No Stupid Questions

Pretty well, it lets me do things Jesus frowns upon and actually enjoy my life instead of being a spiritual slave to a human invention.

It doesn't. I don't think about it at all, honestly. Faith doesn't play a role in my life.

You can always pretend you have an imaginary friend to talk to and that they will make everything better. The only difference is that everyone claims they have the same imaginary friend. That club is always accepting new members.

Spoiler alert: most people don't really have faith, especially the ones screaming at you loudly how much they have it.

When you realize that, you'll see that people are a lot more similar across all religions - authentic/thinking people from any background at all on one side, vs. those who merely "inherit" their beliefs without every really challenging them at all on the other.

Right now there are many people leaving a religion and going to atheism so much like lemmy/kbin it has that "early-generation" ring to it, but give it a few hundred years and dumb people who inherit it will just as dumbly smash others over the head with that non-religion as people have for countless millennia with past religions.

My advice: KEEP QUESTIONING! If you happened to come from a Christian or Muslim background, there is 1 Thessalonians 5:21 that literally commands that, therefore asking questions is in no way contradictory to whatever "faith" means - and anyway how could someone have that if they did not even know what it meant?

I can’t imagine going through life thinking that everything I love and/or desire will send me to hell or whatever. Imagine living in fear because you think someone is watching and judging you. No thanks.

I don’t see any advantage to having any kind of religious faith. Seems like it just limits your options and gives you nothing in return.

Be aware that most of what you see as happiness and comfort is actually just performative - they see that everyone around them is “happy” and their minister tells them if they follow the rules they will be happy. So they don’t want anyone to know how imperfect their lives are, so they pretend they are happy, and say all the right words and jump through all the right hoops.

Then you dig deeper and find that all their kids had kids out of wedlock, one is being abused by their spouse and is cheating on them, one disavowed any responsibility for their second kid they had with a second person who they weren’t married to…

You get the idea.

It isn’t all a front. The truth is that some religious communities do provide community to people who otherwise would be alone. But they are just groups of people with a shared hobby, not some kind of magic.

I feel like, at their core, most religions boil down to two things, for most people:

• Giving you purpose/security/scapegoats ("I'm living a good life so I can go to heaven," "the Lord has a plan/is watching over me," "Satan/sinners/demons tempted me")
• Dissuading you from inquisitive, critical thought (out of self-preservation, I'd imagine)

Personally, I prefer to define my own purpose, live a more "dynamic" lifestyle than is traditional, think critically, and question authority. Doesn't make me "better" than religious folks, in fact they're probably overall happier than I am. But I can't imagine living that way, regardless of whether or not I believe in a magical sky Santa who can't decide whether he loves us unconditionally or whether or not he's actually omnipotent.

Think about dressing up and going to some service every week and being pressured to pay and extra social tax. That will make you feel better.

What do you mean? Faith in a better future? My friends? The christian god?

I miss the sense of belonging and place that comes from rituals. While I don’t want to raise my child in the church, I’m trying to find ways to include ritual and ceremony in our lives. For example, I don’t want to pray before meals, so when we have a family meal I light a ceramic oil lamp to represent our time together.

I think you’re actually looking for a different question to ask - “what do people with faith have that I currently do not?”

For me, personally, I found it to be a sense of purpose. In reality, life has no inherent meaning; we reproduce and hope to pass on our genes before we die. That is the one common denominator across all life on Earth. Faith tends to be an easy answer for giving purpose because you now live for God/Jesus/Yahweh/Allah/etc, and have guidelines for what one should strive to have in life. It’s an easy way to avoid having to face such a thing and I honestly don’t blame people for it - take away all the human elements of it and life is just hard, boring, and meaningless. Faith gives an answer for everything and provides a guide on how one should life live, for better or worse.

However, there’s an upside I don’t think people realize in realizing that life has no inherent meaning: you get to decide what is meaningful in your life. You get to choose the people who you want to care about in your life, what you want to aspire to be, what you think is worth living for… you get to find and create your own purpose, rather than an external influence telling you how to do so. It’s not easy doing that, and it will be a struggle… but if you’re struggling towards something more in life, whatever that may be… then that’s a beautiful thing to strive towards.

I've never envied those with faith. I feel freedom and have comfort in knowing that I am a good person with good morals without being threatened by some mysterious being that allows such disgusting hatred to exist in their creation.

Well it depends on what you mean. When I am being nice I define faith as "what I fear is not true". I for example have faith in human potential.

