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I am religious and believe in free will

70 (27.6%)

I am religious and do not believe in free will

10 (3.9%)

I am not religious and believe in free will

113 (44.5%)

I am not religious and do not believe in free will

61 (24%)

Total Members Voted: 249

[Kot]

The Aztec gods demanded human sacrifice because they were expending all their power and sacrificing themselves to keep the world from ending. Gotta keep the world going. Now, would you kindly climb up this here pyramid with me?

Well, they clearly do great without human sacrifice and that climb seems exhausting so I'd rather stay down here just in case someone needs me.

Wouldn't Ra's presence in the Bible be an argument that there are other gods? And as such maybe other afterlives? There is an argument that Hell is existence without YHWH, then it could very well be that he believes that any afterlife that isn't his is shit.

Hey, friend.
What if... what if the world is so shit becaues we're already in hell and its so shit because there's no God here?
I GUESS THAT MEANS IT'S TIME TO PARTY HARD!

[Rolepgeek]

Fuck, the Aztec human-sacrifice Gods were proably better.

The Aztec gods demanded human sacrifice because they were expending all their power and sacrificing themselves to keep the world from ending. Gotta keep the world going. Now, would you kindly climb up this here pyramid with me?

like how it was Ra, not god who hardened the pharoah's heart, iirc

Wouldn't Ra's presence in the Bible be an argument that there are other gods? And as such maybe other afterlives? There is an argument that Hell is existence without YHWH, then it could very well be that he believes that any afterlife that isn't his is shit.

That's my point; it was edited out later. Thou shalt have no other gods before me. It wasn't even about that he's the other god; it's about how he's the best and most powerful god, and that's why you listen to him and do what he says, instead of those other gods. Over centuries and into New Testament was when it was 'the only god'. Original version of YHWH had very little to say on the afterlife, if I remember right. You basically went into a holding zone. Christianity was the thing that really focused on the whole 'rewards in the afterlife' thing.

[RAM]

I want to believe in something greater than myself, please help...

Humanity as a collective seems disappointing. As far as I can tell, the greatest achievements of humanity are the stasis of written text and the error-correction of science. They seem to be fundamentally inclined to accumulate inaccuracy at a greater pace and to a greater peak than correctness. Adding more humans always seems to be a losing proposition, in intellectual matters at least. Not that one should abandon collaboration, it is just unworthy of any inherent respect and thus should always be subject to critical analysis rather than being accorded any faith or deemed more worthy than any random other entity such as an individual, community, cow, rock, the concept of backwards...
Still, that whole writing/logic/mathematics/science thing and all its marvellous technology is nice, but nobody seems willing to apply that stuff to social conduct, meaning of life(it is "to be yourself"(honestly(not that you have any choice) participate in evolution) which is a terrible lesson in general, short sighted, and extremely depressing. I prefer "to seek a purpose that is actually worth something" which can be extrapolated to "seek inspiration"(maintain diversity) "keep at it"(don't let your civilisation die), and "continue the mission"(make sure that somewhere, somehow, some part of your community is actually thinking about this stuff)), mental development, philosophy, or anything else remotely useful long-term unless they are trying to control it for nefarious ends...

Benevolence is incompatible with faith. Faith is inherently trusting something without reliable confirmation. Benevolence is reliant upon an assessment of the situation. Trusting something means cooperating with it without personally verifying the virtue of its desired task. Faith is, essentially, granting your ability to impose consequence upon the world without also granting your ability to determine what those consequences actually are nor what value they might have. If the subject of your faith further fails to subject itself to intensive analysis to determine precisely what its capabilities and objectives are... It is akin to signing up with an organisation without knowing if it is Doctors Without Borders or The Hitler Youth... All power-transference organisations are inherently immoral because power transfers far more readily than morality does, religion just earns special mention because the authority by which it demands obedience is so irrefutable and the ability to discern and alter the specifics of its morality, along with a complete absence of ability to apply your own morality, result oin a completely one-way conduit of evil.
 Well, I suppose if anyone knows of any spirits or fae that I could form a personalised pact with...

Wind is more like a friend than a god and none of the other elements seem worth talking to. But hey, if you can hook me up with an element of existence that can actually talk back then that would be ace! I really like the idea of local spirits or elemental pantheons but I just don't see much in the way of the sort of evidence you would expect if Poseidon was lurking in the S-bend and Thor was powering the toaster...

