How do you label yourself regarding your belief?

[stealthbishop]

I'm spiritually fluid. On days when I feel a connection with a higher power it is definitely in the universalist ball park but with healthy skepticism. Some days I feel nothing and I'm in the agnostic/atheist ball park but also with healthy skepticism. I just don't really know and I don't think anyone else does either and that's okay with me. One thing is for damn sure, I will never allow my own inner authority to be superseded ever again.

[Fifi de la Vergne]

Some really great thoughts in this thread! Hagoth, I had to copy yours down; it articulates almost poetically something I hadn't been able to express:

. . . I think spirituality is real, but not because there are spirits. Because we have a powerful sense of wonder that makes us suspect there is more to reality than what we perceive with our senses, so we invent ghosts, gods, and prophesy to try to explain it. I also think consciousness is a real quality of the universe. When flowers follow the sun, when DNA is replicated, when a brainless amoeba seeks and finds food, when crystals grow... I consider all of that consciousness of some form. When I add all of that together it's something mindboggling enough for me to respect in a way that other people might respect a God-on-a-throne.

One thing is for damn sure, I will never allow my own inner authority to be superseded ever again.

I am right there with you, stealthbishop!

I do know someone who claims to have been visited by their children before the children were born. I think the visitations happened in dreams.

Under the heading of inexplicable things that I can't quite chalk up to coincidence, before my husband and I were married, we were in the temple and I had a very vivid impression that our future children were with us, three boys and a girl. We got married and I subsequently gave birth to three sons and a daughter, sure with each pregnancy of the child's gender and that I had "met" them before. Make of it what you will -- I can't explain it and I can't explain it away. But it's a big reason why I can't quite label myself an atheist.

[AdmiralHoldo]

My mother in law swears that she met my husband in a dream before he was conceived. Cute story. But... I don't know, I have dreams all the time about having another baby, and I'm 43, my youngest is in high school, and I'm on 2 forms of birth control. Sometimes a dream is just a dream.

And, being a misotheist means that I do still believe in God. I just don't LIKE him anymore. God couldn't come up with a better plan for humanity than one that included inc*st, r*pe, and torturing and murdering his favorite child while telling us it's our fault. This is also the guy that throws a snit fit if you dare to stop praising him for 2 seconds and praise his wife instead. No, thank you.

[wtfluff]

Under the heading of inexplicable things that I can't quite chalk up to coincidence, before my husband and I were married, we were in the temple and I had a very vivid impression that our future children were with us, three boys and a girl. We got married and I subsequently gave birth to three sons and a daughter, sure with each pregnancy of the child's gender and that I had "met" them before. Make of it what you will -- I can't explain it and I can't explain it away. But it's a big reason why I can't quite label myself an atheist.

Thanks for sharing that Fifi!

Your experience just reinforces to me why I would like to have a discussion with the person I know with a similar experience. In no way do I want to gaslight anyone and tell them they didn't have an experience; I just want to point out that the experience has nothing to do with verifying that MORmON Inc. is True™.

[alas]

Some really great thoughts in this thread! Hagoth, I had to copy yours down; it articulates almost poetically something I hadn't been able to express:

. . . I think spirituality is real, but not because there are spirits. Because we have a powerful sense of wonder that makes us suspect there is more to reality than what we perceive with our senses, so we invent ghosts, gods, and prophesy to try to explain it. I also think consciousness is a real quality of the universe. When flowers follow the sun, when DNA is replicated, when a brainless amoeba seeks and finds food, when crystals grow... I consider all of that consciousness of some form. When I add all of that together it's something mindboggling enough for me to respect in a way that other people might respect a God-on-a-throne.

One thing is for damn sure, I will never allow my own inner authority to be superseded ever again.

I am right there with you, stealthbishop!

I do know someone who claims to have been visited by their children before the children were born. I think the visitations happened in dreams.

Under the heading of inexplicable things that I can't quite chalk up to coincidence, before my husband and I were married, we were in the temple and I had a very vivid impression that our future children were with us, three boys and a girl. We got married and I subsequently gave birth to three sons and a daughter, sure with each pregnancy of the child's gender and that I had "met" them before. Make of it what you will -- I can't explain it and I can't explain it away. But it's a big reason why I can't quite label myself an atheist.

It is strange that it is at the temple, isn’t it. I had a very similar experience with two of my children. One was at the temple, and one was during a temple trip to the Washington DC temple. I was told that I was pregnant and the child’s sex, and both were within a day of the child’s conception. With both of those pregnancies, there was kind of a warning that there would be complications, but the child and I would survive it all. It wasn’t a dream, but a voice telling me. So, this is on my list of why I am not a full on atheist. I can’t explain that voice that wasn’t me talking to myself, but something from outside telling me.

And when you have this kind of voice talking to, with something nobody knows yet, and you know it wasn’t yourself thinking it, but something else, how do you explain it? I know there is some kind of intelligence in the universe that can communicate with us.

[dogbite]

It is strange that it is at the temple, isn’t it.