If however you mean the typical meaning of the term I don't envy them at all. I was born into a god-fearing home and I know exactly what horrorshow I left for good.

It can be a touch alienating; there's a swath of rituals you're now not a part of, either because you're actively excluded or because you just no longer fit there (talking about church events and the like).

Conversations change just a little bit too--in the same way monotheists look at polytheists funny when they invoke more than one god, atheists wind up looking at any theist in the same fashion. By that token, when people realize you're atheist, they look at you as a bit damaged--my bestie's cousin blurted out "tf is wrong with you?" when I admitted I was atheist, for instance. In the US it only takes a look at some states' laws on eligibility for public office to see that for some, the only thing worse than having a different faith is having none at all.

It can also be kind of disorienting; you spend quite a bit of time recalibrating your moral framework--what you consider right/wrong and why you take those positions. In this regard, it can be a bit draining too, dedicating so much of the processor sitting on your neck to a kind of reconfiguration.

Lastly and perhaps the worst drawback is how limiting it can feel: when there's no longer a higher power to feel guarded by, you're left with the realization that there's just your own little mortal self and it's depressing lack of influence.

But ultimately, I've found it kind of rewarding: ditching the need for a creator figure (and later, the concept of an afterlife altogether) has freed me of that dissonance that occurs when injustices or random tragedies occur. When you no longer lean on the idea that there must be an inherently just or attentive higher power, those bad things become a little less nerve-wracking.

And while I lose a some rituals and venues through which to connect with others, it's a drop in the ocean compared to what's still out there.

And that powerlessness we're left behind with eases when we recognize there's other kinds of power that come through community (nebulous as that concept feels right now).

To be honest, not a whole lot is different these days for me. I was raised to believe in God, Heaven, eventually Hell, and the importance of honoring the family tradition of going to Church every single Christmas and Easter, their occasions that absolutely cannot be missed.

I will note that I deconverted fully around 14 years old, ironically during the Christmas Eve service and my single biggest fear for a couple of years was my family finding out and their reaction.

Things have gotten better since then, and thankfully, my atheism is (mostly) accepted by my family these days, so all's well.

Obligatory comment: My sunday's are actually free now, so time for some video games.

I have never strongly identified as any particular religion, so if that is where you're coming from this answer might not be helpful.

My parents both came from religious backgrounds, but they decided not to force me into any particular faith. When I was about 8, I started attending a Unitarian Universalist church, which certainly has religious tones but is very specific about accepting all kinds of faiths, choosing instead to focus on community.

As a result, I've been exposed to many different kinds of faith. I don't tend to believe any creation myths or creators myself, at best I am agnostic. But I do believe that faith is an integral part of the human experience. Faith and hope are inextricably tied together, even if they don't both show up to every family dinner, to strain a metaphor.

I may not have faith in a god or gods, but I find that sometimes I have faith in my fellow man. I hope the goodness of humanity will prevail. In much smaller terms, I have faith in my friends; I know that they will have my back when I need it. Every time I take a risk, I have at least a little faith that I'll be okay at the end, or at least that I can pick myself back up.

Humans rely on faith for a lot of things, and in my opinion, that doesn't have to look like God.

Most of us have a faith, for many that faith is not in any hokey old religion but in the things we have come to trust.
Can one have 'faith' that science is the correct path? I think so, I wouldn't call it faith like believing your actions are controlled by a magic ghost but I think it could still fit the word be believing in the ability of something to persevere even if it isn't immediately successful.
To show a quotation from an old TV show might highlight my point, "

OLD MAN 1: So much for your tolerant open-minded Starfleet ideals.
JANEWAY: There's a difference between respecting the spiritual beliefs of other cultures and embracing them myself.
OLD MAN 1: Fine. Don't embrace a thing. It's all the same to us. Go on back to your ship and play with your molecular microscanner.
OLD WOMAN: You've tried all that already, but it didn't work, did it. Kes didn't get better.
JANEWAY: No, she didn't.
OLD WOMAN: Why not?
JANEWAY: The Doctor couldn't explain it.
OLD WOMAN: So it's inexplicable. A miraculous non-recovery.
JANEWAY: We haven't found the reason yet.
OLD WOMAN: But of course you will. You'll find all the answers eventually, with enough time and study, and the right sort of tools. That's what you believe isn't it as a scientist?
OLD MAN 1: Be honest.
JANEWAY: Yes, that's what I've always believed.
OLD MAN 2: Even when her science fails right before her eyes she still has full confidence in it. Now there's a leap of faith.
OLD WOMAN: Unconditional trust. Now that's promising.
"

People with faith definitely have quite a different world view to me but I doubt that leads to a happier life. Christians might find satisfaction in following Jesus and hoping for heaven, but I can do the same by finding a fun hobby. I could never find meaning in what comes down to old myths and legends, so instead of hoping for a good afterlife, I can just do something meaningful now.