Then there is the issue of plausibility. If something wants to be worshipped then it really ought to make an effort. As far as I can tell, too many religions are incompatible. Religions just seem to get too partisan over silly thinks like human sacrifice, cannibalism, child mutilation, rules versus intent... You really can't just choose them all, so you have to pick one. You obviously need to pick the correct one so that means looking at which is best supported, and that means looking at distribution. As far as I can tell, the most widely distributed religion seems to be "a bunch of talking animal-things being terrible to one another, and Bob was there!". Sadly, I just don't really feel it when I think about coyote stealing platypus' nose and spider tricking them into accepting a rock as a replacement...

Creator-gods are a complete no-sale. They are utterly irrelevant. One of the very very few objectively true things is that the scenario that accounts for all of everything is exclusive. There is only the one version of all that exists, a universe if you will. This universe could be anything, the complete absence of anything is still a single scenario(there would be nobody to care about it, but then nobody would care about that...), as is a scenario containing a multitude of worlds described by a single set of dimensions(regardless of whether there is any way for one to leave their own dimensions to enter a different set of dimensions or if instead the sets dimensions are completely inconsequential to one another and others may as well not exist from any given perspective...), or a whole of existence that is a meat pie, or even a world composed entirely of abstractions... The point is that there are no external forces as any such forces would exist thus be a part of it and thus not external. So nothing acted upon it to alter its nature, and everything within is subject to its nature, so even if something is defined as having designed it, that something only exists because it happened to be a component of the universe that we happened to end up with and if we had happened to end up with a different universe then things would be different... So, basically, we have the universe that we do because we obviously don't have a different one, so it turns out that "just because" is actually the irrefutable, absolute, and objective answer to life, the universe, and everything. Not as eloquent as 42 I grant, but still somehow entertaining to me.
 Given that the true identity of the creator of the universe is "whatever will be, will be" and that it is directly and personally involved in every component of not just your own existence but that of all of your progenitors whether mortal, divine, or otherwise it obviously cuts in both above and below any creator gods by being both more involved in your own creation and also responsible itself for creating any creator gods. It is also noteworthy for forging the whole of existence by pure force of whim, being completely devoid of any form of will, intent, purpose, nor anything similar. Now, granted, Que Sera Sera The Random Number God may have picked up a severe case of sadism since it mindlessly brought forth existence, but it is obvious that the chain of events that lead to the idea that I might worship something was originally brought about by forces that lacked the mental faculties necessary to care about worship.
Although, I can only recall the one time that I properly asked for a specific result on a die, and I got that result at a 5% likelihood, so R.N.G. gets points for both definitely being the creator of everything and also having answered my prayers. I would like a larger sample size, but large sample-sizes produce conformity which feels like sacrilege...

and please take note that according to the definitions I am using, "God exists outside of the universe" is identical in meaning to "god does not exist"... Really, that whole line of thought produces some fascinating tangents, but ultimately collapses into various exciting forms of nonsense.

And lets just not use the term "God" as it really doesn't have a definition aside from "something that is worshipped" which can accurately describe Hitler, Stalin, science fictionology, your favourite Twilight ship, and any of the thousand or so "Jesuses" there are out there at the moment, amongst others... "Worship" itself is pretty poorly defined, so it is a bit of a case of blind-leading-a-suggestively-shaped-pumpkin-that-seemed-human-at-the-time. It is easier to discuss more specific things like creators, lords, patrons, or similar...

So, basically, I went looking for spirituality and everything I found beached itself and died. On that note, I have developed the ability to toggle an all-encompassing sense of support that makes limbs feel weightless, motion feel effortless, purpose feels certain and true... It certainly seems consistent with being able to control the holy spirit, so I guess I must be god, or perhaps god is just going along with it to mess with my ability to believe that it is an external phenomenon... I really do feel that I have explored spirituality enough, using both rational and passionate approaches, that it really wouldn't be fair for there to be a "true" spirituality out there and for me to still not be able to identify it with any certainty. But hey, more perspectives lead to greater inspiration! So if anyone knows a religion that I could possible respect, that would be great! Please be advised that I will not embrace a religious text without comparing it to all others as that would risk missing out on something better, and I am not going to read ALL religious texts for reasons that really ought to be obvious, so religious texts are pretty much useless(The real reason is a mixture of laziness, a lack of palatability in the text, and a wise distrust of poetry...)...

