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Why are you a theist?

Sand Dancer

Crazy Cat Lady
I used to believe and no longer do, but I can't say for sure no deities exist, so I hate this not knowing. What makes you think there are deities?
 

King Phenomenon

Well-Known Member
I used to believe and no longer do, but I can't say for sure no deities exist, so I hate this not knowing. What makes you think there are deities?
For me the answers are found within.
When I ponder God who is infinite in space, if you will, I alway return to my heart for that's all I know as God is out of reach. I also believe in God son, who puts things into perspective for me here on earth. I think God questioned himself once and the answer he gave was his son. Also, when the son questions himself the answer he gives is God. It's a twofold phenomenon and existence manifest I believe.
 

mikkel_the_dane

My own religion
I used to believe and no longer do, but I can't say for sure no deities exist, so I hate this not knowing. What makes you think there are deities?

Well, I know nothing about the world, I am a strong skeptic, so I have faith and that is it. Well, if you look at the world through science, there is no purpose in the world, yet humans have purpose, so science doesn't quite add up. Further I treat the world as such as if it is fair in some sense. Thus I assign a non-physical attribute to the world and I live everyday with trust and no evidence of that the world is real. Thus I am a deist of sorts.
 

February-Saturday

Devil Worshiper
I've done group evocations of spirits where they became visible and audible to everyone present and I've had spirits tell me the details of entire conversations I wasn't present for and didn't know were had.

Does that mean these spirits are real? No, not necessarily. There are plenty of explanations for that. It's just more convenient when talking about these experiences to use language that assumes their reality. Whatever their underlying nature is, these experiments at least show that these spirits have an external reality in some sense.

Now, whether that's just because they're an abstract psychosocial construct like a Zeitgeist, or fulfill a sort of universal archetype using common subconscious symbols, I don't know. With shared hallucinations and dreams being a pretty well-known phenomenon, there is probably a naturalistic explanation. Does that make the spirits themselves less real? I don't think so, but some people might.
 

Mock Turtle

Oh my, did I say that!
Premium Member
Well, I know nothing about the world, I am a strong skeptic, so I have faith and that is it. Well, if you look at the world through science, there is no purpose in the world, yet humans have purpose, so science doesn't quite add up. Further I treat the world as such as if it is fair in some sense. Thus I assign a non-physical attribute to the world and I live everyday with trust and no evidence of that the world is real. Thus I am a deist of sorts.

Non-human existence having no purpose (other than the rest of life procreating to ensure survival), but humans creating (or choosing) purpose (for whatever reasons) is not incompatible, and therefore doesn't provide an enigma. Humans seem to have something that much of other life just doesn't have - and largely to do with our bigger brains and what goes on inside.

Perhaps I have a lazy attitude and feeble mind but not knowing doesn't infuriate me, and it is largely down to accepting that we just shouldn't ask certain questions - especially when the answers coming back might be so wrong or to be totally useless to us as a species.

We might argue as to what our purpose should be though.

Edited. (as in italics)
 
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mikkel_the_dane

My own religion
Non-human existence having no purpose (other than the rest of life procreating to ensure survival), but humans creating purpose (for whatever reasons) is not incompatible, and therefore doesn't provide an enigma. ...

Well, yes and no. The best answer within naturalism, seems to be non-reductive naturalism. So yes, we can explain purpose but we can't explain it in strict objective, rational, physical and what not terms. I.e. there is a limit to evidence and so on.
 

Secret Chief

nirvana is samsara
Are we conflating purpose and meaning?

The purpose of any sentient being in imbibing water is to maintain hydration.

Meaning is constructed by the mind. Or not.
 

Aupmanyav

Be your own guru
Well, if you look at the world through science, there is no purpose in the world, yet humans have purpose, so science doesn't quite add up.
The universe and the humans are two different things, so they will have different criteria. The Universe was possibly 13.5 billion years old before the early ancestors of humans appeared (see below), and will possibly be there for at least five billion years even in case humans disappear from the face of earth (they say sun would start scorching the earth in about a billion year's time, though there will be more severe roasting after that). Our purpose is subjective to our existence.

