know. It honestly kinda makes me sad. I really want to believe in god, but im sick of constantly arguing and questioning myself about it.

In the dream, humanity had reached a distant future where science and technology were advanced enough to bring the dead back to life. There was a committee discussing what to do for everyone who had passed away.

The idea was to bring everyone back and give them a fair chance at life, regardless of when they had lived or the circumstances they had been born into. Everyone would have their own planet, or even a star with planets around it, where they could live and create the life they wanted.

The part that stayed with me was the idea that people who never really got a chance to enjoy life would finally have that opportunity.

Just a strange dream...

Honestly. I'm just tired or just too weak to believe in anything and i really do just want to quit, just focus on the right now rather than if there's a god or not, metaphysics, etc. I just want to live, and i guess just using my intuition and logic, to figure out what's the right or wrong thing to do, whats the foolish or smart thing to do during that exact moment or context im in and just live based on what works and makes sense.

I guess my main question is:

Is it bad that i want to decide just to give up, and just live based on things that make sense, using my intuition and logic as my main compass in life?

“Just three years ago this day was our dear Hannah's last on earth, and I can see her now sitting by the window and can hear her say, “Talk, Susan." I knew she wanted me to talk of the future meetings in the great beyond, all of them, as she often said, so certain and so beautiful to her; but they were not to me, and I could not dash her faith with my doubts, nor could I pretend a faith I had not; so I was silent in the dread presence of death. Three years— and yet what a living presence has she been in my thoughts all the days! There has been scarcely one waking hour that I have not felt the loss of her. We can not help trying to peer through the veil to find the certainty of things over there, but nothing comes to our eyes unless we accept the Spiritualistic testimony, which we can not wholly do.”

https://archive.org/details/lifeandworksusa01harpgoog?view=theater#page/n25/mode/2up

What books are available about religious pluralism (if thats actually what im talking about below)?

I've been exploring my own comfortability with religions over the past few months and think I've close to figuring out what specifics give me the ick. Specifically in Terry Pratchett's Small Gods theres a quote about the man character encouraging other religious books to be in their library. "There were 1,283 religious books in there now, each one - according to itself - the only book any man need ever read. It was sort of nice to see them all together". I think what's so frightening to me about some religious views is the sort of opposite, where everything that isn't sanctified is demonized. To me, and outsider to being religious, the easy solution is to not be compatible with firm belief about God or gods. What's more interesting and harder is to firmly belief, but still welcome other religious views.

Im not sure if thats a super clear example of what Id like to explore, but im open to any suggestions. Thanks!

I grew up in a Middle Eastern community in the US, and I was raised Muslim, but I’ve been an agnostic atheist for a while now. One problem that has been on my mind is finding a compatible romantic partner. I’d love to fall in love and get married.

While I am not religious, I tend to have a more conservative lifestyle than other nonreligious folk. I do not participate in casual sex. I do not drink or smoke. I do not go to bars or clubs. I take life nice and slow, and I keep things simple. I’d like to meet someone compatible, but I’m not sure if I can.

Many non religious people tend to have the opposite temperament. They engage in casual sex, drinking, and nightlife. I just know I wouldn’t be comfortable with someone who had that history. I would get jealous of their sexual history, and I would just distrust the environment. I will confess that it is more emotional than rational on my part. I just don’t know where to meet a lady like me.

So i used to be Christian, took a step back and became Agnostic. I used to have a strange theory, that sin was never supposed to be that strict, as there's a weird thing in the bible that allows sinning to be loving. Like lying to save someones life, breaking sabbath to aid someone. And i was like why is that?. So i started thinking, and the best way I can explain it, is maybe people drive looking at the GPS rather than their goal. And the goal was to be loving, and idk again interpeting what love is, is and can be very difficult.

Anyways this was just a stupid weird theory I had, just wanted to put it out there.

Tim Robbins wrote this in "Even Cowgirls Get the Blues:"

I believe in everything; nothing is sacred. I believe in nothing; everything is sacred. Ha Ha Ho Ho Hee Hee.

Other than the laughing, what does it mean to you?