[TheDarkStar]

Please be advised that I will not embrace a religious text without comparing it to all others as that would risk missing out on something better, and I am not going to read ALL religious texts for reasons that really ought to be obvious, so religious texts are pretty much useless(The real reason is a mixture of laziness, a lack of palatability in the text, and a wise distrust of poetry...)...

This seems self-contradictory? You'll read all religious texts but you won't read any religious texts?

[TD1]

So the worst thing to be is someone who claims to besomething other than they are? That's the worst possible thing to be?

It is not the worst thing to be. However, when two people are asses and one pretends to be otherwise, it adds an extra layer of assiness to his character.

Forgive me for my blatant anthropomorphism of the God who made us in the anthropic image.

[inteuniso]

Discovery of the Tengri 137 riddle has changed my views on spirituality.

I now have some calculations I'm sticking in a quantum computer, as soon as I have access to it.

[Shadowlord]

I notice that there is no page named Tengri 137 on wikipedia.

[BorkBorkGoesTheCode]

While that isn't a good yardstick to measure by, the thing is obscure. inteuniso, could you give a synopsis?

[Putnam]

But hey, if you can hook me up with an element of existence that can actually talk back then that would be ace!

Carbon's your element.

[RAM]

Please be advised that I will not embrace a religious text without comparing it to all others as that would risk missing out on something better, and I am not going to read ALL religious texts for reasons that really ought to be obvious, so religious texts are pretty much useless(The real reason is a mixture of laziness, a lack of palatability in the text, and a wise distrust of poetry...)...

This seems self-contradictory? You'll read all religious texts but you won't read any religious texts?

No, just all or nothing, and all is impractical. Imagine that you can only read one book, and only one book in the whole world is actually worth reading, and, in theory, given that the book is perfect, you should be able to write it yourself based upon the "great minds think alike" theory of perfection being predictable due to possessing only the one form. You really probably ought to write the book yourself, so I did, but it was pretty boring stuff with just a few bits of advice for preparing for any possible persistence after life. I mean, sure, "know yourself" is a pretty useful piece of religious doctrine, "maintain your own will and ambience" can help people who lack the arrogance needed to survive this world, and "don't impose your self upon others'" is common decency and carries more weight when your are threatening their afterlife and risking contamination to your own(if two objects press against each other then they both tend to lose their shape...), but there is a distinct lack of giants fighting monsters and virtuous armies righteously purging unworthy squatters who irredeemably refused to abandon their defended city while a horde of fanatics with sharp objects waited outside because they heard second-hand that a disembodied voice said they could have it. I suppose you could probably stretch some incest into it though if you really tried(seriously, what is it with religion and incest, I suspect that it is worse than most fiction aimed specifically at incest fetishists.)? But you can see that it is really light on the whole love, betrayal, violence thing that religious texts love. So I am wondering if the one book that is worth reading might be identified by reading the blurb on the back, but it turns out that there are a lot of books out there, and their blurbs are long and detailed and mostly mindless filler and often contradictory and vague, and there are so many of them that reading them all, or even identifying them all, would be a Herculean labour, so I really can't read the back of every book in the world and even if I did there is no guarantee that it would tell me enough about the books to know which is the best one. So I figured I would ask other people who had already chosen their books because word-of-mouth is more interactive and specific than some advertising piece that was probably made by P.R. people rather than the actual Author and likely had only the vaguest relationship to the actual content of the book itself.

So, yeah, if I could actually find every religious text in the whole world, and have them reduced to a single brief paragraph for each religion, without losing any of the meaning, then reading religious texts would be worthwhile. Sadly there is no way of ranking their validity(popularity is far too variable to be a measure, I mean, the most popular religions today started out being exclusive to a single race...) so it has to be all or nothing and all is impractical. So I fail to see any contradiction at all...

But hey, if you can hook me up with an element of existence that can actually talk back then that would be ace!

Carbon's your element.

