Fun post! I practice Hoodoo, which is Afro-American Folk Magic. It encompasses various West African spiritual practices under one term and is based on the belief that nature — trees, plants, and similar entities — has spirits that deserve our respect. This practice involves conjuring spirits, connecting with the roots, honoring our ancestors, divination, and offering praise.

I’m still learning, but recently the women who have shaped me into who I am today chose me through their spirits (This is called mounting). I want to make them proud. While working with spirits can be a bit intimidating, my culture teaches that you cannot engage with ‘the roots’ without understanding them, and there are as many benevolent spirits as there are malevolent ones.

I’m always a little reluctant to post about religious topics on Beehaw because there’s a pretty strong anti-christian sentiment on Lemmy in general which is, to be fair, entirely understandable.

I grew up in the “Church of Christ” and my wife and I stayed part of our CoC congregation for a long time mostly because of the support network and personal connections we had built up there, even though we had a lot of problems with evangelical theology and the increasing conservatism. A few years ago we wound up in the crosshairs of a group of deeply unpleasant people because of some comments we made in support of LGBTQ folks, and ended up spiritually homeless for a while. We eventually ended up at a local Episcopal church and while it’s been a big adjustment for us in some ways - we definitely weren’t used to high church liturgy - we’ve really come to love it there. It’s not without problems, but we feel like we’re able to wrestle with our beliefs and still have the support of the community, and we’ve made some close connections there as well.

Theologically I’m all over the place, so don’t ask me for a firm stance on anything - I’m just making this shit up as I go 😅

Happily agnostic. Who knows what’s out there. The universe is vast, and we only see a few dimensions. We can’t fathom what is out there or anything about it. So I believe it’s equally arrogant to definitely say there is a god or to say there absolutely is not. Or many gods. Or the Q continuum.

What I will say is that the church here has both hurt society and hurt my family individually, and has been thoroughly corrupted. I don’t think of any individual as less for believing or not believing in a higher power, it brings comfort, but the organized structure has hurt too many people.

Interesting discussion and question, thanks!

I am a reformed catholic. Raised as and confirmed Catholic, but as I’ve gotten older and more rebellious I’ve seen nothing but problems with religion. That is, I am not nor ever been an atheist, but I don’t believe in any man-made religion as truth. They’re shams to take your money; and some do some good for others. I am spiritual and believe in something greater than all of us. Maybe not the puppetmaster, but I feel there is some underlying driving connection and cosmic force we cannot explain or ignore. Your God? My God? Who knows, I do not claim to. But I feel it there and I feel better for it.

Ex Baptist, currently “none”.

Grew up in church via parental mandate, did all the church stuff because I was required to, but never really fully bought into it. Didn’t go to the local Christian school (thank god, ironically), but that was probably because we couldn’t afford it. Eventually moved out, went to college, and never looked back.

Was attending a family event about 8 or 9 years ago, and there was a church service afterward. I grudgingly went, and it just brought back bad memories and it finally clicked why I didn’t want to be a part of it (I knew I didn’t want to be a part of it, but never could put my finger on exactly why until I’d been out for years and saw things fresh).

I’m antireligion:
To consider antireligion instead of atheism

“The harm of religion is historically evident whereas the presence or absence of gods is not. Ultimately, the continued existence of religion is predicated on the indoctrination of children and suppression of rational thought. Therefore I am against religion but not necessarily against the idea of gods. For all we know gods are computer scientists and we are in their video game.” —https://www.arscyni.cc/file/antireligion.html

My mother’s a humanist, my father was a hedonist. I never grew up with any religion or spirituality, and speaking with people that did, I feel that wasn’t a bad thing.

I am atheist, which is an absence of religion. I do however have a deep appreciation for the arts and sciences, and I have a vision for what the world could and should be like. We don’t have to have homeless people. We don’t have to have hungry people or poverty. The existence of this suffering is a choice that the capitalists make in the pursuit of power.

