I have none because it’s nonsensical otherwise.

No.

I’m an ordained minister in the Dudist church. I’ve performed marriages for people using my status. 😌

I learned my religious beliefs (atheist) may be more accurately described as naturalist or naturalistic paganism. But I’m still trying to figure it out.

I’m an atheist, but only mention it when asked. I don’t know what much to tell you about it - as far as religions go, it doesn’t get much simpler than “there’s nothing”.
As for why, I’m very fond of the scienific method and it’s the only thing that makes sense to me.

I am agnostic, does that count? I feel like to “say something” about agnosticism would just be to define it. I can say that I started staunchly atheist, and then realized after being a petulant teenager that there was no way I really knew enough to believe in atheism either.

I grew up a Jehovah’s Witness and disabled. I constantly heard how once the “new system” came by disability would be healed. My grandmother would constantly talk about how terrible everything is from all the “worldly people”. My parents divorced when I was a teenager. They quickly shunned my mother and us. Then again after our grandmothers death (who went to the church… religiously), we heard nothing from them. They don’t care about anyone but themselves.

Anyway, once I started Earth Science in high school and learned how old everything really is, how large space is and how truly small and insignificant we are to the universe. It put it all into perspective and now I’m pretty much an Atheist. I know I don’t truly know what is out there, or who created us. But I know it wasn’t some dude that did it just to set us up to fail. So why should I have any belief in that?

I’m of a kind of Vajrayana ( Tibetan AwakeSoulism/Buddhism ) which apparently died-out centuries ago.

( I’ve earned Soul/CellOfGod/Continuum memories from previous lives, in meditation: only 1 of those previous incarnations was human, the rest were mostly insects, like a hornet/bee/wasp probably in central Africa who saw a few humans )

it’s abstract.

All material-forms, all rituals, etc, are misleading, fundamentally.

OceanOfAllAwakeSouls/Brahman/G-D/EmitterOfUnconsciousSouls hasn’t any form.

The old testament had something on that: “commandment that no-one ever mistake any form for G-D”.

Carlos Castaneda’s guru “Juan Matus” spoke of the real Universe being abstract.

Basically, it’s Science/Engineering of one’s Continuum’s future-condition.

Want to be crushed under suffering more? Then crush others under suffering, & wait for the action->reaction, of the meanings emitted by one’s continuum eventually are forced back into one’s continuum.

Want to be liberated from reincarnation/Universe’s-recycling & all the perpetual cycle-of-birth-life-sickness-injury-death-bardo…birth…?

THEN all one has to do, is earn shedding SurfaceMind/ego duality ( which Castaneda’s tradition called “Crossing Over” & Buddhism calls realizing of Zen: same thing: ego-annihilation ), so only the 2 more-fundamental minds still are in-play,

then earn the dissolution of one’s LifeMind, which is our unconscious & our dreaming-mind, but it can be made fully conscious & capable…

Earning the dissolution of that leaves only the Soul/Continuum/3rdAttention ( as Castaneda’s tradition called it ).

Once that’s done, then one only has to purify it enough so that not-only is it free from Universe’s containment/perpetual-recycling, but it eventually gets from inside Universe to outside ( which is Enlightenment: dissolution into OceanOfAllAwakeSouls/GreatSpirit/Brahman/G-D/etc )

There are 3 kinds of mind which obliterator-force can’t understand, from our perspective:

• Wisdom-seeing-through-phenomena’s-lack-of-inherent-nature
• Faithing ( surrendering-to, relying-on, & being gratitude-for, LivingSpirit, one’s BuddhaNature, or other LivingInfinity/SoulGuru )
• Bodhichitta ( immeasurable compassion for all sentiences, incapable of insecurity. It’s what Yehoshua “Jesus” benJoseph meant when he said “be born in spirit”, as NOTHING else comes close to that sentience. I experienced it only for 1-1.5seconds, some years ago )

Anyways, it’s all self-evolution, eradication-of-the-ego/self, sublimation-from-ignorant-matter-to-pure-spirit, & that kind of thing…

Just providing this for a bit of perspective: most assumption-rivers/religions don’t hold that there is some mathematical-form/judo required for a someone to get from their current-condition to their desired improved-condition, but that’s essentially how mine works.

Current condition, desired condition, what is the geometry-of-intent which produces the alteration-of-one’s-unconscious-mind that one wants…

_ /\ _

Before starting something new, I ask myself if this is going to bring me a step closer to my eventual goals.

