I’ve decided to restart my blog with a really light topic, religion. Don’t worry this should actually be a pretty light post. I’m really just transcribing and cleaning up one of my personal journal entires where I was getting a feel for where I sit with religion these days. For some background, I grew up in a fairly religious family in rural Alabama and we attended conservative Christian churches of various denominations and were at church multiple times a week. My life revolved around it pretty heavily until I left Alabama and once I was out of that bubble bubble I became an atheist and was your standard chronically online annoying 20-something atheist in the late 2000’s and early 2010’s with a.few exceptions. I wasn’t as heavily in the “fandom” side of things, so no Flying Spaghetti Monster for me and I wasn’t much of a fan of a lot of the big atheist “stars”, especially Richard Dawkins. I got older and drifted away from those communities and while I didn’t stop being an atheist, being an atheist did stop being a major part of my personality.
Now I’m in my 40’s and my feelings have evolved slightly, but not in an “I found Jesus” kind of way. I’m still mostly an atheist, especially when it comes to traditional religions and the existence of some sort of super powerful sentient being or beings that some may call gods, but I do leave a bit of room open for some sort of non-intelligent order to the universe and the natural world around us in a way that some may consider a form of divinity. Along with that, I’m open the idea that as parts of nature ourselves we can see or interact with that order either to draw some sort of meaning from it or to affect it in some way. Now I’m not a huge astrology girly, but I don’t entirely discount anyone drawing any kind of meaning from the pattern of movements of celestial bodies or the phases of the moon. I myself am a bit of a fan of tarot cards as a part of little rituals that I use to ground myself and feel like I’m not entirely at the mercy of the randomness of a chaotic world.
While I do love a fantasy novel and a well thought out magic system, I wouldn’t go so far as to say I think our world has any kind of magic of that sort, but I’m not entirely in the cold immovable universe camp either. I’m sympathetic to the idea that rituals, spells, or whatever you want to call similar actions might move the needle a bit. It’s also possible the ritual just makes you feel better and helps you in doing the thing you needed to do anyway. Maybe I’m just an optimist. Either way, I still wouldn’t consider myself spiritual in any real way. I don’t believe in any mind/body separation and when you die I don’t think there’s some sort of independent spirit that still lingers. I think that you simply cease to be an active part in the universe trying to understand itself, but as an active part of the universe your existence has made some kind of indelible mark on the natural world, so in some small way you’re never really entirely gone.
Ultimately I live my life by a sort of a low stakes version of Pascal’s wager where I try to live in harmony with the natural world around me the best I can while being kind to the living things around me, just in case doing so has positive benefits for me.