This I Believe

[Nlloydj]

I believe in God, the father, the mother, the daughter, the son, and the Holy Spirit.

I believe in the divinity of all churches, philosophies, and beliefs that promote goodness and sanctification.

I believe in prophets and their special relationship to God, and their humanity, gifts and vulnerabilities.

I believe in all scriptures from all faiths, books from all perspectives, words and deeds from all of my brothers and sisters promoting unconditional love, unconditional acceptance and unconditional respect.

I believe in the power of one soul touching another soul in compassion, service and love as evidence that God prevails in the hearts of mankind.

[Corsair]

That's a pretty good list. Is there anything that you definitively don't believe. I'm not trying to mock you. Your beliefs are really broad and I was only curious if you maintain some opposition to any specific beliefs.

[alas]

I believe in God, the father, the mother, the daughter, the son, and the Holy Spirit.

I believe in the divinity of all churches, philosophies, and beliefs that promote goodness and sanctification.

I believe in prophets and their special relationship to God, and their humanity, gifts and vulnerabilities.

I believe in all scriptures from all faiths, books from all perspectives, words and deeds from all of my brothers and sisters promoting unconditional love, unconditional acceptance and unconditional respect.

I believe in the power of one soul touching another soul in compassion, service and love as evidence that God prevails in the hearts of mankind.

I am curious where you came up with the idea of “the father, the mother, the daughter, the son, and the Holy Spirit.”

I came across that idea in an encyclopedia of Jewish beliefs, the only place I have ever found mention of a daughter being part of the Godhead. Several volume set, and I can’t remember the exact name of it, but it said that the ancient Hebrews believed the Godhead was made up of Father (translated into English as Jehovah) the Mother (translated into English as Wisdom, so she would be the Goddess of Knowledge or Wisdom) the son (the anointed Savior) and the daughter (her role and name is lost over time). I had a question I didn’t find the answer to in that encyclopedia as to was the Holy Spirit the same as Wisdom, or another female deity known as the Comforter or Holy Spirit, the Shekanah. But there are different opinions in the literature that is available as to is Mother in Heaven the ancient Goddess known as Wisdom, or the Goddess who was a fertility Goddess who was worshipped in the Bible as Ashera? My son took an archeology of the Holy Land class and learned that there are inscription in old buildings of worship that identified Ashera as God Jehovah’s wife or consort (wife of lower status)



What I believe.

God is more of a hands off God than most Christian religions give Him credit for being. I just don’t see evidence that he messes in human affairs beyond maybe imparting knowledge or giving comfort. God is in all things, sort of a pantheistic or Buddhist belief. We are part of that God, as we become one with all things. I believe in Christ as the being who helps us become one with God, but it has little to do with paying a price to the Father for our sins. I just don’t think the Father needs someone to atone for our sins. We humans need it, not the Father, so He pays the debt for our sin to whomever we sinned against. So, very much not BKP’s concept of a debt to God being paid as ransom, because God’s love for us in unconditional and not lacking. God needs no price to be paid in order to love those he created. If there is a father God, then by definition there will be an equal mother God.

[wtfluff]

I believe in gravity.

I believe in logic, reason, skepticism, and critical thinking.

I believe in Occam's Razor.

I believe in science / the scientific method.

I believe that my Goddess is Lakshmi, as prophesied in my MoPag-Stolic Blessing. I don't believe Lakshmi actually exists, but I like thinking of her now and then anyway.

[Linked]

I modified it a little bit in a way that made it easier for me to understand. I probably lost some of the meaning OP intended, but it makes more sense to me this way.

I believe in promoting goodness and sanctification.

I believe in people's humanity, gifts and vulnerabilities.

I believe in promoting unconditional love, unconditional acceptance and unconditional respect.

I believe in the power of one soul touching another soul in compassion, service and love as evidence that God prevails in the hearts of mankind.

I think this is a good thing to strive for as an ideal. In practice there are a lot of mutually exclusive things, but going for love and goodness and acceptance and compassion is something great. I would add understanding to the list.