It involves cats and gayness. Its called the inner fediverse

I believe in ———

Rocks have feelings too.

(And so does everything else.)

I was raised loosely Catholic, as in know the stuff but don’t go to mass regularly. I learned about other religions on my own, my doubts rose as I saw what a Catholic school looked like, then had a falling out with “God” when a school friend died in a silly way (football to the head, dead the next day). I kept a spiritual side, learning more about different cults, but after learning about the scientific method, I started recognizing the patterns of manipulation and wishful thinking in all belief systems, leading me to scientific anti-theism, or “Atheism”. I’ve considered left-hand Satanism for a while, but I’m not fond of rituals.

Right now my religion is “None”, with a dash of tolerance for those who don’t understand science but try to, and another dash of fiery wrath for those who attempt to convert me to their beliefs.

“There’s just us”. It’s frightening. It’s inspiring. Sometimes it’s comforting.

I grew up in an IFB cult due to my parents wanting to assimilate to American society. In the American South, you align to a church and people leave you alone, and that church provides everything for you. That church is your social network. I thought it was normal for church sermons to end up with the crowd angry, and everyone getting into their cars to go protest something together. We used to leave church to go protest other churches on Sunday. Yell at the people from other churches when they came out from their sermons of demonic teachings. Sometimes we would protest churches that spoke in tongues, other times we would protest churches that let gays in. We protested the church where the pastor had a ponytail. During the week, we would protest at the county courthouse. We would protest things that I don’t even remember. We protested Wal-Mart when they sold Power Ranger toys because they were demonic. Everybody was scared of my pastor. When we mentioned to people what church we aligned with, people backed off.

My parents were just trying to make it in the land of the free. It’s better than what they left in Southeast Asia.

Since I’m from the cult, even today I’m prone to evangelizing things and questioning consensus.

My parents left the IFB cult by the time I was 10 and returned to Buddhism. By then, it was more acceptable and there were a couple other immigrant families, but we still got swastikas on our house. People spread nasty rumors about us and in high school it came out. Girls were not allowed to date me, or were forced to break up with me. One time a sheriff’s deputy pulled me over, took my blonde girlfriend out of the car, and back home to her parents. She never spoke to me again, and married a boy from their church a year later. I saw on Facebook that she is now pregnant with their sixth child.

In the military, I practiced as a Buddhist for a few years due to heritage. I went back to Christianity due to convenience and wanting to fit in.

Even in my mid 30’s, I was trying to make extreme Christianity work. First I fell into the spiral that is the New IFB. I corresponded with Pastor Steven Anderson. He was always very cordial and we had what I thought were fair and respectful theological debates. What was different about him was that he was not a racist, which was a welcome change from the traditional IFB. He was probably the first religious person that I could talk to who wasn’t condescending, and who saw me as another person. I read a lot of scripture then, and found my way back into Christianity. Do you see how I’m still prone to cults?

I later studied LCMS Lutheranism since it seemed authentic with lineage and history. They seemed very knowledgeable and scripturally sound. I corresponded with Pastor Bryan Wolfmueller. I learned more about the bible from the LCMS than I had learned in 35 years as an IFB member. I was going to leave my career and focus on the LCMS. The LCMS members know the bible and the history behind it. They are the biggest bible nerds on the planet. Even Steven Anderson agreed to disagree on theological debates. He disagrees with but respects the LCMS. (this is a complication of conflicting passages in the Bible which they both view as infallible and inerrant) Again, he was always cordial.

[personally identifying information and stories paragraph redacted]

I went back to my old church, and tried to convince my wife that we would start attending an LCMS congregation. This was March 2020. Then the rest of 2020 happened and we found out that we don’t belong. As non white, non black people, we never did. Even my evangelical all her life, but still brown wife hates organized religion now. She is now an athiest. I’m not going to share those stories, you just have to accept it. We have distanced ourselves from all forms of Christianity. Our children, who as of 2020 were going to enter private Christian school, are being raised as skeptics and are in a very progressive and tolerant school. They cannot remember a time that they used to go to church, and find the teachings to be silly myths. I started wearing my Buddha pendant again in defiance of Christianity and in preservation of my heritage. But if I had to start clean, with no legacy, I would probably follow Taoism.

I still respect the ELCA, however. They are as close to what Christ preached as I have seen. It’s just the mythos of Christianity isn’t for me, isn’t about my people. There are no ties there and no reason for me to pretend any more. I am my authentic self.

I might delete this later.