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Ask HN: What is your spiritual practice?

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Re: Ask HN: What is your spiritual practice?

#461
post #104
post #78

I am not religious at all and I've thought of myself as tolerant of religion (they all have some very good teachings, after all). But lately organised religion has been bothering me a lot. It is just so obviously a form of controlling people: you have to believe this and that and also hand over some cash and vote for such and such. I can't get around the fact that this still goes on so blatantly in this day and age.

Recently I was attending several catholic weddings and I was taken aback by the level of religious fervor and literal interpretation of the bible there. I was expecting the preaching to be more focused on how to live a good life and be a valuable member of society, but instead it was more about how I will burn eternally for not believing.

> Recently I was attending several catholic weddings and I was taken aback by the level of religious fervor and literal interpretation of the bible there. I was expecting the preaching to be more focused on how to live a good life and be a valuable member of society, but instead it was more about how I will burn eternally for not believing.

Literalism isn’t a big thing in Catholicism, but you can run into it and, what sounds to be more the issue here, there are definitely some (IME, a small minority, but they are quite noticeable) Catholic priests who love to use events where they are likely to get non-regular churchgoers in the congregaton as an opportunity to try to deploy a fear hammer to get people back to Church.

Re: Ask HN: What is your spiritual practice?

#462

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Strong atheism of the sort you profess is religious in my opinion. It may or may not be spiritual, depending on its flavour. You don't sound like a God hating atheist (which is definitely spiritual).

Please explain how being a god-hating atheist is spiritual I think if god-hating atheists do exist it’s an inherent contradiction. Perhaps you are confusing people who practice “satanism” mostly as a way to troll religious people as god-hating. There are definitely anti-religion atheists but I don’t see how that is spiritual.

> Please explain how being a god-hating atheist is spiritual

To hate god, firstly you have to admit his existence in one way or another. Hence, spirituality, even with "minus" sign.

Re: Ask HN: What is your spiritual practice?

#463

100% atheism. Was raised some kind of protestant I forget which one, and derived tremendous spiritual and psychological relief when I realized all of that was absolute nonsense at the age of 9. I knew I was gay at the time and wouldn't come out until I was 18 or so, but my life just got a lot easier when I removed religion completely. I also recall discovering increased moral agency -- as a Christian I had been taugh…

> I had been taught I could simply confess whatever and it would be forgiven I still remember the day at Sunday school when we had to confess. I was a good kid. I had absolutely no idea what to confess. I consulted my Mom who told me to "make something up". And thus my first sin, that I can remember, was lying to the priest.

In hindsight, it was definitely the concept of original sin that got my young mind spinning, not understanding how for example a newborn baby could be innately sinful. All downhill after that.

Re: Ask HN: What is your spiritual practice?

#465
post #14

Not sure if it counts as spiritual, but for 10 years I've consistently done subconscious, mind+body healing exercises. It's been profoundly transformative. Prior to that (and for quite a while after) I had a huge amount of drama and chaos in my life, and after searching far and wide for answers (starting with the usual stuff - mainstream therapy, meditation, etc) I learned about these healing practices, which address…

I do essentially the same thing, but I’ve only been at it for a couple years.

Re: Ask HN: What is your spiritual practice?

#466

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please explain how being a god-hating atheist is spiritual I think if god-hating atheists do exist it’s an inherent contradiction. Perhaps you are confusing people who practice “satanism” mostly as a way to troll religious people as god-hating. There are definitely anti-religion atheists but I don’t see how that is spiritual.

> Please explain how being a god-hating atheist is spiritual To hate god, firstly you have to admit his existence in one way or another. Hence, spirituality, even with "minus" sign.

No offense, but this seems like more of how a religious person understands atheism than what atheists actually think.

A religious person may perceive an atheist as “god hating” when they are merely “religion hating” or perhaps making fun of your god/the existence of a god.

Re: Ask HN: What is your spiritual practice?

#467

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Strong atheism of the sort you profess is religious in my opinion. It may or may not be spiritual, depending on its flavour. You don't sound like a God hating atheist (which is definitely spiritual).

There is, frankly, no such thing as a "god hating atheist". Those two notions are incompatible. Consider, for example, how little you (probably) care about fairies. Are you a fairy hating afairist? You may find an Atheist that says something like "If god does exist, it's a dick". but that's not really hating god but rather pointing out the silliness of believing in a supernatural all powerful being that is good which…

There are God hating atheists. What I refer to are people who were raised within a powerful belief system. Their atheism is powerfully and emotionally reactive against that belief system and it's ultimate symbol. They profess not to believe in that God but much of their own thought system revolves in a negative sense around it.

Edit: Just a note that the specific term "God Hating Atheist" I take from John Gray's book Seven Types of Atheism.

Re: Ask HN: What is your spiritual practice?

#468
post #368

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m curious. How did you originally arrive at the conclusion that god didn’t exist?

Good question, hope you don’t mind me jumping in. For me as a teenager or even younger, reading about various faiths and mythologies, I was thinking about which faith was the right one. Obviously I could simply choose the one of my parents and the adults around me followed, but I went to a school with Muslims, Hindu and Buddhist children too. Was I really supposed to try and convert them? None of the Christian teache…

Ironically you can never strictly prove that something doesn't exist.

But something's existence in theory can be proven by mere act of finding or defining it.

Re: Ask HN: What is your spiritual practice?

#470

I used to be devout Mormon, and a hardcore one at that. It was woven so deeply in my reality, that everything had spiritual significance for me. A few years ago, I encountered history, documents, and truths about the religion that were never presented to me. Since then, I've slowly, painfully, removed myself from the religion, and removed the religion from me. It's extremely painful to go from a space where everythin…

> I encountered history, documents, and truths about the religion that were never presented to me

I encountered something like this but wasn't able to find it since; I think it was called something like the "blue document" or the "blue papers"; basically a very intelligent Mormon came up with a document with all of his very reasonable but quite heretical questions, and it caused quite a stir. Would love to track it down again and bookmark it this time.

> "nothing actually matters"

Well... It does, IMHO, you just don't need religion to have that.

Disclaimer: I've donated to https://footstepsorg.org/ and one or more ex-mormon support orgs because I think the more extreme the beliefs, the more cult-like and harmful they are. My family's Catholic but I'm the "black sheep" and have been exploring maybe joining a unitarian church, just for the "community of free-thinkers" aspect

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