Mammilaformes are 225 million years old (Mammaliaformes - Wikipedia). That makes it 13.78 billion yars.
220px-Mammaliaformes.png
 
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Quintessence

Consults with Trees
Staff member
Premium Member
I used to believe and no longer do, but I can't say for sure no deities exist, so I hate this not knowing. What makes you think there are deities?

Gods are that which people deem worthy of worship (aka, that which people hold in high regard or value). Human persons worldwide deem many thing worthy of worship, and affix honorific titles to them like "gods" or equivalent. So do I. Or they don't put such honorific titles on them. Doesn't matter, they're still functionally gods.

It's not really more complicated than that to me. That gods exist is pretty obvious.
 

mikkel_the_dane

My own religion
The universe and the humans are two different things, ...

Yet we are connected to the universe, because apparently the first life came from non-life parts in the universe. And to this day we are still parts of the universe as we rely on parts of the universe; i.e. e.g oxygen, water and so on.

So no, I don't believe that the universe is a thing which is different than me as a thing, but what do I know. I believe in God.
 

Aupmanyav

Be your own guru
.. so I hate this not knowing. What makes you think there are deities?
Don't. There will be questions for many generations, many centuries. We should work to get answers, but not hate not knowing. How uninteresting will it be if we knew everything? No forums, no discussions. :)
So no, I don't believe that the universe is a thing which is different than me as a thing, but what do I know. I believe in God.
You reach so close to truth but then you go back because of culture, society, tradition, childhood indoctrination, etc. This is where I hesitated many a times, but then finally made the jump. I do not regret that.
 
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mikkel_the_dane

My own religion
Don't. There will be questions for many generations, many centuries. We should work to get answers, but not hate not knowing. How uninteresting will it be if we knew everything? No forums, no discussions. :)

Or accept there is no answer, because knowledge has a limit unless you accept anything goes, just because you can imagine it. There is more, of course, but in effect it is no different that claiming one day we will all know God.
 

Aupmanyav

Be your own guru
How will we know whether there is no answer? To get there we have to exclude all other possibilities. In that case, why God when there is nothing more than imagination?
 

PureX

Veteran Member
I used to believe and no longer do, but I can't say for sure no deities exist, so I hate this not knowing. What makes you think there are deities?
I don't know if there are deities or not. All I know is that I am a better human, and am living my life in a better way because I choose to trust that a benevolent, loving, forgiving, kind and generous God exists. Knowing has nothing to do with it. It's all about the positive power of faith.
 

Aupmanyav

Be your own guru
I don't know if there are deities or not. All I know is that I am a better human, and am living my life in a better way because I choose to trust that a benevolent, loving, forgiving, kind and generous God exists. Knowing has nothing to do with it. It's all about the positive power of faith.
Many are malevolent, hateful, vengeful and cruel even when they worship the same God. Therefore, belief in God is no guarantee of the person being good.
 

Quintessence

Consults with Trees
Staff member
Premium Member
Many are malevolent, hateful, vengeful and cruel even when they worship the same God. Therefore, belief in God is no guarantee of the person being good.

This is in part because "belief in" doesn't make for a good measure of anything important, especially since most folks use that phrase in its most superficial sense (aka, "accept the ontological existence of"). What people do or practice matters.
 

February-Saturday

Devil Worshiper
How does one go about doing that?

If you're really interested in learning, you can DM me with how much experience you've had with magick and what you know about Western esotericism and grimoiric tradition. Depending on how much you know, my answer to this question changes drastically.

I will say that if you're very new, you're probably going to have to be willing to put in at least 30 minutes of daily practice for a few years before you're going to have experiences like this. It's a lot easier if it's coupled with religious devotion, for a variety of reasons I can get into once I know you have a decent enough background to understand what I'm saying, otherwise I'll just sound like I'm speaking gibberish and that won't help either of us.

The short answer is that there are a handful of ways from different traditions, depending on what you're looking for, but they're all fairly complex operations. The operations themselves usually fill an entire book, and rely on you having read and practiced several other books beforehand. Luckily, most of these books are in legal, free, online archives because either their copyright has long run out or the copyright holders wanted to give back to the occult community.
 
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