It is to be expected because you've been psychologically primed that's where it is easiest to happen. You've been set up to interpret anything that happens there, good or bad, in that light.

[moksha]

And, being a misotheist means that I do still believe in God. I just don't LIKE him anymore. God couldn't come up with a better plan for humanity than one that included inc*st, r*pe, and torturing and murdering his favorite child while telling us it's our fault.

What about a god with a better story? Surely you can come up with something exceeding the output of some Babylonian fabulists as well as Joseph Smith.

[alas]

It is strange that it is at the temple, isn’t it.

It is to be expected because you've been psychologically primed that's where it is easiest to happen. You've been set up to interpret anything that happens there, good or bad, in that light.

Disagree. No matter what I was taught about the temple, I hated it from the first time through. The first message, I had hated the temple some 20 times through, so plenty of time o get over any lingering idea it had anything to do with God. Nope, I felt totally then that if God does exist, then the Mormon temple is 1,000% wrong, but if it is the real temple of the real God, then I really hate his ugly sexist guts. So, yes for many Mormons, I would agree that they are psyched up for it. But for me and many other women, the temple taught us that God doesn’t love us, only our husbands. And the temple, with secret handshakes and pass words was more of the Gadianton robbers secret combinations than anything that came from God. I never reconciled the temple with a loving God, let alone a God who loved his daughters. The temple was the most ungodly place in the whole world, not someplace I felt close to God. So, really really really strange that it happened at the hell hole Mormons call “the temple.” The temple taught me that God didn’t know or care about me, so if anything, it was God telling me he knew me so well he even knew the minute I got pregnant, so compensation for the ungodly hell hole I was currently sitting in, pretending I didn’t hate the God of this god damned cult. See, back then, I hated the Mormon God for being a sexist pig. Getting out of the whole Mormon mindset made me more willing to believe that God could be real. So, in many ways, I am less of an atheist now than when I was a practicing Mormon, thinking that if God is real, then I hate him.

So, for you and even my husband, yes being primed to think God is really close when you are in the temple would make such things more likely, if the Mormon God was real. But how could an unreal God tell you anything, even f you are in his temple. That is like Venus telling you how to find your true love while you are visiting the ruins of her temple. She isn’t real, so how could you receive revelation from her, even in a temple dedicated to her unreal self? So, no, Mormon God is not real, so people only imagine messages from Mormon God there. These messages were real, and did not come from Mormon God. I think a real message from some intelligent being in the universe can send messages about future children, or just conceived multicelled embryos, and such a being can send the message anywhere you are, whether the Mormon temple or the ruins of Venus’s temple. But it has nothing to do with the “god” of that temple.

It is kinda like once when we were hiking across miles of new lave flow on Hawaii’s big Island. We came to an old temple site, you know the old pagan Hawaiian gods. The lava had parted and flowed around the temple. No, it wasn’t on high ground, but the lava never touched the old temple walls. A three foot high wall of molten lava changed direction, within a foot of the old temple wall, for 30 feet. So, is Madam Pele real? or was the weird way the lava flowed around the temple coincident?

[dogbite]

Alas, I meant it more as you generic and plural. I can see how it could be interpreted as at you singlularly. I apologize for writing sloppily.

I've been to a number of heiaus in hawaii. Who knows how many have been swallowed by the sea and lava? Knocked down by earthquakes. We only see what remains.

[Hagoth]

I suppose the opposite of Mormonism would be Benevolent Universalism. I could find happiness in a God of goodness that embraced everyone, especially if no one stepped forward to financially profit off of this belief or seek to have its adherents worship them.

Unfortunately, few religious communities will tolerate you in their club if you believe in that kind of God (even though some of them claim to). He isn't adequately petty, vengeful and judgmental to make you surrender your identity and money.

You might consider worshipping the Great Styrofoam Grasshopper (a god I read about in Mad Magazine when I was a kid). He's a bit of a tyrant, but far less than most gods, and praying to him yields exactly the same results.

[Hagoth]

I'm spiritually fluid. On days when I feel a connection with a higher power it is definitely in the universalist ball park but with healthy skepticism. Some days I feel nothing and I'm in the agnostic/atheist ball park but also with healthy skepticism. I just don't really know and I don't think anyone else does either and that's okay with me. One thing is for damn sure, I will never allow my own inner authority to be superseded ever again.

Wow, Stealth. you said something here that is way outside of most peoples' thinking. We are conditioned to have a solid philosophy about God that can be categorized with a single word. But why? Our perspective changes from day to day. Why not our ideas about God/gods/goblins?

[jfro18]

I consider myself a random idiot trying to figure it out that has spiritual moments but doesn't claim to know what they are. I'm open to just about anything as long as there is not evidence against the claims.

But really it's just "a random idiot trying to figure it out."

[alas]

I consider myself a random idiot trying to figure it out that has spiritual moments but doesn't claim to know what they are. I'm open to just about anything as long as there is not evidence against the claims.