Seriously? Carbon can talk for itself? How can I get in on this? Oh, wait, do you mean, like, organic compounds and only the subset that are designated to be alive? Most living things can't talk. They can communicate, sure, but I am sort of looking for philosophy rather than gossip. I already mentioned that I am distrustful of humanity as a god... I had a traumatic experience where a parrot ate me, on m birthday no less, so I am assuming that the cult of parrot doesn't accept me. And on top of all that, these are only specific examples of the element talking, I was referring to the element itself, or its official representative talking. I mean, if an arcane haze rose from every human and coalesced into a single humanoid form and bade "Wooo! Dudes! Party time!!! Oh man, sorry about stepping on your garden. I am so wasted right now... Hey dudes! the more of you there are, the more wasted I get! MOAR BABBIES 4EVA!!!" whilst producing a cacophony of celebratory gestures then I might consider it a valid religion. I can't say that I would see much validity in actually following the religion, but I would concede the point that it were, in truth, an element of existence directly communicating and thus qualify as a god patron.

So please tell me how to contact the patron of carbon as this seems like an excellent time to join the cult. Diamonds continue to be sought-after, I still have faith in the applicability of graphite, and nanotubes are all the rage these days and it seems like their star is still rising...

[Rolepgeek]

Ah, so you want a very specific subset of communication behaviors involving the vibration of gases at specific frequencies and changes of said frequencies in particular patterns.

Also, that's some...interesting...logic behind your case for 'all or nothing'. Hell, if you're going to read books at all, you could just read religious texts instead of fiction narratives or whatever else you'd be reading. Doesn't seem too impractical to me. You've got years ahead of you, after all.

There's just so many weird assumptions and dismissals built in to that argument that it's hard to see where you're coming from.

[RAM]

All of me is weird, so that doesn't narrow down which arguments of mine might be erroneous.

Religious texts tend to be boring and depressing. Barely any editing so the content is all over the place so even if some of it is appealing most isn't, a plot that usually revolves around heroes and villains being good or bad based upon who they know rather than what they do, an overall message that tends to look disturbing like "if you are lucky I will kill you and eat your soul, otherwise I'll probably just dump you alone in a featureless void and forget you as your mind looses cohesion and then your soul melts. And when I say "lucky" I mean that I basically set up a conveyor belt to produce humans, but instead of improving the manufacturing process so that it would produce a vast variety of tolerable humans, I just threw it together haphazardly and put all my effort into throwing away the rejects when they reach the end of the line because I want my extra-special-ignorant-favourites to have something to feel better than...", and almost nothing is ever actually explained, it just leaves it for you too figure out the hows and whys and then tell it how clever it is for not saying anything that you disagree with... If I am reading for entertainment than I will go with better fiction. If I am looking for knowledge than I will go with non-fiction(it is possible that one religious text at random is non-fiction but there is no way of telling which it is even if it happens to be one that you have read).

So as far as I can tell, there is very good reason to read fiction narratives or almost anything else instead of religious texts. And there are so many, I wouldn't want to even speculate on how many different how-to books there are on feng shui...

Vibrations are unnecessary. I was a bit hasty in requesting speech, that is my bad and I apologise. It would need to communicate in a somewhat sophisticated way though. I really can't get a clear intent off of infants and animals most of the time so it would need to be more compatible with me than that but so long as I can get an appreciation of the concepts that it is conveying with confidence that I am not misinterpreting it. And, of course, it would need to be inspired by the entity in question. If a specific giant carbon molecule when subjected to a specific vibration at a specific point starts singing hymns than that is pretty compelling if it was a result of carbon following natural growth patterns in an unremarkable environment. If it the result of a massively repetitive forced-growth process then it would be a bit more dubious unless the message was "cut that out you annoying brats" and the following structures all had their own messages following a theme that would actually be plausible from the manifest will of all carbon. And even then, it really doesn't matter if god patrons exist because there is still no established reason to worship them, it just means more people who we really ought to try to treat decently because we are all trapped in here with each other and all the messes that we make.

[Rolan7]

Thanks to Fallen London, I find myself in a situation where I'm casually attempting to justify, to my friends, the act of selling one's soul to devils.  They're very nice devils.  There's a treaty.
It seems to operate on Supernatural logic, where the soul is basically a conscience...  and holds memories, while the brain also holds memories.  So when a soul is returned (in Supernatural and presumably in Fallen London) you essentially re-enter your body and remember everything it did in your absence.

It's an issue that I'm more familiar with from a sci-fi perspective.  There's a great short story which takes star-trek transporters to an extreme, where they're the only FTL travel (only information can be transferred).  The "clones" being reconstructed are inevitably angsty and even furious, but the original is compensated.

In another story, a guy was repeatedly uploading himself into a personal computer simulation...
And trying to figure out why all his copies kept committing suicide.

I have no point, just musing about the nature of self/soul/consciousness.