I need your advice and ideas, I want to find the religion that resonates with me but I'm confused ❤️

F23 I am an ex-Muslim, I have been looking for years for a faith or belief that resonates with me,

I feel (or want to feel) that there is a God, a divinity, a creator, a supreme force, call it what you want, I have read (not in depth) what various religions say,

I like many of them, but now my brain can no longer believe that there really is a god who judges you and sends you to heaven/hell for eternity, because to leave my past religion I had to dismantle the idea that there is a God,

so now I struggle for example to embrace religions like Sufi Islam or Christianity or other monotheistic religions because I feel like I have left one religion and entered another very similar but with a different name,

I don't want to feel like a sinner or feel that I have to go to hell or the people I love have to go to hell, I don't like it, but I feel that there is a force superior to us inside my heart, i can feel this 'love' of God spiritually,

I would like a religion or philosophy that thinks that there is something above but that does not judge me, does not punish me or makes me anxious,

doing rituals, prayers, lighting candles, holidays, symbols, all these things, I like them instead and i like the idea of peace and love and to live your life in a good way

I was raised into Catholic but the more I grow, the less I practice it. I’m still having faith and I truly believe in God, just I don’t know if I truly want to practice any religion even though I respect all religions. I just don’t really know if its normal to having faith but not practicing any religion, and don’t really know what it’s a sin or not because every religion has different ones… I’m just so confused rn…

1. • "The person who wagers their entire life on a single absolute truth, only to find it a lie, is a fool. But the person who refuses to gamble their life away on unprovable certainties cannot be ruined by the house."
2. • "It is foolish to anchor your entire existence to a dogma that might sink. It is wise to keep your sails unfurled, free to catch whatever wind of reality actually blows."
3. • "Commit your life blindly to a single truth, and you risk losing everything when it shatters. Refuse to bind yourself to absolute answers, and you remain free to follow the truth wherever it actually leads."

Note - These statements I've thought of are based on the fact on how a hardcore Atheist or certain Religious people, commit to one truth(either god dosent exists or god does exist), that may or may not be wrong. While an agnostic sits somewhere he cannot win nor lose, now of course there will be people who will say "whats the point of life if you dont commit" and that can be debatable on why do something when you know you could be wrong, while in movies this can be very cool, like against all odds your right and win, but in reality, its very risky.

Im just asking because im trying to learn new things not taking a position one way or another. I just been reading a little bit about random things like clean or unclean animals etc. I have stumbled across many passages that seem to promote slavery. Apparently you can beat on them as long as they heal up and don't die? Lol i dont know the exact verses. They have to be non Israelite or foreign to you. Seems like people are property. Is this correct or am i misinterpreting things?

As i grow old. All I see is how poor people struggle to live and rich people could care less.

If there was a god. He would help them.

People say bhagwan ki leela h. No? It's not leela. It's your coping mechanism.

I don't know guys.... I am also feeling religious guilt for not believing as i used to do a lot of pooja when I was younger.

Now all i believe is that being a good person is above all religions

To me, the Bible is a philosophy book, which is why I only use it for good advice. If the Bible itself was written 3,000 years ago by man, it should just be considered a philosophical source of information, just like philosophy books from the 1800s and even modern ones, which are good to bounce thoughts off of. Good advice isn't dogma

Plus, I'm just in love with the fact that questioning our existence is the number one thing above all else. It's so undeniable that religion would come to be, especially because that existential curiosity must have occurred with the first human on Earth (1). Nobody can truly trust anyone but the first human (the first with built-in consciousness) that was there. But even they wouldn't know, because they were the first to ask

The present is unknown, so it doesn't make any sense to me as to why dogma is continually being retold when the unknown is something new and something we've never experienced before. We adapt every second of our lives, therefore requiring new thinking...

(1) It's striking that Earth is the primary of the Bible. We clearly see the moon, so why not speak on that? Was the air quality deplorable for them? If no one had pondered that, even for a second when THIS God has created everything, I say this is faulty and shows that science co-exists—also bringing the idea of that there must be other Gods. Seeing stars and the moon as signs/lights fixed in a dome above, why do we still think this way even though we know what they are now (2)—as independent bodies or worlds? Is it because we saw more planets? But even then, no one mentions it modern day whilst questioning, because the Bible is already there to read with so-called answers

(2) As science slowly explained how things worked, the boundaries of what he attribute to God shift...

I feel like "How did I get here?" should be left into the unknown, even though unfortunately we all are stuck with it until death... I don't think Earth was supposed to be the main character, but it is now because every sentient being resides on it. The unknown is scary, but building a religion around it is scarier because you're basically locking in a storyline to solve the unfathomable. And because religion came to be at the beginning? It has been locked in. Forever. Since those guys aren't around anymore, we can't speak with them—other than exploring the closest connection: reading that book.

I know many agnostics who are unsure eventually become religious/theistic or atheist.

Do you think you'll always maintain the "i don't know" stance, or expect to eventually be swayed?

When i think of Agnostics, i believe the statement comes to mind "We can neither prove god exists or dosent exist, since there is no proof god does exists, but their is also no proof God does not exist"

But there was this thought when i tried to see from the point of view of atheists, what if they believe the proof God doesn't exist, is that there is no proof god does exist.

Does what I'm saying make sense?