Since we are not human, we have a completely different outlook on spirituality and religion.

Humans would most likely mark us ‘pagan’ and ‘witchy’ but for us these things are natural, we dance through the world with glee, enjoying all the myriad forces around us, all the ways of knowing we inherit and all that flows to and from us.

We connect to it and there is so much love, life and beautiful things, things to be understood and those that are not.

I worship cock.

I’m pretty staunchly atheist. My mom took me to a Unitarian Universalist church for a year or so when I was a kid, and that’s the closest I’ve ever come to church or religion. I mostly went for the hot chocolate because god damn, church hot chocolate just hits different. I grew up in a town in Utah that was 95% Mormon, which was pretty weird in retrospect. I thankfully wasn’t bullied or excluded for my lack of beliefs, but I did have to suffer through a few conversion attempts. My exmo partner likes to make fun of all the ridiculously incorrect things I’ve absorbed via cultural osmosis.

I do try to give myself some spiritual time. That usually entails looking at the mountains here and thinking the existential thoughts I normally don’t give myself time to think about. If I need to do that while I’m feeling sad or mopey, I’ll make some herbal tea and sip it while I’m chilling. I have a really strong aversion to many other forms of spiritualism (like crystals and some forms of meditation) due to some childhood trauma. I haven’t worked on that trauma because my approach seems to work well enough for me. I only experience existential dread when I fail to take good emotional care of myself.

I am leery.

Every single thing I’ve learned about it or experienced has strengthened that point of view.

I took comparative religion as a class at uni, it opened my eyes. I remain tolerant because most religious people I’ve met are not, no matter how much they preach it.

I feel like most religious teaching is for people who want to be told what to do, like a child. They want those simplistic explanations, and they want a reason to be intolerant and discriminate.

Still, I try to be tolerant.

It all seems like a cult, no matter how organized or recognized the religion is: Protestant, Catholic, or Muslim (sorry, I don’t know any Jewish folks).

I came to the same conclusion as Gene Roddenberry about 4 or 5 years ago.

religion doesn’t… make sense in my head. and not in an “enlightened atheist” kinda way, just in the way that it seems somehow alien. like the part of the brain that gets people into religion is missing. i know it must necessarily be different from imagination because while i can do that no problem, religion or even belief in general just… doesn’t click.

i find reading about practices and beliefs fascinating, so i will monitor this thread out of curiosity.

I’ve sort of run the gamut, but I spent several years as a Hare Krishna that informed most of my current practice - I’m glad I did it and learned a whole lot but there is damage to undo.

Currently I practice my own homebrew blend of Discordianism and Buddhism. Since I came from a high-demand environment, I reject the idea of spiritual authority now - no teachers, no gurus, no organizations. My practice is not beholden to anyone. I also reject the idea of dogma, which is not out of bounds in Buddhism when you consider the hundreds of sutras that directly contradict each other. Buddhists know they cannot all be true, you take what works and leave the rest.

One thing that I heard at a dharma talk once was “write your own sutra.” Start with “This I have heard. One day, the Buddha was teaching…” this and that student was there, someone asks a question, the Buddha answers. The speaker encouraged everyone who had a question they were struggling with to write a sutra, ask the Buddha, and see how he answers. I liked this approach so I’ve written several sutras myself. I write, I meditate, and I do mantra chanting as my primary day to day practice.

I have been pagan in the past, before I came to dharmic practice, so I’m open to a lot of different ideas. I do sometimes do chaos magick in the form of sigils, and I do some deity work, mostly tantric. I read tarot, but only for myself. I’m very open, generally, to all forms of sincere practice, and when pressed on my beliefs, I paraphrase Robert Anton Wilson and say “I don’t believe anything but I can imagine quite a bit.”

Edit: It’s a little stream-of-consciousness and silly, but if you’d like an insight into my practice, https://ChaosBuddha.org.