But really it's just "a random idiot trying to figure it out."

I like this self identity best. It applies to me better than any of the others. I have no idea what my spiritual experiences actually mean. I just can’t reconcile them to any concept of God I have ever heard. Although in the Bible, there are women who have the birth of their babies foretold. But so much of our western concept of God is from a patriarchal view point, and best I can figure from the religious history I have read, our God of the Bible is a synthesis of the volcano god and war god of ancient tribes, with the idea of a Savior adopted from the Babylonians while the Jews were captive there. All feminine aspects have been throughly stomped out. But some indigenous people in New Zealand fought to have a river that was being polluted declared a living entity whose life needed to be protected. They won. I really identified with that in a way that no other religion has ever touched me.



Dogbite, I understand that you meant it in general, because one of the main struggles of coming out of Mormonism is separating our spiritual experience from the meaning that the church wants to tack on it. As proof that the church is true. The church co-opts any spiritual experience to its own benefit. So, you were explaining a way around this common experience of the church co-opting all spiritual experiences as all about it. And for most Mormons this would be very true. Like praying about the BoM. We are taught what to expect, so we manufacture it. This doesn’t fit that normal pattern, so it kind of leaves me stuck.

And, that stuck feeling makes me touchy. I guess I am a bit sensitive about the fact that even when I hated the temple as much as I did, that these happened in association with the temple. What the blank kind of God are we even dealing with? I guess it makes it harder to explain away why it could happen there. Because I am just backwards. The normal reason for something to happen at the temple is exactly why that should be the last place on earth for it to happen to me personally. But it it really was a message from Mormon God, it should first comfort me about how horrible I found the temple. But it completely sidestepped that as if I didn’t need that answer most of all. It was like I am praying about how can this be from a loving God, and instead of answering the question, out of the blue, he tells me about a baby. It wasn’t God telling me the temple was from him. If anything, it was God disowning the temple, and telling me that he knew me and cared about me in spite of the misogynist message in the temple, but without just being honest and saying the Mormon church is made up trash. I mean, why didn’t he just say, don’t worry about this temple stuff?

Why doesn’t God answer the questions we ask? But out of the blue tells us something we would figure out eventually anyway. But ignores what is really bothering us?

[wtfluff]

...
And, being a misotheist means that I do still believe in God. I just don't LIKE him anymore. God couldn't come up with a better plan for humanity than one that included inc*st, r*pe, and torturing and murdering his favorite child while telling us it's our fault. This is also the guy that throws a snit fit if you dare to stop praising him for 2 seconds and praise his wife instead. No, thank you.

Is it just the "Christian" / MORmON version of god that you hate, or is it all of the versions of god that humans have invented?

I'm spiritually fluid. On days when I feel a connection with a higher power it is definitely in the universalist ball park but with healthy skepticism. Some days I feel nothing and I'm in the agnostic/atheist ball park but also with healthy skepticism. I just don't really know and I don't think anyone else does either and that's okay with me. One thing is for damn sure, I will never allow my own inner authority to be superseded ever again.

Wow, Stealth. you said something here that is way outside of most peoples' thinking. We are conditioned to have a solid philosophy about God that can be categorized with a single word. But why? Our perspective changes from day to day. Why not our ideas about God/gods/goblins?

Fluid-Theism?

Non-Binary-Theism?

[deacon blues]

I'm a rational delusionist.

[deacon blues]

I'm a rational delusionist.
Seriously, I do swing between a pantheist with Christian leanings and agnostic humanist, and I'm not exactly sure what any of those words mean. But I feel good when I can help people, you know, be useful.

[moksha]

Unfortunately, few religious communities will tolerate you in their club if you believe in that kind of God (even though some of them claim to). He isn't adequately petty, vengeful and judgmental to make you surrender your identity and money.

Not many groups will sit you down and interrogate you regarding your beliefs. I think that may be due to lacking Stake Centers where they can regularly burn heretics.



"We the Church court find that you believe in a "God of Goodness". Such apostasy is not allowed. We, therefore, excommunicate you from our presence."

[Hagoth]

I consider myself a random idiot trying to figure it out that has spiritual moments but doesn't claim to know what they are.

I really like this attitude. The biggest problem with religion is that people take it so freaking seriously, to the point that joining teams and forming battle lines is essential to a belief system. Onward Christian Soldiers and all that. How about being more like a spiritual detective, looking for clues and only following the ones with the most merit? Maybe you'll never reach a solid conviction, but you'll avoid a lot of pitfalls. The problem with this, of course, is that it means embracing UNcertainty as your most important standard in a world that wants to be all about certainty.

I like to point out to Mormons that was Lehi, not Nephi, who first found the Tree of Life, and he did it by wandering in mists of darkness, not by clinging to the iron rod.

[deacon blues]

very profound, Hagoth.
On second thought, I'm just a seeker.
Not all who wander are lost.

[nibbler]

In no particular order...

Christian
Mormon
Buddhist
Taoist
Atheist
Gnostic