Reading many of the posts in this thread, it seems many people here are:
-anti-clerical
-anti-christianity (more specifically catholicism in some cases)
-anti-whatever-crazy-thing-you-were-forcefully-taught-growing-up
-anti-superficial beliefs and other batshit crazy trains of thought (e.g. scientology, creationism, etc.)
I'm all of the above myself. I don't very much like religion as an organization/institution. In that sense, I distinguish between religion/being religious and faith. The former revolves around a set of rules, principles (and scriptures sometimes) that a set of people believe in, leading them to join together around those beliefs in a way that's more or less official. The latter is just what you personally believe in, your profound, unique outlook on life, which you can't even express sometimes (that's my case). Some would call it one's private domain (the French have an expression for this that I think is more apt:
son jardin secret, literally "one's secret garden", one's inner belief).
To me at least, this is the essence of faith and spirituality. It doesn't have to conform to an established religion, or any religion at all.
I'm not an atheist.
Atheism, as I see it, is a strong claim. A very strong claim. In fact, it's so strong a claim that I don't think I've ever met anyone in my life that I would really consider an atheist, even if they said they were. But that's probably because the notion of "God", for me, goes way beyond the stereotypical "invisible bearded man that is inherently good and has a plan for us" hypothesis. You might as well replace the word with "Chance", "Cosmos", "Wisdom", "Nature", "Life" or even "the Origin/Big Bang". Although I wouldn't directly equate God with science, but that's another topic. Anyway, just as I'm not fond of religion of any kind as a source for personal spirituality, I'm not fond of atheism as described above. The implications of complete atheism are way too heavy (and, in a sense, too pretentious) for me to be an atheist. I'd rather use agnosticism to describe myself and many people who claim to be atheists.
Since the topic at hand is our realization, the only event that sticks to my mind as a turning point is when I was preparing for my declaration of faith I was raised in a then-catholic family, but we all slowly drifted away from it all. I was once told by this instructor I had a religious man obviously, but he was all right that you could believe in God without practising, to which he replied that it was a bit contradictory. I left the conversation at that, but there you go, that's my story. To this day I don't know what I believe exactly. I don't belong to any religion or movement or sect, but I'm not an atheist either, according to my definition. So for the time being, I'm an agnostic, for lack of a better word.
luxarific said:
...
At this point, I don't hate religion. I actually find it pretty interesting as a cultural and sociological phenomenon. I do know that I've outgrown any emotional need I have for it. (I still go to church on occasion since I like hearing Greek and watching the liturgy - it's like a little piece of Byzantium has been transported right to my neighborhood. :lol) I've accepted the fact that one day I will die and that will be the end of my consciousness. That makes me sad since I love being alive, and the world, even with all its misery, is an amazing place, but it's still better (for me at least), than believing in the lie that I'll meet all my loved ones again after death. All I can do is love my friends and family as much as I can right now, since this life is all I will ever get.
Thanks for this interesting post, luxarific. I especially like this last paragraph. I can relate to it. As for the bolded, this is one of the many points where I hit a wall. While I have a hard time believing that we will all go to some kind of paradise as we usually envision it, I have an equally hard time believing that death is all there is to it. Why? Because as with all good mysteries, I just can't fathom what happens if your consciousness just dies. It's one of the things that utterly blows my human mind. What is death like? What happens after it? If nothing happens, then what is "nothing"? What does it feel like? Obviously I will never have an answer to that while I'm alive, and I might even not have an answer when I die, and that's why it blows my mind even more. I just can't imagine what it's like to be dead with my limited human mind.
[EDIT] @Treo360: that's a good way to summarize it, yeah. Makes a good chunk of my post redundant, actually :lol.
. I should have replaced "God" with Transcendence, which is a far broader, unequivocal term. What I wonder is whether strong atheists completely reject the notion of transcendence, or simply that of God(s). While I have no problem with believing that there is no God (meaning no Allah, no Lord, no Hindu pantheon, or nothing akin to Buddhas), the idea that there can't be any kind of transcendence is the one I have a hard time wrapping my head around. But again, it's easy for me to say this, since I'm not an atheist in the first place.