Inevitable edit:  Specifically, I'm justifying the Sunless Sea option to simply offer your soul to a lonely deviless in exile.  She only wants company (at least, that's what she says).  She promises that when "you" drown, you'll actually stay with her in pleasant company.  There's an implication that she would set you free and replace you if/when said company became tiresome, but she's a devil.  In exile.  It's not even a promise.

But maybe that form of immortality would be preferable to the unknown, at least for a while?  The main danger would be boredom, a problem she is equally eager to confront day-by-day.

[Silverthrone]

I do believe that it is possible to worry too much, and eventally stare oneself blind, as it were, on scripture and which one is precisely the right one. There are many paths to God (in whichever form it may be). Further, scripture is made and written by men. It is an aid, but cannot be followed to the letter, even though that would be a comfortable way to handle matters. Be it religious congragations trying and wanting to live by the very letter of unapplicable ancient Old Testament law, or people who are against scripture but would still like the people appointed as opponents to stick perfectly to it to keep their conflicts all pleasantly absolute and black and white, it is not a good choice.

Then, there is the matter of who to follow. Many claim that there is (or should be, for tidiness' sake) only one true choice. I disagree. I am quids in on Christ, myself. That is mostly because that I was I was born in and raised with. It is familiar, and I like it because it is mine, so to speak. If I were born elsewhere, I would likely be the same dabbling follower of the faith given to me. What matters is that I try to become, and be, a good and decent chap, and I would like to think that would be true no matter which particular path of ink I was invited to follow. Christ is one way of many. It is not a particularly difficult thing.

The matter of our maker and our being is not one of picking and comparing holiday destinations in adverts and leaflets. Aspire to be a good person, and to die on good terms with your life. That is what matters, and you need not worry about having chosen the "wrong" package tour. Unless it is a path of cruelty or spite that hampers you from doing good to your fellow men, the particulars of it will not matter. Indeed, not choosing a particular path of faith, in a religious context, is a valid choice. You do not, strictly speaking, need scripture or ritual to be a good person, and to honour your maker. I doubt it matters if you even believe that your maker is real, it matters so little next to the reality of how you live and who you are. Try to do good, try to be good, and live the best life that you can. It will all be well.

[inteuniso]

While that isn't a good yardstick to measure by, the thing is obscure. inteuniso, could you give a synopsis?

Contact-like riddle involving 23 pages of magic cubes made up by magic square constants, with the magic cube's constant being 666, huge division problems involving only primes, and a bunch of old turkic runes basically stating that extraterrestrials made the riddle and whoever solves it gets access to their eternal library. They also claim to be the ones behind the bible, with YHWH actually being a clue towards π7/π^7=

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

0.0072811303130709660726288634443994380218609001184193098581017807773000188247754624059925152205799660855862873713...

or π^7/π7=

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

137.34131336790063386145992052177427126674536115443523084872516964058484469176431621417448702170224802158769080690...

, both of which point to the fine-structure constant.

137 is a number that spooked Feynman/physicists in Feynman's camp simply because it appears seemingly everywhere and we've yet to hold a candle to anything that would explain this. This riddle ups the ante and uses calculations of only primes to come up with answers that contain various physical constants + religiously significant numbers in a single answer

Spoiler: See here, ripped from the wiki (click to show/hide)

(2×23×499×19214759967251×55150662460749672076915609)
----------------------------------------------------------
(3×11×47×139×2531×549797184491917×11111111111111111111111) = 0.0072973525613766677788831415921618033299792458

0.00729735256 = Fine-structure constant
 137 = 33th prime, inverse Fine-structure constant (~ 1 / 137)
 666 = number of the beast, see here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/666_(number)#In_religion
 777 = number of God, see here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/777_(number)
 888 = number of Jesus, see here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/888_(number)
 3141592 = Pi (π, 3.141592...)
 1618033 = Golden ratio (1.618033...)
 299792458 = The speed of light in vacuum (299792458 metres per second)
The period of 46 decimals is maybe for the number of HUMAN CROMOSOME(sic)? You will see on the last page (P023.png) molecules. These are DNA and RNA molecules! We think 46 is for HUMAN CROMOSOME("")!

We are baffled and wondering who this calculation works("")!?? This is a powerful message.

. The last six pages are just problem sets and the message/riddle recommends solving them out to over 137 decimal places. IDK if even vector would feel like doing that...