I doubt that hoping for a good afterlife is all that happy of a life, in fact I have seen it lead to dissatisfaction on people leaving a religion beleaving that they might have wasted a good chunk of their life. All research I am aware of points to happened being determined by biology and shows that doing something provides much more satisfaction then hoping you're right.

If someone doubts their faith it can result in a lot of misery because of the sunk-costs fallicy, being terrified that if the religion is wrong they have spent a lot of their life chasing a fairy tale.

Careful, this thread will likely be a flamewar mindfield.

When I was a believer, it was so comforting to be able to wash away (or at least calm) my fears, worries, stressors and other anxieties by knowing that there was ultimately a place beyond this one where everything would be perfect, and no matter what happened here, it happened for a divine reason that truly mattered. "Give it up to God" as they say.

Now I have to have real, present, in the here-and-now coping strategies (and otherwise). It's also harder to meet good people and keep a community together if you don't live in a populated area.

IDGAF. Seriously, the only time I even talk about religion is when I'm super high and one of my christian friends wants to annoy me. But it's all in good spirits, we have friendly arguments. I never really feel like I lack anything just because I don't have a faith. It might be because I never really had it in the first place. I grew up in a household where no one really cared about these things. My parents are Hindu, but when I told them (around the age 9-10) that I can't believe in this stuff, they were fine with it. Unlike many in the comments, I've never really met anyone who was directly hostile/weird towards me just because I'm an atheist.

Everyone occasionally notices that they'd prefer a comfortable lie over a difficult truth. You need to choose which you value more: truth or comfort. It's not an easy question.

I still fool myself, but not in this particular way. It means mostly that I can't use "the gods did it" as an excuse. I find other excuses.

You mean other than religious people looking shocked when I tell them there is no God?

It doesn't.

Freedom of thought freedom of self and a set of morals that place the well-being and happiness of others as a top priority.

so etymologically speaking, faith doesnt come from any religious source. It's just a word that's meant trust, belief, loyalty.

I put my faith in myself and those who have proven they are worthy of me putting it in them as well.. Faith in anyone is a risk, faith in anything is a risk. I don't believe in a higher power, though I did once.

the only consequence in my life to not following religion is my religious friends and family, including my biological parents, disowning and cutting me out of their lives as quickly as they could.

But as a result, after years of healing, I am able to love my most wonderful partner, work at an amazing lgbt nightclub, and I dont have to spend an hour pretending I can commune with some otherworldly being.

Not having religion freed me from gender expectations, so I can live my life being a person instead of having to uphold toxic masculine character traits.

The caliber of people I meet are higher, as they are also folks going against the grain that is so heavily inscribed into the culture of the States. They tend to be better educated, and thus more capable of making decisions based in critical thinking rather than conspiracies or unbased "faith"

Overall, all that matters in this cruel world are the connections we make and the experiences we have. I simply prefer the connections and experiences that religion pretends are immoral.

Most people with faith don't think about their faith most of the time. Atleast this is the case with the people I know.

The biggest thing I’ve noticed is not having a large community to feel a part of. Those I know who are active in church communities tend to have a more active social life. I have close friends for sure, but I do miss that sense of greater community and cause.

The only other thing I feel acutely is the sense of being all on my own and the decider of my own destiny. There’s no leaning on faith as a crutch during tough times.

I have a lot more free time than I otherwise would.

For me, it was kind of like taking off a pair of sunglasses you forgot you were wearing. Faith tends to put a tint on everything that after a while just becomes normal until you take off the glasses and see what the world actually looks like and you realize the sky IS blue and the grass IS green.

I was born into a religious family and on the outskirts of any serious involvement with a church...I never really "felt" anything as a kid or ever later despite summer camps and bible school, so it was just this weekly burden and this unnecessary layer of thought to wade through in everything I did, so when I started working my way out of religion it was a massive weight off my shoulders.

I still consciously do good where I can, still give to others in need, etc...I still try to be as kind and empathetic to people as I can regardless of their beliefs, but now with the knowledge that I'm doing it just because it's what I believe is right to do, not because it's tied to a rule book.

Hate to be that guy (What am I saying? I love being that guy!) but: affect*