[Hagoth]

I believe that nobody knows the nature and will of God. Those who make such claims usually want your money. A real God doesn't need money.

I believe that everyone has equal access to God, regardless of claims of authority. The purest access is through the God within, which we all share in equal parts.

I believe there are no hard boundaries between me and God, me and Nature, me and you, you and Nature, you and God, you and me. It's all God.

I believe that If God shares your prejudices and bigotry you can be pretty certain that you have made Him in your own image.

I believe that the idea that a bearded man on a throne created the universe magically out of nothing is no more wondrous, awe-inspiring, or logical than the idea that the universe created itself through its own natural forces and processes.

I believe that scripture is the invention of men reaching out to God, not the other way around.

I believe the human mind is the universe’s (i.e. God's) way of contemplating itself. Human eyes are its way of looking upon its creation.

I believe that the only way to know if there is life beyond death is to make that journey yourself.

I believe that if you believe in a God who is more cruel and petty, less loving and forgiving than the best person you have ever known, you are worshipping something invented by some people to control other people.

I believe that if you still believe the same things at age 50 that you did when you were 20, you have wasted 30 years.

I believe, as Jesus taught but nobody accepted, that the Kingdom of God is within you.

[RubinHighlander]

I believe the concept of a god, as defined by most of the major religions, is a human created idea born out of genetic hominid tribalism. Humans have this deep desire to know all the answers and will invent ideas and unproven facts to fill those gaps. Religion tries to fill those gaps, often weaponized as a means of controlling as big a group people as possible, or a few very special souls that were lucky enough. As Haggoth pointed out, it's usually about money and control, telling people how to think and act about sex, life, morality; all under the ruse of altruism and divine providence.

I have my own ideas of a higher power, one that may or may not be intelligent by human definition. To me it's an energy, vibrations, patterns, the physical rules of this universe. This universe somehow went from a dense hot state to the expansion it's in now, destined for entropy, eventual death, every last black hole dissipated into dead dark coldness in trillions and trillions of earth years. The Big Bang is kind of like god for science; it's an assumption, an idea, along with many others, as to what existed before the big expansion and if there was any intelligence behind it. So far we have nothing to measure or know what existed before expansion, some mathematical and scientific guesses and it can quickly gets philosophical. If you say it's all random events, that's a conundrum as it appears the universe itself has a consciousness, manifested through us. If you say it's a simulation its another conundrum of who is running the simulation and who is running their simulation; the who created god(s) problem. Same conundrum if you take the human created gods as plausible.

At least science admits when it's theory and ideas and not observable truth. Even those with years of experience with psychedelic substances, those that explore the brain and consciousness, they usually admit they have no solid ideas as to what is going on there. Of course, even some scientists and psychonaughts have and will continue to invent religions.

It would seem, for us on this tiny blue speck of dust, that this universe is far from understanding it's own existence, especially if we are the first intelligent life to look out at it all and ask the big questions, try to figure out all the mechanics of it with our scientific technologies and discoveries. In spite of what our little ape egos tell us, that we are the most important things in this universe, that may or may not be true. If humans and their tech manage to get off the planet and even populate the galaxy, other galaxies, etc., can we, or our silicon based evolutionary progeny, solve entropy? I often think about Asimov's paper The Last Question http://www.physics.princeton.edu/ph115/LQ.pdf. Humans may be nothing more than the cosmos trying to grapple with it's own eventual mortality. Maybe we are just an early mid-life crisis or a teenage stage of establishing it's own identity.

I find it a struggle sometimes to live with all the big life purpose questions unanswered. I often churn these questions over in my mind when I have time to be alone, especially out in nature. At the same time I find the not knowing to be quite liberating, and I convince myself it's okay not to know. It took a lot more mental gymnastics to make the mormon religion work for me than the big unknown realm of discovery and endless ideas I occasionally grapple with now.

[moksha]